The Third smiled and waved a hand, picking up his pipe again. "No need. I've always trusted you to handle things."
At those words, Shimozuki Hayate's taut nerves finally relaxed, and a flicker of gratitude crossed his eyes.
"Since he's such a promising talent, the village certainly won't let him go to waste. But the boy hasn't graduated yet, so let's not rush his growth."
"We'll discuss it once he officially graduates. Since his talent rivals White Fang's, you should keep a close eye on his swordsmanship training as his older brother."
"Konoha is facing troubled times. We sorely need fresh blood like this to breathe life back into this withered old tree."
With the Third's approval, Shimozuki Hayate had fully accomplished what he had come for.
He couldn't hide the excited flush on his face.
The Third naturally saw what he was thinking and said gently, "All right, you're tired too. Go get some rest. I still have this pile of documents to deal with."
"Then I won't interrupt your work any longer!"
Shimozuki Hayate bowed respectfully at a ninety-degree angle, then left the Hokage's office, his steps far lighter than when he had arrived.
As the door closed, silence returned to the office. The warmth in the Third's eyes gradually faded, replaced by deep puzzlement.
"Swordsmanship talent... can it really be that terrifying?"
He wasn't merely skeptical. He found it downright inconceivable.
Perhaps he really needed to find a chance to take a secret look. If the boy was truly as extraordinary as Hayate had claimed...
A kid this young, with a clean background and so easy to sway, would surely become a pillar of Konoha with a little nurturing-and the sharpest blade in his own hand!
Meanwhile, Lei Dou was holed up at home, frowning as he studied the active skill module in his mind.
"What exactly would happen if I forced a ninjutsu into a passive skill slot?"
[Great Sage: Insufficient database information. Unable to perform logical analysis. Please explore and experiment on your own, host.]
Looking at the cold notification before him, Lei Dou curled his lip helplessly. It seemed he would still have to be his own guinea pig and figure things out through trial and error.
Still, he couldn't be too greedy. The active skills could already help him acquire new skills for free, which was outrageously powerful.
As for what idling ninjutsu would actually do, trying it himself wouldn't hurt. There was no need to insist on asking Great Sage.
In truth, the idea of putting ninjutsu into a passive slot had been circling in Lei Dou's mind for a long time.
After all, in this world, a ninja's core combat power ultimately came down to ninjutsu.
What would ninjutsu look like as a passive skill? Who could resist that temptation?
Lei Dou took a deep breath and, with a thought, rearranged the system's passive skill slots.
[Passive skill 1: Chakra Extraction Technique]
This was the foundation of being a ninja, an immovable core skill. Lei Dou wouldn't remove it even if it killed him.
[Passive skill 2: Academy-Level Taijutsu]
His body was the foundation of everything. Taijutsu could passively improve his physical fitness, which was crucial. It had to keep a slot.
As for the remaining slot, Lei Dou's eyes burned with anticipation. He planned to use it for a bold experiment.
This time, he wouldn't be idling something commonplace like the Three Body Technique, but a genuine elemental jutsu!
Aside from this house and a little savings, it was the only inheritance his long-deceased parents had left him.
Water Release: Wild Water Wave!
Looking at the slightly yellowed ninjutsu scroll with its fraying edges, Lei Dou gently brushed his fingertips over the rough paper.
His parents had both been ordinary Chunin. Who knew how many years of mission pay they had saved to obtain a proper elemental ninjutsu scroll like this?
The body's original owner had spent three whole years just barely managing to learn this C-rank ninjutsu.
Fortunately, Lei Dou's body possessed water-nature chakra, most likely inherited from his father.
That showed how incredibly difficult it was for ordinary ninja to learn even a C-rank ninjutsu, never mind advanced B-rank or A-rank techniques!
He locked onto it with his mind and began.
[Passive skill 3: Water Release: Wild Water Wave] [Installation successful]
Lei Dou stared at the interface, counting the seconds in his head to see how often it would run automatically.
Tick, tock.
Roughly twenty seconds passed.
[Passive skill completed one cycle]
One cycle every twenty seconds. That wasn't particularly slow.
But the real question was, what did it do?
Before Lei Dou could react, a rapid string of notification chimes suddenly sounded in his mind.
[Great Sage: Host detected learning a new skill. Analysis program initiated.] [Analyzing...] [1%...]
Huh? Even this could trigger an analysis?
Lei Dou looked utterly baffled and spread his hands. He hadn't done anything at all. He had just been standing there!
"Huh? Why did it stop again?"
"Don't freeze up! Keep going!"
When it had analyzed other skills before, the progress bar had moved faster than a rocket. Why was it now stuck at 1% as though it had crashed?
Just as Lei Dou was struggling to make sense of it...
[Passive skill completed one cycle] [Analyzing...] [4%]
Lei Dou suddenly understood. "So every passive cycle of Water Release: Water Wave makes the system register me as practicing a new skill?"
"What exactly is it analyzing?"
[Great Sage: Performing an in-depth analysis of the underlying rules...]
Fine, analyze whatever you want. It wasn't costing him anything anyway.
The progress rose every twenty seconds, gaining about 3% each time. By his calculations, it would only take a little over ten minutes.
Then he'd wait!
Time ticked by, and roughly seventeen minutes later, the pleasant notification chime finally rang out.
[Great Sage: Analysis complete.] [Congratulations, host. Successfully acquired new skill: Water Nature Transformation (beginner)]
Holy shit?
Lei Dou nearly jumped off the ground in shock.
"Nature transformation? It's actually nature transformation?"
"Just leaving Water Release running in a skill slot lets me acquire chakra nature transformation for free?"
"Then, following that logic..."
If he got ninjutsu scrolls for the other five natures and slotted them in, wouldn't he become a master of every nature in no time-a walking ninjutsu encyclopedia?
He had been worrying about how to learn all those complicated ninjutsu. Now that he had Great Sage's analysis function, that wasn't even a problem!
The corners of Lei Dou's mouth shot upward, and he grinned like a child who had just received a new toy.
But he quickly took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.
"The skill slots definitely have more potential than this. Collecting nature transformations for the five releases would only be the beginning, hardly anything impressive."
"What truly reaches into the realm of gods is Yin-Yang Release!"
Mastering Yin-Yang Release along with the five elemental releases would be his ticket to the Six Paths level!
The most terrifying thing about these skill slots was that they were like a tireless perpetual-motion machine, making him stronger every moment.
But now a new question surfaced in his mind.
Running the Chakra Extraction Technique increased his chakra reserves, and running Taijutsu increased his physical strength. What would running an offensive ninjutsu increase?
Could it increase Water Release's destructive power?
Lei Dou was itching to find out. He couldn't sit still for another second. He had to test his theory immediately.
But this was an offensive ninjutsu. Firing it off at home would surely demolish the house.
He needed somewhere spacious and deserted.
The artificial lake in Konoha Park would be the perfect testing ground.
Outside, the sun blazed fiercely. The area around the artificial lake was bare, without even a single tree. Surely no one would want to go there and roast in the sun right now.
It was practically a training ground made just for him.
He pushed open the door, and a wave of heat hit his face. Braving the scorching sun, Lei Dou headed straight for the park.
"Strange. I ran all this way without even getting winded. My body seems to have gotten stronger again."
"It feels like endless energy is surging through me. This round-the-clock idling feels amazing!"
When he reached the artificial lake, it was exactly as he had expected. Everything was quiet, without a single person in sight.
In this awful weather, even the paving bricks burned underfoot. It was a little cooler near the water, but only a little. Only an idiot would come here to suffer at a time like this.
Lei Dou stood by the lake, facing its shimmering surface.
He gently exhaled a stale breath and steadied his breathing.
He recalled how he had practiced day and night to learn this C-rank ninjutsu, suffering through endless hardship.
And what had that achieved?
After three years of practice, he could barely spit out a stream of water as tall as a person. Its impact was feeble, enough at most to knock someone over.
Calling it a squirt gun would have been generous. It was the absolute king of garbage.
It was a C-rank ninjutsu, just like the genius Sasuke's Great Fireball, yet Sasuke could casually spit out a huge fireball and burn enemies to cinders in an instant.
That was the despair-inducing gulf between ordinary people and geniuses.
Even the same ninjutsu could differ enormously in power depending on who used it.
But now Lei Dou's eyes shone, because that meant a ninjutsu's upper limit wasn't fixed.
"Since I slotted Water Release in, it must have run at least sixty or seventy times."
"Whether quantity can turn into quality comes down to this one shot."
Although the Clone Technique had already proven that proficiency could improve a technique's effects, it was a basic ninjutsu without an elemental nature. That still made it different from genuine elemental jutsu.
What if it didn't work?
Lei Dou's gaze sharpened, and he swiftly raised his hands to form hand seals.
The moment his hands moved, their fluid motion sent a jolt through his heart.
"So fast! The time it takes to form the hand seals has been cut by at least half!"
Lei Dou's hands hadn't been slow before, but completing this sequence of seals had still taken at least three seconds.
Now, however, his fingers seemed to possess muscle memory. In less than 1.5 seconds, the seals were complete!
That speed already held tremendous tactical value in the constantly shifting conditions of real combat.
Water Release!
Water Release: Water Wave!
Lei Dou sucked in a deep breath, his chest swelling high. The chakra gathered in his throat surged out like floodwater bursting through an opened gate.
Rumble!
A deafening roar exploded beside his ears, startling even Lei Dou himself.
How was this anything like that pathetic stream of water from before?
The torrent before him had expanded more than tenfold, becoming a raging water dragon six or seven meters wide. With a howl that tore through the air, it crossed dozens of meters in an instant and charged straight toward the center of the lake!
It wasn't merely larger. Its speed was astonishing too.
Compared with the old "squirt gun," this was something from an entirely different league. He had traded a peashooter for a cannon!
The enormous column of water slammed into the lake.
Boom!
Water exploded upward, and a skyful of spray poured down like a torrential rain with a thunderous rush.
The falling droplets instantly soaked Lei Dou's clothes, and his wet hair clung to his forehead, but he couldn't spare a thought to wipe it away.
He stared fixedly at the still-churning lake, his eyes brimming with wild delight.
"The ninjutsu really got stronger-and by a massive amount!"
Of course, some of that increased power had to be credited to the nature transformation he had just mastered.
It was like dancing with nothing but raw strength. Before, he had flailed around blindly. Now a dance instructor had poured the proper techniques into his head, so naturally the results were different.
But the greater reason was undoubtedly the skill slots frantically grinding proficiency behind the scenes.
Water Release kept running in the background, deepening Lei Dou's understanding of the technique with every passing moment.
Even that so-called nature transformation might be growing stronger as it idled.
Lei Dou firmly believed that nature transformation wasn't a fixed threshold. It had levels too.
The only reason he wasn't receiving notifications now was that the Great Sage module was broken and could no longer report his analysis progress in real time.
Lei Dou lowered his head and looked at his hands, grinning from ear to ear.
By that logic, the longer he idled, the more absurdly powerful his ninjutsu would become.
Even if it only accumulated a little at a time, given long enough-and setting aside the drawback of chakra consumption...
Someday, he might casually spit out a C-rank Water Release and produce a world-destroying effect like a massive tsunami.
Flooding half the Shinobi World with a single Water Release: Water Wave was entirely possible in theory!
"These skill slots are practically a divine ability. They can upgrade ninjutsu endlessly and break through rank barriers."
"Even the most worthless low-rank ninjutsu could unleash the destructive power of an S-rank forbidden jutsu in my hands!"
"Now that's a man's fucking dream!"
The skill slots had given Lei Dou far too many pleasant surprises. They were practically an all-purpose cheat.
[Host detected performing a release exceeding the original skill's quality limit] [Update this skill's status?]
That absolutely needed an update!
The Water Release: Water Wave he had just unleashed was worlds apart from the previous version.
The Lei Dou of today was on an entirely different level from the Lei Dou of yesterday.
Having ninjutsu that could grow stronger without limit felt great, but it also brought a serious problem.
Lei Dou felt the empty chakra pathways inside his body and gave a wry smile.
"That blast felt amazing, sure, but it drained well over half my chakra in one go!"
It packed a punch, but turning into a "one-shot wonder" meant he couldn't sustain a fight at all.
Of course, deliberately limiting his chakra output would reduce its power, but that would largely defeat the purpose of idle training.
If my skills get too high-level someday and any random jutsu sucks me dry, won't I be a laughingstock?
Lei Dou wrung out the hem of his soaked clothes and sighed. "It all boils down to one thing: chakra reserves are king!"
If my mana bar were long enough, would I even need to pinch pennies like this?
Forget it. I'll switch my passive skill back for now and build up my mana reserves first.
[Passive Skill 3: Water Release: Wild Water Wave]-Uninstall!
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