When we finally arrived at Sakai, I was well and truly sick of ships, tiny rooms, and single beds.

We ended up spending a lot of time up on the deck because of two of those things, but we couldn’t really get away from the ship in any meaningful way. Karenbana was quickly becoming immune to my obvious baiting as well, but I had only just begun to dip into my well of tricks, and it was almost time to bring some of them out.

Even so, when we drifted up to the port city of Sakai and I took that first step off the ship onto the sand? I don’t know what to tell you; it was fucking incredible.

Sakai wasn’t particularly large or impressive; there was lots of sand, the ocean, and more sand. Just what you would expect of a city on the coastline of the Land of Wind. The buildings were a mixture of stone and wood, but I was almost sure that the deeper into the desert we went, the less wood and more stone there would be.

We were going to need some desert clothes, not that I had any idea what that kind of thing actually was in practice. I just assumed it would be a hooded robe or perhaps a hat of some sort. Karenbana took off choosing the supplies when I started talking about the hats.

She ended up selecting a pair of thin hooded traveling cloaks, cloth wraps, and a bunch of other stuff that I would never have even thought to bring before she disappeared, leaving me to pay for it all. I found a bunch of containers for water and food and stuffed most of them in my inventory while she wasn’t there, and eventually, she returned with a pair of traveling packs.

I watched with interest as she spent the next fifteen minutes, packing them neatly with everything we might need before tossing one of them to me.

It wasn’t very heavy right now, but I am absolutely sure if I had needed to carry this when I first arrived in this world, I would have died. We didn’t set out until the next day, and Karenbana made sure to double-check both bags before we left Sakai behind. I realized very quickly that Sakai had tricked me completely.

I fucking hated the desert.

We walked for hours every day, rested when we were lucky enough to find shade, usually provided by exceptionally tall sand dunes, and then walked for hours more. I didn’t really get tired, just walking, and I didn’t need to sleep at all, so even in these conditions, I was okay physically.

I needed to at least be running before it did anything stamina wise.

Karenbana, on the other hand, wasn’t running on bullshit game magic, and I had no idea just how long a ninja could walk in these conditions per day, so I made sure to give up as soon as I thought she looked tired.

I was such a gentleman.

We would set up the small tent that Karenbana insisted we buy and then camped there until the next day, sometimes having to dig ourselves out if too much sand ended up at the entrance. I had seen enough movies to expect giant roiling clouds of sand and vicious storms that would strip us down to our bones, but there was none of that, it was just endless walking, heat, and fucking sand.

I always waited an hour or so until I thought it wouldn’t be too suspicious and then started doing my physical training for the day in the shade of a dune. I spent most of my training time running, I’d already dumped all of my stat points in Speed, and I really wanted to reach the level of Speed a ninja had.

I would need it soon anyway.

Karenbana did some training of her own, although it was mostly practicing what looked like shadow boxing to me. Then a complicated series of acrobatic maneuvers that I insisted she show me how to do almost an entire week passed before she stopped telling me to fuck off and finally caved.

You have unlocked a new skill, Acrobatics.

It was a bright spot on an otherwise unending series of days walking across a hot sandy desert. If the first day was enough for me to realize how much I hated the desert, the first week was enough for me to consider giving up. The second week though, after trudging through the sand for countless hours, spending hours at a time with sand in my pants and between my ass cheeks, I had had enough.

We were barely halfway to Sunagakure; this was fucking lame. Sand sucks, its course, it’s rough, and it gets everywhere! What the fuck Gaara, fix your stupid country! You have sand powers for god's sake, take all the sand, and throw it in the fucking ocean or something you sandy bitch!

Fuck!

“Stop being such a baby,” Karenbana said, annoyed.

I rolled over in the tent and found myself face to face with her, my frustration boiling over.

“You’re short; your hair is short, your tempers short, everything about you is short!” I said meanly, “Short, short, short!”

Karenbana punched me in the face.

It wasn’t ninja strength hard, but it was hard enough to go straight through Iron hide and for a flash of pain to shoot through my nose for a brief painful moment before it vanished.

So I headbutted her.

It quickly turned into a kicking and punching contest that I immediately began losing horribly, she was tiny but far stronger and so much faster than I was. All I had on my side was the dubious advantage of size and reach which may have worked back in my world, but it did exactly fuck all here.

The size difference between us ended up being entirely useless anyway because when she ended up on top of me, it very suddenly stopped being a fight and started being something that involved a lot more kissing.

I even managed to forget about the sand, at least for a little while.

Fuck Sakai, Sunagakure, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.

The outside of the city was surrounded in a massive natural stone wall that had to of been made smooth through some mysterious method; it was perfectly cut into massive platforms that almost looked like a staircase for a giant. I could see people standing evenly across each of the ‘stairs,’ and when I got closer, I quickly found that they were ninja, although there was some non-ninja there as well. The staircase was split in the middle as if a section had been cut out vertically that left a path straight into the village. Inside that craggy mess of ridges and stone was a city where we could get the hell away from this god damned sand.

Even the two high-level dudes that were standing at the entrance looked like angels.

“Finally!” I said cheerfully, “I thought I’d never see anything but sand again.”

Karenbana remained quiet in the face of so many Suna ninja, possibly gearing up to defend me from a sudden attack or something.

“Welcome to Sunagakure,” The ninja on the left said pleasantly. “I am Yura, what is the purpose of your business here?”

I smiled at the man that could only be the gatekeeper of heaven, heaven without sand.

“Yura, man, I don’t know how you guys do it,” I said honestly, “I’ve gained massive respect for you Suna dudes, this sand nonsense is hardcore.”

Yura raised his eyebrow at the spiel of words I was unloading on the guy, but it was just so nice to have someone other then Karenbana to speak to after an entire month.

“We are headed to the Land of Vegetables really; this is just a mid-way stop to get out of the desert for a little while.” I said cheerfully, I waved at Karenbana, “This is my ninja bodyguard, she’s pretty cool."

Karenbana still hadn’t relaxed at all even at the introduction, Yura just looked vaguely amused, probably because there was hundreds of ninja directly above us on the wall, he wasn’t worried at all.

“I see,” Yura said thoughtfully, “The Land of Vegetables. Where did you two come from? Sakai? The Land of Rivers? Tea Country?”

“Sakai.” I said easily, “Nice enough place, but I totally underestimated the distance between there to here, though.”

Yura nodded understandingly.

“First time crossing the Land of Wind can be challenging,” Yura said sympathetically, “What are your names?”

This guy was fairly good, I’ll admit, he was really easy to talk to, it was probably why they had him on gate duty, to ferry out as much information as possible before letting anyone suspicious into their village.

“Oh!” I said, surprised, “I’m Sora, this is Karenbana, were both from the Land of the Moon.”

Yura glanced up at an angle for a moment before turning back with a smile.

“Excellent,” Yura said pleasantly, “You will be permitted to enter Sunagakure, but there are several rules you must be aware of.”

I smiled happily and nodded at him.

“Anything for the man that’s getting me out of all this sand!” I said cheerfully.

Yura laughed lightly.

Sunagakure was an interesting place, architecture wise.

The buildings were all made from sandstone, stone, and even wood; however, they were very strangely shaped. Tall, round, and multistorey with windows carved out all across them, they almost looked like giant clay pots, and the city itself was massive and surrounded by a natural barrier of craggy mountainous terrain.

The layout of the city was interesting as well, from what I could see from the ground, divided into sections by large walls that came out of the middle of the city at an angle. In the middle of the walls was a large bulbous tower, which I was guessing was the Kazekage’s place.

We were escorted through the village by Yura, and another ninja had taken his place at the gate without question. Yura seemingly had a hotel in mind because he brought us to a tall building just off from the main street and oversaw us getting a room.

“It was nice meeting you both,” Yura said pleasantly, “Please remember to follow the rules and enjoy your stay in Sunagakure.”

I grinned at the man; he was pretty cool.

“Thanks, Yura!” I said happily. “We won’t be here for that long anyway, maybe a week to build myself back up to braving more of that damn sand.”

Yura laughed and then headed off with a quick farewell, Karenbana remained silent until we were shown where our room was, and the door was closed. Then she spent several minutes searching the room thoroughly, while I watched her curiously.

“What are you doing?” I wondered. “Looking for a bathroom?”

Karenbana scoffed at the silly comment.

“I’m checking for anything strange, listening devices, seals, traps,” Karenbana said simply.

I shrugged before striding over the bed and flopping down on it without fanfare, Karenbana watched me annoyed, she hadn’t searched that area yet.

“Think you could have taken Yura?” I asked curiously.

Karenbana then sat on the bed with a happy groan.

“I don’t know the name, but he was either a Chunin or a Jounin,” Karenbana said happily. “It wouldn’t have mattered though; we would have gotten dog piled by all of the others.”

I nodded in agreement.

“He had almost as much chakra as Kakashi,” I said easily, “So he was probably a Jounin, most of the guys on the wall were Genin and Chunin, though.”

I hadn’t actually revealed that I could sense chakra to her yet, so she turned to stare at me silently, eyes wide.

“You can sense Chakra?” Karenbana wondered, “You didn’t tell me that.”

I shrugged.

“I haven’t told you a lot of things,” I said cheekily, “but there’s not exactly a lot of things to sense in the desert.”

We fell into an extended silence; it was more comfortable now that we had spent a couple of weeks forced to deal with each other; it had also given me a lot of time to think. Training in the desert had been kind of shitty overall; I had barely made any progress compared to the first couple of weeks partially because my training time had been shorted dramatically for most of my skills.

There were outliers though, Energy Sense and Iron Hide had been on permanently since before I had even left the Land of the Moon. They had both made significant progress, and because Mana Core, Mana Mastery, and Mana Recovery all gained EXP from using Mana in general, they had all been dragged up along with them, albeit some took longer to level than others.

Meditate, Heal, Repair, and Stealth had all barely grown at all. I couldn’t meditate while walking and like eighty percent of the last month had been walking, I hadn’t needed to use Heal really, and Stealth didn’t work that well in broad daylight with the only person I could possibly hide from being five foot away from me at all times.

Karenbana had been on edge for the first week, but I had continued to train Line Spear as often as I could, making sure to keep it as far away from her as possible. It was my only offensive technique, and I needed it strong enough to kill the unkillable. My other skills weren’t worth mentioning because the improvement either didn’t exist, or it was so small that it wasn’t noteworthy.

My physicals had grown a decent amount, but still much slower then it had at the beginning, the effort required to level them up was getting harder and harder. I had already decided I wasn’t going to do anything while we were here, we would only be in Sunagakure for a week at most, and I was going to do my absolute best to enjoy it.

Leaving Sunagakure was the hardest thing I have ever done, but not turning back around after the first day back in the desert was even harder. If the thing that ended the world happened in the Land of the Wind, then I’ll be sending my prayers to the good guys from anywhere fucking else.

The trip from Sunagakure to the border of the Land of Vegetables was much the same as the one from Sakai, only longer.

I’ll keep it brief, lots of sand, we walked, we trained, we slept, ad infinitum.

When I saw that first hint of green in the distance, I almost wept. The temperature had actually stayed remarkably hot, even after we had crossed the border, and it wasn’t until we could no longer see the desert at all that it finally started to cool down.

The Land of Vegetables was a rather green place; it was almost entirely forested, I was betting they had some kind of trade deal going with the Land of Wind involving wood. There were lots of elevated Stoney mountain paths that were broken up by the occasional large hill or giant rock formation. Most of the country seemed to be bordered by massive mountains, which Karenbana revealed was the border between Vegetable Country and Bird Country.

There also seemed to be black smoke rising from towards the north-east. The fires must have been pretty big if we could see them from here, yikes. It was also in the direction of the capital, which was our next big stop before the Land of the Demons.

“Is it a forest fire?” I asked curiously.

It still seemed like it was several days away at our normal traveling Speed, but if it was a bushfire, I didn’t really want any part of that.

“Not likely,” Karenbana said easily, “See how there are three mains sections, and the smoke is rising straight up?”

I studied the area again; it did look like three small fires? Maybe?

“It’s likely three small, deliberate fires, a forest fire would have a much larger block of smoke above it,” Karenbana said thoughtfully, as she drew out a more general shape with her hand.

“Burning off crops?” I asked curiously.

I didn’t know fuck all about farming, but that was something they did, right?

“Wrong time of year,” Karenbana said, amused, “It could be an attack of some kind, it's right around where the capital is.”

Goddammit, I swear to god if some assholes were trying to fuck up my trip, I was going to go nuts.

“Come on then,” I said resignedly, “If its ninjas, you can kick their asses for me.”

Karenbana laughed.

Over the next two days, more and more rising smoke appeared. It was all in the same direction, singular thin streams that went straight up into the air. Someone was definitely lighting something on fire, whatever the targets where they were hundreds of meters apart, at least. The only other thing of note was the largest craggy mass of stone I’d seen so far that stuck out far above the trees to our northeast.

On the third day, we were attacked by fucking ninja.

“It depends,” I said easily, “I could probably beat up a couple of bandits now, right?”

Karenbana just shrugged.

“You’re actually getting better bizarrely quickly.” Karenbana said suspiciously, “It took me over a decade to get as strong as I am right now.”

“That’s stupid though, Lee could have definitely kicked your ass, and he is only like fourteen at most.” I argued, “You must be doing training wrong or something.”

Karenbana looked annoyed.

“Which was one, Lee?” Karenbana demanded, “The orange one?”

“No, the green one that killed Kongo.” I said immediately, “He was almost as fast as Kakashi and Ishidate, and if he goes all out, like all the way, he would have likely been faster. Hell, he couldn’t even use ninjutsu either before I fixed him.”

Karenbana looked surprised at how strong a fourteen-year-old could possibly have been.

“Fucking ninja villages.” Karenbana said, annoyed, “How do they get so strong so quickly?”

I shrugged.

“Lee uses stupidly heavy leg weights if I remember correctly,” I said curiously, “Did you see all those massive dents in the main chamber of the castle?”

Karenbana nodded with her face scrunched up.

“Each of those was like a single one of his weights.” I said honestly, “He’s fast as fuck.”

Karenbana looked stunned at the idea.

“That’s ridiculous!” Karenbana said, alarmed.

I laughed.

“Start wearing weights, then lazy ass, I need my ninja bodyguard to actually pull her weight.” I teased, before gesturing broadly to the trees.

Karenbana narrowed her eyes at me for a moment before suddenly moving. In what had to be a fraction of a second, she had stepped in front of me and deflected a handful of shuriken in a shower of sparks.

“Holy shit.” I said gleefully, “That was cool as fuck!”

I had noticed the ninja coming ages ago, the range of Energy Sense was pretty large now. I’d told Karenbana about them straight away, and we had decided they were probably from the capital, so we just pretended not to know they were there. I was assuming that they were probably just on a patrol or something and would leave us alone after a while.

It turns out that wasn’t the case because they had attacked us completely unprovoked. I had felt one of them start to close in on us, which is why I had gestured at the trees in the first place. There were four of them, all about Genin level at best, which is why we hadn’t been too worried.

Why the hell were Genin attacking us?

“Two on the left, one on the right, one coming in behind us,” I said cheerfully.

Karenbana dashed left into the trees with Speed I still couldn’t track visually. I felt her appear almost directly on top of one of the signatures, and it abruptly fell to the ground below before she immediately went after the other one.

I had to dodge out of the way of another handful of shuriken that came spinning from next to a tree to my right. I was fast enough to get out of the way, but when the Genin dashed out of the trees towards me, I found it much harder to follow. The guy was tall, either a late teenager or early twenties, black bandana, black face mask, and no village symbol.

That was all the time I had before the guy reached my position.

I threw a straight punch at his face as he came into range, and he ducked underneath it, spun to his feet again, and then kicked me in the face. I felt pain erupt in my head and neck before I was sent stumbling sideways from the force.

I took another swing at him when he came close again, and he smacked my hand out of the air before turning my face to the side with a blow that would have broken my neck a month ago. I was surviving purely because of Iron Hide at this point, and it was mitigating enough of the force for me to at least not immediately be killed.

It hurt.

His next punch spun me around, and I had the bright idea to try a roundhouse kick. The Genin simply ducked under it without even trying and then hit me with his own, properly chambered roundhouse kick sending me stumbling away again in pain.

“Timeout!” I shouted.

The Genin didn’t even pause for a second before continuing to beat the living shit out of me. I gave up on trying to win the fight and instead started trying to block his attacks. It kind of worked, the attacks hurt substantially less when they were on my arms or shins then directly to the face.

Then the second Genin arrived.

“This is an honorable duel asshole!” I shouted, “Don’t even think about it!”

Fighting two Genin was a very painful experience, but I managed to weather their attacks for almost ten seconds before I thought I saw an opening. My eyes widened, I dropped my guard and took a swing at the one on the left, and then Karenbana appeared with her foot buried in the guy’s face before I could land it.

I stumbled back in dismay as she stole the only hit I would have landed in the entire fight.

Karenbana took the two Genin apart in less than ten seconds, at the same time, and the end result was four unconscious ninjas tied up on the ground.

Your level has increased by 1.

“They kicked my ass.” I complained, “You’re a terrible bodyguard.”

Karenbana looked more animated then I had seen her since our ‘battle’ in the tent.

“Hah!” Karenbana laughed, “I wanted to see if you could take the first guy down.”

“What about the second one?” I demanded.

Karenbana grinned toothily.

“That was just funny,” Karenbana said cheekily.

I narrowed my eyes at her, watching me get the shit kicked out of me was funny, huh?

“Don’t be mad,” Karenbana said cutely, “You did rather good, and now we know you can almost fight a weak Genin.”

“I will definitely get you back for this,” I vowed solemnly. “You will pay dearly for this betrayal.”

Karenbana just laughed again.

“I’ll make it up to you, boss,” Karenbana said playfully.

I scoffed and turned back to the ninja.

“What do we do with these assholes?” I murmured. “Do we just leave them here?”

Karenbana shrugged.

“We could take them to the capital with us, but that’s a lot of Genin to carry,” Karenbana said easily.

Yeah, fuck that.

“Nope,” I said immediately and started walking again.

“You don’t even want to ask them why they attacked us?” Karenbana said strangely.

“What do ninja usually attack random people for?” I wondered, “Because the only thing I can think of is they don’t want us going in this direction.”

“They are probably a part of whatever is going on with the fires,” Karenbana said, amused.

“Ninja running around lighting fires near the capital of the Land of Vegetables,” I murmured, “Burning houses down? Farms maybe? Are they assaulting the city? Who rules this place, another King?”

“A daimyo,” Karenbana said easily, “I’m not sure what his name is, though.”

“What are the chances that this is a repeat of what happened at the Land of the Moon?” I asked curiously.

Karenbana didn’t answer.

We stopped at the edge of the forest.

The trees abruptly disappeared around the capital city of the Land of Vegetables, leaving a large, flat, plain of grass from here all the way to the city. The city had been built onto a large stone structure of bricks, leaving it raised off the ground, and the backdrop was framed with large mountains in the distance. There were farmlands and trees scattered all over the plains, with small houses dotting the landscape.

There were also about fifteen separate fires that were close enough to see with many more in the distance, although most of them had already petered out. They were located at the houses and farms, which explained why there were so spread out. It was getting dark, and the idea of going into whatever clusterfuck was happening in the city sounded terrible, so we decided to camp in the forest for the night.

A fire had seemed like a bad idea to give the circumstances, so we just ended up finding a small overhang near that massive stone formation we spotted earlier. Karenbana was already sleeping, and I was using the time to figure out the next skill I wanted to make. The fight with those two Genin had made it very clear that I was still far too weak to fight the immortal duo. If I failed to kill them right at the start, I would get deleted within seconds.

So I went back to theory crafting. I still needed a skill that would allow me to visually track ninja-level Speed, like a reflex boosting skill of some sort, and an energy defense that I could use to block attacks, along with a teleport skill for evasion.

If we had to fight in the city tomorrow, what would I get the most use out of when it would undoubtedly still be weak.

Teleporting would probably be extremely expensive and likely have a long cast time, an energy shield would probably be moderately expensive and block less than a single point of damage at the start. A reflex boosting skill would have a large drain per second like Iron Hide and Energy Sensing had started with, but my mana reduction might take care of that.

Reflex booster then.

What would that look like exactly? Who had a skill that increased visual tracking speed? A? His lightning aura thing did something like that, although it might just be a speed increase overall. The eight gates that Lee and Gai used increased it along with Speed as well.

Sharingan did it, Byakugan did it too, I think, I remember Neji punching like a hundred spiders out of mid-air or something in the show. I wanted to be able to still use Stealth, though, and being covered in lightning wasn’t ideal; an eight gates styled technique would likewise ruin any chance of being sneaky.

What about other forms of media, I’d stolen the Esuna equivalent from final fantasy, what did they have for reflexes? Haste? I think that was overall Speed again. There was whatever Neo was using to dodge bullets in the matrix. I was struggling with this one; most of the speed-related things were purely overall enhancements.

But the common theme amongst most of these was that you needed to be able to see something to react to it. I pushed Mana slowly up my chest and towards my face. I had to be careful, pushing Mana into my entire head seemed pretty dangerous back when I’d done it the first time, but this felt far more worrying for some reason, my eyes were rather squishy things.

I mentally struggled against the fear of my eyes suddenly melting or exploding for a long moment

I very slowly moved it up to my eyes, my Vision flashed white, and I suddenly couldn’t see, for a brief, horrifying moment, I’d thought I had blinded myself before I realized it was actually just the pale blue light of my Mana that I saw and not some kind of white blindness.

“Fuck.” I murmured, feeling my heart thud in my chest.

I moved the Mana around carefully and tried to make it slightly denser. I started my now standard mantra of concentration and intent.

Reflexes, Sight, Speed, Vision, Reflexes, Sight, Speed, Vision.

I continued the chant for almost an hour, while minutely increasing the amount of Mana in my eyes over time. I could actually feel the skill coming this time long before I reached the threshold, due to how slowly I was building the Mana up. I just needed to exceed the threshold; I didn’t speed up, though, still nervous.

You have unlocked a new skill, Vision.

I opened the skill description.

Vision (Level 1) – Infuses Mana into the eyes to enhance visual prowess.

Type – Toggle.

Cast Time – Instant.

Target – Self.

Cost – 6.25(25) Mana per second.

Each level Increases the ability to see detail at greater ranges. Each level increases the ability to see in low light. Each level increases the user's reflex rating. Increases how far the user can see by 1m (+1 per level.)

I stared at it, annoyed, it was kind of what I had been envisioning, heh, but worse.

The Reflex rating wasn’t even listed on the stats page, so another hidden stat that I couldn’t track. The increased range and detail at range sounded pretty useful while being able to eventually see in the dark would be cool. I wondered what kind of effect the hidden reflex rating would provide; I suppose if I suddenly started seeing things in slow motion or something, I could consider it a success.

The cost was about in line with what I expected as well, the combination of Iron Hide, Energy Sense, and Vision would drop me down to nineteen mana recovery per second which wasn’t too bad, but it would probably annoy me for a while.

I spent the next thirty minutes squinting around in the dark, trying to make out anything past ten meters and failing. I blinked when two people just appeared on the edge of my sensory range, one was weak and probably a civilian, the other was definitely a ninja, a ninja with Chunin level chakra, was this the leader of the assholes who attacked us?

This time I was going to land at least one hit goddammit.

“Karenbana, wake your shapely ass up!” I demanded loudly.