After tying up a few last-minute matters with Yoru, Ren slipped quietly out of the village. Nobody except Yoru knew of his departure, and that was exactly how he wanted it.
The timing was too delicate, Danzo's trial date had finally been fixed, and Ren himself was the central figure carrying the banner against the old war hawk. If word got out that he wasn't even inside the village when the trial was approaching, people would start whispering. Some might even panic, thinking it was a setup or a sign of weakness.
Ren didn't doubt that Yoru and Shikaku could handle the political noise if it came to that, they were more than capable but still, why add unnecessary complications? Better to keep his movements buried. He'd learned enough in the past six months to know that in politics, silence was often more powerful than bravado.
And those six months had changed things more than he cared to admit. His name, for one, had spread across the shinobi world like wildfire. That wasn't the part that annoyed him, the problem was why.
People didn't talk about his fights, or the jutsu he'd refined, or the missions he'd crushed. No, what spread like gossip in a tavern was the label, Senju heir. That title had wrapped around his neck like a leash.
Now he finally understood why so many so-called geniuses in the old novels complained about being "known for their family instead of their own strength." It wasn't just whining, it was suffocating.
He could flatten jonin in sparring matches and still the chatter wasn't Ren did this, it was the Senju heir did this.
But, if he was honest with himself, that wasn't even the thing that had been gnawing at his nerves lately. Not Danzo, not the trial, not even the looming Uchiha massacre.
No, the thing that had actually kept him awake some nights, the one problem that left him feeling truly cornered, was far simpler.
Marriage.
His own marriage.
If it had been Tsunade's, he might've found the whole thing entertaining, hell, he'd probably have organized a village wide event if it was really her wedding. But this wasn't her life being shoved under a spotlight; it was his. And ever since Tsunade mentioned that a formal ceremony of announcement of comeback had to be held, things had spiraled out of control.
At that single ceremony, he'd received twelve marriage proposals.
Twelve.
Every clan with some standing in the village had thrown something onto the pile, even the Shimura clan, which left him staring at their messenger like they'd grown a second head. He honestly didn't know whether to laugh or kill someone.
The most ridiculous one came from the Hyūga. Not just any offer, either, they had the gall to send a proposal to marry him off to Hinata. When he first read the scroll, his mind blanked in disbelief, and then he nearly sent the poor messenger flying through the wall.
Hiashi, that smug bastard, had signed off on pairing him with a girl who was literally half his age. The sheer audacity was enough to make Ren grind his teeth.
And it wasn't even a one-time insult. Every time he crossed paths with a high-ranking Hyūga elder, they brought it up, as if persistence would suddenly melt his resistance. It only stopped after he "politely" hospitalized a few of them. That shut them up fast, and the other clans wisely followed suit. Finally, he could breathe again without hearing the word "marriage" muttered around every corner.
Ren leapt from branch to branch through the thick forest, moving at a speed that would leave even most speed-specialist jonin choking on his dust. The wind whipped against his face, sharp and clean, and it gave him room to think. His mind naturally drifted back to those six months, turning them over like stones in his palm.
Tsunade had been right, of course. Yoru had eventually ordered him to stop bounty hunting altogether. It had been a bitter pill to swallow, Ren had enjoyed the thrill of it, the independence, the chance to test himself against all kinds of unpredictable opponents. But the order was final, and he had no choice but to shelve it.
With bounty hunting off the table, he found himself with more free time than he ever expected. Too much, in fact. Aside from the occasional S-rank mission, which he only managed to secure after practically begging Yoru, his schedule had been surprisingly open.
Of course, losing bounty hunting also meant losing his main source of points. That stung more than he liked to admit. But with one door slammed shut, another one creaked open, jutsu creation.
Now, for most shinobi, creating jutsu was more of a headache than a blessing. It was slow, exhausting, and often ended with wasted chakra and burned scrolls. For Ren, though, it felt like the system had been designed with him in mind.
The requirements for creating new techniques were threefold, chakra control, elemental mastery, and creativity. And he was overflowing in all three.
First was chakra control. Ren's control wasn't just good, it was absurd. If there was a historical ranking of shinobi with the finest chakra precision, he was confident he could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with legends. Top five in history, easily. That gave him a ridiculous advantage because he could take concepts that would normally fizzle out halfway through and sculpt them into working jutsu in hours, sometimes minutes.
Second was elemental mastery. This part might've slowed down others, but Ren had already spent years pushing his affinities forward. Out of the five base elements, four of his had reached advanced stages. Only Water lagged behind, sitting at 51% in the intermediate range, but even that was enough to work with. The rest gave him a massive playground to experiment in. Fire, Earth, Lightning, Wind, he could twist and reshape them as he pleased.
The last piece of the puzzle was creativity, and on that front, Ren felt untouchable. He'd lived a past life where he'd devoured cultivation stories, magic systems, and power frameworks of every flavor. That mental library was now his secret weapon. Where others hit walls because they lacked imagination, Ren's head was overflowing with ideas, half of them insane, sure, but at least one in ten turned into something worth keeping.
And with all that combined, creating jutsu wasn't just possible for him, it was easy. Stupidly easy. To the point where he could realistically make an A-rank jutsu every single day if he wanted. Over six months, he had casually built up a collection of nearly two hundred techniques.
Two hundred.
That pile of fresh jutsu was now locked away in the village archives, waiting for the right hands to pick them up.
The frustrating part was that for all that effort, what he got in return from the system was a grand total of three measly S-rank points.
Three.
Ren had sighed so often during those months that even Kimura had gotten annoyed at the sound. Still, gains were gains. Add in another three points from the handful of missions Yoru had begrudgingly allowed him to take, and his six-month total came to six points.
Six points for six months. Not the flashiest harvest, but Ren wasn't the type to let points gather dust. The moment he got them, he invested them, and the payoff was clear enough, his stats had grown, his foundation had sharpened, and the time had been worth it in the end.
As he leapt from branch to branch, his body slicing through the forest like a shadow, Ren casually pulled up his status in his head. The numbers and progress bars were familiar now, but he still couldn't stop himself from analyzing them whenever he had the chance.
[NAME]: Ren Takahashi
[LEVEL]: 80 (79 >> 80)
[ATTRIBUTES]
Strength: 80 (79 >> 80)
Agility: 83 (81 >> 83)
Intelligence: 88 (86 >> 88)
Vitality: 89 (88 >>89)
Chakra: 88 (84 >> 88)
[Available Stat Points]:
[Talents]: Improved Chakra Control, Enhanced Reflexes (Ex), Genjutsu Resistance (S+), Fuinjutsu (Ex Uzumaki), Space Release Talent (Ex)
[MASTERY PANEL]:
Chakra Control - 94% (Master) (Chakra Stability)
Shadow Clone Mastery - 90% (Master) (Restoration)
Fuinjutsu Mastery - 89% (85 >> 89) (Advanced)
Yang Release Mastery - 89% (Advanced)
Yin Release Mastery - 57% (46 >> 57) (Intermediate)
Wind Style Mastery - 85% (83 >> 85) (Advanced)
Earth Style Mastery - 89% (81 >> 89) (Advanced)
Fire Release Mastery - 84% (79 >> 84) (Advanced)
Lightning Release Mastery - 75% (40 >> 75) (Advanced)
Water Release Mastery - 51% (31 >> 51) (Intermediate)
Space Release Mastery - 83% (79 >> 83) (Advanced)
Iryojutsu Mastery- 84% (76 >> 84) (Advanced)
Bukijutsu (Weaponry)- 92% (Master) (Calibration)
[MASTERY POINTS]:
10 Intermediate Level Points
4 Advanced Level Points
2 Master Level Points
[NINJA PANEL]
Ninjutsu: 92/100 (91 >> 92)
Taijutsu: 91/100 (88 >> 91)
Genjutsu: 86/100 (70 >> 86)
Fuinjutsu: 89/100 (85 >> 89)
[SPECIAL STATS]
CHARISMA : 88 (86 >> 88)
PERCEPTION : 94
The part that made him click his tongue every single time was his Strength stat. It had finally broken past the 80-point mark. Under normal circumstances that should've been something to celebrate, proof that he was stepping deeper into the territory of monsters, but instead it came with a bitter aftertaste.
Crossing that threshold meant his rewards from A-rank missions had tanked. Practically became pocket change. And that's why those two hundred jutsu he'd carefully built up and handed over to the village had only netted him three measly points. An insult, really.
The rest of his stats were climbing steadily, though. Slow compared to his ridiculous earlier growth, but steady, and honestly, that was fine. Ren had enough self-awareness to know that for anyone else at his level, gaining this much in just six months would've been nothing short of impossible. Other S-rankers would've killed for the kind of progress he was pulling off.
His Vitality, though, was another headache. It had reached the absolute ceiling of the S-rank level, and no matter how he poked at the system, the stat wouldn't budge a single decimal higher. The same applied to his Chakra reserves.
It didn't matter how many points he shoved into it, or how much he trained, it was just stuck. He had no clue what the hidden requirement was to push them into Kage-level territory, and that gnawed at him. For now, all he could do was wait and grind in other areas.
The various masteries were moving along nicely. All the elemental ones except Water and Yin had hit the advanced stage. Water was still crawling at the intermediate level, stubborn as ever. And the big three master-level skills, Chakra Control, Bukijutsu, and Shadow Clones, were… infuriating.
Not even a single percent increase in six months. Not one. He'd sighed about it so often he thought his lungs might wear out before his patience did. But, really, it made sense. Skills at that level weren't the kind of thing you just pushed with brute force.
Chakra Control and Shadow Clone mastery at least trained themselves automatically, his clones never stopped practicing, and his control was always being refined by necessity. But Bukijutsu was different. If he wanted to push it, he'd have to put in deliberate hours of drilling with weapons. And honestly? He hadn't had the time for that lately, not with everything else crowding his plate.
The one thing he kept circling back to was his Yin and Yang Release masteries. Yin had finally reached intermediate, Yang was already higher, and he'd been saving points specifically to pump Yin up to the cap of advanced. He just hadn't found the right chance yet. Every time he thought he'd have a moment to sit down and invest, something else had popped up, missions, training, clan politics, Yoru breathing down his neck about responsibilities.
And the reason he was so desperate to push them both up was simple, Yin–Yang Release. He remembered vividly what Zetsu and the Otsutsuki had shown, creation out of nothing, nullification of techniques, truth-seeking orbs. It was high-level, borderline broken stuff.
Ren wasn't delusional enough to think he could replicate it perfectly just by maxing Yin and Yang, but if there was even a sliver of a chance he could piece something together from those foundations, he had to try. That kind of power was too useful to pass up.
So he kept grinding, kept theorizing, kept pushing. That was all he could do. He wasn't the type to sit around waiting for miracles, he'd make one himself, even if it took years.
~~~~~
{Well, we've finished catching up with his growth over the last 6 months, the base stats might not have gone up by much but I can't do anything, it's all upto Ren, so yeah, that's it.}
{If you want, you can support me on pat-reon, we're 8 chapters ahead there.}
{ h t t p s : / / w w w . p a t r e o n . c o m / Z e e n o n }
{You know what else}
{STONES!!!!}