Chapter 31: Not a shadow
In his room, Ryo looked at himself while analyzing how long he could maintain the clone. A clone with 30% of his chakra would disappear after 40 minutes, returning 14% of the chakra to Ryo, once the clone reached the expenditure of 16% of the chakra or time, it vanished, sending thememories to Ryo.
"A clone with 50% of my chakra can stay exactly 1 hour, which is a good time considering that making a clone with more chakra than that would affect my classes at the academy or training with Kentou-sensei."
He also pondered making two clones so that they could study the biology and medicine books Kentou had given him, but after some consideration, Ryo had set aside the idea, at least until he could increase his chakra reserves.
"Perhaps by mid-year, I'll be able to. Speaking of which," he said, forming the hand seal again, expending exactly 50% of his total chakra, leaving him a little less than half, but still enough. The clone that appeared immediately began picking up the books to study them. Ryo then left for the ninja academy.
Ninja Academy;
Asuma finished giving a long speech about everyone needing to work hard to train and a few other things, and then it was ninjutsu class, where they would review and learn some basic jutsus. Ryo had already learned most of them on his own, as they were mostly rank E and weren't really difficult.
But there was one he hadn't tried yet, and that was what he was going to do in today's class, the Kawarimi no Jutsu, the body replacement technique. He hadn't learned this yet because lately he had been focused on other things, such as intensive training with coins and then extra medical jutsu lessons.
"You can start practicing your chosen ninjutsus; if any are offensive, remember not to target your classmates; we don't want anyone getting hurt in this class," Asuma said, still sounding amusing in Ryo's mind. He couldn't imagine the Hokage's son as a teacher, even though he had been there for some time.
Taking a deep breath, he set aside his thoughts and began making the hand seals. There were six seals, but the way the chakra moved was simple. Ryo had already placed the famous piece of wood in front of him.
As soon as the hand seals were finished, smoke appeared where Ryo was, and then the piece of wood was swapped, with Ryo a few meters ahead. Ryo still couldn't swap places with objects further away, which was bad; he would have to train to improve the speed, number of seals, and effectiveness of the jutsu, but he had managed to execute it easily.
He continued training, swapping places with the wood a few more times, using up 25% of his chakra in the process. Now he had barely 10% of his chakra left, sitting near a tree and breathing heavily. He felt a strong headache with numerous pieces of knowledge flowing into his mind, gritting his teeth. He put his hand on his head.
"All right... I forgot, it's been an hour now." But as the memories returned, a little chakra came with them, allowing Ryo to train for another hour or so. He hadn't paid much attention to the other classmates since most of them had gone to train offensive jutsus and were further away.
There were few students around Ryo; most were practicing walking on water or trees, and others were throwing some shurikens with fire or lightning at targets in the trees. No one caught Ryo's attention, none of those who wanted to show off their clan's jutsus.
Inuzuka Yuuto and Maru trained with each other, and apparently Yuuto had had the same idea as Ryo, but he practiced the technique with his dog Maru, swapping places and attacking a stationary target. A little further away was Haruka Asahina, who... was dancing? Ryo blinked a few times as he tried to understand; the young girl looked like a ballerina with petals falling around her.
Ryo felt that for some reason, if he tried to throw something to hit her, it would be much harder than usual. And then, analyzing that, he came to a conclusion. "It's a genjutsu! I didn't know she used genjutsus; it's a rather elusive art to train in the end." He took a deep breath as he resumed training.
There was no big wind in this class either; none of the classmates tried any pranks on Ryo, and soon the class ended. Ryo returned home, seeing the mess of open books and notes, he sighed and began to tidy up the house.
After everything was tidied up, he sat down to meditate; he had spent a lot of chakra that day, which was good, but meditating to recover chakra faster was essential. Amidst this, he heard some knocks on his door.
Opening it, he could see Naruto there; he had two cups of instant ramen in his hand. "Hey Ryo, it's been a while since I've been able to talk to you! Dinner's on me tonight!" Ryo looked at Naruto, opening a slight smile. "Sure, come in; tell me how things are going at the academy!"
The two had a calm dinner, well, not so calm since Naruto had a loud voice and always made a mess when telling things. While they ate, Ryo listened to Naruto's day-to-day life, realizing that it hadn't changed much from what he already imagined; Naruto didn't say it, but he had once again been left alone.
Ryo knew that, but the little boy in front of him tried not to let it show, even though he failed miserably at the task. "So, another day, I put the eraser from the board at the entrance of the classroom! Then Iruka-sensei came in, and the eraser fell on his head, leaving him all white from chalk!" He laughed loudly as he told how he played a prank on Iruka.
Ryo laughed along as he thought about it all; Naruto had already started playing pranks on the teachers, just as he did at the beginning of the anime. "Naruto, tell me, how's the training going? It's been a month, right? Have you been training?" Naruto made a complicated face.
"I... It's tough! But I did it!" Ryo was a little surprised at what he heard, and then Naruto took a piece of paper from his pocket, putting it between his hands. And after a few seconds, he opened his hand, taking the paper and showing it to Ryo with a smile on his face.
"See! I told you I could do it." In Naruto's hand was a small piece of paper that was cut. At least the tip of the paper. "Oh... You can already cut the tip of the paper like that? You know you have to aim for the center to master it, right?" Naruto put his hand behind his head and then spoke with a lower tone. "Yes... But I can't train that much... I'm someone very busy, dattebayo."
Ryo laughed as he heard that, knowing that Naruto was free to do many things, at least within the village. "Of course, let's do it. A challenge: you have until the end of the year to achieve that. If you succeed, I'll consider teaching you a new jutsu. What do you think?" Naruto, who was a bit sad and looking the other way, opened a big smile.
"Alright, If I can't do it, I won't call myself Naruto Uzumaki anymore! No, until the end of the year is too long; I'll accomplish this in the next three months!" And so the night came to an end, and Ryo went to sleep while thinking.
"This reminds me of when he said he would master the Rasengan in a week in the anime. Well, if he said he's going to do it, then I'll believe in him. Not that I care much about it for now, but the stronger we get, the better."
He looked at the ceiling knowing that he had to train more. He wouldn't stay in the shadow of Sasuke and Naruto; even though he was helping Naruto now, it was for his own pleasure as a friend. Ryo wouldn't be a support in the shadows in this world; he would walk with his head held high alongside the two who would become the strongest in the world, well, three with Ryo.
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