I had already done a lot of thinking, and come up with the broad type of skills that I needed, but it was time to refine those into something that would be useful against those I was setting myself up to fight.

Hidan was still an S-rank ninja, despite all the shit he got online, and stronger physically than Kakashi, or Asuma had been, although I had personally thought that if he had fought Kakashi in a one on one fight Hidan probably would have lost. I was still able to bleed though, and if he managed to get any of my blood I would be completely screwed, so I needed a way to avoid bleeding.

A physical shield of some kind, something that covered my skin and blocked damage.

Something like what Kakuzu himself had used, that earth skin technique with the dumb name that I couldn’t remember. Something about a spear? Or that steel skin technique from that guy that was stealing everyone’s bloodlines from one of the other movies.

How do I go about making something like that? Try and cover myself in mana? Maybe try and make a thin layer against my skin, or try to just push mana into my skin in general? I tried it for a moment, pushing it down into my hand and attempted to flatten it on my palm. My palm sparked for a moment before the mana appeared through my skin as a pale blue light, and I spread the mana outwards slowly to cover my fingers, and slowly up my forearm and it lost cohesion a moment later, my skill with mana not good enough.

I frowned, this hadn’t happened when I made the Heal skill, I needed to try and hone my intention. I spread mana into my palm again and flattened it against my skin, repeating a mantra in my mind. I dropped into Meditate to help and my focus sharpened.

Harden skin with mana, Increase defense, reduce physical damage, harden skin with mana, Increase defense, reduce physical damage.

Almost an hour later it finally seemed to take effect as I felt the mana in my hand pull itself into a tighter and more condensed form around my hand, before flowing up my arm and over the rest of my body before it vanished. I opened my eyes and was greeted with the sight of a new skill.

You have unlocked a new skill, Iron Hide.

I stared at it resignedly.

Iron Hide (Level 1) – Infuses mana into the skin to create a protective layer.

Type – Toggle.

Target – Self.

Cost – Reserves 5.5(10) Mana per second.

Exchange 5.5 Mana points per second for 0.25(+0.25 per level) points of Damage Mitigation. Can exchange up to maximum mana for increased Damage Mitigation. Any damage below the threshold is mitigated entirely. Any damage over the threshold is reduced by resistances first before being applied to Iron Hide. Having Iron Hide Active grants EXP towards this skill.

It was perhaps the weakest shield that had ever existed, but it was better than nothing, if only slightly. I toggled it on felt the drain reduce my mana recovery to a quarter of a point. I was just able to leave it on without running out of mana, that was something at least. I dumped most of my mana into a Heal and then dropped into Meditate, it had turned out that not only could I use Observe while it was active, but I could also toggle on Stealth as well, as long as I remained hidden at the time.

Observe, Stealth, Meditate, Iron Hide, Mana Core, Mana Mastery, Casting Speed, and Heal all being trained at once, now this was efficiency. It was also still incredibly boring, tracking the progress of each skill couldn’t keep my attention for long. The Observe skill helped to relieve some of the boredom, being able to read a summarised history about everyone was pretty interesting. I found that there really were a lot of commonalities between people though, but even then almost everyone had some unique flavor text of some kind, there wasn’t much variety in jobs, and I started trying to guess what a person’s job was before I checked.

I rarely got it right, but it was a way to pass the time. I had made a note of it a while ago, but there was a lot of ‘Working Girls’ wandering around the city, even during the day. It seemed to be one of the more common jobs in fact, alongside Fisherman, Fisherwoman, and Labourer. Another interesting fact that I noted was that nearly everybody was a little bit below maximum health, usually one or two points at most, but occasionally much more, especially for those with visible injuries. The more wealthy someone looked the higher their current HP was, generally, of course, there were still outliers everywhere.

I hadn’t seen a single ninja yet, and the highest leveled person I had seen was an elite guard, sitting at level fifty. I doubted there was a single guard on this island that would have taken any of the main cast more than a few seconds to defeat, I was mostly thinking of the Genin though. Naruto, Sasuke, Lee, Kiba, Shino, Ino or Sakura, I couldn’t imagine any of them struggling even against the elite guy. What would an average Genin look like level-wise? If an elite guard were level fifty, I would guess that a Genin would be at level seventy? How about Genin like Neji or Lee? Eighty? Ninety? The gap between a Genin and a chunin was in relative strength was probably massive, but a jounin was even worse. What level would Kakashi or Gai be, or even the weaker jounin like Anko or Kurenai, or that sword guy that died during the chunin exam? One hundred? One twenty? What level would the S-ranks be in this hypothetical? One fifty, two hundred or even higher?

It was nothing but guesswork, but I could treat it as something to work towards. I needed opponents of some kind to fight, or some low level fetch quests or something if I wanted to level up, but I still didn’t want to just start traipsing around the city with all of those guards. Wasn’t there supposed to be an instant dungeon or something to train in? I remember the guy raising his hand into the air and saying dungeon or something like it. I would test it tomorrow morning.

I couldn’t help but think if it did work I would only get 0.25 EXP per kill. It was dark when I finally gave up for the day, and I slept more out of desire than need, it was the first time I had done so since arriving on this damn island.

I woke up at almost midday judging by the position of the sun.

I chided myself for wasting an entire night sleeping when I had to kill S-rank ninja in the distant future and got up a moment later. The Instant dungeon didn’t work at all, no matter what I attempted, so I started my daily routine once more but the entire time I kept coming back to thinking about Kakashi’s team. If I told them about everything that I thought might happen, what happens then? What effects would it have on the world?

What should I be doing? Getting strong enough to help fight Kaguya? Trying to stop strong ninja from dying?

Would Jiraiya still run off to fight Pain if I told them about him early? I wouldn’t be able to stop him if he wanted to go, and he would almost certainly die, even with knowledge of Nagato’s real body. Konan would be there as well, and she had to have been jobbing in that fight, especially after what she had pulled against Obito later on, as strong as Jiraiya was it would be multiple S-ranks versus him on his own.

Speed has increased by 1.

No, that was storyline railroading, someone as experienced as Jiraiya, a real Jiraiya, wouldn’t just run straight to his death if I told them about it. I could give them knowledge about every single one of Akatsuki’s members and explain a method to kill each of them. That would go a long way to stopping them from taking all of the Jinchuriki, surely.

If I could get a message to Sasuke of some sort, I could ensure he knew about Itachi before he killed the guy. That’s potentially two more S-rank ninja to help fight Kaguya, three if I could get Sasuke on board early as well.

That pink crystal chick who worked for Orochimaru, what was her name? Garden? Gearin? Could I get her on the side of the good guys somehow, she was stupidly loyal to Orochimaru from what I recall, but eventually she ended up on Naruto’s side somehow, and didn’t she have a sibling or minion that she wanted to protect? Something to do with the three tails?

Who else?

Danzo was still around and he might have been a total dickhead, but he was a strong ninja, I’m not sure I should try and go near that guy until I could defend myself though, that sounded like a recipe for disaster. Zabuza and Haku would already be long dead, so I couldn’t try and save them, the sword would be near that bridge though.

Strength has increased by 1.

Kimmimaro would also be dead, albeit more recently. Jugo, and Suigetsu would probably be in prison by now, I could release them. I had no way of controlling Jugo without Sasuke or Kimmimaro though so If I tried anything on that front I would need to be at least strong enough to fight him off.

Karin worked as the prison warden or something in one of Orochimaru’s other bases, I might be able to do something there as well, wasn’t she an Uzumaki? Maybe I could just capture her and drop her off in Konoha and let them sort it out.

The old man in the Sky Ninja movie, he had ended up being stupidly strong as well. I wondered if I could get him to stop trying to kill everyone? I doubted it, old people could be very stubborn about things, and he had some kind of trauma from all of his people being killed during one of the wars or something.

The fourth Kazekage had already died as well, before the chunin exam, that was Orochimaru’s doing as well. It was so hard to remember the minor characters, real people now who probably wouldn’t appreciate his glibness, who had died.

What about the more major ones then? Neji died in the war, I would hopefully have this resolved long before that happened again. Asuma had been killed by Hidan. If I managed to kill Hidan then we would have exactly one Asuma for the big fights, the two tails Jinchuriki got hunted down by Hidan and Kakuzu as well at some point, just before Asuma died. Hidan and Kakazu were looking like the best target to go after first.

Mana has increased by 1.

Green haired girl, two tails girl, Asuma. Alright, I’ve made my decision, I would do my best to kill the immortal duo.

Primary Quest unlocked.

Kill Hidan and Kakuzu.

Objectives

Save Green-haired-girl.

Save Two-tails-girl.

Save Asuma.

Reward

???

Failure – Death.

How come this one had come with objectives? They didn’t even have the damn names listed either, how annoying. Green-haired-girl was first, at Taki right after the Suna-Leaf Chunin exam. Two-tails-girl died a little while after Gaara was captured, and Asuma died right after Two-tails-girl. So I had until that Suna-Konoha chunin exams to figure out how to kill them both and save Green-haired-girl, which would spare the other two by default? Hopefully. I think Asuma would be fine as soon as I killed Hidan but Akatsuki would probably send a different pair after the Two-tails-girl eventually. Surely whoever they sent after her couldn’t be that much worse than these two?

Hidan was durable enough to survive Kakuzu’s area of effect techniques head-on without taking any damage, so I would need something strong enough to pierce or cut through that level of durability. Cutting Hidan’s limbs off should be enough to put him down as long as I stopped Kakuzu from fixing him up, and then I could bury him or chuck him in a fire or something.

Kakuzu was the bigger problem, he had techniques of every element, and he could split into multiple opponents with his masks which worried me. I would need to gank him first as Kakashi had. Take one of his masks out before they knew the fight was even happening. I had no idea where each mask was located other than in some random order along his back. I needed to attack from stealth, so a long-range piercing attack that was strong enough to break the masks.

So a fast, long-range, and accurate piercing attack that I could spam at them both.

What would that look like? A bullet? An arrow? A needle? What could I emulate to get something that would fit the criteria? Some kind of penetrating energy attack? Frieza’s death beam, but smaller and tighter? Something like a needle-thin beam of mana? I pushed mana into my hand, before trying to push it into my fingertip. I kept on loading it up until my finger started to glow with faint blue light, and sparked furiously. I condensed it all down to a tiny dot, as small as I could force it before pointing my finger at the sand in front of me and focused all of my attention on a mantra of what I wanted to do.

Ranged. Penetration. Needle. Beam. Piercing. Ranged. Penetration. Needle. Beam. Piercing.

It took several long minutes before the mana at my fingertip abruptly squeezed even tighter together, and erupted from my fingertip in a tiny, needle-thin, white line of energy that hit the sand before vanishing. My mana dropped significantly from the spell, but there was a tiny divot in the sand, almost like someone had poked it lightly with the end of a pen.

You have unlocked a new skill, Line Spear.

The passing wind brushed some loose sand over the top of my tiny indentation, and I pouted, why did everything start so weak?

Line Spear (Level 1) – A long-range skill that penetrates the target.

Type – Cast.

Cast Time – 4.75(10) seconds.

Target – Other.

Cost – 95.5(100) mana.

Penetration 0.25 (+0.25 per level.) Range 1m (+1 per level.)

Where was the damage?

I read over the description again, but there was nothing, I went back and checked on the stat tooltips to check exactly what the Mana stat did again. Increased total mana by 10 per point, there was no other magical stat. What? How did it calculate damage then? If I shot someone with this, what would happen? How much damage would they take? None? Was this even an attack if it didn’t do any damage? The cost was insane, one-hundred mana for something that wouldn’t even pierce through a centimeter of sand. I frowned down for a moment before I grit my teeth and shot myself in the foot. It felt like someone had tapped me lightly with something, not even hard enough to cause a single point of damage.

It imparted kinetic force of some kind if only a little amount. If I leveled it up significantly would it hit harder? It said the penetration increased each level. Point-two-five penetration had done nothing more than a tiny tap, what would ten ‘penetration’ look like? What about one hundred? If I leveled it high enough would it impart enough force to break through wood or stone? Or Hidan? I dropped into Meditate before casting it again, but this time I aimed directly in front of me. I waited for the required charge time and then launched it. The Line Spear cut across the air in front of me like an instant, before dissipating after what must have been a single meter.

Line Spear has increased by 1.

Three casts for the first level which wasn’t exactly unusual, but it cost so much to use.

It was probably another four-to-ten cast for the third level, which was almost a thousand mana at the upper end. I would need to constantly be in Meditate to train this in a useful amount of time. The range had increased to two meters with the level, which was a decent jump actually, while the penetration increased to point-five. Point-five what though? There was no penetration distance measurement associated with it, was it a force-rating of some kind? The kinetic impact rating?

I cast it again when I had the mana and watched it flash through the air, the range had definitely increased, so fifty meters at level fifty? That was a pretty long distance, I would probably have a lot of trouble aiming accurately at that range. I spent the rest of the day just training Line Spear, Meditate, and Iron Hide and ignoring pretty much everything else. I thought about trying to make another offensive skill, but anything else I made would likely be just as weak as this seemed to be. If I could get it strong enough to pierce through a tree then I would know that I was on the way to creating something dangerous.

When the sun started to go down I went back to camp and made a small fire before continuing to train Line Spear on the sand. Thinking about everything that I needed to do, I felt like I had a long road ahead of me, and enough time to walk it.