How many times do you have to do something to become good at it?
Ten times?
One hundred times?
One thousand times?
One hundred thousand times?
Unfortunately, for some people, the number is even larger than that.
Nine hundred ninety nine thousand, nine hundred ninety seven.
Nine hundred ninety nine thousand, nine hundred ninety eight.
Nine hundred ninety nine thousand, nine hundred ninety nine.
One million.
After one million draws, one million swings, one million strikes, Kouki had finally learned to do something well.
[Strong Draw (S)]
[Your first attack cannot be broken or interrupted. All damage taken during this first attack is halved.]
It had taken him two hundred seventy eight days of training to reach this point.
This was it. It was finally time to reap the fruits of his labor. Kouki planted his feet in front of the wooden dummy. His right arm reached into his pouch and grabbed the handle of his kunai. In one strong twist, he swung his waist in conjuncture with his arm and slashed a straight line through the dummies neck. Its head fell cleanly, rolling off the dummies shoulders with a slight breeze.
Kouki stood there for a moment before realizing he was stupid. "Right, it can't fight back. I don't know what I was expecting."
Kouki Kazehaya was a young genin from Konohagakure. Like the majority of relatively untalented genin, he was placed under the tutorship of a chunin along with two of his fellow nobodies from from the academy. Together, they didn't manage to do much of anything. His days consisted of doing menial chores for old people, training, and making small talk with his former classmates who he didn't really want to talk to.
"This really sucks." Kouki sat down and thought of everything he had done to this point.
Although Kouki Kazehaya was a young genin from Konohagakure, he wasn't of Konohagakure. His origin didn't even come from the elemental nations. In his past last life, Kouki Kazehaya was just an ordinary college student. One day, after eating too much fried food, he had a heart attack and died. When he gained consciousness, he was Kouki Kazehaya, an ordinary genin with mediocre talent, mediocre skill and a mediocre life.
At the very least, he could say he wasn't an orphan. Which only made him guilty that he was impersonating someone's son.
"I just wish it didn't take so long to make progress." Kouki grumbled as he scrolled through the systems UI.
Truthfully, Kouki probably would've been content just being a normal genin, but he couldn't let himself just be an ordinary person, not when he had a system. Although the system's mechanics were a bit rough, they were rewarding enough to motivate him.
When he first became Kouki Kazehaya, he wasn't good at basically anything. Although it took nearly a year of training, he had finally mastered a skill. It might not sound impressive, but Kouki knew this skill was incredibly important. In any type of confrontation, the most dangerous moment was the first few seconds.
Shinobi fought at incredibly fast speeds with extremely deadly attacks. Just one clean hit was usually enough to kill someone. Despite possessing incredible strength, shinobi were inherently fleshy, there were few ways to survive hits that didn't involve dodging them outright.
Although Strong Draw wasn't showy, it allowed an almost guaranteed hit, provided the opponent didn't dodge out of the way. Just one hit could decide the outcome of a fight. At the genin level, where elemental jutsu were a rarity, this was an almost godlike skill.
The most crucial point was that this skill didn't need chakra. Kouki was still just an ordinary genin with low chakra reserves, for him, it was a luxury to use the three basic academy jutsu a couple of times in a row. In most encounters, he was the one with less chakra.
Although Kouki was a bit slow, he did understand his weaknesses, which was everything. Kouki didn't excel in anything prior to this. From now on, he planned to establish himself was a taijutsu/weapon specialist, provided he saved enough money to buy actual weapons and not just used kunai.
Thankfully, the system was more than a grind fest. Well, kinda of. There were missions available concerning certain characters from the anime. They ranged from defeat said character, kill said character, recruit said character and so on. There was also missions for job promotions, joining certain organizations and learning certain jutsu. Naturally, none of the missions were easy, but now that he was a bit stronger than before they weren't impossible to complete.
Scrolling through the UI, Kouki found a mission he might actually be able to accomplish now that he wasn't a complete loser.
[Defeat a genin 10 times.]
[Reward: Strong Fist (C)]
Yes, after almost a year in the world of Naruto, Kouki had failed to defeat a genin 10 times. Currently, he had only ever won seven fights against a genin, five of those victories coming from his own teammates.
The Strong Fist series was the first series of missions Kouki hoped he could finally complete. The rewards went as follows. At one victory, Kouki was rewarded D rank mastery of the Strong Fist, which was basically as useless as you could possibly imagine. At ten victories, he would be rewarded C rank mastery, at one hundred victories he would be rewarded B rank mastery of the Strong Fist, at one thousand victories he would be rewarded A rank mastery of the Strong Fist, and at ten thousand victories he would be rewarded S rank mastery of the Strong Fist.
In short, he needed to defeat nearly the entire population of genin in Konohagakure in order to complete a single series of missions.
So although it would technically be easier now that he had a skill, it was still going to be a grind fest.
"By the time I'm as strong as a jonin, won't the story have already come to an end?" Kouki sighed as he stared up at the three heads on the Hokage mountain. "Well, at least I still have a few years."
Kouki packed up his things and ran back home. Tomorrow, the genin of Konohagakure would know his name.