Chapter 28: Graduation
With his face still burning from embarrassment, Ishiro stopped attending the Ninja Academy altogether, except when he had to practice ninja tools.
There was only one year left until graduation, marking the end of the "rookie protection period." Ishiro felt a mixture of curiosity and dread about the outside world. Although the world beyond the Academy was fascinating, it was also extremely dangerous.
In the ninja world, there was no shortage of wandering ninjas – missing-nin from various nations, or others who had never belonged to any country and learned chakra extraction through unofficial channels.
These rogue ninjas had no fixed base, drifting everywhere to survive on underground bounty missions. Generally, the Great Nations wouldn't go out of their way to exterminate them all, because the cost-to-benefit ratio was too high. Even if some rogue ninjas were weaker, they could resort to ambush tactics that cost the village dearly in manpower. And some rogues were quite powerful, a threat the hidden villages had to respect.
Moreover, the existence of wandering ninjas sometimes benefited the villages by handling missions that a village couldn't openly touch. High-risk tasks, for instance, might get posted on the underground network for a smaller fee, and desperate rogue ninjas would pick them up. Official clients tended to trust the hidden villages more, but these bounty missions still formed part of the system.
(Indeed, Onoki himself would hire the Akatsuki at a later date, commissioning them for war-related tasks. So the relationship between rogue ninjas, the underground network, and the hidden villages was a delicate equilibrium.)
Despite this, most wandering ninjas feared confronting entire hidden villages. Even though large villages dreaded the aggregate power of many rogues, they rarely worried about any single one. If a particular rogue made himself too big a problem, a hidden village's intelligence department would track him down and send specialized hunters, which was usually more than any one rogue could withstand. Thus, unless cornered, rogues rarely provoked the hidden villages directly.
A more significant threat came from missing-nin – those who defected from their home villages, often holding grudges. They tended to retaliate against their old village or carry important secrets. The villages thus assigned special units to eliminate them.
For a fresh graduate stepping into the world, these missing-nin were often more lethal than the official mission targets themselves.
Although Ishiro hadn't formally graduated, he'd worked in the village for years, overhearing colleagues' stories about how brutal the ninja world could be. Disregarding the war, the greatest number of ninja casualties came from missing-nin.
Yes, the canon storyline singled out only Deidara as an Iwa missing-nin, versus the many from Konoha, but that didn't mean Iwa had none – just that they weren't highlighted.
Shinobi was, by nature, a high-risk profession. Most adapted to the harsh environment and were willing to fight or even die for their village. But a few ended up choosing self-preservation over loyalty. Such individuals might retreat from dangerous missions due to fear. In a ninja village, that sort of cowardice typically led to imprisonment or execution, so many who balked at paying that price ended up fleeing. Thus, the ranks of missing-nin kept growing.
Ishiro didn't expect to become overwhelmingly strong within the next year. He only hoped to possess enough self-defense to survive an ambush by a missing-nin.
He did want to learn many things – medical ninjutsu, sensory ninjutsu, defensive and offensive jutsu, taijutsu with ninjutsu augmentation, genjutsu – but his body's aptitude was limited.
His powerful spiritual energy had already closed some of the gap between him and actual prodigies. Indeed, he remained no match for Ikura in head-on battle, but compared to most of his peers, he was exceptional. His greatest advantage lay in the sealing arts – hence his high value to the top brass.
Still, forced to choose, he had decided long ago not to dabble in everything.
Medical ninjutsu was the first to go – he lacked enough chakra to heal himself, let alone heal teammates.
Nintaijutsu was next – his physical prowess lagged behind many classmates, so even if he learned nintaijutsu, he'd merely approach parity without achieving a real advantage.
Genjutsu was intriguing, and Ishiro had devoured the Academy's theory. However, Iwagakure had minimal illusions, especially advanced ones, plus illusions demanded plenty of chakra. So he couldn't invest in that either.
He chose fūinjutsu – in the early stage, sealing arts provided versatile support, and later they could greatly enhance his combat power. Indeed, Ishiro was currently relying on them to beef up his fighting.
He used two primary methods:
1. Sealing ninjutsu into scrolls
2. Inscribing runes on his body to store weapons.
Sealing techniques for storing entire jutsu in scrolls did exist in the ninja world; Shikamaru in the original storyline had used something similar. The constraints, though, were very strict: the scroll's chakra must be identical to the user who cast the ninjutsu, or else the jutsu would escape control. Put differently, the user must create the scroll, cast the jutsu, and seal it themselves; no one else could use it effectively. Moreover, to unseal the jutsu required forming hand seals, albeit at a lesser chakra cost than the original. The stronger the jutsu, the stronger the seal had to be, and the more chakra was required to unseal it. Finally, forging such scrolls was complicated, with a high failure rate, so few ninjas bothered.
Yet for Ishiro, it was an appealing loophole – he lacked direct offensive power, so bridging that gap with cunning made sense.
His sealing skill was among the top in the present-day Iwa. Making a C-rank jutsu scroll was feasible; thanks to his membership in the Barrier Division, he got materials much cheaper than outside. His refined chakra control further boosted his success rate. After the initial learning curve, he rarely failed to produce a blank scroll.
The next step – storing a jutsu in the scroll – was the tricky part, with a very low success rate.
After some particularly large mission payouts, Ishiro had plenty of money. He spent 1,000,000 ryo on a hundred sets of materials, then spent a month creating blank scrolls. Because of his limited chakra and daily job duties, he could only craft about three or four scrolls per day. Still, that was better than two a day, thanks to his extraordinary control keeping each scroll's chakra cost below 1C.
When the hundred blank scrolls were ready, he invested two more months trying to seal jutsu into them, but the results were disheartening: in the end, only five were successful—three for Earth-Style Wall and two for Water Thread. He had also tested the Three Basic Techniques but discovered intangible illusions didn't qualify. Possibly only jutsu forming a physical presence were sealable.
Even so, it wasn't a total waste. Repeatedly attempting to store Water Thread did sharpen Ishiro's mastery of that technique; its success rate rose, and his seal-forming speed improved. He still couldn't reduce the total required seals, indicating he hadn't "truly mastered" it, but progress was progress.
Because everything remained calm and his Barrier Division duties became routine in the post-war period, he wasn't racking up extra mission rewards as before. His contribution points thus grew slowly.
At least the Division recognized his potential and upgraded his status. Early on, working in the archives, he'd earned a meager allowance. Then after dealing with that Mist ninja, he became a full-timer with monthly pay equivalent to three C-rank tasks – 150,000 ryo plus 30 points. He also earned 10 points for each storage scroll he made, which during the war had netted him a fortune of points used for B-rank sealing studies.
But once the war ended, those extra orders dried up. Fortunately, the Barrier Division again boosted Ishiro's rank, giving him pay comparable to Meisha's, i.e. 200,000 ryo monthly plus credit for two B-rank missions—600,000 ryo total and 200 points a month.
Still, as his training demands rose with his body's growth, he never had enough points. Indeed, his stash was lower than when he had purchased Water Thread. As for the ryo, he could save a lot each month, plus he still had leftover from that S-rank mission reward. Now he regretted blowing precious points on ninja tools – in peacetime, many merchants sold weapons for ryo anyway. Yet what was done was done.
---
Finally, the day came for graduation.
Having spent four years at the Academy (and four years since his transmigration at age 3), Ishiro had grown into a seven-year-old who had trained continuously. His evolution was massive. If there were a "system" with a status page, it might look like this:
Name: Ishiro
Age: 7
Rank: 4th-year Academy Student
Chakra: 11C
(Note: 10D = 1C, 100C = 1B, so he's nowhere near B-rank ninjutsu usage.)
D-rank jutsu mastered:
- Substitution (with pre-prepared log): needs 3 seals, 3 seals/sec, costs 0.4D
- Substitution (no log): same 3 seals, 3 seals/sec (+1?), 0.4D
- Clone Technique: 4 seals, 2.6 seals/sec, 0.6D
- Transformation: 4 seals, 2.6 seals/sec, 0.6D
C-rank jutsu:
- Earth-Style Wall: 14 seals, 2.6 seals/sec, costs 1.1C
- Water Thread: 16 seals, 2.4 seals/sec, 0.8C
- Earth Spear Gun: 15 seals, 1.9 seals/sec, 2.5C
Fūinjutsu: B-rank Chakra Obfuscation (C-rank or lower omitted)
Over the final stretch before graduation, Ishiro poured most of his energy into fūinjutsu. He'd only gotten Earth Spear Gun to the point where he could reliably form lethal spikes at chosen locations, then set it aside. Meanwhile, he refined Water Thread, cutting two seals off its sequence and boosting his speed, thus saving a bit of chakra.
His skill with kunai, shuriken, or other tools was merely average, nothing special.
Now, sitting in his classroom alongside his classmates, Ishiro awaited Ishikawa-sensei to announce their teams. Possibly because it was the last day, or because the "rookie safety net" was about to end, a wistful aura hung over everyone. Yet they were just kids; lacking a better way to handle their mixed feelings, many ended up squabbling or mocking each other to vent. The chatter grew noisy.
Ishiro found himself growing fond of these chaotic sounds. They felt vibrant, carefree, a reminder of daily life in the Academy.
Because of the war, many in Ishiro's class had lost parents, yet after four years, that grief had dulled somewhat. More than sadness, they now had hope for the future—an eagerness to become real ninjas.
Shouhara was still sneaking glances at Tanaka, but Ishiro didn't tease him this time. If they ended up on separate teams, that might be the end of any chance together. Shouhara, having never had the guts to confess in four years, was unlikely to do so after graduation.
As for Tanaka, the little girl looked preoccupied, not noticing Shouhara's stares.
Tatsuya, Mokashi, and Fujino were still "fighting" over who would become the Tsuchikage, probably a way to commemorate four years of shared bonds.
Ikura still reigned as the idol of all the girls in class. While the guys bickered rowdily, the girls expressed their emotions by swooning at Ikura with starry-eyed devotion.
Ishiro swept his gaze around, soaking it all in. His time at the Academy had actually been rather calm; he had no intense clashes or deep bonds, mostly drifting as a quiet observer. Perhaps from the moment he transmigrated, he'd been oriented toward "becoming a real ninja," so he identified more with life in the Barrier Division than with being a student.
Still, there was a faint warmth in the trivial friendships he'd formed here.
It was as though Ishikawa-sensei couldn't bear to part either, arriving somewhat late. He walked in wearing his usual calm expression—though his steps betrayed a hint of unevenness. The class hushed at once, eyes locked on him.
Ishikawa-sensei surveyed them thoroughly, as if measuring how they'd changed since that first day. It felt like a moment suspended in time, and he rubbed his eyes, skipping the usual banter. Straightaway, he began reading the team assignments.
"Team One: Tatsuya, Mokashi, Fujino."
Everyone was a bit stunned. Those three had always been at loggerheads, so placing them together was surprising. Plus, they were among the strongest in the class, so some questioned whether it was fair to group them all. Meanwhile, the three themselves wore odd expressions. One might've guessed they'd be displeased, but their faces suggested something else.
Ishiro couldn't help quipping, "You guys are so happy you can't stop grinning, so why the sour faces?"
A burst of laughter erupted. Indeed, those three had always bickered incessantly, yet they were thrilled to remain together. Their attempts to hide it had been obvious, deflating the somber mood in the room.
Even Ishikawa-sensei chuckled. Seeing the trio ready to explode in embarrassment, he calmed everyone down and continued with the announcements.
"Team Two: Ikura…"
At the sound of that single name, absolute silence descended. Almost every girl's gaze bored into Ishikawa-sensei. Tanaka's head dropped so low it nearly touched her desk; Ishiro sensed her entire body tense up in that instant.
A few boys stirred, drawing savage glares from a dozen furious female classmates, so they instantly froze. Ishikawa-sensei himself was startled by the pressure, gulped, and quickly resumed:
"…Meikō, Uzumaki Yumi."
When he finished, the room momentarily fell deathly quiet, then erupted in outraged cries. The scene turned chaotic. Ishiro noted Tanaka looking deflated, as though all life had gone out of her the moment she heard the last name. Nearby, Shouhara almost seemed relieved.
Meanwhile, Ishiro's focus fell on a red-haired girl in the front row – obviously an Uzumaki. Half a year ago, Iwa had "rescued" a number of Uzumaki survivors, who, upon learning that Uzushio was gone, decided to join Iwagakure. Strangely enough, the process went smoothly: many of them had been sidelined in the Uzumaki clan, but now received good treatment, and with their homeland destroyed, they had little reason to resist. Among that group were quite a few children, some Ishiro's age, including Uzumaki Yumi, the most gifted among them. She had been placed in Ishiro's class, and now the village seemed to be pairing her with Ikura and Meikō – a sign of how highly the leadership valued her.
Finally, "Team Five: Ishiro, Shouhara, Tanaka."