Strength Test

Mirai began to work hard on his physical conditioning; it was the only thing he could do for now. Compared to others, he possessed a natural advantage: he knew exactly what was useful to him. Human energy is limited, and he could not master the reckless taijutsu of someone like Might Guy, but he still needed a body capable of handling any situation.

As the homeroom teacher had said, refining chakra too early would place a burden on the body, so there was no need to train that yet. Hand seals, however, required practice. In the anime, children at the Ninja Academy would practice their seals even while playing. The twelve basic seals required long-term, repetitive practice.

Mirai had already been practicing for half a year. He had found the techniques on Baidu back on Earth, practicing them just for fun at the time. Growing up, he felt silly for having done so, but now he realized that it was precisely that "silliness" which allowed him to perform hand seals with such speed today.

For the twelve hand seals, if performed in sequence, Mirai could complete them in five seconds. He was currently striving to reach a pace of three seals per second, with his ultimate goal being five seals per second. Since he lacked Uchiha Itachi's talent for one-handed seals, he would simply compensate with raw speed.

After finishing his training, Mirai lay on his bed to rest. He had expended quite a bit of stamina today, and he had school again tomorrow. After setting his alarm, he quickly drifted into a deep sleep.

School time passed by very quickly, and in the blink of an eye, a month had gone by. Mirai trained diligently every single day. Without realizing it, he seemed to have become much stronger; his body was more agile and nimble, and his hand seals had finally reached the level of three per second. At this stage, it was already quite fast, and improving even a little bit more would be extremely difficult.

Mirai completed every school training session to a very high standard, and as time went on, he began to gain a reputation among the students in his class.

Of course, Uchiha Itachi, who was at a similar level to Mirai, performed no worse than him in the daily school-mandated training. News naturally traveled from the children to their parents, and as parents talked to one another, word spread quickly. Before he knew it, Mirai was already known by many as a genius youth.

At Training Ground No. 1, the entire class was gathered. Sitting on the ground, the homeroom teacher, Nakamura Hino, stood before the students and spoke: "It has been over a month since you enrolled. In this time, you have all completed the training plans arranged by the school. However, school training alone is far from enough, which is why I often remind you not to play around too much after school and to practice more. Now is the time to test the results you have actually achieved."

"Ninjas are meant for battle. It is precisely because our predecessors fought hard without fear of death that our Konoha enjoys the prosperity it has today. Therefore, today's practical training will be different: you will fight each other to determine a winner. I will grade you based on your performance, and each person's ranking will be recorded as part of your graduation grades. Such strength tests will be held once a month. If you want to become a true ninja, strive to achieve victory!"

[Ding--! School mission triggered. For the host's safety, defeat your opponent in this strength test. For every opponent defeated, mission reward: 1 point. Failure results in a point deduction. Mission difficulty: F.]

Hearing the system store's notification, Mirai curled his lip. How stingy, only one point? Couldn't they give more? Still, he didn't mind; every little bit helped, and the mission wasn't difficult anyway. Mirai accepted the mission.

All the students in the class were eager and ready to go. Clearly, whether boys or girls, since they had come to this school and wanted to become ninjas, none of them were willing to fall behind. Besides, Nakamura was right—if ninjas didn't fight, what was the point of all their training?

"We will now randomly draw the match-ups. The two people drawn will engage in a one-on-one fight to determine the winner." Nakamura Hino took out a cardboard box containing slips of paper with the names of every student in the class.

"Yamazaki, let's start with you," Nakamura said, calling out a student's name. Every student in the class had a student ID number, and the one with ID number one was Yamazaki Kawa.

"Yes!" Yamazaki Kawa pushed himself up with his hands, walked over to the box, and drew a slip. He handed it to Nakamura, who opened it to reveal the name: Uchiha Itachi. Mirai smiled when he saw this. That guy is really unlucky to run into Uchiha Itachi right off the bat. Still, that was fine; at least he didn't have to worry about facing Uchiha Itachi in his own first round.

"The first battle is a sparring match between Yamazaki Kawa and Uchiha Itachi," Nakamura announced.

Uchiha Itachi stood up expressionlessly and said to Yamazaki Kawa, "Please advise me."

Yamazaki Kawa replied, "Please advise me." Uchiha Itachi usually appeared as a silent person; there were only a few people he ever spoke to. Everyone else had completed the same daily training, and while Uchiha Itachi and Mirai appeared slightly more outstanding, many felt the difference wasn't all that significant.

"Here I come! Aaaaah!" Yamazaki Kawa let out a shout, then sprinted rapidly toward Uchiha Itachi. Just as he reached him, he threw a punch.

Uchiha Itachi dodged the attack by shifting his body to the side. Yamazaki Kawa was stunned, realizing his target had suddenly vanished. He turned his head quickly, only to see a fist growing larger and larger before his eyes. Terrified, he squeezed his eyes shut. A moment later, realizing no pain had come, he opened his eyes to see Uchiha Itachi standing before him with his hand already retracted.

Uchiha Itachi said calmly, "I accept your challenge."

Nakamura then spoke up: "The winner of the first group's battle is Uchiha Itachi!" As he spoke, he recorded the performance of both students. He had to admit that Uchiha Itachi performed well; the gap in strength between the two was simply too large. If nurtured properly, he would likely become a powerful ninja in the future. As a teacher, he naturally wanted to cultivate ninjas like the Fourth Hokage. Since they couldn't go to the battlefield yet, training ninjas was his most important job.

"Alright, next group: Fukuda Yumiko and..." Nakamura began to call out the next pair of students.

After a while, it was finally Mirai's turn. His opponent was a boy named Sato, who liked to be loud and boisterous in class. Mirai had rarely spoken to him.