Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Finally real Kenjutsu
PEENNNGGGG!!!
The blade moved incredible fast towards the ground, breaking the sound barrier on its way. It produced a very loud sound comparable to a gunshot from his old world. But that wasn't anything of Soma's concern right now. He tried to stop the blade and end in his basic stance, but wasn't able to. The blade just stopped a few centimeters before hitting the ground. Then the bokken fell to the ground, followed by Soma who wasn't able to stand anymore due to chakra exhaustion. This one attack used up all of his chakra reserves.
As Soma found himself lying on the ground facing the sky, he just had to laugh. It was the first time for him to laugh after entering this world. The sword awakened his emotions partially. Soma thought to himself, that he had a long way to go until he could call himself a kenjutsu master. He hadn't even fully mastered the basic strength. He continued to laugh, while thinking about the future ahead of him.
Over the next year, he continued his chakra control and strengthening training, as well as his kenjutsu training. Although he wasn't able to perform even the most basic of Jutsus yet, he was still certain to defeat most of the kids at his age. He was now able to freely run on any surface he wanted without worrying about any side effects. His chakra strengthening was on a level where he could turn it on and off without even thinking about it. The moment he attacked, he strengthened his punches and slashes with chakra and immediately dismissed it to save himself some chakra. He also had no concerns about his physique.
However, the most progress he made was in his Kenjutsu training. The first thing Soma was taught by Tomioka after he learned the basic slash was his footwork. That's what Tomioka called it, but it was more of a drill to react to everything immediately with his feet before wasting a single thought for it. The real footwork was a part of training part after the next. The next thing he learned was Iaido, the art of drawing the sword. It was how to change the mere drawing of a sword into a powerful attack, that was perfect to finish an opponent with a single attack. It was so effective as it was a fast attack directly from the sheath, that the opponent couldn't even react to in most cases. You can also make a ton of variations with the Iaido. However most of them weren't as effective as the basic, slightly slanted slash. But there were many helpful modifications as well. Soma memorized three Iaido variations:
Iaido
Lightning Iaido
Backstep Iaido
Although, it had lightning in the name, the Lightning Iaido hadn't actually anything to do with the lightning release. While you're running into a direction and accelerate, you had to take one last step, while you simultaneously perform a Iaido. That way your Iaido was even faster and thus, it had gained the name of Lightning Iaido.
The backstep Iaido also wasn't what you'd expect from the name. First of all, it had the least to do with the classic Iaido. While an Iaido was an active opening attack, the backstep Iaido was a reactive move, you had to perform when your opponent engaged in combat first. You had to draw your sword in a way to block your opponent's attack, while performing a backstep to get yourself in the perfect range and stance for combat.
After learning the Iaido, he learned everything Tomioka deemed necessary to have before even learning a proper sword style. That means he now had to learn a sword style. However a sword style wasn't even a kenjutsu. To be frank, the only real Kenjutsu Soma ever used was his 545 fold basic slash, as it was the only attack he used, that included the usage of chakra and a sword. Everything other was just mere swordsmanship. That also included the sword style he was about to learn. His sensei gave Soma three valid options.
Konoha style: Flame
Sushizaki style
Shinobi swordsmanship: No style
Konoha style: Flame was a destructive fighting style focused around powerful slashes with two hands, while also performing a few light attacks with a single hand that can be used to cast supporting Jutsus. The win condition were the powerful sword attacks in close combat. It was the sword style used by most of the people at the training at the park and was the most common one in Konoha. That didn't mean it was bad, but was rather a proof for its applicability.
Sushizaki style was the personal sword style trained in the Sushizaki clan, which Tomioka was the head of. It was a great honor for Soma to get the chance to learn it. Over the past weeks Tomioka and Soma build a relationship comparable with a father-son relationship. The little boy who lost his parents was for Tomioka like family, while Tomioka was the fatherly figure in this world to Soma. It surprisingly was a swordsmanship for mid to high range focused around putting distance between his opponent and himself. The win condition were powerful Jutsus.
Although he had those incredible options, Soma decided himself for the third option, that sounded the most underwhelming at first. Shinobi swordsmanship: No style. It was the most basic sword style every other style was based on, filled with a lot of one-handed, light attacks. It was the sword style that left the most room for individuality and was able to be developed into a personal sword style perfectly fitting the users Jutsu arsenal.
That said, depending on what his chakra nature was he would ask Tomioka to teach him the Sushizaki-style in the future, as it was always a valuable asset to be able to create space between oneself and an opponent.
Since he chose the most basic sword style and was a diligent student, he had finished learning two weeks before his next birthday, which left only practising left.
The next thing that stood on the agenda was the ninja academy. The new year was starting in two and a half months and since Soma was now 6 years old, it was now his turn to get admitted into the academy. Then he could finally learn real Jutsus. As a gift for his birthday, he just took the 100 Ryu, which lead to a joking statement from Sawada. "Just wishing for money at this age. They grow up so fast."
However that wasn't the only surprise for his birthday. Tomioka also prepared something for his student. As Soma arrived at the park for training that day, Tomioka smiled.
"Yatora, happy birthday."
"Thank you, sensei." Soma slightly bowed down towards Tomioka.
"Six years of age already. I hope you know, that the academy takes in new students in a little more than two months from now." Soma nodded. "And to prepare you for the academy, I figured that I might teach you something new. Yatora, are you ready to learn real Kenjutsu now?"
"Yes." Soma was very excited, something he felt only about anything sword-related. Finally, he'll be to train real Kenjutsu. He could probably have already learnt to use chakra strengthening while fighting with the sword. But there were two main problems with that idea. On the one hand, he wouldn't be able to train with a partner. The past months he sparred with a back holding Tomioka. That helped his progress in the real fighting application very much. And on the other hand it would simply feel like a betrayal to his teacher.
Tomioka introduced Soma to the process of chakra strengthening and since Soma couldn't say that he already knew everything, it looked to Tomioka that was a little genius in chakra strengthening. As Tomioka said, that it would be easier to have a little bit of your chakra focused around your important parts like arms shoulders and legs, Soma asked if it wouldn't be more efficient to just strengthen everything the moment he needed it to be strengthened.
"It is what advanced Kenjutsu users do, but I wouldn't advise it for beginners as the timing can be difficult to grasp. But if you feel confident enough, I won't stop you from trying."
That was everything he needed to know. Over the next two months, Soma trained and mastered the Kenjutsu: Shinobi Swordsmanship: No style. That only meant that he was now able to perform the sword style with chakra strengthening which officially made it count as a Kenjutsu. Unfortunately it was a rankless Kenjutsu. To elaborate: the foundation, namely sword style often were assigned no rank. But the attacks for example No style: Cutter, No Style: Piercer or No Style: Beheading had a rank assigned to them. The first two were D-Rank while the latter was a C-Rank Kenjutsu. No Style: Beheading and Lightning Iaido were the only rank C Kenjutsus Soma knew and thus his strongest and highest rank Jutsus in generell.
[A/N: Lightning Iaido only counted as a Kenjutsu after the application of Chakra Strengthening. Thought I should clarify that, in case there are some slow paced people like me here]
And there was the special day, Soma and all the other six year-olds in the orphanage waited for. After breakfast, the group of children lead by Sawada and a second old caretaker made their way to the Ninja academy. As they reached their destination, they were called out by some academy teachers to follow them inside. As parents were not allowed to go any further, the kids had to say goodbye to the caretakers for a while.
"Children, I wish you all only the best of luck." The old caretaker said.
As the orphans were about to go in, Soma was pulled back by Sawada. "You're the strongest six year old I know. Show them, Yatora. You're going to pass!"
"I will. Don't worry about it." With those words Soma left his 'big sister' behind and confidently followed the other orphans.
The first admission exam was an endurance test. For that, the 6 year-olds were taken to a sportsground behind the academy. The orphans had to jog for a time of 30 minutes or complete 10 rounds around the sportsground, which were equal to around 5 km. If you are able to do either of those you have passed. That task wasn't very hard for Soma to perform, but there were a lot of students there, so he couldn't notice, if there were any canon characters. But he didn't think that he would be able to notice them with their looks alone, as he only knew some of the names through fanfictions. He finished the race first and returned to the teachers. After him, there were a bunch of people who finished early. Including a black haired guy, Soma seems to notice from his past life.
"Sasuke Uchiha - I finished the 5 km." The boy said and a teacher noted his name down.
'That's where I know him from' Soma thought. Although he was never into Naruto, you must have lived under a rock, if you weren't even able to notice someone like Sasuke.
Soma looked at the children running. Most of them weren't able to keep running for the next 10 minutes. He himself ran the 5 km the race at 16 minutes and decided to also report it. He figured, that it wouldn't be able to conceal his intense physical training, as well as his Kenjutsu training. So he decided to portray them in public, while training Jutsus and elemental releases in secret.
After the 30 minutes were over only around 160 children from the originally over 800 were left. The teachers made the next Announcement. "The second and last part of this exam will be one-on-one conversations. Please gather yourselves to my left if you're already familiar with some Jutsus and if you're entirely new to the world of shinobi, please gather to my right."
Soma went to the left. As did around 20 other students. Most of them looked like they were in a clan, as they had symbols on their clothing. But there also were some without any symbols or potential civilians like Soma. The teacher that lead the small group of people into the building had brown, ananas shaped hair. He opened the door to a classroom, advised the children to wait on the floor, while taking one of the future students with him into the room.
After a short amount of time the student left the room and the next student had to enter. Sometimes there was a loud sound coming from the room, which lead Soma to ask himself just what was going on in there. That wasn't a normal interview, that much was clear. That process repeated until Soma heard his name. He entered the room. In front of him there was the pineapple head, as well as two other shinobis in uniform.
"Hello, I'm Iruka, a Chunin and a teacher at this academy. You're Yatora Soma, right?" The pineapple head or Iruka said.
"That's right." Soma replied.
'A civilian and an orphan at such a young age. The years after the war sure were tough. But I wonder-' Iruka though and started speaking again. You are here, because you already know a Jutsu. I wonder where an orphan would have learned that?"
Soma was impressed, that they had his background here. Until today, nobody knew that he was going to take the exam. He decided not to lie. "My Master, Tomioka Sushizaki, taught me."
Looking at the bokken at the little kids waist and upon hearing the name of the retired shinobi and active blacksmith, Iruka asked "So, i take it that you only know Kenjutsu?"
"That's right. I am only familiar with Kenjutsu."
"Could you perform one of your Jutsus then." As Iruka asked that question, Soma know understood where the loud noises earlier were coming from.
"Of course. Do you have a dummy for me. I don't think you're able to get a grasp of the extent of my abilities with only air as a target."
"Of course. Would a shadow clone work for you?"
"It would." Soma said satisfied. He was already used to that to attacking the shadow clone of his master.
Iruka performed fast a few handsigns summoning a shone clone. Soma stood himself in his perfect stance and drew his sword. Iruka positioned his clone in front of Soma 2 meters away. "What would you like to see?" Soma asked, as he went through all the possible options in his head.
"We just want to measure your ability, so it would be best for you to show the strongest attack you have." Iruka replied.
Yeah, Soma wouldn't do that. His strongest attack was an artificial basic slash, but the aftereffects of that attack, wouldn't let him look good.
[A/N: The artificial basic slash he is talking about is, what was performed at the beginning of the chapter, just faster, as Soma's power and Chakra is way higher now.]
Soma made his decision and announced it immediately. "I'm going to perform the C-Rank Kenjutsu No Style: Beheading."
The mood in the room was tense. He was the first child to perform a c-rank Jutsu as a civilian. The little child from the Uchiha Clan, Sasuke Uchiha, that was in here before Soma performed a C-Rank Jutsu as well. But he was an Uchiha, not even to speak about him being the son of Fugaku and the little Brother of a genius. Was this civilian really about to perform a C-Rank Jutsu. Especially Iruka wanted to know it, as he was a civilian as well and would be the teacher of the top class next year. That means, that if the little boy would really perform a C-Rank Jutsu, Soma would be in his care for the upcoming years.
Soma breathed in and hold his sword vertical behind his shoulder in one hand. He fixated his chakra in his sword-bearing arm and the shoulder, as well as in the muscles of his leg. He breathed out and simultaneously swung his sword and jumped. For the Chunins it looked like he disappeared and reappeared behind the clone, while it's head got detached and send flying before the clone dispersed, although it was actually one continuous movement.
"That's enough. More than enough. You're dismissed." Said the surprised Iruka, while the other Chunins were too flabbergasted to even react.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone