Chess

Back at home, I was nagged at for being late, though it only lasted for a couple of seconds.

"Tsk...I don't want to nag you anymore, it's too bothersome", my mother said.

I did not consider them my real parents, and I did not like them very much. In my eyes, they were quite irresponsible, but at least, it gave me freedom.

[Nara Chess Set - Rare Item

A chess set that has been passed down through generations, having been used by countless geniuses. Besides its history of nurturing intelligent players, the Nara Chess Set is known to increase the learning rate of its users, chess-wise.

Effect - Increase intellect of players by 10 while playing on this chess set, and the insights earned from the games can be memorized, making the learning rate of chess much faster]

Back in my room, I started to play chess alone.

[Chess - Common Skill

Proficiency: 108 (Intermediate)

The ability to move pieces with skill and elegance. Pins, forks, skewers, castling, outposts and common tactics are second-nature to you. You can crush pretty much anyone who has not dedicated years of training and playing games with some of the best. Your knowledge of earth-based openings will give you an edge against some of the greatest chess experts of this world.

Style: Positional Games, London System, Caro Kann

Effect: Visualization skills are 1080% more effective]

Simulations. Although there was a long way to go still, I wanted to train my skills by simulating combats in my head, rather than in real life. Ultimately, I wanted to be able to gauge a combat in my head, so that I would know whether I needed to fight my opponents or flee. The fact that my system could scan the attributes of my opponents gave me an edge already, so combining this skill with my superior vizualization skills, I knew that it would save my life in the future.

Plus, chess was the only way I had found that enabled me to grow my intellect stat. Books I was allowed to read in the house were all meant for the people in this world. Uneducated individuals, that is. The litterature was anything but elegant, and the core of the books were simple ideas that was so basic that it was just humiliating.

Hence, chess was a good way to grind my way up.

I stopped playing my father ever since he gave me a look of fear.

"No child should be able to play this well", he told me

At that time, I only had 40 points of proficiency in the skill, so I decided to stop for a while. If a Nara found me too strong with such low proficiency, then it told a lot about this world's standards of intellect. But it did make sense after all. If shinobi were smart, there would not be so many wars, and so little technology. Hell, the fact that there were so many strong shinobi yet not a single trace of a well-trained army formation was proof of the shinobi's lack of intellect.

Imagine an army of trained shinobi using a fireball in a wall formation. It would be disastrous. But shinobi worked in small teams of three or four. At the end of the day, I needed to become Hokage to make some changes to this barely managed village...