Chapter 18: Sparring

Naruto's next month was spent focusing on training, he had gained a skill called [Leaf Concentration Exercise] which helped in training his chakra control, sadly leveling it up took an extremely long time so he spent most of his time training this skill, along with practicing the most basic Fuinjutsu seal the storage seal, it was quite easy to do for Naruto and he had managed to master it within a day, he produced a bunch of storage scrolls which he used to hide his minimal use of his inventory.

At the academy, he was still ranked first place as there hadn't been any spars yet and he easily aced all the academic tests they had done, with Sasuke coming in close second and Shino third, Naruto was actually surprised to see Shikamaru Nara at the bottom of the ranking but he realized that the boy was simply too lazy to care about rankings and test, Shikamaru spent his time relaxing with Choji who Naruto caught to be always eating.

Naruto had actually become friends with most people in his class, excluding the couple fangirls that Sasuke seemed to have he got on pretty well with everyone, of course, Shino was the person he spent the most time with, they had actually managed to become best friends, he had even been introduced to the boy's father, which was a rather awkward but welcome experience to Naruto.

Naruto had actually held off on going into the ID again, instead, he spent his time training, his wisdom was way too low and it took him a long time to replenish his chakra without using meditation, his vitality hadn't actually risen but all his other stats had by a couple of points.

Naruto was well ahead of his class and he thought about graduating early but that would give him less time to learn and raise the level of his skills, why would he leave with the strength of a genin if he could leave with the strength of a Jonin and this way he could spend time with his friends as even training got boring sometimes.

Naruto was even contemplating training together with Shino to help to boy become stronger than his peers but he realized that Shino didn't have much time to train with someone else as he was busy mastering the use of his newly gained Kikaichu, which he still hadn't shown to Naruto.

Naruto entered the academy classroom and quickly found Shino who was sitting around the middle of the classroom, he was greeted by some of his friends as he walked to Shino, he greeted them back and didn't pay them much attention.

"Yo Shino, how's your training been going?" Naruto greeted Shino

Shino quickly replied, "Hello Naruto, my training has been going quite well, I can control my Kikaichu quite well now, but father still doesn't let me take them out of the clan compound."

Naruto nodded in understanding, they continued making some small until Iruka arrived and started explaining the day to the kids.

"Good morning class, today we will be going out to spar with each other, but for now we will have a history lesson, we will be talking about-" Naruto drained out the rest that Iruka was saying, while history was very interesting the man wasn't that interesting of a teacher and his lessons got boring after a while.

The day quickly passed and the time to have the first sparring class quickly arrived.

Iruka was once again outside with his students on the academy training field, and he began explaining how things will go.

"All right class, I want all of you to form pairs, we will start off by sparring with a partner after an hour we will be doing 1 on 1 spars with everyone watching, understood?" Iruka asked to which the class replied with "Yes, Iruka-sensei."

Naruto quickly paired up with Shino as they headed to a less crowded spot on the training ground, Shino was a very talented student, he had come third in the rankings and could fight Naruto for quite a bit, of course, Naruto held back since he didn't want to kill his friend.

Naruto and Shino stood three meters away from each other and both formed the seal of confrontation, Shino was designed to be more of a ranged fighter but as a member of the Aburame clan his Taijutsu was deadly and efficient, sadly he couldn't use the full form of Aburame Taijutsu as that required the use of various types of insects which injected poison and toxins, and because Shino would eventually use Kikaichu he would drain his opponent's chakra with each hit.

Naruto took the initiative and charged at Shino who took on a defensive stance, Naruto sent a punch at Shino which Shino deftly blocked, they exchanged a few blows before Naruto decided to attack full-on, Naruto dropped into a low stance and sent a ferocious kick at Shino's legs, Shino moved back in time to dodge, Naruto who expected this to happen, used the momentum of his kick to send a spin kick at Shino's stomach, which Shino did not expect, evident by the sound of Naruto's foot connecting to Shino's stomach.

Shino buckled over in pain as he mouthed out that he gave up.

Shino eventually recovered enough to speak "It seems that it is my loss once again." he said as he formed the seal of reconciliation.

Naruto mirrored Shino as he formed the seal of reconciliation and grinned "Hehe, you're still a hundred years away from beating me!" Naruto said as he stuck up his nose acting all high and mighty.

Shino chuckled at Naruto's antics as he got ready to at it again, this hadn't been the first time that they sparred, the few times that Shino didn't have to go back to his clan compound to train after the academy they had used to spar with each other, at first Shino couldn't even keep up with Naruto's speed but he had gotten a lot better from before.

They continued sparring with each other until Iruka called all of them to group back up together.

Iruka spoke, "All right we will now begin sparring with each other 1 on 1, please stand in a large circle."

The students followed his instructions and formed a circle, Iruka stood in the middle of the circle and started naming students, the first few fights were pretty basic but you could see that the students had improved from a month ago, of course, there wasn't much improvement but it was something.

Shino's name was eventually called and he had to fight Inuzuka Kiba, Kiba charged at Shino much like Naruto had done at first sadly for Kiba he was a lot slower than Naruto and Shino had easily taken him down.

The fights continued until only two people were left, which were Naruto and Sasuke.

Naruto and Sasuke stood in front of each other, Sasuke was slightly glaring at Naruto, it seems he was still upset about his previous loss.

Sasuke confronted Naruto "I will defeat you today!" the fangirls that Sasuke had cheered him on.

Naruto was slightly irritated "Hmm, we'll see about that,"

They both formed the seal of confrontation, Naruto instead of charging ahead patiently waited for Sasuke to attack, which seemed to work as Sasuke angrily charged at Naruto.

Sasuke punched at Naruto but Naruto easily dodged and redirected the punch which caused Sasuke to stumble forward.

"You are too blinded by your rage, in order to fight at your best a calm mind is always needed," Naruto spoke some wise words to Sasuke.

[Your wisdom has increased by 1 because you imparted wisdom upon others.]

Sasuke seemed to take Naruto's words seriously as he took a deep breath and calmed himself down, the more he fought Naruto the more he learned, he realized that he would probably not be able to beat Naruto but he could learn a lot from fighting Naruto.

Sasuke charged at Naruto once again but this time it was a calculated charge instead of one fueled by anger.

This time Sasuke managed to get off a couple more moves but was ultimately punched square in the jaw, which caused him to be stunned for a second or two, Naruto could've ended the fight there but he wanted to see how much Sasuke had improved from before, it actually seemed like he had become a bit worse but Sasuke's moves were actually a lot more calculated now, unfortunately for Sasuke that did not amount to much in front of Naruto.

They continued fighting for around five minutes but in the end, Naruto managed to get Sasuke into a chokehold, and Sasuke was forced to give up or faint from asphyxiation, of which Sasuke chose the former.

They formed the seal of reconciliation and Iruka announced the winner.

Naruto turned around to walk back to Shino but before he could Sasuke spoke up.

"My father has invited you to have dinner with us, he would appreciate it if you could come, Naruto-san." Sasuke's expression seemed regretful as if he didn't want to tell this to Naruto but he had decided to tell him either way.

Naruto was surprised, he didn't expect his Uncle to invite him to dinner after all he had told Naruto that it would be problematic if they met up too often nevertheless he was happy "Sure I'll show up." Naruto and Sasuke discussed some details and then went on their own ways.

Shino stared at Naruto and decided that he wasn't going to ask about what they talked about, the day had come to an end and both Shino and Naruto decided to head home.