Chapter 24: Graduation Preparation
Feeling too embarrassed to show his face, Ishiro stopped attending the Ninja Academy except when absolutely necessary for tool practice.
There was only one year left before graduation, marking the end of the "rookie protection period." Ishiro felt both excitement and anxiety about life beyond "novice village." Though the outside world was vast and fascinating, it was also fraught with danger.
In the ninja world, wandering shinobi are not uncommon. Among them are many missing-nin from various countries, as well as individuals who never belonged to a village in the first place – they learned chakra extraction through less-than-official channels.
Such rogue ninjas have no fixed base and roam the lands, taking jobs through the underground bounty network to survive. Generally, the Great Nations are reluctant to chase them down relentlessly, because the cost-to-benefit ratio is too high. Not only can some of them be quite formidable, but even lower-level rogues, if cornered, can adopt guerrilla tactics – like ambushing new genin – causing heavy losses for a village.
Moreover, the existence of wandering ninjas can sometimes help solve missions that a village doesn't want to be directly tied to. Highly dangerous tasks, for example, can be posted on the underground network, paying significantly less than an official village commission, yet with enough money, there will always be risk-takers. Of course, the reliability of such ninjas can't compare to the "cleaner" missions handled by the hidden villages. Still, many are willing to hire them for the right price.
In fact, in later times Onoki himself secretly hired the Akatsuki – for some borderline war-related contracts. The arrangement forms a delicate balance: wandering ninjas fill certain gaps in the market, while the hidden villages let them exist, mostly.
Nevertheless, most rogues prefer not to provoke the hidden villages. In the era after Hashirama and Madara disappeared and before Nagato arose, an individual ninja is still no match for an entire village. Though villages fear the sheer aggregate of numerous rogues, they rarely fear any single one – if an overly bold rogue draws too much attention, a village's intelligence team will dig into his background and dispatch specialists to eliminate him.
A bigger threat to the village, however, comes from "missing-nin," who number among these rogues. Missing-nin parted ways with their villages due to grudges and are more likely to exact revenge. And they carry inside knowledge, so the village leadership tries to stamp them out, dedicating specialized personnel to the task.
Hence, for newly minted genin, the greatest danger out in the ninja world isn't so much the official mission targets, but the missing-nin who might randomly appear.
Ishiro, though not yet graduated, had been working for a few years and had heard stories from coworkers about how brutal the ninja world could be. Excluding full-scale warfare, the leading cause of death for a ninja is often at the hands of traitors from their own village.
While the canon storyline only highlights Deidara as an Iwa missing-nin – as opposed to Konoha's many famous defectors – that doesn't mean Iwa is immune to the problem. It's just never described in detail.
Ninja is a high-risk profession. Most adapt to the harsh environment, forging a strong will for the sake of their village. Yet a small minority choose themselves over their village. In a pinch, these ninjas might back out of missions out of fear for their own safety. But deserting at critical moments can end one's shinobi career, and typically the village would sentence them to prison or even execution. Many who can't accept that punishment opt to defect, fueling the ranks of missing-nin.
Ishiro wasn't expecting to become overwhelmingly strong in the next year. He just hoped to gain enough self-defense capacity to survive an ambush by a missing-nin.
He did want to learn many things – medical ninjutsu, sensory ninjutsu, defensive and offensive jutsu, nin-taijutsu, genjutsu – but his body's aptitude was limited.
Thanks to his extraordinary spiritual power, Ishiro's ability to control chakra had already closed much of the gap with "real geniuses." True, Ikura could crush him in direct combat, but compared to the rest of the class, Ishiro was already exceptional. And regarding support and utility, no one in his year matched him, especially in the Barrier Division. That was why the high command valued him so highly.
When forced to choose where to focus, Ishiro had made that decision once he realized his chakra reserves were so limited.
Medical ninjutsu was the first to go – his chakra was hardly sufficient for healing himself or teammates. Nintaijutsu (taijutsu boosted by chakra) was next – he discovered early on that his raw taijutsu lagged behind other classmates by a wide margin, so even learning nin-taijutsu would only help him inch closer, not capitalize on his best skills.
Genjutsu had appealed to Ishiro at first, and he'd read all the Academy's textbooks on illusions. However, Iwagakure had a limited tradition in that domain – it had nowhere near the illusions found in, say, the Uchiha clan. And with Ishiro's small chakra pool, investing in illusions looked unpromising. He also lacked advanced illusions in the Iwa library, as illusions at that time emphasized "how to break them," not "how to cast them."
So Ishiro settled on sealing techniques. Early on, they would assist him in support roles; later, they could substantially increase his combat potential. Currently, Ishiro was using them to boost his own fighting capacity in two ways: sealing ninjutsu into scrolls and engraving runes on his body to store weapons.
Sealing a jutsu into a scroll was known in theory – Shikamaru had used something similar in the original storyline – but the constraints were considerable. The sealed ninjutsu's chakra must match that of the user who made the scroll, or else it would break free. In simpler terms, you must produce the scroll yourself, cast the ninjutsu yourself, seal it personally, and then use it yourself. Moreover, to deploy the sealed jutsu, you still have to form the correct hand seals to release the seal, though it's less chakra than the original cast. The higher the rank of the sealed jutsu, the more advanced the sealing, and thus the more chakra needed to release it. Finally, creating these ninjutsu scrolls was a time-consuming, error-prone process, so few ninjas bothered.
Ishiro, however, saw potential in "Shikamaru's approach." If direct combat power was lacking, why not use some cunning?
His skill in sealing techniques was among the best in Iwagakure's current generation. Making a C-rank ninjutsu scroll was feasible. As a Barrier Division member, he could purchase materials at a fraction of the external cost. His precise chakra control meant that once he learned the process, his scroll creation success rate was quite high. He only failed a few times in the beginning; now every attempt at a blank scroll was guaranteed to succeed.
But forging the blank scroll was only half the process – the next step was actually sealing a jutsu into it. This was incredibly difficult and had a low success rate.
After some especially lucrative missions, Ishiro had a good amount of money, so he splurged on 100 sets of materials at 1 million ryo. Then he spent an entire month producing scrolls. Chakra constraints meant he could only craft three or four a day – he still had his normal job to do. Even that was possible only because his outstanding chakra control kept the per-scroll chakra cost below 1C. Otherwise, he'd manage at most two scrolls daily.
Once the 100 blank scrolls were done, Ishiro spent two more months trying to seal ninjutsu into them. His success rate was abysmal. In the end, he used them all up, producing only five completed ninjutsu scrolls – three for Earth-Style Wall, two for Water Thread. He had tried to seal the Three Basic Techniques as well, but discovered illusions or intangible jutsu couldn't be sealed – only jutsu that formed a physical entity.
It wasn't a total waste, though. The repeated practice of sealing Water Thread also improved his mastery of that technique. By the end, his success rate was noticeably higher, and he could form about 2.2 seals per second. Still, he hadn't reduced the total seals required, indicating he hadn't "fully mastered" it yet.
Because life had been relatively calm, and his job had grown more relaxed post-war, he wasn't raking in huge sums from special tasks. The result was that his contribution points accrued slowly.
Fortunately, the Barrier Division recognized Ishiro's talents and raised his status. Back when he first joined, he made only a meager wage in the data room. Later, after the incident with the Mist ninja, he was made a full employee with monthly credit for three C-rank tasks – that gave him 150,000 ryo plus 30 contribution points. He also received 10 contribution points for every storage scroll he produced. During the war, as the village desperately needed storage scrolls, Ishiro made a fortune in contributions – fueling the purchase of B-rank sealing knowledge.
But once the war ended, that extra revenue dried up. Now, though, the division had further upgraded Ishiro's rank and benefits, matching Meisha's level. Each month, he'd earn 200,000 ryo plus the equivalent of two B-rank missions – 600,000 ryo in total and 200 contribution points.
Yet as his body matured, so did his training costs. No matter how he tried, he never had enough contribution points left to buy the high-tier gear he wanted. In fact, he realized he actually had fewer points than he did right after purchasing Water Thread.
As for money, he was able to save a lot each month. Combined with his S-rank mission bonus, he was hardly short on ryo. Now he somewhat regretted using precious contribution points to buy ninja tools earlier. During peacetime, many merchants in the village sold gear for ryo, so he could have saved his points for more specialized items. But he couldn't turn back time.