Time flew, and the brief summer break was drawing to a close.
Ever since Tsunade had taken Nonō as her apprentice, Amamiya Maki had rarely seen the girl.
She left early and returned late every day, either studying medicine under Tsunade or rushing about Konoha Hospital, often too busy even to make breakfast.
Even so, Amamiya Maki still had a hot breakfast waiting for him on time every morning.
Minato Namikaze had volunteered to handle the cooking.
Before Amamiya Maki and Nonō moved in, Minato had lived alone. He was already used to looking after himself, so handling everyday chores was effortless for him.
Amamiya Maki had told him more than once that there was no need to make breakfast especially for him, since he had never been in the habit of eating it.
He had only obediently eaten breakfast before because Nonō had pestered him until he gave in.
The girl would stand beside his bed with watery eyes, quietly wondering aloud whether her cooking wasn't to his taste. Faced with that soft, relentless pleading, he had no way to refuse.
With Minato taking over the cooking, Amamiya Maki had thought he could finally sleep in undisturbed.
He had never expected Minato to come equipped with his own personal "instrument of torture."
Every morning, Minato woke him by poking him with his signature spiky hair. It worked better than any alarm clock.
At the breakfast table, Minato brought up sparring.
"Want to spar today? I've gained some new insights into those two jutsu."
The two jutsu he meant were Earth Release: Headhunter Jutsu and Earth Release: Subterranean Voyage, both taught to him by Amamiya Maki.
At first, Minato had tried every excuse to turn him down, insisting that they were neither family nor master and apprentice, and that teaching him jutsu broke the rules.
But the anticipation and longing in his eyes had long since betrayed his true feelings.
Mastering new jutsu would let him pull ahead of his classmates and bring him one step closer to becoming Hokage.
More importantly, he didn't want Amamiya Maki to leave him far behind.
He understood all too well that falling behind once meant falling behind at every turn.
"Some things barely weigh a few ounces until you put them on the scales. Then even a thousand pounds won't cover them."
Amamiya Maki offered the reassurance casually.
They were just two low-level jutsu. Teaching them to him was hardly a big deal.
He was now an inheritor of the Will of Fire personally acknowledged by Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi.
He was also a boy recognized as possessing the vision and mindset of a Hokage.
"No sparring today. Summer break's almost over, and I have a few things of my own to wrap up."
"...All right."
Minato wilted at once, looking like a shriveled eggplant.
"You only dare put on that disappointed act around me. That trick won't work. I don't cave under pressure."
Amamiya Maki stood, ready to leave.
Minato playfully stuck out his tongue.
"You saw right through me. See ya!"
"See ya."
After that brief farewell to Minato, Amamiya Maki set off alone into the depths of Konoha Forest.
He finally stopped before a secluded waterfall.
The roar of the water reached his ears first, making his chest vibrate faintly.
Amamiya Maki stood beside the pool, quietly watching the white curtain of water pour down from the cliff above.
He had spent more than half his summer break beside this waterfall and pool.
After a long period of exploration and research, Amamiya Maki had thoroughly figured out how the system worked.
[Name: Amamiya Maki] [Currently owned jutsu] Clone Technique (E-rank): beginner, proficiency 25/60 Body Flicker Technique (D-rank): beginner, 14/100 Chakra Scalpel (A-rank): beginner, 3/1000 Rasengan (A-rank): fragments, 846/1000 Mystical Palm Technique (A-rank): fragments, 5/1000 Monster Strength (B-rank): fragments, 5/600 Flying Thunder God Technique (S-rank): fragments, 8/2000 Spatial Perception talent: fragments, 46/500 Shadow Imitation Technique (C-rank · secret art): fragments, approximately 10/300 Shadow Stitching (B-rank): fragments, 3/600 Earth Release: Headhunter Jutsu (D-rank): beginner, 50/60 Earth Release: Subterranean Voyage (C-rank): proficient, 200/500 [Current attributes] Chakra Control: proficient (227/500) Vitality: intermediate (269/500) Medical Ninjutsu talent: elementary (20/60) Wind Release Chakra: elementary (15/60) Fire Release Chakra: elementary (3/60) Yin Release Chakra: elementary (4/60) [Remaining pressure points: 591]
S-rank jutsu had an extremely high barrier to entry. Flying Thunder God, for example, required not only relentless training but also a specific talent for space.
With his current abilities, there was no chance of mastering it anytime soon.
Whether he improved his Spatial Perception talent or spent points to unlock Flying Thunder God directly, the cost would be astronomical.
Requiring two thousand fragments to unlock an S-rank jutsu and one thousand to unlock an A-Rank Ninjutsu was almost absurdly demanding.
By comparison, A-Rank Ninjutsu offered better value. He could accumulate proficiency through continued practice, just as he had done with the Chakra Scalpel.
But training in an A-Rank Ninjutsu had a strict prerequisite: he either had to spend pressure points on fragments to unlock the beginner level or possess the corresponding jutsu scroll to study from.
Without either, he had no way to begin.
The core of the Chakra Scalpel was supremely precise chakra manipulation. Flying Thunder God, on the other hand, was nothing but a futile exercise in banging his head against a wall without spatial talent to support it.
Yet there was one A-rank jutsu that required no hand seals. It demanded extremely precise chakra control, but its barrier to entry was relatively manageable.
That was the Rasengan.
Among the Pressure Points rewards Minato had generated earlier, there had been a bonus Rasengan fragment.
Although it wasn't a complete set of jutsu fragments, he already understood every principle behind Rasengan training from the original story.
That was why he had spent most of his summer break rooted to this spot, practicing and refining it over and over.
He wrapped chakra around water, gathered it into a sphere in his palm, continuously compressed it, and spun it at high speed, repeatedly recreating the process that formed a Rasengan.
Fortunately, his Chakra Control had already reached the proficient level. Had he started from scratch, there was no telling how long mastering the Rasengan would have taken.
Failure had long since become routine.
The water spheres repeatedly slipped out of his control, fell, shattered, and splashed into the pool, sending water flying everywhere. Several times, they had burst right in his face.
After every failure, the system promptly displayed a notification, increasing his proficiency by a point or two.
Chakra backlash left his palm numb. The rapidly spinning water sliced fine cuts into his fingertips, and soaking them in the icy pool sent waves of stinging pain through him.
But he never stopped.
It had nothing to do with perseverance. Every proficiency increase after a failure simply told him, clearly and unmistakably, that he was one step closer to his goal.
It was exceptionally precise positive feedback-so precise that he could calculate exactly how many more failures stood between him and completion.
And now, he stood at the threshold, with only the final stretch left.
[Rasengan (A-rank): 890/1000]
Amamiya Maki lowered his gaze to his reflection in the pool.
His soaked hair clung to his forehead, and faint dark shadows lay beneath his eyes-the fatigue accumulated from training day and night for half the summer break.
Water kept dripping from his chin into the pool, spreading tiny rings of ripples.
He took a deep breath and murmured a rueful observation.
Jutsu really were such inconvenient things!
"Deep Blue, add points."
[Spend 110 pressure points to exchange for jutsu fragments?] [Yes]
The instant his proficiency broke through its limit, an unprecedented sense of stability surged through his palm.
The chakra spilling wildly outward drew inward at once, locking firmly onto an anchor point in the center of his palm. Around that point, it began an orderly rotation at an incredible speed.
A pale yellow chakra sphere hummed in his palm. The currents flowing within it were clearly defined, like a miniature storm compressed to its utmost limit.
The spinning air forcibly pushed aside the waterfall's drifting mist. Fine droplets danced across the chakra sphere's surface and evaporated, turning into lingering wisps of white vapor.
He could clearly sense the movement of every strand of chakra inside the sphere.
The once-chaotic turbulence vanished completely. All the chakra was held in check by a single force, spinning in the same direction, overlapping and amplifying one another.
It worked.
Amamiya Maki raised his hand and gently pressed the Rasengan in his palm against the water's surface.
The rapidly rotating chakra instantly churned the pool, drawing out a deep whirlpool. Flying spray soaked his cheeks.
He grinned and casually shook the water from his palm.
His earlier observation still stood. Most jutsu were cumbersome and inconvenient, but making a Rasengan was unquestionably the one exception.
He leaned back against a tree trunk and closed his eyes, quietly feeling the lingering chakra fluctuations within his body.
The roar of the waterfall crashing into the pool blanketed the entire valley, forming a monotonous yet deep wash of white noise.
A breeze skimmed the water and carried cool mist against his face, dispersing the heat and exhaustion of days spent training.
"I did it! Rasengan!"
The boy's clear shout cut through the roar of the water, ringing through the valley and echoing for a long time.
He failed to notice a slender green snake coiled in the shadows of a treetop, deep in the woods across the waterfall.
Its cold, slit-pupiled eyes stared unblinkingly at the boy resting beneath the tree.
Its tongue flickered, catching and tasting the rich traces of chakra lingering in the air.
The snake had lain hidden here for half the summer break.
It had watched from the boy's first attempt beside the pool, when a water sphere burst in his face, through his ability to maintain a stable chakra rotation while remaining just short of success, to this moment, when he finally formed a complete, stable, rapidly spinning chakra Rasengan with his own hand.
A moment later, the green snake slipped silently from the treetop, vanished into the deep shadows of the woods, and disappeared without a trace.
By a window in Konoha Laboratory.
The little green snake slowly climbed a pale wrist. Its flickering tongue conveyed everything it had witnessed, perfectly recreating the scene in the valley in a way unique to Orochimaru.
A jutsu without hand seals.
No hand seals, no medium. Through chakra shape transformation alone, he could form a rapidly rotating chakra sphere in his palm.
The boy had called it-Rasengan.
"So this is the boy Nawaki was so eager to recommend as my apprentice? He does have something interesting about him."
Orochimaru had been observing Amamiya Maki for some time.
When Nawaki learned that his sister Tsunade had taken Yakushi Nonō as her apprentice but passed over Amamiya Maki, he had felt it was a shame.
Tsunade's assessment had been blunt: Amamiya Maki's innate talent was mediocre, and his aptitude for chakra was far from exceptional. His only strengths were extraordinary willpower and precise Chakra Control.
For that reason, Nawaki had specifically recommended him, hoping Orochimaru would take him as an apprentice.
Amamiya Maki knew nothing of this.
Although Orochimaru had agreed to consider the recommendation for Nawaki's sake, he had never readily committed to taking an apprentice.
His criteria for choosing apprentices were entirely different from Tsunade's.
Tsunade valued natural gifts, favoring an inborn talent for precise chakra control that required no acquired refinement.
Orochimaru, however, valued an insatiable desire for knowledge and the tenacity to refuse defeat.
When someone faced a problem they couldn't overcome, would they retreat and avoid it, or keep running into the wall until they broke through their limits and shattered the obstacle?
Half a summer break of covert observation had been enough for him to see everything clearly.
Every time the boy failed in his training and took a water sphere to the face, his first action was never to wipe away the mess. It was to try again.
To Amamiya Maki, failure was never synonymous with defeat. It was precise data he could review and use to improve.
And now, he had truly done it.
Without a teacher or a scroll, armed with only a single fragment and half a summer break of relentless effort day and night, he had worked out and mastered the Rasengan from scratch.
Tsunade had said his talent was average, and she wasn't wrong.
The boy's chakra reserves were unremarkable, and his innate aptitude was hardly stunning.
But Tsunade had overlooked the most crucial point.
Amamiya Maki's most frightening ability was his way of thinking-his ability to take everything apart.
He broke down the principles behind jutsu, his own shortcomings, and the root causes of every failure. Then he pieced those scattered fragments and scraps of experience back together into a path of training all his own.
It was a supreme mindset for growth, one that far surpassed innate talent.
"That Tsunade... she let an uncut gem slip right through her fingers."
Orochimaru lightly licked his lips, a faint glimmer of satisfaction crossing his golden, slit-pupiled eyes.
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