Chapter 32

In the area which better be called a devastated forest now, Aoki was siting cross legged on the ground with sheathed Dragon's breadth laying on his lap. His breadth was slightly erratic and forehead filled with beads of sweat. Still he could not hide the small smile on his face while looking at figure of the old man standing few meters away from him leaning his back against a thick tree.

" I told you to not underestimate me old man but you did not listen. The fight would have so much more interesting if you had summoned Monkey King Enma san."

The old man was breathing hard but he also had a kind satisfied smile on his face. Actualy Aoki had surpassed his expectations by too much so he was more than satisfied. " Like I said before too , it won't have been much of a fight if I summoned Enma. Still do tell this old man from where did you learn such great swordsmanship? Honestly I had never seen anyone spamming flying slashes easily without even using chakra before in my life."

" Heh.. it's not really a secret anyway. Just talent and years of hard work. I will explain the steps in detail some other day. But I dont think someone else can withstand the training because it has basically nothing to do with chakra and requires insane amount of repetitive practice."

Aoki said truthfully as he genuinely thought that in this world where everyone was used to using chakra, it would be almost impossible for someone to appear who had great talent for the sword and did not mind investing all the time to sword practice only. Well not everyone had unparalleled sword talent like Aoki after all.

Meanwhile Sandaime just nodded at Aoki's words and did not doubt them either. He felt that the young man infront of him had a rare straightforward personality for a shinobi and wont lie to him unless necessary. Besides he also could not even imagine the talent and hard training required to achieve Aoki's otherworldly skill in swordsmanship.

Sandaime shivered literally whenever he closed his eyes and remembered the scenes of their fight and the potential he felt from young Aoki.

Aoki made him remember Minato because both of them had insane talent in reflexes and reaction speed. Sandaime tried to trap Aoki countless times using various combinations of his jutsu but did not succeed even once. It felt like Aoki had eyes everywhere and could dodge any attack from any position in time.

Well he was correct because Aoki had used his mind's eye skill full vision and maintained it in one kilometer radius around him during the whole fight. It was slightly taxing on his mind but totally worth it. Sandaime could guess that Aoki was definitely someone with sensor talent too but that was it. He could never be able to guess that Aoki's skill was way ahead from simple sensor skills unless he was told in person by the young man himself.

Sandaime could tell that Aoki's fighting style was not yet complete and it had great potential to grow in future. The young man showed no definite weakness and used his strengths to his current limits. Sandaime approved of this mindset as it would be useless if one focused on too many jutsu or fighting styles because no matter how talented was the person , one was limited by many factors and most important one was the allocation of time for training.

In this aspect , Aoki was great because his main focus was on few things from Sandaime 's observation which were :

1. Swordsmanship

2. Body Conditioning

3. Wind Chakra Nature transformation

4. Fire Chakra Nature transformation

5. Honing reflexes

Sandaime had confirmed in the one hour and thirty four minutes long spar that Aoki's main focus was definitely on those five points and what made him extremely satisfied was that the young man had already reached significant progress in the five aspects too.

Sandaime was correct but Aoki would not agree with him completely because he knew that he himself had never planned to stick with just these few aspects. Aoki had unlimited body potential so it would be a waste to not use it completely. His chakra will grow at much faster pace than others so Aoki planned on mastering other nature transformations and jutsu too. His Fuinjutsu level was max so he will naturally focus on that too. All in all he will never limit himself because Aoki had one more insane advantage which was that he could hasten his mastery over skills using skill points. Sandaime could never imagine such things and Aoki would not really share his secrets with him either.

During the fight , Sandaime stubbornly refused to summon Enma and use his mastery on Bojutsu. Aoki was annoyed by this but the old man had a good reason behind his decision.

Unlike what Aoki thought, Sandaime had actualy stopped underestimating him from during the early stages of the fight already. Precisely from when the old man saw the skill of Aoki with the sword and genuinely fell in awe watching it. Sandaime made a decision to test the limits of Aoki's swordsmanship and was not disappointed either.

Old man used Water Dragon jutsu but in return Aoki showed his insane movement speed and reflexes and almost instantly jumped above and cut the dragon into two with a powerful but quick flying slash.

When the old man trapped Aoki using sturdy Earth walls from all sides , the young man just smiled and slashed his way out in seconds.

The fire Dragon bullets were cut effortlessly and basically all the just below rank S were useless and did not even last few sword strikes. Sandaime was already awed by the insane sword skill at this point but more surprise was waiting for him as the fight intensified.

Sandaime used S rank jutsu too but they were also cut before doing any real damage to Aoki. This time the momentum and force behind each jutsu was immense so the normal flying slashes were not enough to stop them. Aoki could definitely do that in future but not with the current proficiency.

So to tackle this problem Aoki used his skill which could be called his trump card. He used his near perfect wind chakra flow and combined it with his flying slashes. The difference in power was visible to the naked eye and the old man was left speechless.

Still it was not like it was easy for Aoki either. The old man had much greater chakra capacity than Aoki and his years of training with his jutsu had also resulted in the least possible chakra consumption using them. So Aoki had to confront jutsu after jutsu without rest which took a great toll on his stamina.

The chakra consumption of Aoki was the plan of the old man and it worked to some extent too. Still Sandaime greatly underestimated Aoki's chakra capacity which was already at low Kage level. So to keep up with his own tactic , the old man also had to use more jutsu than planned which resulted in his own unexpected chakra consumption too.

The fight thus ended when Aoki's chakra capacity was reaching its limit and his request to stop the fight then was accepted by the old man who was also cursing his own tiredness which was the result of his old age.

Aoki was greatly satisfied with this fight because of multiple reasons. He got see so many jutsu and their combinations and timely taking care of them greatly enhanced his battle experience. Aoki's swordsmanship also improved during the fight because his focus was used to his current limits all the time. Naturaly the quest from system was completed too so he also could not wait to recover some of his mental strength and chakra and return back to his apartment.

The only regret was that Aoki could not experience the old man's infamous skill with Bojutsu and his infamous summon who could transform into a staff which could shrink and increase its length at the old man's will. That would have made the fight more difficult and intesrting. Aoki was sure that he would definitely have been forced to use Flying Thunder God at some point of time if old man had used his bojutsu along with his insane variety of ninjutsu. After all there was limit for Aoki too of what could he do only with his reflexes and reaction speed. He was also feeling grateful slightly because this also meant that he could hide the fact that he could use Flying Thunder God from the old man for now.

Time passed and after recovering a little , Aoki started to job back to the village while his mind was still filled with the exciting scenes from the battle with the old man. He was thinking of what to improve in short term and had already come up with a few ideas..