(5th of July, year 55 AK)
Then Hiruzen and everyone else went back to the viewer's area to spectate and Junichi, the proctor of the third phase of the Chunin Exams, announced the first pair of participants that would be fighting, and asked everyone else to move to the spectator's area.
It was two Leaf Genins Yuta didn't know, and he and his teammates walked up to the spectator's area where Shisui greeted them.
"Good work you guys on cleaning the second stage of the exams." Shisui said casually, "You have broken the previous record, did you know that? You've finished in just two hours, two hours and four minutes to be exact, no one ever cleared it this fast before."
"What's a big deal?" Hikari smirked, "We weren't even trying to clear it as fast as possible, I bet we could've done it in under one hour if we were to go all out." And although she was trying to show that she doesn't care one bit about the broken record, there was quite a bit of smugness seeping into her voice.
"Sigh, I just hope there would be someone interesting I'll get to fight here, and that they wouldn't put me against Itachi straight away during this preliminary rounds..." Yuta commented as he leaned on the handrails and looked at the two Leaf wannabe Chunins that was about to fight down below.
"Hey, you are being worried about Itachi but not me?" Hikari exclaimed being offended, "Do you seriously believe you could beat me?"
"Yea, why not?" Yuta casually replied without looking back at her, "At least as long as you are not going all-out..." Yuta hinted at her Kekkei Genkai.
"Tsk. And what if I would go all-out just out of spite? You better not provoke me like that, or who knows what will happen, humph!" She said angerly, although Yuta noticed that there wasn't much heat in her tone, so he wasn't worried about what she said, believing that she wouldn't reveal her hidden ability that easily.
The fight finally started and after a couple meaningless provoking sentences that each of the Genins said to each other, they finally ran at each other and clashed with kunai in their hands.
They opened up with standard taijutsu moves using ninja tools, slashing with kunai, throwing shurikens, and soon Yuta lost all interest in the fight. Seeing their moves, two young ninjas about seventeen years old each, fighting each other without any ninjutsu or genjutsu, it was a genuine snooze-fest for Yuta, who had no interest in such type of fights.
Even more so, following their moves with his eyes Yuta realized, that he wasn't that far off from this level of taijutsu himself, and more so, if he actively utilizes chakra to boost his moves in a fight against opponents like that, he believed that he could even beat such an opponent in a pure taijutsu himself.
"You can't be serious..." Yuta quietly mumbled with disappointment as he watched the fight.
In Yuta's understanding, with his taijutsu being his greatest weakness, if there is someone who he could beat with taijutsu, that could only mean one thing in his understanding – such an opponent is complete and total weakling.
But what Yuta didn't fully understand is that even with his taijutsu and the physical body being his weakness, his physical strength was still growing at a steady pace, and although compared to his genjutsu skills and the spiritual energy's strength there was still the same huge gap, it doesn't mean that it stays the same.
And now, seeing how young ninjas on the level of an average Chunins were fighting in taijutsu, Yuta finally realized that his own physical strength had quietly grown to the point where it wasn't too far off from theirs. And with his combat chakra application he was practicing for quite a while, he could even bridge that gap if needed and even surpass this level by a slight margin. Although fighting while actively spending a lot of chakra is far from ideal and quite wasteful, but it was still possible.
Also, after his last time spending many years training in a time-loop, and his spiritual energy growing to the point when the side effects of energies imbalance started showing up, after that his physical energy and the physical body underwent a considerable amount of stress as it was forced to withstand all that grown spiritual energy, so it was stimulated again to grow in turn as well.
Although that stimulated growth wasn't anything significant, but in the course of the past ten months after his spiritual energy had grown severely, his body was pushed to adapt to it. And as such, his physical strength had undergone a significant increase, and now it could be estimated about in the middle in between a Genin's and a Chunin's level. And by actively utilizing chakra in close combat to boost his moves, Yuta already could bridge that gap and push his physical strength temporarily to the level slightly above an average Chunin.
It was due to him being on the team with a total monsters that grow in strength rapidly and having even a bigger monster as his team leader and a teacher, and having to fight opponents that either far below his level or significantly above it, like that Stone Jonin Keisuke, it was all because of it that Yuta didn't really adjusted to his grown physical strength yet and still considered himself physically significantly weaker than pretty much everyone.
But right now, watching the taijutsu fight between two young ninjas that he knew was firmly on a Chunin level, and realizing that the said fight ain't much even in his eyes, that realization was quite a reality check for Yuta, although a positive one this time for a change.
Yuta didn't know either to laugh or cry. He wanted interesting fights but instead he was given a realization that he had truly grown since the Academy in just a year of objective time, although for Yuta it wasn't a year, and more like a decade...
"What are you mumbling there about?" Hikari chimed in as she heard Yuta's previous remark.
"They don't look strong..." Yuta replied absentmindedly as he continued watching the fight.
"No they don't..." Hikari replied and sighed, a bit disappointed.
A bunch of nearby participants glared at both of them angerly as they overheard the conversation.
The fight proceeded further and at some point both of the fighters jumped back, created some distance between them, and both went through a series of hand seals.
Yuta's eyes lit up for a brief moment as he saw the change, but the next moment his eyes dimmed again.
'Their hand seals forming speed is so slow...' Yuta analyzed, 'Those hand seals, it should be Fire Style...' Yuta concluded as he recognized the patterns after witnessing many times how Itachi forming hand seals for his Fyre Style ninjutsu.
Then, after about one and a half seconds both fighters spewed fireballs at each other and they canceled each other upon collision in the middle between them.
'More than a second for a simple ninjutsu, it's too slow, and compared to Itachi's Fire Style their fireballs look pale in comparison. And why did they stand there and wasted a precious moment without making the next move immediately after the fireballs were cast? Sigh... That Stone kunoichi from six months ago, Maki was her name if I remember correctly, she would've killed both of them in two or three moves tops...'
The fight continued for a bit longer before one of the fighters didn't made a mistake and got himself a deep cut on the left arm, and after that the fight ended in less than a minute, since the wounded Genin started panicking and making reckless moves, the other fighter managed to catch him at some point and made a stab to his opponent's neck, stopping the kunai in time of course.
The fight was quite mediocre at best in Yuta's point of view, and he sighed, looking at the winner.
"Don't look down on your peers like that." Shisui said calmly by his side as he noticed Yuta's state of mind, "Everyone is different and progresses at their own pace, don't judge other people, especially not those who are fellow comrades, ninjas of the Leaf. If you become overconfident and underestimate your opponents, you will only end up dead."
"Sigh, I know." Yuta replied with a bit complicated emotions, "It's just..."
Yuta stopped for a brief moment, gathering his thoughts and trying to get them into a proper words, then he finally said "I just want to fight someone strong. But not strong to the point that all my moves look meaningless like with that guy six months ago. How else am I supposed to test myself?"
As Yuta found the words to voice out loud what he felt at that moment, he also better understood himself at that point as well. He recalled the past year since he became a Genin. During this period he had fought multiple times against enemy ninjas. But it was only two times he was in a serious all-out fight, one time against the Mist ninjas, and another time against Stone ninjas.
But if against the Mist ninjas he fought tooth and nail and had measured his own strength in that fight thoroughly and found multiple weaknesses that he later on worked to fix, a lot of time passed and he had grown significantly in strength since then, so it doesn't count anymore.
And against Stone ninjas later on, those Chunins weren't stronger than him, rather weaker, so he wasn't able to fight all-out against them and test his skills properly. And the Jonin, Keisuke, he was too strong for Yuta to properly test his skills, back then Yuta was grasping at straws and trying his best to win while almost all of his moves ended up completely useless.
And now Yuta felt the urge to find a worthy opponent that he could fight against in an all-out fight while using all of his skills to 100%. Only then would Yuta understand where he stood on the power scales and measure his strengths and weaknesses thoroughly, only then would he understand properly how to further improve his skills.
"What you are feeling right now is only natural." Shisui said calmly, "Every ninja goes through it every now and then..."
'Every ninja goes through this, huh...' Yuta thought, 'I didn't feel like a proper ninja up until now, I guess... At first, it was all that reincarnation and memory merging business, then training, then Academy and more training, then bunch of other stuff happened and then even more training, then missions, but by now I guess I indeed had become a ninja, I just didn't feel like one and didn't realize that it happened somewhere along the way, huh... What a peculiar feeling this is...'
--- AN ---
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