Top-Tier Experience Pack and Watchers in the Dark

The pace began to accelerate wildly.

In the flurry of fists and kicks, Minato's terrifying talent for combat was laid bare. He abandoned single explosive bursts in favor of an unbroken blend of feints and real attacks. A left hook flowed into a right kick; one second he pretended to form hand seals, but it was actually the opening motion for throwing a shuriken. His footwork was ghostlike, endlessly varied. Every move tested Yan's defensive blind spots from the most vicious angles.

Yan's countermeasures, meanwhile, appeared woefully limited. He had never systematically learned taijutsu combinations, relying entirely on Observation Haki's precognition and the Magma-Magma Fruit's basic physical enhancement to hold on.

Minato keenly caught Yan's inexperience. He sidestepped in close and threw three consecutive feints after closing the distance.

The predictive information flashed through Yan's mind like lightning once more—all feints. The true killing move was hidden below!

Yan completely ignored the fierce fist shadows flying at his face, practically about to smash into his eyes. He directly retreated half a step. The instant his toes left the ground, he barely avoided Minato's deadly right-leg sweep skimming along the ground. At the same time, using the momentum of twisting away, Yan drove force through his waist and slammed a savage reverse elbow squarely into Minato's exposed left shoulder as he swept!

"Hiss—"

Minato staggered back several steps, clutching his shoulder and sucking in a sharp breath from the pain. Yet instead of getting angry, his eyes grew even more excited as he stared at Yan like he had discovered a new continent.

"That's seriously bizarre. How did you figure out I was going to kick at the end? I was even looking at your head the whole time!"

"Lucky guess." Yan's face did not redden in the slightest.

"Cut it out! That wasn't guessing. Every time, you nail my rhythm perfectly, like you've seen my moves in advance! Have you been secretly practicing some special sensing technique?" Minato might have been young, but his instincts in battle were frighteningly sharp.

Yan did not answer. A provocative smile tugged at his lips as he beckoned with one hand. "You talk too much. Keep going."

That exhilarating sparring session lasted a full forty minutes.

If they were settling the score, Minato had won on points. His fists and feet landed on Yan's vital areas far more often than Yan managed to strike back. Yan quickly discovered a painful truth: the physical enhancement currently provided by the Magma-Magma Fruit was only at its beginner stage. The reaction speed of his muscle fibers simply could not keep up with the Observation Haki predictions his brain received.

Several times, Yan's mind clearly sensed that Minato was about to kick his right ribs, even knowing the exact angle of force. Yet his body was stubbornly half a beat too slow. He took several solid blows and grimaced in pain.

But when it came to seizing the timing for defensive counters, Yan steadily had Minato beat. Minato relied on pure dynamic vision, muscle memory, and fundamentals. Yan, on the other hand, relied on foresight that was practically cheating.

In the end, both boys were completely exhausted. They sprawled against the same fallen tree trunk, gulping down air.

"Yan, I get it now. You're definitely not some dead-last." Minato wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, his tone utterly certain and his eyes shining. "You've been playing dumb at the academy all this time, haven't you?"

At this point, Yan could not deny it. He simply admitted it openly. "Yeah. So what?"

"You're not just scheming—you're way sharper than you look!"

Minato grinned broadly, revealing two little canine teeth. "Of course." Then his smile faded, and he said seriously, "I won't ask why you've been hiding your abilities. Everyone has their own secrets. But from now on, when you're with me, you don't need to put on an act. Just be yourself."

The evening breeze passed through the forest leaves, bringing a rare hint of coolness.

Yan lowered his eyes and silently examined the back of his hand. The skin over his knuckles had split, flushed red with congestion, and even the slightest movement sent burning pain through them. These were marks left behind by real, living bodies colliding. Without relying on the Magma-Magma Fruit's destructive power, without directly cheating through the system, he had fought with nothing but his fists and feet, taking hits and striking back again and again.

It fucking hurt. But it also felt fucking great.

"Then it's settled." Yan exhaled a breath of stale air and threw out his terms. "After school every day, we train here for an hour. If anyone asks, say you found an empty spot to practice sticking leaves to your forehead, and I just happened to wander over because I was bored."

After hearing that, Minato nodded furiously like a pecking chicken.

"One more trade. You teach me blind throws and rapid-fire shuriken techniques. In return, I'll teach you how to figure out an opponent's attack patterns in advance when you can't see them."

Without a second thought, Minato agreed. "Deal!"

He had no idea that the "figuring out their patterns" Yan spoke of was actually a simplified, watered-down version of Observation Haki instruction from the world of pirates. Yan intended to break down the experience of sensing hostility and catching premonitions bit by bit, feeding it to Minato as muscle memory. He could not teach him true Haki in this world, but he could absolutely forge top-tier battlefield instincts. For Minato, a civilian-born ninja, that would be an invaluable life-saving skill on future battlefields.

Late at night.

After returning to the drafty little shack at the edge of the clan grounds, Yan lay against the hard bedboards, his entire body aching, and summoned the system panel in his mind. White characters glimmered faintly in the darkness.

[Magma-Magma Fruit Evolution: 18% (+3%)]

Yan's breathing stopped instantly. A single pure taijutsu spar had raised it by a full three percent in one go?!

He hurriedly checked the source note.

[Combat Training · Sparring with a Strong Opponent (Emotional Resonance Bonus)]

That tiny annotation was worth savoring. Yan knew that simply having a fight could never have raised it by so much. The key was the way they had exchanged their trump cards during the sparring session, the state of complete trust without holding anything back. In this ninja world filled with betrayal, schemes, and exchanges of interest, a pure friendship untouched by political motives had instead become the rarest resource. The system had captured this positive emotional fluctuation with astonishing precision and turned it into nourishment for fruit fusion.

This system's evaluation mechanism was frighteningly human. It was practically encouraging him to win over these core figures! Treating the future Fourth Hokage as his personal humanoid experience pack and farming him like crazy—this felt damn good.

His gaze continued downward.

[Observation Haki: Lv.1 (Sensing Radius: 120 meters) (+20 meters)]

His sensing range had expanded again!

Yan rubbed the pad of his thumb in satisfaction. Minato might have fought dirty during their spar, always targeting his weak spots, but he really was the perfect high-level experience pack. This deal had been absurdly worthwhile.

Yet before the smile on his lips could fully spread, two suffocatingly dim auras abruptly crashed into his newly expanded sensory net without warning.

One hundred and ten meters away.

One to the left and one to the right, one south and one north, positioned in a perfect concealed surveillance formation.

Those auras were utterly desolate and rigid, like two emotionless stones, devoid of the emotional fluctuations a normal person should possess.

They were Root scouts under Danzo.

"Old fox, is your patience finally running out?" Yan sneered in the darkness.