After sorting through all the storage scrolls, I finally reached the moment of truth—checking the jutsu collection. With all the excitement of a kid opening presents, I unsealed the first scroll.
Water Style: Wild Water Wave. D-rank.
Hmm. Alright. Not bad, not great. I set it aside and moved on.
Water Style: Water Bullet. C-rank.
Another water jutsu. Fair enough. My mother was a Senju, so she probably focused more on water than earth. And my father… well, being a civilian, he shouldn't have had many jutsu of his own. Most of what he had probably came from my mother. Still, no problem. Let's keep going.
Water Style: Starch Syrup Capturing Field. B-rank.
…
Water Style: Exploding Water Colliding Wave. Another B-rank.
...
Water Style: Water Dragon Bullet Technique. A-rank.
…
Water Style: Great Waterfall Technique. A-rank.
…
Water Style: Water Severing Wave. S-rank.
At this point, I was starting to see a pattern. In fact, I already knew where this was going. Just to confirm, I grabbed another scroll at random, popped it open, and—
Water Style: Water Clone Jutsu.
…
Yeah. The entire collection was almost entirely water style.
To be fair, for any random civilian ninja, this was a literal treasure trove. But for me? Not exactly what I was looking for. I was more interested in Earth and Lightning.
And no, this isn't just some baseless bias. Water style isn't bad, but in the Naruto world, Earth style has the potential for gravity manipulation, as shown by Ohnoki—though he barely scratched the surface. As for Lightning style, there's electromagnetism. These two alone place them at the top of the five elements.
Fire might have heat manipulation, but Water and Wind? They're the least versatile, capped at surface-level applications.
Water style would be absolutely useless against a threat like the Otsutsuki. That's just a fact.
Well… can't have everything, I guess. Still, this could work to my advantage. If I mastered these jutsu early, I could make everyone think I specialize in Water Style. It would be the perfect cover while I secretly developed Earth and Lightning.
It was like setting up a poker game where everyone saw my hand, but my real cards were hidden up my sleeve.
With that decision made, I picked out a few basic Water jutsu to practice. If I was going to sell this deception, I had to be thorough.
Water Style: Water Bullet Jutsu seemed like a good place to start. Simple, effective, and a classic Water-style technique. I headed to the backyard, a small training ground behind my house. Nothing fancy, but enough space to train without making a mess.
I'd learn Wild Water Wave later—Water Bullet was just better.
Opening the scroll, I studied the details. Hand signs, chakra control method—it was all neatly documented.
Now, chakra manipulation was my thing. My Six Eyes let me see chakra at an extreme level, so this kind of stuff was easy. But even with that, this felt… too simple. My IQ probably had something to do with it.
Well, no point overthinking. I'll just chalk it up to my genius. Besides, my new brain was really much better than my last one.....no it did not change my innovation or imagination capacity, it was simply like turning a box computer into a super computer, everything felt easy to do now...
As for training equipments,
I set up a training dummy—almost every ninja household had one—and took my stance.
"Water Style! Water Bullet Jutsu!" a few hand signs later
A stream of high-pressure water shot from my mouth, slamming into the dummy and knocking it over.
Hmmm… decent, but not sharp enough. Water jutsu were supposed to be precise and cutting, but this felt like I'd just smacked the target with a water hose. It should have drilled a hole into the dummy, not just pushed it back.
I reset the dummy and adjusted my approach.
Maybe if I added some rotation…
This time, when I released the jutsu, there was a noticeable drilling effect. Still not perfect, but definitely better.
I kept at it for a few hours, refining the technique until I'd mastered a total of five jutsu:
Water Style: Water Bullet Jutsu
Water Style: Wild Water Wave
Water Style: Starch Syrup Capturing Field
Earth Style: Earth Wall
Lightning Style: Lightning Current
Three offensive jutsu, one defensive, one trapping.
A perfect balance for a student about to enter the academy. Strong enough to match clan kids, but not so ridiculous that it raised suspicion. The goal wasn't to be an overwhelming monster from the start—just to be the best "genius" of my generation.
And considering that there were even people like Minato, the Ino-Shika-Cho trio, Hyuga clan head and many more in this year, made the face value of this title much higher..
And not just that, I needed to play my role accordingly.
Maybe I should help out some civilian students, teach them a few minor jutsu? Something simple enough to make me look kind and reinforce the whole Will of Fire image.
That way, I could win over Hiruzen's favor. If he saw me as the next great "protector of Konoha," that could be far more valuable than a few D and C-rank jutsu.
No, I wasn't aiming to become a hokage, but having a better identity is always better than not having one. Besides, I also needed a teacher to get more resources from...
For which, I was aiming for Tsunade. She was a Senju, like me. And one of the Legendary Sannin. Being her student alone would give me status and credibility without having to prove anything.
But first things first—admission into the Academy.
Only a few days left for the entrance exam.
That reminded me—I'd need to train physically and work on shurikenjutsu. The Academy entrance exam would probably involve those. Since most of the examinees would be completely newbies who know nothing about the shinobi world, a.k.a. Civilian students. The difficulty setup might be according to them, and with a senju body, I was already ahead of everyone, just needed some exercise to polish it.