Chapter 44: Purchasing Equipment
However, he didn't regret the money spent. His philosophy was:
"If I don't invest money in becoming stronger, then what's the point of having savings? But I should be grateful I learned fuinjutsu. I still have over 225,000 ryo remaining."
As he began sparring with real weapons, he also started seriously training the Rasengan.
The first and second stages had been mastered long ago. He finally began learning the third and final stage.
The biggest challenge with Rasengan training was that he absolutely couldn't allow anyone to see him practicing it.
For regular training, if someone interrupted him or discovered his practice sessions in the forest and saw through his Transformation Jutsu disguise, he could fabricate reasonable excuses—such as claiming he was practicing stealth by training while transformed, or explaining that a shinobi must conceal their full arsenal and never display all their techniques unless absolutely necessary.
While these explanations might leave a questionable impression, he wouldn't mind too much.
But for the Rasengan, if he were discovered training it, that would create an enormous problem.
His only available excuse would be claiming:
"I figured it out independently after reading about the Fourth Hokage's achievements in the Academy archives."
However, this would portray him as an unprecedented genius, inevitably attracting Root's attention and possibly even Danzo Shimura's personal interest! Not to mention they would monitor him far more strictly afterward.
So for Rasengan training, he decided to practice exclusively at home in complete secrecy.
His sensory abilities were now refined enough to detect if anyone was observing him.
Therefore, if he sensed someone watching, he would immediately abandon Rasengan training and instead demonstrate that he was simply practicing Air Bullets technique.
To create proper training space for the Rasengan, he cleared his entire living room.
He left only a single couch in the living room, moved everything else into the bedroom, and began his intensive training.
The compression and stabilization components proved quite difficult. He attempted for several hours without success. He sighed, thinking:
"I'll follow Naruto's approach initially."
Then he created a Shadow Clone using twenty percent of his chakra reserves.
The Shadow Clone performed the rotation and compression while Kaito handled the power and stabilization, and through this method, he successfully formed his first Rasengan within a few hours.
But he understood that relying on a Shadow Clone to form Rasengan was extremely inefficient for actual combat, so he began training to complete the entire technique independently without any clones.
It required a month and a half of dedicated practice to properly master this jutsu and successfully complete the Rasengan formation solo!
During the remaining time, Kaito wanted to further refine his Rasengan.
He worked on reducing the formation time and increasing the amount of chakra that could be compressed into the sphere.
Now, only one week remained until the fourth-year final examination.
Genshu followed last year's procedure, asking students interested in taking the graduation exam to meet with him after class. Kaito thought analytically:
"I suppose it's finally time to officially become a shinobi. There isn't much more I can learn from the Academy curriculum. At best, I could study another elemental nature or additional genjutsu. If I don't take the exam this year, the instructors and even the Hokage might become suspicious of my intentions. I certainly won't receive much institutional support in the future if I delay further."
"If I fail the exam despite my preparation, I don't believe my performance disguise can fool people with decades of experience evaluating students. Anyway, I'm confident I'm adequately prepared now, so I'll take the examination seriously."
After class concluded, Kaito approached Genshu and confirmed his intention to participate in the graduation exam.
Genshu smiled warmly and wished him good luck.
With only one week remaining until the final exam, Kaito began focusing intensively on the written examination syllabus. The curriculum for the written test was quite surprising.
He recalled when Genshu had first started teaching this advanced content at the Academy.
The instructor had been teaching trigonometry. Kaito's immediate thought upon seeing this was:
"Trigonometry? For nine-year-olds? What's next on the curriculum? Differential and integral calculus?"
Although he felt frustrated by the difficulty, he was genuinely shocked when Hyuga Hana solved these problems perfectly. He thought with amazement:
"How can these nine-year-old children master trigonometry so easily?"
He concluded that children in this world were considerably more intelligent, then continued studying diligently.
He also wanted to be fully prepared when performing missions in the field. Instead of learning new sealing techniques, he had his Shadow Clone focus on creating important equipment for him.
He purchased 2 standard shinobi pouches, 2 thigh holsters, and several metal bracers. Then he had his Shadow Clone inscribe storage seals on these items.
The fuinjutsu scroll in Library Section D provided extended explanations of storage seal variations. It described methods for increasing or decreasing storage space dimensions and manipulating spatial configurations.
This wasn't particularly difficult, as it only involved adjusting the number of spatial symbols incorporated. So the sealing formulas themselves remained relatively basic.
However, this proved extremely useful for Kaito's purposes.
Inside the shinobi pouches, Kaito inscribed 7 storage seals. For the thigh holsters, he managed to inscribe 4 sealing formulas.
These had considerably smaller capacity compared to his storage scrolls, but considering their purpose was enhancing the carrying capacity of pouches and holsters, this was extremely convenient!
In the thigh holsters, 2 storage seals could each hold 6 kunai, and the other 2 seals could each store 24 shuriken.
Then he created various activation triggers to automatically refill the holsters with weapons from the storage seals. This would dramatically increase his sustained ammunition supply during combat.
For the pouches, the storage seals could accommodate more diverse items. But he hadn't decided how to fill them all yet.
He did have several ideas—such as first-aid medical kits, shinobi wire, blank scrolls, elemental storage tags, additional weapons, explosive tags, soldier pills, ration bars, and similar essential supplies.
For the metal bracers, he inscribed a specialized small seal on each bracer.
When worn properly, these sealing formulas would be positioned directly beneath his palms.
These seals created elongated cubic storage spaces approximately 15 cm × 15 cm × 100 cm in dimensions.
Both of these seals were specifically designed to store swords. This way, he could draw blades instantly at any moment during combat.
Besides these storage seals, he also planned to inscribe three additional sealing formulas on each bracer.
On the exterior surface of the bracers, Kaito planned to purchase two large, durable shields to store there.
If he found himself in a dangerous situation where he couldn't protect himself with Earth Release: Mud Wall, he could rely on these physical shields for emergency cover.
However, since he wasn't certain about the size specifications of shields he wanted to purchase, he didn't inscribe those seals yet.
Beyond these 2 planned seals, he had originally intended to inscribe two more storage seals on the bracers, but he hadn't determined what to store in them yet, so he left that decision for later.
The day before the examination, Kaito disguised himself with Transformation Jutsu and purchased extensive weapon supplies.
He bought 96 shuriken and 24 kunai to completely fill both thigh holsters.
He also purchased 12 explosive tags, attaching 6 of them to kunai in each holster. The total cost would have been 65,000 ryo.
He negotiated skillfully and eventually purchased everything for 55,000 ryo, making vague promises of substantial future purchases to secure the discount.
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