A year passed since Rei and Konan found their Mokuton ability. They both decided to abuse the shit out of it and spammed trees whenever possible. Whenever they were sure that nobody watched. This also made them evade any and all towns or villages as they entered the Ame mountains and didn't leave them for the entire year!

It was a very quiet area. Nothing important. Nothing really advantageous. The shinobi didn't come here. They encountered one lone Kumo spy but Rei and Konan made the spy meet his maker swiftly. ​​

Surprisingly the loot was quite good!

Most of their time was spent on affinity training though.

As Rei thought, this tree spamming made them unconsciously better at Water and Earth affinity.

They didn't know the exercises for the affinities other than the one with the paper so they trained what they found hard.

Both Konan and Rei could float a boulder while sitting on it for three hours until their chakra depleted. This was what they found hardest when it came to Earth affinity. They had to continuously mold earth chakra and supply the boulder with it to make it float through gravity.

Rei started to seriously suspect that Onoki was not floating himself but the specks of dust on the soles of his feet and in his clothes that pushed him up. Or maybe he just used his rock-hard brain for it? Who knows.

This exercise though... They could not do it with smaller rocks while sitting on them yet. Nor with something bigger and heavier than an adult human. That would take an enormous amount of chakra from them. They still needed more practice... More perfection.

As for water release... They focused on the feeling of water in the atmosphere.

Both Konan and Rei could even feel the water in the clouds! But pulling it outta them? Meh...

Thankfully in Ame no Kuni water was supplied very frequently. Their first exercise that took them three whole months was all about standing in the rain and making sure the droplets evade them. They simply had to stay dry. Which was a freaking chore when you are walking in a downpour! They had to ALWAYS supply water chakra and coat themself with it. It was like a human-shaped make-shift umbrella or aura around them. It was completely invisible but it worked!

When they were both sure they could stay dry even under a waterfall, they tried something more... challenging.

They tried to pull water out of the surroundings. Easy, right? They were in a country where Water ALWAYS fell from the sky. But...

But no. They tried to pull the water in the surroundings and add it to the clouds! It was a back-breaker but their improved mid-chunin reserves barely managed it! It was more about water chakra control anyway than the amount of their chakra. This made sure there was ALWAYS a downpour in their location. But no worries they had their umbrella no Jutsu!

The downpour was not the result. Only a step. When they finally managed to make a downpour they had to... stop it. Make the rain in their location stop. Keep it in the clouds. Both Rei and Konan felt as if the heavens were pushing onto them during that excercise. The rain WANTED to pour down onto the earth but they held. They held insane amounts of water in the sky. Until... the clouds started to get charged with lightning and instead of downpour, a lightning storm started.

Rei used this for his lightning chakra training as he made sure to try and use his raiton chakra to redirect the lightning strikes where he wanted to. Mostly on the trees Konan was creating. She became incredibly proficient in it.

No wonder though. Konan found a new cheat for herself. Rei was quite fed-up with her Kekkei Tota when he found out. It was yet another bullshit in his opinion!

Konan could change the tree into slices of paper. They didn't even need to be made by mokuton! Just mokuton chakra supplied to a very normal tree and 'bam'. One tree could be changed to thousands of slices of paper. The best part? The chakra used for that was actually minimal if she raised the tree herself via mokuton. Konan now had ALWAYS thousands of papers soaked in her chakra. She just had to grow them from the ground.

Rei vowed he would train hard when he saw it... Fortunately, his Water manipulation was a helluva lot better than Konan's. As for Earth, they were about the same.

Rei always added nature chakra into the water, increasing its volume and density. His chakra nature manipulation was leaps and bounds above Konan. Where she could potentially create a house-sized ball of water in ten minutes. Rei could create an entire lake in five. And then there was his lightning affinity... Hehe. Zap-zzzzap.

Their biggest problem was, they still had no Jutsu so they could not compare what they could do with actual ninjas.

Rei found a few kenjutsu scrolls on the poor Kumo lad and he trained with his chokuto. Konan just shrugged them off and said her futon paper is enough for cutting power.

But they both knew she was kinda behind in her futon. By now it was more effective to maul her enemies with doton-hardened paper than cut them with futon-enhanced paper. The damned paper was hard as steel. If she stacked enough, she could even block her futon-enhanced paper and that was telling something since these could literally fly through three trees and then make a hole through a half of a boulder. Hell, the thickness of that paper shield was not even an inch!

Yes... maybe they really overdid their doton affinity training a little. Considering they were ten while their bodies looked twelve years old.

Konan was actually able to completely soak up an entire lake with her papers and make them still look as if they didn't even have a drop of water on them. The more her water affinity improved the more bullshit that aspect of her Kekkei Tota became.

Rei started to see why it was so rare and people were so amazed by it. Her papers may not have the destructibility of Dust release but the sheer utility? Konan was carrying a lake with her everywhere and it didn't even burden her.

When she learns to change her body into paper like her canon counterpart? She will literally HAVE a lake inside of her body and could potentially also harden it to the levels of her doton-hardened paper shield that blocked the futon shuriken. Rei shuddered at the future prospects.

Rei on the other hand could not carry so much water with him. He compensated. He could pull enough water to create a ball of the size of a small house almost instantly. Most of the time it was enough but he knew it was nowhere near Hoshigaki Kisame or the best Water users.

He also used doton chakra on his clothes to make them harder to penetrate while retaining their flexibility. A trick learned from Konan. But his doton enhanced with nature chakra was much tougher.

His kenjutsu with raiton chakra was getting better and better by the day and he was even able to use a minuscule amount of nature chakra to make his lightning a shimmering greyish black. But nevertheless, it was much more powerful than the blue one. He barely controlled it as his lightning affinity was the least trained so far. A pity that his Supreme Chakra Control talent worked perfectly only for regular chakra. In elemental chakra, it helped a whole lot but it was still far from perfect.

Rei was the proudest of his body strength. He left Konan completely in dust in this department. She was still very powerful in taijutsu but Rei was even more so. The nature chakra he pulled into his body each night enhanced him leaps and bounds, making him faster, stronger, more durable. He was quite sad that Konan was having at most one-third of his enhancement since her body was unable to use the nature chakra to its fullest extent. Alas, she just did not have the godly talent for it.

Rei was shaping up to be quite the swordsman. It would certainly be helpful when he finally starts Senjutsu training...

But slowly, their training time ended and they decided they had enough of the mountains. It was time to leave and get some experience... and loot.