Chapter Seventeen- A Flutter Of Wind

Eleven days later....

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{Hidden Quest Complete}

The Old Way

Objective: Allow Koshu Uchiha to help you develop your Sharingan to its next stage.

Reward: 1 Perk Point,1x Armor Crate.

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I spit on the ground in principle as I begrudgingly accepted the rewards offered.

"There you are kid" Ruko said with a small wave. He was the chunin with the water affinity that played probably the greatest role in our triumph over Ruso. I was surprised he really waited for me as I planned to make my way to the Suna front on my own.

I offered a small nod in response as I forced out a half smirk.

"Surprised you waited for me, where are the brothers?" I asked more to keep the conversation going then actually caring. He raise a confused eye brow as we headed toward the gate office to finalize our departure.

"Those two….. Well those idiots decided it would be a good idea to go on ahead yesterday. It seems getting an award really lit a fire under them. Something about wanting to prove themselves and rise through the ranks" Ruko said with a small chuckle about his over zealous squad mates.

"Is there something different about you old man?" I asked after we finalized the paperwork for our departure. It seemed to be on the tip of my tongue as I observed the middle aged chunin. He tripped slightly before coughing in slight embarrassment.

"You really haven't noticed?" Roku asked but I felt his response had no malice on it, though he did oddly keep adjusting his shinobi jacket….. It was a darker shade.

"Congratulations, tokubetsu jonin?" I asked with a real smile as I began tree hopping.

"Yes sir and it's all thanks to a little crazy bastard that ran around the battlefield like a chicken with it's head cut off." Ruko said with a chuckle that in turn caused me to do a spit take at his assessment of my first battle.

I scowled at him slightly before sighing as we continued forward in silence with a few odd bouts of small talk during our journey.

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{Quest Accepted}

Art Is An Explosion!!!

Objective: Destroy the Iwagakure Explosion Corps

Reward: ???,???, 

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Another goal to drive me toward this tornado of destruction, sand, blood and death. But there was a more pressing matter that had my full attention. More so than even my contract to kill Lord Hiruzen.

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{Quest Accepted}

The Cycle Of Hatred

Objective: Kill 'Gari Of The Explosions'

Rewards: ???,???,???.

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What annoyed me the most as the damn floating scroll didn't give me with the right to see what the fruits of my labor could produce. But the rewards didn't really matter, the goal did. I would've tried my damndest to complete that vendetta whether the scroll interfered or not. 

Anything from the scroll after that point became a bonus for what I was planning to do anyway.

Still, before this war ends. I swore to myself that by the end of this war Gari's head would lay at my feet, nothing…. Nothing else mattered.

My Sharigan came alive as I yet again say the world in bloody red. The memories entered the center of my mind once again. My squads death and my mothers head and upper body being blown to smithereens seemed to be just another part of my daily shinobi life.

[Three Tomoe Sharingan: When active it enables its users to copy movements and jutsu, they can only use whatever is copied if they are capable of it themselves. It grants the ability to see chakra and easily disrupt genjutsu. With the third tomoe one gains the ability to reliably read opponents moves as well as cast genjutsu with just eye contact. Cost: 6 Chakra/second.]

I after all had to train these damned cursed eyes after doing all that to unlock them. What would be the point if I just stayed broken and useless. No, I had to find an outlet and thankfully there were thousands of Sand shinobi waiting to be killed, or to kill me. Oddly, I was ok with that. I actually couldn't wait to return to the war, everything was so simple.....

"You ok kid?" My inner monologue was interrupted as I turned to Ruko who wore a concerned expression on his face. 'Guess I should try to keep my 'Emo-Mode' as Nawki would call it, off my face'

"Yeah, sorry. I'm just going through some shit" I said with a sigh.

"Ok then, don't let it get to you Tometsu" The newly established tokubetsu jonin said supportively as we continued our dash towards the Suna Front. We were shinobi so our pace was astonishing but we eventually stopped for a half day of rest. We were making good pace as we completed half our journey after a day and a half of constant tree hopping.

Without my weights on I barely felt a strain nor did a single drop of sweat fall from my forehead. It seemed that my self made training program had merit.

After we talked over a small dinner Roku retired to his tent. Though I stayed near the smokeless campfire as I used it to read a small manual for probably the fifth time. 

'At the bare minimum a Ninshu practitioner should have completed the first two steps of chakra manipulation training.' Check.

'You must understand that chakra will not always follow a command you make, no matter how much control you believe you have over it. This is especially true for an elemental change.'

'Then you must understand the wind itself. At its very core the element controls the sky, to control such a force you must give up on complete dominance. Wind is free, so it can only be guided. Fire burns, earth crushes, lightning pierces, water flows and wind slashes.'

'The simplest way to begin this training is to acquire a leaf. Push chakra into it until you manage to cut it in two. Imagine your chakra as two blades, grading against each other with the overarching goal being to sharpen each other. Once you can visualize that perfectly your chakra should respond to your will and you will have completed the first step on your journey to guide the wind'

'Page 1 of 'Wind for dummies' by A*h**a Ot****s*ki' sadly this book was extremely old, the darkest of yellow and plenty of molded dark spots that ate away at the author's name. Luckily the knowledge somehow remained intact, which is all that really mattered in the end. This was after all my main reward for completely the second step of chakra training, water walking.

Two clones appeared beside me after a slight bend of two fingers. They both managed to replicate the seal and thus there were now five of us sitting or standing around the fire. My current limit of clones had reached four.

The truth was it was a rather simple application of chakra. For a shadow clone to remain solid they had to have at least five hundred points in their chakra pools. So for a clone to be able to use the jutsu they would have to have a thousand points of chakra upon creation. The hard part was lowering or raising the amount of chakra given to each clone. 

But it took me less than a day to get the ratios down. Well without Koshu's explanation on jutsu alteration it might've taken me longer. Almost all ninjutsu have a 'window' in which it can be changed slightly without the jutsu failing. The shadow clone jutsu is supposed to split your chakra in half each time but a clone could be made with a third of your chakra, albeit that you have enough control and chakra. 

But the latter was also true, I could give a clone two-thirds of my chakra.

It wasn't terribly useful besides creating just one extra clone but the fact remained that my training speed skyrocketed after I learned the jutsu. So a clone was another shinobi working on my growth, valuable no matter the number.

With a small nod from each of them they all jumped up and grabbed a handful of leaves. 

I caught a couple that were thrown towards me as my three tomoe Sharingan came alive.

'Two blades grinding against each other, sharpens the chakra transforming it into wind' I repeated the directions in my mind as I watched my chakra flow and saturate the leaf.

After around an hour of absolute nothing I finally saw a change. The two blue flames continued to run against each other and for just a moment a small almost negligible part of the flow changed. A translucent white chakra fluttered for barely a millisecond but my eyes caught it.

I stopped the flow and observed the leaf. On the bottom left side a half centimeter cut appeared. I honestly doubted if my eyes were playing tricks on me and I was simply staring at one of the leaves' natural ridges. But no, the cut was too clean.

It wasn't in the center which was what I was aiming for, but that didn't matter. Progress in an hour was something, and with my eyes I'd never forget that color or the feeling of that translucent white chakra.

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{Questline Accepted}

The World's Breath I

Objective: Cut a leaf perfectly in half with wind chakra.

Rewards: 20 stat points,???.

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I viewed the scroll with a hum as I dismissed it and continued trying to replicate the elemental transformation.

Four hours later I managed to replicate it three times. I was unsure of how many times my clones managed to but I decided to keep it a surprise instead of asking.

"Keep training guys, I'm going to go to sleep" I said as I got up and headed for my tent. A few hums of confirmation were all I received as I fell forward into my sleeping bag. But before I let my eyes close I summoned my inventory screen, as in one of the boxes was a small picture of a wooden crate a t-shirt icon painted on it's center.

Curiously I pushed it and a prompt appears asking if I would like to open the 'armor crate'. After confirmation something fell in front of me. A single earring. I looked at it's odd shape with curiosity trying to discern how a piece of jewelry would be considered 'armor'. A basic hanging earring but the emblem that hung from the hook had a Kanji that meant 'wind' expertly carved out of whatever obsidian like stone it was made from.

Curiously I activated my Sharingan and noticed a small translucent film of chakra surrounding the earring, almost as if it had its own extremely weak chakra flow. Which didn't make sense since it was an inanimate object and I couldn't spot a single seal. Before I could speculate further the scroll appeared, finishing my investigation.

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{Armor Crate Opened}

Name: Wind's Call

Effect: Increases the power of wind natured jutsu by 10%

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"Useful, surprisingly in fact." I noticed as I used the hook to pierce my left ear without a grunt of pain. Now with the earring and the 'Wind Natured' perk my wind jutsu's do eighty five percent more damage. I had no idea how that might compare to another wind using shinobi.

Training nature transformation was mentally exhausting. I came to find out as I awoke in the morning with a terribly splitting headache as through the night my clones ran out of chakra.

It was rare for me to feel a drawback from the jutsu after using it every day for a month. That just proved how hard this training was compared to anything I ever attempted.

I curiously picked up a leaf and flooded it with chakra. After around five minutes I stopped and observed my nights worth of training. On the left side a centimeter deep cut appeared.

Four clones working for ten hours, plus my four hours. A few hours shy of two full days of elemental training assisted by my Sharingan's chakra seeing abilities and the manual written ages ago.

'Two months' I promised myself. It might've been a vain hope as I had no idea what I would be doing on the war front but a goal needed to be set.

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Level 9 (1480/6000)

Name: Tometsu Uchiha

Chakra: 2600/2600

Title: Fang's Apprentice- Boosts the learning speed of Kenjutsu and Lightning release by 20%

Strength:49

Dexterity:61-(67)

Agility: 37-(47)

Endurance:40

Intelligence:104

Stat points:10-(0)

Perk Points:1-(2)

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