Discharge

Life in the hospital was incredibly boring. Yashui didn't want to be hospitalized, but the doctors insisted he stay. Fearing that the exercise might have left him with some lingering complications, Yashui had no choice but to listen to the doctors and remain for the time being.

In any case, Yashui didn't need to worry about being unable to afford the medical bills. At the Konoha hospital, all ninjas injured during missions, exercises, or other official duties were treated free of charge.

As the first ninja village to develop a specialized medical unit, Konoha's medical standards were top-tier among all ninja villages. For a ninja, a fracture was a common, minor injury, and in the eyes of these doctors and nurses, it was nothing out of the ordinary. While people often said it took a hundred days to recover from a bone injury, thanks to the efforts of these doctors and nurses, that "hundred days" was compressed into a single week.

Lying on the hospital bed, Yashui found himself thinking clearly about many things.

A finishing move...

A finishing move was far too important for a ninja. It didn't necessarily have to guarantee a kill, but it had to possess the potential for one—much like Amaterasu. It was capable of a finishing blow, even if, in the original work, one never actually saw it burn anyone to death.

When coordinating with Xun's team, Yashui had always been unable to get a word in, simply because he lacked a finishing move capable of dealing massive damage. Xun, who possessed such a move, relied on that fact to boss Yashui around at will.

The significance of a finishing move went beyond merely enhancing one's own strength; it also determined a ninja's status within a squad. A ninja with a finishing move would naturally become the core of the entire team, making everything they did much easier. This was the real reason Yashui wanted to learn one.

If he could use the Reverse Summoning Technique to go to the Hundred Bird Nest and ask the Three-Legged Golden Crow, Yashui would certainly go and get to the bottom of it. The awkward part was that Yashui had essentially lost contact with the Three-Legged Golden Crow, and he couldn't get to the Hundred Bird Nest even if he wanted to. Every time he attempted the Reverse Summoning Technique, he was rejected by the Three-Legged Golden Crow.

"Besides the Three-Legged Golden Crow... who else can I turn to for help?" Yashui ran through a list in his mind, finally settling on Choza.

Although his connection with Choza wasn't very deep yet, Choza was, after all, his jonin instructor. If a student came to ask for guidance, it was only right in terms of sentiment for him to teach something. However, Choza was under no obligation to teach Yashui anything.

Thinking this over, Yashui decided to give it a try anyway.

A week later, Yashui was discharged. Because two genin had been seriously injured on the very first day, Team 12 hadn't taken on any missions for the entire week. While other teams had already completed over a dozen missions, Team 12's mission record remained at zero.

While processing his discharge papers, Yashui ran into Xun. She glanced at him with a look of embarrassment, serving as both an apology for her terrible performance a week ago and a gesture of gratitude toward Yashui.

Xun's injuries had healed well, and she appeared to be in no further trouble. In reality, she still had to follow the doctor's orders to perform only low-impact exercises daily; strenuous activities like wielding blades or spears were strictly off-limits for the time being.

"Team 12 can finally be reunited once again," Yashui said, taking the initiative to strike up a conversation.

"Yeah. It seems your mission record is still at zero, isn't it? It looks like we'll be stuck doing nothing but D-rank missions for a while," Xun said. She had become a bit easier to talk to than before, but one could still hear in her tone as if Yashui and Hachiko were the ones holding her back.

"D-rank missions—aren't those incredibly boring?" Yashui recalled the D-rank missions of Team 7 from the original work; they were all trivial matters, and the pay was so low that the reward for a single D-rank mission would be gone after eating one bowl of ramen. That kind of pocket change could only fool newly graduated genin.

Don't underestimate D-rank income; if B-rank missions and above were the tasks that sustained Konoha's revenue, then D-rank missions...