Ninjutsu and Team Assignments (Couldn't Think of a Chapter Title, So It's a Two-in-One)

Uchiha Gen wrote and sketched in a small notebook, beginning to take stock of all the resources he currently possessed.

Fire Release ninjutsu was what he lacked least.

Before reaching the level of jonin-grade Nature Transformation, while the various Fire Release techniques did differ, a ninja who could use one Fire Release ninjutsu well would not be much worse at the others. They had plenty in common.

Just like him. After his proficiency in the Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu had been enhanced, he had easily gotten the hang of several other Fire Release ninjutsu.

In this respect, he only needed to follow the path laid out step by step by generations of powerful Uchiha Clan members.

After all, when it came to Fire Release, the Uchiha were experts among experts. Even the Sarutobi Clan, who also excelled at Fire Release, fell somewhat short of the Uchiha Clan in terms of accumulated knowledge.

What he needed to make up for was everything else.

Uchiha Gen placed several Ninjutsu Scrolls on the table and arranged them according to the order he had decided on.

At the very front were two Scrolls and a small booklet. One was C-rank Wind Release: Gale Palm, one was Hell Viewing Technique, and the last bore several large words—Uchiha Style Swordsmanship: Upper Volume.

A line of small text beneath it read: Compiled in Konoha Year 14.

According to the Great Elder, Uchiha Style Swordsmanship had taken shape more than a century ago. During the Warring States Period, it had been compiled and organized by Uchiha Izuna, the greatest swordsmanship master produced by the Uchiha Clan in a hundred years. Later, in Konoha Year 14, Kagami Uchiha had sorted and classified it once more.

This Upper Volume was meant for Uchiha who had not yet awakened their eyes. Its main purpose was to build a foundation. The later volumes were for Uchiha who had awakened the Sharingan.

Whether one possessed the Sharingan had an enormous impact on an Uchiha's combat style. With their powerful perception, reaction speed, and genjutsu, the Uchiha Clan's swordsmanship differed greatly from that of other ninja clans.

But that did not mean the Upper Volume was weak in actual combat simply because it focused on fundamentals.

Even without the Sharingan, the Upper Volume of Uchiha Style Swordsmanship was considered first-rate swordsmanship in the Ninja World. It was quite powerful and could be cultivated normally like any other swordsmanship. It would be more than sufficient even up through the jonin level.

Every top-tier powerhouse might not be a perfectly balanced all-rounder, but none would have an obvious shortcoming in any one area. Even if they did, they would have other means of compensating for it.

Otherwise, before they ever became famous, their enemies would have targeted that weakness and killed them.

The more a prestigious ninja clan had a long history and produced powerful members in abundance, like the Uchiha, the more importance it placed on the well-rounded development of young ninja. Through this, they developed combat systems proven by countless battles.

Finally, Uchiha Gen took out two new Ninjutsu Scrolls.

He had not planned to use that green Skill Learning Card on the other techniques.

With his talent and solid foundation, learning C-rank Ninjutsu was not particularly difficult.

Five-year-old Uchiha Itachi had learned the Great Fireball from Fugaku after watching it once. Uchiha Sasuke was considerably less talented than his brother, yet Kakashi still acknowledged him as a genius. He could spit sparks after seeing Fugaku perform it once, basically master the technique after training hard for an afternoon, and even use the A-rank Lightning Blade, which involved Lightning Release Nature Transformation, in actual combat after only a month.

Uchiha Gen considered his talent only above average among students of his generation. Compared to Sarutobi Enju and Uchiha Inabi, he was actually quite a bit worse. He was even somewhat inferior to Nara Shikaku and Yamanaka Inoichi. He had mainly surpassed them thanks to rewards obtained through the system's Gacha Pulls.

But at the very least, he was not bad. During the early stages, when his level was low and the system offered little help, he had indeed entered the elite class through his own talent and effort. That meant the people responsible for selecting elite-class students believed he had the potential to become a jonin.

He had yet to come into contact with high-level Ninjutsu, so he could not say for now. But given time, a lineage of instruction, annotations, and someone to teach him, learning ordinary C-rank Ninjutsu was not particularly difficult for Uchiha Gen.

But some ninjutsu in this world were always exceptions.

For example, Space-Time Ninjutsu, Sensory Ninjutsu, Medical Ninjutsu, and Fuinjutsu.

Flying Thunder God was a typical example. No matter how talented someone was, they could not learn it without the proper aptitude. Sensory Ninjutsu, Medical Ninjutsu, and Fuinjutsu were less extreme than Space-Time Ninjutsu, but not everyone had the talent for them either.

This time, the extra technique Uchiha Gen had selected from the Clan Vault was a Sensory Ninjutsu with C-rank learning difficulty—at least among those who possessed talent for Sensory Ninjutsu, this technique was considered C-rank.

Uchiha Gen had actually wanted to learn a Medical Ninjutsu to improve his ability to stay alive.

He also had Haruno Sakura's Character Card. Even though it was only from her time as a Ninja Academy student, Sakura would grow into the strongest Medical Ninja apart from Tsunade, so her foundation in that field had to be excellent.

Unfortunately, there was nothing suitable.

At this time, Hiruzen Sarutobi's three disciples had not yet earned the title of the Sannin, and Tsunade had not yet established the Medical Ninja system.

In other words, the specialized profession of Medical Ninja had not yet appeared. Konoha did have a small number of people who knew Medical Ninjutsu, but apart from Tsunade, most were only mediocre practitioners.

That was because Medical Ninjutsu was not yet systematic. Its knowledge was disorganized, and its techniques were scattered.

Only in the future, after Tsunade—the founding master of Medical Ninja—integrated all the knowledge compiled by her predecessors through her exceptional Medical Ninja perspective and constructed a complete Medical Ninja system, would Medical Ninja formally take the stage in the Ninja World and play an important role in several Ninja World Wars.

Naturally, the Uchiha Clan had also developed its own medical system through centuries of warfare, but its effectiveness was certainly far inferior to the Medical Ninja system created by Tsunade.

After deciding it did not meet his expectations, Uchiha Gen could only turn his attention to other ninjutsu.

Fuinjutsu was difficult to begin learning and even harder to master. Before reaching a relatively high level, it also had limited practical use in combat. Compared with it, Sensory Ninjutsu and Space-Time Ninjutsu were better choices.

For Uchiha Gen, the most suitable option was either Space-Time Ninjutsu or Sensory Ninjutsu.

And the only Space-Time Ninjutsu he could access right now was the Summoning Technique.

The Summoning Technique was not limited to summoning summoned beasts. Ninja tools, puppets, and even corpses could be summoned. Even the forbidden technique Impure World Reincarnation could be classified within the scope of the Summoning Technique.

The Uchiha Clan was also skilled at using the Summoning Technique to assist in battle. The most prominent example was a B-rank summoning technique called Lightning Flash Sword Transformation, which could summon a large number of ninja tools in an instant.

For the Uchiha Clan, who could make ninja tools perform every conceivable trick, no ninja were better suited to this technique than they were.

The most basic Summoning Technique happened to be C-rank in difficulty. For those with aptitude in this area, the technique posed no learning difficulty at all. They only needed to meet basic standards such as chakra control.

"First, I'll see whether I have talent for Space-Time Ninjutsu. If I don't, I'll use this Skill Learning Card. If I can learn it, then I'll use the card directly on Sensory Ninjutsu."

Uchiha Gen unrolled a black Scroll. After thinking for a moment, he bit his index finger and wrote his name on it.

The purpose of this Scroll was to allow him to form a contract with one of the Ninja Crow flocks raised by the clan.

As long as he signed the contract and successfully summoned the flock's head crow, that flock of Ninja Crows would belong to Uchiha Gen from then on—provided he paid for them. Fortunately, the Great Elder had waived the fee for him.

If new Ninja Crows joined in the future, he only needed to smear a little of their blood on the back of the Scroll.

"Boar—Dog—Rooster—Monkey—Ram."

After writing down his name, Uchiha Gen immediately formed hand seals, used the remaining blood on his finger to activate the technique, and slapped his hand against the ground.

Black patterns appeared one after another, followed by a puff of smoke.

More than a dozen crows appeared in Uchiha Gen's home, cawing loudly as they circled the room.

One especially robust crow with glossy feathers flapped its wings and flew before Uchiha Gen.

Seeing this, a faint smile appeared on Gen's face. He extended his arm, allowing the Ninja Crow to perch on his right forearm, while his left hand pulled out a packet of jerky from a drawer.

The Ninja Crow raised its head and let out a loud "Caw!" The other dozen or so crows also cried out together and landed before Uchiha Gen, lining up in a row on the floor.

Uchiha Gen tore open the jerky package and fed the crows one by one.

The main purpose of this process was to close the distance and familiarize the crows with his scent. Later, when he fed them, he could simply toss a few bags of food before them.

It seemed he did have some talent for Space-Time Ninjutsu after all.

These Ninja Crows had been specially raised by the Uchiha Clan. They contained a certain amount of chakra, had stronger bodies than ordinary birds, could understand human speech, and were familiar with basic tactical commands.

Their combat ability was not particularly strong. If he wanted them to coordinate with his ninjutsu and genjutsu like Uchiha Itachi and Uchiha Shisui did, the summoner would need to train them specifically. That was no less difficult than mastering a high-difficulty ninjutsu.

There were not many of these Ninja Crows at present. Although they had undergone basic Uchiha Clan training, their greatest use was still conducting fixed-area reconnaissance over medium to long distances.

This reconnaissance method also came with related knowledge for the summoner, allowing him to distinguish information through the volume, frequency, and tone of the crows' calls.

For instance, the enemy's direction, distance, numbers, characteristics, and so on.

After feeding the Ninja Crows, Uchiha Gen finally dispelled the Summoning Technique and took out the final Ninjutsu Scroll.

This was the Sensory Ninjutsu. Its name was nothing special—Chakra Sensory Technique. At medium to close range, it allowed the user to vaguely sense chakra signatures nearby and judge the number and strength of enemies.

Uchiha Gen slowly placed his hand on the Scroll.

[Skill Learning Card (Green)] used!

One day later.

With the Skill Learning Card's boost, after a day of study, he had basically gotten started with Chakra Sensory Technique.

With his current sensory ability, while in a sensing state, he could only detect an area of roughly ten meters around himself.

If he wanted to expand that range later, he either had to continue increasing his proficiency with this Sensory Ninjutsu or simply raise his spiritual power and brute-force it with higher stats.

Early morning arrived, and the sky gradually brightened.

After spending a day training in ninjutsu and resting for a night, Uchiha Gen once again organized his equipment and headed to the Ninja Academy.

He had already graduated, so he was obviously not going there to attend class.

At this time, the day after the Graduation Exam was when newly promoted Genin like them would meet the instructor assigned to each team.

They would also receive their ninja certificates bearing their identification numbers.

"Ninja Number, 005486."

This was Uchiha Gen's Ninja Number.

It meant he was the five-thousand-four-hundred-and-eighty-sixth person to graduate from the Ninja Academy.

The Ninja Numbers of others from his year, such as Sarutobi Enju, Aburame Shino, and Nara Shikaku, also began with 54.

It was worth mentioning that a considerable portion of Konoha's ninja had not actually graduated from the Ninja Academy.

The newest batch of graduated Genin had Ninja Numbers in the five-thousands, but that did not mean Konoha had only five thousand ninja.

In fact, the Ninja Academy had very few students in its early years. Its first class had only thirty-six people, while all other Konoha Ninja at the time had been trained by their respective clans according to their own methods.

This remained the case for a long time. Only later, under the Third Hokage's orders, did the Ninja Academy undergo several expansions and increased enrollments, eventually reaching its current scale. It gradually became Konoha's mainstream means of training ninja, as well as the only path for commoners to become ninja.

It could be said that a large portion of Konoha's ninja had not been trained through the Ninja Academy. Instead, they had emerged through bloodline, master-disciple, and other relationships, forming this massive ninja village with more than ten thousand ninja.

"Team assignments will now begin."

Muna, the examiner from the Chunin Exams, was once again presiding over the team assignments.

"Team One: Akimichi Chōza, Nara Shikaku, Yamanaka Inoichi. Jonin instructor: Sarutobi Biwako."

"Team Two: Aburame Shino, Uchiha Tetsu Inaho, Katsumai Sanae. Jonin instructor: Inuzuka Tsume."

"Team Seven: Sarutobi Enju, Uchiha Gen, Utsuki Ruri. Jonin instructor: Orochimaru."

He had finally heard his own name.

But why was Orochimaru his jonin instructor?

Was this the Butterfly Effect caused by him?

Uchiha Gen only remembered Orochimaru having had two disciples. One was Nawaki, the First Hokage's grandson and Tsunade's younger brother, who had stepped on a trap and died on the battlefield three years ago. The other was Mitaraishi Anko, who had not even been born yet.

And the lineup of this team...

Uchiha Gen looked at Sarutobi Enju and Utsuki Ruri.

The former was staring at the latter with a foolish grin, apparently delighted to have been assigned to the same team as the goddess of his dreams.