On the outskirts of Sunagakure, the rising sun had yet to dispel the morning chill from a designated training ground strewn with wind-eroded rocks and gravel.
Shira was already there, beginning another day of arduous training.
Unlike his usual practice of honing his punches and kicks, he now held an ordinary-looking, unsharpened straight training sword.
The blade reflected the cold morning light, contrasting with his somewhat awkward grip.
"Slash!"
With a low shout, he drove the movement from his waist and brought the sword down! His form was correct, and the stroke carried plenty of power. The blade cut through the air with a short whistle.
But the strike landed about an inch off target. The tip swept past the mark on the wooden post, kicking up a spray of sand.
Shira frowned slightly, withdrew the sword, and reset his stance. He adjusted his breathing once more and repeated the same downward strike. Once, twice, ten times...
Like a tireless machine, he drilled the most basic downward chops, slashes, upward cuts, and thrusts over and over. Sweat soon soaked his bangs and ran down the side of his focused face.
He knew his talent did not lie in weapons. From his previous life, he had only the physical coordination gained from soccer and ordinary exercise, and not a shred of experience with cold weapons.
Everything had to start from scratch. But he needed patience and perseverance, as well as the determination to hone every basic movement until it became instinct.
"Keep the wrist steady. The power comes from the waist, not the arm." He recalled the key points he had learned from a retired old weapons instructor in the village and adjusted how he applied his strength again.
This time, the blade struck precisely at the center of the mark on the wooden post, making a dull thunk.
The corners of Shira's mouth rose, and he nearly transformed into a crooked-mouthed Dragon King. Then he threw himself into the next round of practice, no longer chasing power but focusing entirely on precision and a smooth path of force.
After wrapping up his basic sword practice, he rested briefly before turning to another exercise: throwing Shuriken and Kunai.
This was originally a basic course at the Ninja Academy, but Shira's goal went far beyond simply hitting a target. He could not use Chakra to perform dazzling manipulation techniques, like the Uchiha Clan's near-miraculous Shurikenjutsu.
All he could rely on were pure feel, calculations of angles and force, and... a little of the most basic physics he had learned in his previous life.
He walked up to a row of specially made targets. These targets were not stationary. They hung from ropes on wooden frames of different heights, swaying gently in the wind. Some were even simple mechanical targets designed to move irregularly.
Shira took a deep breath and held three Shuriken between his fingertips. Rather than throw them immediately, he quietly observed the patterns of the targets' swaying and felt the changes in wind speed.
His gaze was focused, and his brain worked like a precision instrument, rapidly calculating lead and trajectory.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
The three Shuriken left his hand almost simultaneously, but they were not aimed at the same target. One flew toward a swaying round target directly ahead. Another traced a strange arc around an obstacle post toward a moving target behind him to the side. The last was tossed high into the air, using the acceleration of its descent to pin itself precisely to the edge of the bull's-eye on the highest, nearly vertical target!
Clink! Clink! Thunk!
The first two hit their bull's-eyes. The third was slightly off because of a minor error in calculation, but it was still astonishing enough.
"Curved shots, obstacle avoidance, high-arc falling strikes..."
Shira quietly summed up his attempts. He was practicing unconventional throwing techniques, using every environmental factor to make projectiles hit their targets from incredible angles.
That required terrifying spatial imagination and muscle control.
"Damn it! Still not enough..." He wiped away his sweat and picked up another Kunai. He tried to make the Kunai spin with an extremely subtle flick of his wrist at the instant he threw it.
A spinning Kunai flew more steadily and had greater penetrating power. It could even ricochet unpredictably upon impact.
At first, the Kunai often veered off target or failed to spin enough. But he was not discouraged. He failed again and again, adjusting each time. The skin on his fingers wore raw, so he wrapped them in strips of cloth and kept practicing.
As the sun set, he finally became capable of throwing Kunai with a strong spin relatively consistently and hitting small targets thirty meters away with precision.
By the end of training, Shira was soaked as though he had been pulled from the water, his arms and wrists aching badly. Yet as he looked at the targets covered in score marks and the training weapons scattered across the ground, picked up countless times, his eyes glimmered with satisfaction.
The path of a blade, the throwing of weapons.
These were not entirely the core of his strength, but they were necessary pieces of the puzzle for making up for his shortcomings. He could not form Hand Seals and unleash dazzling Ninjutsu like others, so he would hone every bit of strength and every skill to its utmost limit.
After putting away the training equipment, Shira dragged his weary yet fulfilled body homeward, step by step, into the afterglow of the setting sun.
Every day of training added another insignificant yet solid stake for the unknown future.