Chapter 93: Miss Haruno Sakura is a Little Melancholy
After the height of summer, the wind gradually grew cooler.
The restless heat in the air, as the days passed, gradually cooled down. Blowing on one's face, it no longer felt unpleasantly hot—especially for Water and Ice Style ninja.
The noisy chirping of the cicadas also slowly became sparse and fragmented. As if having consumed a whole summer's worth of passion, the cicadas began to disappear, quietly waiting for the next year's breeding season.
But in Konoha, the passion of the ninja and civilians for rebuilding their homes remained in full swing.
A normal great nation and its people, after experiencing such disasters—whether natural or foreign invasion—would absolutely not fall into despair and decline because of it. On the contrary, they could use it to unite the people's hearts, stand together as one, and erupt with a strong patriotic sentiment, eagerly participating in the ranks of rebuilding and defending their homeland.
Even in a certain country in her previous life, where patriotism was mocked and reviled, and where cursing and hating one's country was the politically correct stance, it was still the same.
Konoha... was of course no exception.
After all, from Haruno Sakura's own personal experience over so many years, although Konoha had many dark places, it was, on the whole, still worthy of love.
However, in stark contrast, the girl's own mood was a little low, or rather, melancholy.
Hn, it wasn't the kind of low that came once a month.
A small part of the reason was something she couldn't say to others: that was, the girl realized that for various reasons, she could no longer make predictions about the future based on the "plot" she had seen as before.
The reason was obvious.
The things she had done were no small work; they had even far exceeded the so-called butterfly effect. Having changed so much—Tsunade had returned early, the Third Hokage had not died—how could the development of events still proceed as in the original story?
For example, Sasuke's defection. Sakura was almost certain that it would not happen. It was very simple: Orochimaru had not been seriously injured by the Third Hokage's mutual destruction technique and had no urgent need to find a new body immediately. Konoha had not been as severely damaged as in the original story either. If Orochimaru wanted to forcibly abduct Sasuke from Konoha, he probably couldn't do it even if he sacrificed himself.
Besides that, she hadn't seen much of Shippuden, so as for what Naruto was about later, which boss they fought, she was just as clueless as the natives of this world.
The only thing she was clear about was that there would definitely be even stronger villains appearing later on. After all, that was the formula for a popular shonen manga.
Oh, right, she had heard that a major villain was Kakashi's former teammate, Obito. But wasn't this just an analysis that was circulating online? Sakura felt that this kind of thing was fine to listen to, but it couldn't be treated as fact.
She would sometimes let her mind wander, thinking that besides herself, if there really were other transmigrators, they would probably be divided into two mainstream factions. One faction would conscientiously maintain the plot to preserve their advantage as a prophet; the other would unhesitatingly and drastically change the plot, thinking that if nothing changed, then what was the point of transmigrating? To be a 3D IMAX movie audience?
Sakura felt that she was probably in a third, non-mainstream faction: she didn't know what the plot was, didn't know where the final villain was currently hiding, or what world-destroying conspiracy they were planning, and was completely bewildered. As a transmigrator into a famous popular manga, she was unable to feel a sense of superiority over the natives of this world by relying on the advantage of possessing more information. As for future developments, she couldn't predict them one by one either, which was indeed quite rare.
Compared to the first two factions, she was just a weakling.
This is the consequence of not catching up on the series, crying face emoji.
If heaven were to give me another chance... Sakura would sometimes fantasize like this. Hmm, but she didn't actually think that not knowing the plot was that bad.
Unable to predict the future—wasn't that how a normal person's life was? So what if she didn't have a golden finger and didn't know the future "plot"? Should she just not live?
If you can't get by without these two great advantages, then that can only prove that the so-called transmigrator is a waste.
So, as they say, a person's destiny depends on their own efforts, but one must also consider the course of history.
Sakura could never have imagined how she had ended up transmigrating to the Naruto world, which she was not very familiar with, and becoming a ninja. But since the development of events was unpredictable, to grasp her own destiny, she could only rely on her own efforts.
Besides, so what if she knew more of the plot? Transmigrating to become the flower vase of the original story—Sakura didn't know that according to the later plot, her combat power was actually quite good—even if she knew the plot, without strength, she couldn't change anything. Who told her she didn't have a pair of red eyes, or a perpetual motion machine hidden in her belly? Without an innate cheat, to improve her own strength and constantly grow, she could only rely on her own efforts.
So far, Sakura had done quite well. She had worked very hard to think about what her advantages were, then developed powerful ninjutsu suitable for herself, then practiced desperately, did her best to make up for her shortcomings, and cultivated her strengths to the fullest.
Although she couldn't reach the level of Kakashi back then, who had become a Jonin at the age of twelve, as a ninja who had graduated in an era of peace, the girl had already done her best.
Speaking of which, apart from combat experience, her own strength had already surpassed that of Kakashi back then, hadn't it? —Of course, she couldn't compare with the transmigrator seniors who had become Chunin at five, Jonin at eight, and Kage at twelve.
But it was not enough. Far from enough. The girl said this to herself.
With the powerful ninjutsu she had developed and the Ice Style she had just begun to learn, Sakura had reached Jonin-level combat power early on. Although she was stronger than the cheat-equipped Naruto and Sasuke, she felt more and more clearly that the natural limit of this body of Haruno Sakura was indeed not very high, while the potential of her two teammates was still unfathomable.
If she let things develop naturally, she would probably be caught up by the two of them in a few years, and then be surpassed in another two years, right? If the Haruno Sakura from the original story were here, that would indeed be the case.
An ordinary ninja without any Kekkei Genkai, their lifetime limit was probably Jonin. Sakura had her two self-created ninjutsu, she had Ice Style, she had chakra control that surpassed her predecessors. Perhaps she could go a little higher, for example, reaching the level of an elite Jonin a few years after graduation, and then if everything went smoothly, she could reach Kage-level strength by her early twenties through hard work. That would be her limit. After that, she could at most only maintain her peak.
In contrast, as long as Naruto and Sasuke worked hard at their training, Kage-level was almost a matter of course. Surpassing Sakura was just a matter of time. Kage-level was not their ceiling at all; even beyond-Kage-level was not out of the question. The gap was so large it was speechless. This world was just so unfair, so biased. How could this convince Sakura? Such a setting, how could it not make one—mainly the supporting characters—feel chilled to the teeth?
This was the main reason the girl felt melancholy.
As the one in the lead, it was always unpleasant to be overtaken from behind. Especially with a personality like Sakura's, who was easygoing on the surface but actually extremely proud on the inside.
It wasn't that she was jealous of their progress. On the contrary, as a sincere friend, Sakura was happy for them. However, comparing her own step-by-step forward movement with her teammates' great strides forward always made one's mood irritable and anxious.
From their return from the Land of Waves to the Chunin Exams, Sasuke and Naruto's progress could be described as advancing a thousand miles a day. The upgrade of his Sharingan and the acquisition of the Raikiri had elevated him from being previously crushed by Sakura's strength to being able to pose a threat to her. As for Naruto, with his cheat beginning to be unsealed, his chakra was as deep as an abyss, and he had even learned Jiraiya's Summoning Jutsu and could summon Gamabunta. His combat power had also skyrocketed like a rocket.
After the match against Naruto in the Chunin Exams, she admitted that without dealing a killing blow, it was already quite difficult to defeat him.
So what about Sakura herself?
She had learned Ice Style, developed many small ninjutsu, and her combat experience had also greatly increased.
But these were all trivial things. Speaking of which, the truly useful things were still her two core water jutsu from before. A jutsu like the Water Style: Legion Water Clone was fine for sparring, but in actual combat, its application was too narrow, just like the other water jutsu she had learned. With Sakura's attainments in Water Style, would her use of conventional ninjutsu like the Great Waterfall Technique and the Water Formation Wall be worse than others? She could now say without any modesty that in terms of Water Style in Konoha, she could at least rank in the top ten.
But she never used such ninjutsu. The reason was none other than that the cost-performance ratio was not high.
If she had Naruto's amount of chakra, hmph, she would start every battle with a Great Waterfall, then casually throw around Water Dragon Bullets, the Legion Water Clones would cover the sky and the earth, the Water Formation Wall would be maintained from beginning to end, and ninjutsu could be thrown around like it was free!
Tsk tsk, I'm drooling just thinking about it.
Unfortunately, such a dream could only be realized in her dreams. She knew her own chakra amount in her heart. In this aspect, she was stronger than the original Sakura, several times stronger, but she was still not the type with particularly abundant chakra, especially since she was a ninjutsu-type ninja, and it was well known that ninjutsu consumed more chakra than taijutsu.
As for Ice Style, the only ninjutsu she was interested in for the time being was one: Ice Style: Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals. The problem was that this ninjutsu was more suitable for a speed-type ninja—meaning, Sakura's reaction speed was a bit too slow to keep up...
This was very awkward!
Then again, recently Sakura had discovered a surprising and joyful point, which was that after learning Ice Style, her physical fitness was slowly improving. In this way, it was not without reason that a ninjutsu like Ice Style was called a Kekkei Genkai. Chakra itself is a combination of physical and spiritual power, and a high-level chakra like Ice Style could actually act on the body and spirit in return, improving the user's physical fitness and changing their bloodline. In the long run, it would form a heritable Kekkei Genkai: if Sakura were to have offspring ten years later, then the probability of him/her being a natural Ice Style ninja would be very high!
But this effect was long-term and slow, and would not lead to obvious progress in the short term. Only with long-term, in-depth study and use of Ice Style would there be a great change, which could considerably make up for Sakura's shortcoming of not having high enough physical fitness.
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