(June 27th, year 54 AK)
After thinking about the new backup skills that he has to add to his skillset rather sooner than later, Yuta was more inclined to learn the elemental ninjutsu, especially since Shisui had already said that he would teach him that in the future.
But for the time being Yuta felt that he has to compensate for this weakness somehow, so he decided to spend a bit more time in this time-loop to train with the three basic Academy jutsus more and with the Body Flicker as well. Since his chakra reserves and chakra control had improved, he felt that he could push those jutsus a bit more as well.
Yuta started with the three basic jutsus and trained with them for about six more months, while not only getting a better grip on them, but also finding some new creative ways of using them in combat.
He was already able to perform those jutsus without hand seals, but it was taking him almost a full second for the each jutsu, so Yuta also trained to reduce that time further, and he had reduced it to almost nothing, after all, these jutsus are much easier than the Shadow Cloak jutsu.
After that Yuta trained more with the Body Flicker jutsu during the next six months, and although he wasn't able to do anything with the jutsu's side effect of the full second of disorientation, he was able to remove the hand seal component on it as well, and was able to cast it in a second.
Although spending a full second in combat when he needs this jutsu to dodge the attack is way too long, so Yuta spent another six months practicing it further and had reduced the time all the way to half a second, still not ideal for the life-saving jutsu, but he felt that on his current level this is already the best he could do, and if he has to use it faster than that – then he always could use a hand seal to cast it almost instantaneously by now.
'I think I'm done here...' Yuta thought a bit tiredly as he was lying on the grass after another day of training, 'I ran out of things to train anyway, and if I'm not intent on starting developing some new jutsu right now, then I'm finished with this time-loop...'
'How long had it been? Somewhere around seven or eight years I think...'
...
'Damn, how easy must everything be for those talented characters like Sasuke? He learned Chidori in a month, and he also trained during that same month to reach the level of speed that Rock Lee had displayed after he took off his leg weights...'
'And here I am, spending more than seven years to slightly modify a few jutsu and to increase my mastery over them... I bet the twelve-year-old Sasuke could do all that in a month tops...'
'In just three or four years those two monsters, Naruto and Sasuke had reached such an insane levels of strength... Although most of that was either inherent, like the Sharingan's evolutions or external, like Nine-Tails and the Hagoromo's gift, but still...'
'Jiraiya said, that Rasengan is the second most difficult jutsu, Tsunade said outright that Naruto would never be able to master it, she said it even after Naruto had demonstrated the incomplete Rasengan in a spar with her, and even Kakashi had scolded Jiraiya for teaching such a powerful jutsu to Naruto. All the same, Naruto was able to master such a difficult jutsu in just a week...'
'With my current chakra reserves I won't even dare attempting learning the Rasengan, there is no chance in the world I would be able to master it, I'll just waste all my chakra in a one or two attempts a day, and Naruto was going at it non-stop day and night during that week when he mastered it.'
'Well, not that I even have any use for the jutsu anyway, it's a close combat jutsu and I would never be able to connect it with the enemy on my level of taijutsu. As for the upgraded version – Rasenshuriken, that Naruto was able to throw, I can't even begin to comprehend the amount of chakra I would need to pull something like that out, not happening any time soon, that's for sure...'
...
'As for my chakra...' Yuta concentrated on his chakra and sized it up, 'Well, it has grown a lot, that's for sure. At first, it has grown from slightly above 8G all the way to 1C after the mission, I assumed that it was thanks to all the experience I have gained back then. But now, after more than seven years of training in a time-loop...'
...
'It's about 5C now, I think. More than five times of what I had during the last battle. I wonder how much chakra regular Jonins have, I wasn't able to estimate the extent of the chakra of ninjas that had more than about 4C before, but I should be able to do that now. I should have more chakra than Hikari right now, but still, likely not even close to what Itachi's chakra reserves had grown after the Sharingan's awakening. Sharingan is such a cheat...'
'With my current progress of chakra growth, I think it will take about six to ten more years of active training to double it again and reach 10C. If I assume that regular Jonins have about 10C of chakra, or 1J, then the future is not very optimistic for me, it would be very hard and slow to grow my chakra naturally past 1J with how it slows down the more it grows.'
'I would probably need about 15 years of training to push it from 1J to 2J with how it goes right now...'
...
'Reaching Kage level of chakra with that speed of development? Highly unlikely.'
...
'No point thinking about it right now, I still have room to grow, and I will deal with the natural limits of my potential when the time comes. One step at a time and all that...'
...
After completing all of his objectives, Yuta returned one more time to the June 26th and trained his body during those days to not miss on his physical training routine. It was a long time for him since he had trained his body, he almost forgot how to do it properly, but his body was still remembering the exercises just fine, and he quickly got used to it again.
Then June 30th had arrived and Yuta went to the training grounds number 68 where his team always gathers.
As Yuta approached the place, he adjusted his mental state to his usual previous self, after all he had spent more than seven years training, so he was a bit different than before.
He also checked on his chakra suppression technique that he constantly uses to not give away his suddenly grown chakra resaves right away. Although this method won't work against dojutsu users or against someone like Hiruzen, who saw through Yuta's disguise easily, but still, it was better than nothing.
Right now, for any regular chakra-senses of other ninjas, Yuta's chakra reserves would look like 1.5C, while in reality it was 5C. Still, 1.5C is quite a growth, considering that just not long ago his chakra was about 8G, and he was disguising about half of it back then as well.
But still, Yuta felt that compared to his teammates his growth would just fall off short anyway in everyone's eyes, such was the perks of having very talented teammates – he doesn't need to hide much of his own strength that was growing explosively overnight in everyone's point of view, everyone's eyes will still be on Itachi and Hikari, while Yuta was being fully satisfied to remain mostly in the background.
Being underestimated was a sure way to defeat his enemies more easily, he had learned it by now. Also, while his teammates, especially Itachi, would hug the spotlight, Yuta would be able to avoid most of the attention of the likes of Danzo, or so he thought.
But what Yuta didn't know, is that after his fight was witnessed by Yohei and Isao, Shisui's old teammates, Yuta had made quite an impression on them. The efficiency with jutsus that he had used, the cold-minded execution during the whole fight and especially the effectiveness of his genjutsu – all of that had made an impression on the two of them, and since Shinji was their teammate and a close friend, he had heard everything about that fight as well from them.
Slowly but surely, Yuta's reputation as a scarry genjutsu specialist was already beginning to spread through the village. Although Itachi had displayed unbelievable skills fighting against the Mist Jonin, and Hikari had performed even better than Yuta, there wasn't anything unique about that, Konoha always had crazy geniuses popping up all the time, but what Yuta did back then, it had a different kind of impact.
All of that was because he was using genjutsu, and he was doing it on the incredible level of mastery. This level of proficiency with genjutsu wasn't realy something unheard of, the village has some Special Jonins and Jonins that are much stronger at genjutsu.
But when this level of genjutsu, that makes defeating Chunins look easy, being displayed by an eight-year-old kid, a Genin – that's what was the most impressive. Also, Yohei and Isao had seen Yuta using genjutsu through a long distance, such a thing should be impossible for a regular genjutsu, but they weren't aware that Yuta had used sound as a medium for it.
Yuta was imitating a bird's sound that one time, but they didn't connect it to the genjutsu, since Yuta had used it also to lure his enemies into the trap. And all other times he was casting his genjutsu through speaking, so they didn't suspect it then either. Shisui surely knew what was going on back then, but he wasn't about to spill out Yuta's technique details to anyone casually, even to his old teammates.
If they were to know that, they would be even more shocked. Since even among the genjutsu-specializing Jonins, using such advanced techniques as adding a medium for the genjutsu, like sound or something else – is a very rare thing and very few genjutsu specialists ever do that. Not because they don't want to, or because it is not good, but because it is a very hard thing to do and not a lot of ninjas ever encounter something like that during their lifetime, so many ninjas aren't even aware of such things.
Genjutsu specialists are rare, but using a genjutsu medium that is not related to the Bloodlines like Sharingan, is even more rare.
Sure, the Sharingan genjutsu is widely known. The Sharingan and the eye contact acts as a medium for such a genjutsu, but for the regular ninjas developing a genjutsu that uses a medium is neither easy nor even widely known.
With all of that, seeing Yuta's battle and his horrifyingly effective genjutsu, Yohei and Isao were deeply impressed by it.
--- AN ---
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