First Clear

"You're here?" Just as Kyosuke's thoughts began to drift again, Fugaku finally lifted his head and greeted him.

Before he could reply, Fugaku left him with a "Follow me" and turned to walk toward the courtyard on the other side.

Kyosuke watched his back, shrugged helplessly, and then followed.

The two of them were now in a state that mirrored yesterday's—once again walking one behind the other along the wide corridor.

After a good while, they arrived at a massive open-air training ground.

"Come, attack me." Fugaku stood at the center of the training ground, looking at Kyosuke as he spoke.

Then, a one-sided spar unfolded within that training ground.

At this moment, before Fugaku, who was on the verge of stepping into the ranks of Elite Jonin, Kyosuke was hardly any different from an ordinary person.

After five minutes of high-intensity movement, he hadn't even touched a corner of Fugaku's clothes, and instead found himself panting heavily from exhaustion.

Fugaku frowned as he watched Kyosuke, thinking to himself: "This kid's fundamentals are too poor, and his chakra reserves are insufficient, but these can be made up for with effort."

Then, he began to correct some of the flaws in Kyosuke's movements—like how his right hand instinctively retracted when blocking, or the disorder in his footwork when charging forward.

And so, a day passed like that.

After parting ways with Fugaku, he thought about sneaking into the village to see if he could trigger any more quests, but unfortunately, as soon as he stepped out of the Military Police Force's gate, he saw an Uchiha clansman already waiting there.

With no other choice, Kyosuke had to follow him back to the clan compound.

That evening, after washing up, Kyosuke lay bored on his bed, idly flipping through the system menu, when he unexpectedly discovered that his chakra had actually increased by a bit.

After thinking it over carefully for a long time, he finally set his sights on a skill he had somewhat overlooked: "Chakra Refinement Technique."

To confirm his theory, Kyosuke steadied his mind and breath, and began the daily cultivation essential for any ordinary ninja—extracting chakra.

An hour later, Kyosuke reopened his eyes and immediately started checking the results of his efforts.

Sure enough, not only had the experience for "Chakra Refinement Technique" gone up, but his total chakra had increased again as well.

This left Kyosuke, who currently had no way to gain experience points, overjoyed.

But just as he was about to attempt another extraction, he felt an explosive pain in his head, and had no choice but to abandon the idea.

"Since the number of extractions I can do each day is limited, I'll have to find a way to level up the 'Refinement Technique.' That way, the amount I extract each time should increase."

As Kyosuke thought this over, he suddenly realized something was off.

"Doesn't that still require experience points!!!"

Outside Kyosuke's house, the Black Shadow tasked with monitoring him heard the noise from inside and scratched his head in confusion.

"It's this late, and the kid's not asleep—what's he yelling about?"

And so, a month passed.

During this time, through his unrelenting efforts, Kyosuke not only increased his personal Strength and Physique attributes by 0.1 each, but the most crucial skill, "Chakra Refinement Technique," had finally reached level 2.

Now, every day when he practiced extracting chakra, he could gain 2 points.

Though it was still not much, Kyosuke was satisfied—after all, his freedom was still restricted, and the time to truly start raising his strength hadn't come yet.

"Clang~" The sound of kunai clashing echoed repeatedly through the forest.

Looking at the Missing-nin who, a month ago, he could barely face head-on without activating his Sharingan, Kyosuke smiled lightly.

Thanks to Fugaku's training, even though his attributes hadn't increased dramatically, the improvement in his combat experience and taijutsu technique allowed him to barely hold his own while being flanked by two Missing-nin.

In particular, the increase in his total chakra made him much more composed when fighting with his Sharingan active.

At least he no longer had to count seconds during battle like before.

Kunai clashed again, but this time, that Missing-nin wasn't so lucky as to dodge Kyosuke's attack.

With his Sharingan activated, the moment he sensed the Missing-nin trying to overpower him with brute strength, Kyosuke turned in advance, using inertia to brush past him in an instant, while leaving the kunai in his hand lodged in the man's chest.

When the other Missing-nin saw his comrade die, he let out a furious roar and charged wildly at Kyosuke.

"Come on, you already roared like that last time. Do you really have to pull that stunt every single time?" Kyosuke said with a faint smile.

Then, in less than three seconds, that Missing-nin also fell dead beneath his kunai.

Kyosuke stared blankly at the two corpses. He noticed that after killing two people last time, he'd felt a bit of panic, but this time, there wasn't even a trace of unease.

At that, he could only offer a self-deprecating smile—it seemed he was well-suited to survive in this world.

As he laughed, Kyosuke suddenly spun around and hurled his kunai toward a hidden patch of grass.

"Trying to ambush me a second time?" Kyosuke said coldly, looking at the third Missing-nin with a kunai stuck in his throat. "Sorry about that. Your chakra may be small, but in this dark, dense forest, it shines as brightly as a lantern in the dead of night."

The moment he finished speaking, he heard the system's prompt.

"Notification: Instance Dungeon cleared successfully. Randomly generating rewards. Please wait."

A short while later, three virtual items appeared before Kyosuke.

"Chakra Refinement Technique"

"Kunai Throwing Technique"

"Shuriken Throwing Technique"

All of these were the most basic skills, after all, those few missing-nin were extremely weak—it wasn't realistic to expect any ninjutsu to drop from them.

Still, these three skills couldn't be called useless. It was just that the throwing techniques for kunai and shuriken were already close to leveling up, so using skill scrolls to boost them directly at this point would be a waste.

But when a skill reached level 2, it required two identical skill scrolls to upgrade directly, so these three skills would have to be set aside for now.

Kyosuke shook his head helplessly, then exited the instance dungeon.

In the blink of an eye, another ten-plus days passed.

Kyosuke's two throwing techniques had finally reached level 2. Not only had their power increased slightly, but their accuracy and throwing speed had improved significantly.

Because of this, even Fugaku rarely spoke up to praise him.

Kyosuke's achievements didn't stop there. Although Fugaku didn't approve of him training his body due to his age, his physical attributes had still increased by a small margin.

In particular, his Chakra had reached 80 points, not far from the minimum threshold of 90 points required to use C-Ranked Ninjutsu.

Although the system still rated him as a Ninja Apprentice, he felt confident he could already spar with some ordinary graduates of the Ninja Academy—and had a high chance of winning.

To be honest, Fugaku was already quite satisfied with his performance, considering how short a time he had truly begun training in earnest.

But someone else was dissatisfied with the speed of his progress.

That someone was none other than the powerful and influential Great Elder.