Kamigane Yuya

It was the fifteenth year since Konoha was founded.

In a Japanese-style house with a courtyard in the village, a boy of about seven or eight sat on his knees in a spare room with its door open.

A low wooden table stood on the tatami, with a map spread across it.

The boy rested his hand on the table and stared pensively at the black dots marked on the map.

The boy was named Kamigane Yuya. A few years ago, Konoha's First, Senju Hashirama, had found him and taken him in.

He was currently living at Senju Hashirama's home.

Today was a day off from Konoha Academy. Yuya was resting at home and taking a look at the map.

As for what this map showed...

Well... it marked the locations of gold deposits in the Land of Fire.

In his previous life, Kamigane Yuya had been electrocuted to death while playing a mobile game. When he woke up again, he had arrived in this world.

He had also gained a cheat ability from that mobile game.

Well, the game he'd played was a mobile game called Road of the Strong, based on another of the three major shonen manga series, One Piece.

And yet he'd ended up in the world of Naruto with that cheat ability. Talk about...

The starter account he'd bought had recruited a brand-new character from the latest update: Gild Tesoro, wielder of the Gold-Gold Fruit.

His cheat ability was that character's Gold-Gold Fruit, also known as the Gold Fruit.

—Honestly, Yuya thought it would've been much better if the power had just been given to him directly. Having to eat an actual fruit was awful; it tasted terrible.—

The fruit's power let him turn anything he touched into gold, but the gold reverted to its original form as soon as it got wet.

In the early stages, the ability was mostly useless, and if anyone found out about it, they might chase him down and beat him up. Even after the fruit awakened in the later stages, the power wasn't particularly useful.

Still, it had one pretty good ability.

It let him sense gold.

Konoha was located in the west-central part of the Land of Fire, and its surrounding territory extended far and wide. Whenever Yuya went on missions, he made a point of checking whether there were any gold deposits nearby.

He'd already sensed three deposits, but they were all minor veins, each containing no more than a few hundred kilograms. He'd have to go and absorb all that gold sooner or later.

But if there were minor veins, there had to be a main vein beneath them.

Most gold was underground, more than fifty kilometers below the surface. The tiny amounts found at the surface made up only a small fraction of an already small fraction.

Yuya currently had no way to reach gold deep underground. So even those minor veins, though they held little gold, were valuable to him.

The Ninja World had been at peace for fifteen years, and every country was developing. What Yuya needed to do now was improve his strength as quickly as possible.

That meant personal strength, of course, but there was also an eternal truth that applied in every world: money made the world go round.

And in the Ninja World, gold was especially valuable.

Although the common currency in the Ninja World was ryo, there was also an exchange rate between gold and ryo.

In recent years, as peace had gradually taken hold, that rate had fallen considerably compared to wartime. But gold remained valuable all the same.

Of course, Yuya wasn't very strong yet. In this Ninja World, nothing mattered more than being powerful yourself. Even if you wanted to become Hokage, you still needed strength.

And so...

"Tap, tap." Yuya used a wooden stick to mark the three locations, then folded up the map.

He had to get the gold contained in the veins at those three locations.

"Thump, thump, thump, thump!"

Rapid footsteps approached. Yuya looked up at the doorway. A long-haired man with a goofy expression hurried over, then flung himself at Yuya. "Yuya! My good disciple! Save your master!"

That's right. This man was the First of Konoha, the founder of Konoha and the one who established the system of one country, one village—the Ninja World's greatest, the God of Shinobi, Senju Hashirama.

Yuya looked expressionlessly at Hashirama, who was clinging to his leg, and calmly asked, "How much do you owe this time?"

Hashirama grinned. "Three hundred thousand ryo."

"Three hundred thousand?!" Yuya stared at Hashirama in shock. "That's enough to support Mito and me for a whole year!"

"I couldn't help it. I was winning at first, but then I lost it all. I tried to win it back, and... well, here we are."

Yuya stared speechlessly at the man in front of him, who was rubbing the back of his head with an awkward grin.

To be honest, when he'd watched the anime in his previous life, Hashirama hadn't left much of an impression on him, since the First hadn't appeared very often.

But after living under the same roof for several years in this life, he'd realized that the God of Shinobi was really just a laid-back ninja who liked gambling small amounts of money.

He knew perfectly well that the place was crooked, yet he kept going anyway. And to avoid being recognized as the First, he used the Transformation Technique.

He won sometimes and lost other times, but his wife, Uzumaki Mito, thought nothing of his wins. Whenever he lost, she laid into him...

"If Mito finds out, won't you be kneeling in the courtyard all night, Master?" Yuya asked, looking at Hashirama's sheepish grin.

Hashirama laughed heartily. "Ha ha ha! Yes, yes. Mito would definitely do that."

Then he looked at Yuya expectantly. "That's why I came to you, isn't it?"

Yuya put on a troubled expression. "You know how it is, Master. My ability isn't all that great. The gold I create turns back as soon as it gets wet..."

Hashirama waved a hand quickly. "Oh, don't say that. Those people won't care about that. Just turn something into gold. It's not like they're going to pour water on it, are they? It's worked plenty of times before."

This wasn't the first time.

Yuya kept up his troubled expression as he looked at Hashirama. "But... but..."

Seeing his disciple act that way, Hashirama understood. He immediately said, "I'll talk to your uncle tomorrow. You can skip school tomorrow."

Yuya broke into a grin. Then he got up, found a small stone in the courtyard, and held it in his hand. He activated his ability, and the stone gradually turned gold.

"Hmm, this is probably about half a pound... a little over two hundred grams. That'd be worth about a million ryo." As he spoke, Yuya tossed the stone to Hashirama. "Just remember, don't let it get wet!"

Hashirama nodded repeatedly, then turned and slipped away.

Yuya dusted off his hands. Whether his gambling-addicted master got caught trying to fool those people wasn't his problem. He'd helped out, and now he had a day off tomorrow.

He probably couldn't visit all three locations in one day... He'd go west first.

With that plan in mind, Yuya started getting his things ready for tomorrow.

Yuya's chakra natures were Water, Wind, and Earth.

Three natures might sound like a lot, but it also meant that if Yuya followed the conventional path of a ninja, he'd need to master Water Release, Wind Release, and Earth Release.

Compared to that, I'd rather improve my cheat ability first. That'll be easier.

He didn't have any cheat to help him learn ninjutsu, so learning it would be slow.

After all, he didn't have Indra's or Asura's chakra in his body. To follow the path of a ninja, he'd have to work three times harder than other people.

Without his cheat ability, maybe Yuya would have to work himself to the bone like Rock Lee.

But with the Gold-Gold Fruit...

I'd be better off looking for a gold deposit.

Once I found a gold vein, I'd take off. No question.

PS1: Less than 0.001% of the gold on Earth is at the surface. Even counting the gold in the crust, it's less than 0.01%. Most of the gold is in the core, where it's incredibly difficult to mine. In fact, extracting even the gold in the crust would cost humanity dearly, and that cost might well exceed the value of the gold itself. PS2: The gold-to-yen exchange rate in Japan is roughly 1 to over ten thousand yen, but that ratio is a bit too high, so I cut it in half and went with 1 to 5,000. [One of the three major shonen manga series, Bleach, ended badly. One Piece is still going, and it's getting more and more fantastical. That big-bearded Five Elders guy actually turned into a spider demon. Talk about... Naruto's still the best. It's already been confirmed to have ended, so there won't be any weird twists.] [Though I wonder if anyone's reading Naruto stories these days. Oh well, if nobody's reading, I'll just write slowly. No rush.]