As the saying went, one minute onstage took ten years of practice offstage.
With all the groundwork laid, Yamada Soji's first mission as a ninja finally arrived, right on schedule.
But compared with all the masterful strategizing he'd done behind the scenes, once he entered a state of readiness for battle, the gap in his basic abilities began to show.
As arranged by the Nara Commander, Team Five was placed in the relatively safe middle of the marching formation.
Motochika-sensei's exact words had been: "This arrangement ensures that if anything unexpected happens, the strongest team, Team Five, can quickly come to the aid of our teammates at either end of the formation."
How much of that had been sincere, and how much favoritism, only the people involved could say...
At least as someone benefiting from the arrangement, Soji wasn't about to go looking for trouble by making snide remarks.
The awkward part was that even in what should have been the most comfortable position, the boy's performance still left much to be desired...
Compared with all those fake dead-last types who were best friends on the surface but instantly became combat geniuses once a fight broke out, the real Soji was truly an "honest man" through and through!
Setting aside the system's cursed version of Kekkei Genkai, nearly all his basic qualifications for being a ninja hovered around the passing mark.
Forget close-quarters combat, which demanded extreme adaptability in the moment. Even during an ordinary march, Soji lagged behind everyone else...
—The soul from another world was probably used to keeping both feet on the ground. All that jumping around, wall-climbing, and tree-scaling parkour had nearly shaken the boy's brains into mush!
That meant Soji, who'd suffered from motion sickness in his previous life, was like a new driver just learning to drive. He was incredibly clumsy when choosing a route and using Ninja Footwork.
On top of that, the mission's formation meant Team Five, in the middle, had to keep an eye on their teammates' hand signals and watch the movements of the two squads ahead and behind them. This only added to the boy's burden!
If this went on, he'd be spending several times as much energy covering the same distance!
So whenever they stopped to rest, Soji, who already had a fairly limited chakra supply, looked much more exhausted than Todo and Erina...
"Are you okay, Soji? Does anything feel wrong?"
The chubby boy thoughtfully handed him a bottle of water. Soji smiled and nodded his thanks, then passed it straight to Erina, who was sitting on the other side.
It wasn't that the boy was stingy with supplies and trying to pass off someone else's kindness.
It was just that their break was almost over, and they wouldn't get another chance to regroup before reaching the next checkpoint.
Soji was already less efficient on the move than everyone else. He didn't want to drink too much and waste time dealing with personal necessities, so he simply passed the drink to Erina.
"It's all right. I've never been very good at Taijutsu, and my chakra reserves are pretty worrying, too. Sorry for dragging everyone down."
"Hey, no worries! Everyone needs a few flaws to make friends, right?"
Unlike the cautious Soji, the real top student, Erina, didn't have nearly as many reservations.
Her excellent talent had helped her get into the rhythm quickly, while her well-proportioned build made using Ninja Footwork much less taxing.
She first tipped her head back and gulped down half the bottle to quench her thirst, then cheerfully leaned over toward her two teammates. "Honestly, you handled everything perfectly, from the late-night raid to packing the supplies. You were practically Team Five's second leader! You made me feel like I wasn't good enough!"
"Not at all... I just happened to know a little about what was going on and used a few clever tricks."
Soji shook his head slightly as he took a ration pill he'd prepared earlier from his ninja pouch and tucked it under his tongue. "It's my first day on the road. I probably haven't adjusted to the pace of marching in formation yet. I'm sure I'll get better after a while."
"That's good~ If anything unexpected happens, we'll be counting on your Medical Ninjutsu to get us through it!"
"Don't say that, don't say that!" Before Soji could answer, the chubby boy, Todo, waved his hands. "No unexpected incidents! Reaching Jingu Forest safely is a victory!"
"What's wrong, Todo?"
"It's nothing... It's just that when I got home last night, Uncle Torifu explained some of the risks Multi-Size Jutsu might pose in actual combat. It was kind of..."
The little chubby boy's face turned ashen. He even instinctively covered his mouth to suppress a gag.
"Ugh, what did he tell you? Was it really that terrifying?"
"...It was terrifying! I only had a bowl of plain congee for breakfast today."
"I see. I think I can imagine."
The Akimichi Clan had a secret method for eating a large amount in a short time to store up energy. So before setting out on a mission, they usually ate even more than usual.
Judging by that, the chubby boy had certainly been frightened badly by his elders.
But from Soji's perspective, he was more interested in the name that had come up for the second time in Todo's conversation.
"By the way, Todo, Motochika-sensei mentioned your uncle before. Is he Lord Torifu Akimichi, the comrade of the Third Hokage?"
"Yeah..."
Todo smiled wryly and rubbed his round belly, looking every bit the picture of "happiness."
"Actually, Uncle's usually very gentle. He's a kind old man who hardly ever gets angry. But when it comes to anything related to ninjas, he absolutely won't go easy on you."
"That makes sense." Erina nodded, interjecting from the side. "Lord Torifu was one of Lord Tobirama's elite guard members. After all those years, the Second must have influenced his personality."
"Maybe. Uncle does talk about the Second's deeds all the time. Sometimes he even quotes Lord Tobirama directly when he's lecturing us." With Soji and Erina taking turns to distract him, Todo had finally recovered.
He counted off his elder's lessons on his fingers, then earnestly repeated them for his two companions. "Like, 'The more painful the training, the stronger the power you gain,' and 'When releasing large-scale ninjutsu, you need to choose the right chakra release method for the situation.' There are some things I still don't fully understand..."
"Chakra release method?" Soji, who had been worrying about how much chakra he was using, naturally picked up on the key phrase.
He repeated the end of his teammate's sentence as a probe, and the chubby boy took the hint and elaborated.
"It's just that the order of use is different...
"You know how the Akimichi Clan's secret techniques tend to involve releasing a lot of chakra? That's actually quite similar to the Water Release that the Second was so good at.
"So Uncle taught us that when releasing chakra, you can reverse the order of control. Instead of the usual sequence—convert it first, then release it—you switch them around. That way, when using techniques that don't require precise control, you can activate them faster than usual!"
"Oh! So that's how it works! I learned something new! By the way, Todo, have you already mastered it? That's amazing!"
"I'm actually not very good at it yet..."
Erina's eyes lit up at that, and she tilted her head adorably.
The chubby Todo blushed slightly, his words turning hesitant and stammering.
Meanwhile, Yamada Soji, who had been listening the whole time, had unexpectedly gained a huge insight!
—The exact mechanism behind Accio was still unclear, but one thing was certain: when Soji used chakra to power the spell, he didn't need to consciously manipulate it in any precise way.
In practice, he simply adjusted the spell's effect after it took hold, combining it with other ninjutsu or tools to achieve different goals.
From that perspective, the "Inversion Chakra Conversion Method" Todo had mentioned might—just maybe, possibly—let him temporarily bypass the "energy purity" restriction and break through the shackles that had been holding Soji back all this time!?
Before you continue