Chapter 3: More Training

It was easy for Sawada to persuade the other caretakers. They were happy that Soma finally showed interest in something. However, for safety purposes, Soma was only allowed to go there in company of Sawada and only two times a week.

They made their way to the park for the first time. Sawada asked Soma if he was exited, which he replied to with a yes. This was the first time he was going to see real sword fighting after all. As they reached their destination they were greeted by Tomioka. He then introduced us to the others. There were 7 Jonins and 25 Chunin, as well as 7 retired shinobi including Tomioka. At first the group of three only watched right next to the group of other retired sword fighters. They used the opportunity more to talk about the good old times and also had a shogi board with them.

Soma was amazed. The Chunin were great and all, but the Jonins just were on another level. The finesse they wield there swords with and their level of skills left the boy in awe. As he saw the chain of attack, defense and counter, that looked more like a dance than a mere fight. That lead him to want to join the fight too. Of course, he wouldn't be able to compete in any way with them, but still. He was so caught in their fights, that he didn't even realized his hand slowly moving towards the handle of his bokken attached to his waist.

Tomioka next to him laughed, as he noticed the fire in the boy's eyes. Soma wanted it. He discovered a new feeling inside of him. Well, it was more of an obsession. "Hahaha, little guy. Let me show you something." Soma looked up, realizing he was just trapped in another dimension without paying any attention to anything around him other than the fights.

Tomioka walked a little bit forward and then took his sword from his back. It was a Katana with a silver blade and a green and black handle. He took his stance having his sword in one hand pointing away from him. He then proceeded to slowly lead his arm above his head, making the blade pointing directly to the sky. He slowly breaths in, holds the air and as he breathed the air out loudly in one go, he launched the blade towards the ground, whirling up the wind, making his hair move wildly up. He stopped before the ground, letting him stand in the same stance he stood before he took a swing.

He then chuckled. "Looks like I'm getting old. I didn't even break the sound barrier." 'The sound barrier!?' Soma thought. He asked himself just how much he needed to train in order to achieve that level of skill.

"Come here, Yatora. I'm going to advise you." Yatora did as he said, taking out his bokken. The training session went on with Tomioka correcting his stance. It was way harder than it looked. It had to be relaxed and loose, while being able to explode anytime. Turns out Tomioka is a very diligent teacher. Soma scored the jackpot. After around 40 minutes of correcting his newly achieved student Tomioka was finally pleased with Soma's stance. 

"Now to the easy part." Tomioka said with a straight face. 

"The easy part? Isn't slashing way more important and difficult than the mere stance?" Soma asked with honest interest. 

"Hah the youth, so ignorant." Tomioka sighed, while smiling internally. "While slaying is important your foundation is the part were the power of your slashes are coming from. The order of difficulty is the following: The easiest are slashes, like the one I showed you. Then there is the stance I just drilled into you and will drill into you in the future. Next there is, is learning a sword style or more if you want. That can be your personal sword style that is suited perfectly for you and your selection of Jutsus or learning an already established sword style, which isn't amiss either. However, the most difficult part of learning the art of the sword is the application in the real battle."

'That made perfect sense' thought Soma. While he could take a perfect stance on even ground right now and had all the time to slash, a battle was fast paced and you also sometimes have to attack midair, which made a perfect foundation impossible. The last and utmost thing was, that during a battle you had to decide quickly on how to respond to your opponents actions.

"And now I show you how to perform a basic slash." Tomioka walked around Soma checking his stance one last time, before explaining the basic slash. "Normally it would be best to slash with both hands on the handle. That way you have more power behind your attacks. I say normally, because it is not optimal to wield two-handed, as it limits the usage of Jutsus drastically. That is why Shinobis usual wield their swords in only one hand. However there are some exceptions and I would advise you to try a wakizashi sometime in the future. Better you just forget about it now. Now you have to lift you're sword until it has around a 105 degree angle, from you're normal stance. Just a little bit more. A little bit. Now you are too far away. That's decent." Tomioka said, as Soma was adjusting my wooden sword to his word. "And now I want you to slowly slash down. It doesn't have to be complete slow motion, but you should be able do a perfect line without making any sound from cutting the air. Then stop when you think you're back to your base stance."

Soma did as Tomioka said and stopped in the moment he thought he returned to the base stance. "First try, I'm impressed. Maybe you are a little bit promising." Said the blacksmith calm, while being secretly really happy with the progress of his student. Soma was thankful for all the training he did on walking on vertical surfaces. Since his pool of Chakra wasn't big, he wasn't able to coat his feet in chakra the whole time he was running on walls, as he trained for multiple hours everyday. This is why he started learning the timing when he sat foot on the wall to just apply chakra that short moment. Right now he was able to do that subconsciously, which apparently improved his feeling for timing by a lot.

"And now do it 1.2 times faster." The training continued until the point where Soma had mastered the 26.8 fold speed. It was still slower than the average slash, but he had perfect control of it. Then he was dismissed as the training ended and thanked Tomioka for the training. What Soma didn't expect was a homework. "I want you to do it on 85fold speed. That should equal the speed of a normal slash. But only increase it by 0.2 each time, you here me. No cheating allowed." It sounded difficult at first, but it really wasn't. Just as Tomioka said. Slashing WAS the easy part. Then the group of shinobi said goodbye to each other and went their own way. Soma and Sawada did the same and returned to the orphanage.

On there way home, Sawada asked "Did you have fun?"

"I quite enjoyed it. Those Jonins were amazing. They were just like real swordmen." Soma replied.

Sawada chuckled. "That's because they are."

"Oh" With their anime-worthy performance Soma had forgotten that this world of fiction was now his world.

The next day, Soma was training under the watch of the caretakers and the other kids for the first time. It was ok since he was just practising something physical, rather than something chakra related. On that topic, he was in the library two days ago to check out Jutsus to learn. The sections for Jutsus were not publicly accessible. The library was divided into following sections: General section, Science Section, Novel Section, as well as the Jutsu sections E-Rank Section, D-Rank Section, C-Rank Section and finally B-Rank section. Apparently the higher ranked Jutsus where stored elsewhere. The way the ranks work is that you're allowed into the E- and D-Rank section as an academy student, as a Genin you are allowed into C and B and as a Chunin you apparently get excess to the A-Rank Jutsus. The few S-Rank Jutsus in Konoha's possession were apparently only known to a selected few Jonin and Anbu.

However the safety precautions were laughable. It was easy to get into the limited sections, but you had to keep being unseen while you're inside the section. That meant that you had to take the scroll you wanted outside of the section you're not allowed to be and into a section where you're allowed to be in. There's only one problem. While all of the Jutsus were contained in scrolls, everything in the normal sections were books. Damn technological progress. Now he couldn't read the scrolls, because everything was mass produced as books. However, he didn't seem to find a problem to learn higher rank Jutsus once he was able to enter the E- and D-Section after he joined academy. That said, there's no real reason to buy a Chakra paper now, since he won't be practising any Jutsus anytime soon. 

Back to his sword training. Soma managed to make every slash on the first try until the 72fold speed. As he stopped he immediately felt something was off. The blade was around 2 cm deeper than else. It felt unnatural. 'That's why Tomioka-sensei makes me slash that often before I try it at real speed. I now have a feeling for the perfect stance!'

He tried it again and got it right this time, but he wasn't satisfied until he got it right three times consecutive. He repeated that procedure for the next stages of speed. That made his progress distinctly slower and the training many levels harder. The sweat he produced soon began to flew every time he slashed down. But that didn't stop him from reaching 85fold speed. It took a whopping four attempts to finally complete one successful swing. But he wasn't pleased with that outcome. He tried it again and it took him another seven attempts to finally hit the three consecutive times. But Soma was still not satisfied. Now, he wanted to hit the slash 10 times consecutively.

He was currently at nine slashes consecutively. The last swing. 105 degree. And DOWN! It hit. 

Ten slashes consecutively. He would consider the homework done. After a short thought about increasing the speed even more, he dismissed this idea immediately. As Tomioka said, 85fold speed was the speed of a normal slash. Soma couldn't slash much faster anyway. And he was drenched in Sweat. It is probably time to wash myself before dinner. He actually enjoyed dinner now, as he was able to talk to the others and especially to Sawada about his training progress. The best part was, that Soma was the reason for some of the other orphans to start working out too. After all, most of the little kids in this world wanted to be Shinobis too when they grow up. It won't hurt them to have a stronger base when entering the academy. 

The next day, the duo visited the park again, Tomioka instantly ordered Soma into his stance. "Hmmh, yeah that's a good stance. Does it feel right to you?" Tomioka asked, having his hand scraching his beard.

"It does feel natural now. When I stop a slash only a few millimeters too late, it instantly feels off."

Tomioka smiled, as that means that his students diligently did his homework without shortcuts. His training was not only to teach his student control over the sword, but also the feeling you need to have in order to become a real master of the sword. "Now show me your slash!" Tomioka ordered Soma. The two of them had also captured the look of the other retired shinobi, who even stopped their game for a second.

Soma knew this slash had to hit. But there was no way it won't, right? No that was the wrong mindset. It is going to hit. Soma breaths in and as he breaths out his sword slashed down. It was barely visible and it perfectly stopped at the stance that was drilled into him by his sensei. Tomioka clapped and the other retired swordmen joined. 

"Perfect. You know can count a really fast slash into your arsenal." Tomioka said.

"What do you mean? Didn't you say it was average." Soma was slightly confused.

"Oh, yeah? Well, I tricked you. The average adult shinobi that knows near to nothing about Kenjutsu has a slash around your 75fold speed with an unclean form. You might have experienced a power spike around that point." Explained Tomioka. He completely fooled his poor student. "And now you have a faster than average slash at your young age. However it is a sword perfectly fit for your height and weight. Without training, you won't have a much faster slash when you're older since you'll have a bigger sword then too."

It was a very well played move from Tomioka. Soma's mindset didn't want to fail, before reaching the point of being average. Little did he know that he was already past the average level. Soma thought 'Now that's what I call a teacher. I wonder how those in my old world even got their license.'

"Tomioka-sensei?"

"What is it, little boy?"

"I could probably go a little faster. Can I try?"

"Of course, but don't go overboard. Be realistic. You should never overestimate yourself. You heard me. Never. That can be the cause of your death." His face had a dark expression when he said this. 'That was probably a story of his past, that he wouldn't tell me just like that. He must have experienced crazy things, I can't even imagine. He fought in multiple wars, while I'm a mere five year old or 14 year old. Or do years add up?' Soma thought.

Whatever. Now he had to concentrate on the task at hand. How fast can he go? Probably around 97fold. Let's try 95fold, as it is a nice number. Vertical slash: 95fold! It stopped perfectly.

"Oh, 95fold. Respect. And even a round number, so you'll probably can even go a little faster, right?" Soma nodded. Tomioka had incredible eyes. Soma looked at the Jonins training. He couldn't even see their movements properly, so he was wondering if Tomioka could.

"Hey, no daydreaming!" Tomioka called him out of his thoughts.

"I was not daydreaming. I just wondered if you are able to see their movements." Soma pointed at the Jonins.

"Of course I can. I'm a Jonin myself or rather was. In my old days I was even better with my sword than these 7."

"How fast can you go then?"

"Without strengthening of chakra, I can now do around your 250fold. But I could've probably done over 300 in my prime. But don't feel discouraged."

Soma didn't feel discouraged. He was rather fired up, knowing the possible speed. And Tomioka's words gave him a hint. Strengthening with chakra. Of course Tomioka didn't know that he was already able to perform Chakra strengthening. He was going to try that tomorrow morning while no one was awake. If it works how he thought it would, that was something no one should see.

"We have about an hour and ten minutes left, so I'm going to start training your footwork now."

At the next morning he stood up early again. He decided to do his physical exercises and calisthenics first before trying the chakra slash. His physique had a lot of improvement since he started and he had a level of body control, that he couldn't even dream about in his past life. Of course it helped that he still had his childlike agility and a low bodyweight. After he completed his basic training he decided to try it out.

Soma drew his sword, or he would want to, but his wooden bokken had no sheath. Thus he just laid his hand on the handle. In one quick movement he took his stance and had his sword on a 115 degree angle from the ground or 105 degree angle from his stance. 

He focused the maximum amount of chakra into his arms and shoulders he could handle. 

"Artificial 545fold."