Chapter 29: Mastery-Level Ninjutsu
Mugetsu fell into thought as he stared at the three sudden notifications.
He hadn't expected the Master-Disciple System to have a feature like training missions.
Why hadn't it appeared before when I planned their training? He wondered. Could it only be triggered by the disciples themselves?
Even if that were true, there should have been missions triggered before—like when Obito wanted to win first place in the practical exams.
Mugetsu guessed there were probably stricter activation conditions for these cultivation missions, likely tied to things like trust levels or personal determination.
Since it was the first time the feature activated, he couldn't be certain of all the details. But one thing was obvious—only when a disciple truly desired something would the mission trigger.
Looking at Obito's eager, sparkling eyes, Mugetsu was sure of that much.
"Sensei, please! Just this once!" Obito clasped his hands together. "Once I get first place, I swear I'll follow every training plan you give me, double the effort!"
His frustration from losing to Kakashi in front of Rin still lingered.
"…Fine," Mugetsu sighed, nodding with a slightly helpless smile.
"Mugetsu-sensei, you're really the best sensei in the world!" Obito shouted in excitement.
"Keep the flattery until after you win first place," Mugetsu replied, flicking Obito lightly on the forehead with two fingers.
"Hehe, I'm just telling the truth," Obito grinned.
After years in the Academy, he could tell a good teacher when he saw one. Mugetsu wasn't boring, his lessons were easy to understand, and he genuinely cared about his students. How could he not be a great sensei?
"Alright, then, what Ninjutsu are you going to teach me, Sensei?" Obito asked, his excitement barely contained.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique," Mugetsu replied casually.
"…But I already know the Great Fireball Technique! Last time I used it in the competition and only got twenty points…" Obito scratched his head in frustration.
In the previous competition, his Great Fireball had barely earned him twenty points and a short-lived first place. Then Kakashi appeared, used Earth Release: Earth Motion to control the entire field, and scored a perfect thirty.
"Didn't you say you wanted power?" Mugetsu asked with a smile. "Among the Fire Release techniques you can currently learn, Great Fireball Technique has the highest power."
With that, Mugetsu walked to the riverbank and quickly formed hand seals.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
A massive surge of chakra condensed into raging flames. The instant Mugetsu exhaled, the chakra transformed into fire through nature transformation, and a colossal fireball burst forth.
The towering inferno swirled, forming a blazing sphere nearly ten meters tall.
In front of it, Mugetsu—despite standing nearly two meters tall—looked small. Obito, Shisui, and Guy, standing off to the side, were even more dwarfed by the sheer scale of the flames.
It's even bigger than before… Shisui's eyes widened in disbelief.
He recalled the first time he'd secretly caught a glimpse of Mugetsu training with the Great Fireball. He had thought it was already incredible back then, but this… this was on an entirely different level.
Sensei's strength… I can't even guess how high it goes, Shisui thought, feeling his admiration deepen.
"…This… this is Great Fireball Technique?" Obito's jaw nearly hit the ground.
His own Great Fireball looked like a candle's flicker compared to this.
Might Guy swallowed nervously. "To block something like that… you'd need speed far beyond what I have now," he muttered to himself.
The enormous fireball roared forward, crashing into the river. Steam erupted instantly, shrouding the surroundings in thick mist before Mugetsu quickly dispersed it with a light Wind Release.
Lowering his hands, Mugetsu turned back with a relaxed smile.
"So… is the power of Great Fireball Technique enough for you?"
"Enough! More than enough! It's ridiculously awesome!" Obito nodded so vigorously he looked like a bobbing bird.
If I can make my Great Fireball even a quarter that size… first place will be mine for sure!
Mugetsu thought to himself, Of course it's mighty. That attack just now was flashy—but it had burned through nearly a thousand chakra points in one shot.
In actual combat, especially in fights between similarly ranked opponents, a Great Fireball of that scale was impractical. Hitting a moving target with something so large and slow would be nearly impossible.
Mugetsu even recalled how, in his previous life, someone bored enough to compile statistics had discovered something hilarious—across more than seven hundred episodes, no matter who used the Great Fireball Technique, it had never once hit a humanoid target.
With a record like that, it wasn't surprising people joked about it as "the Ninjutsu that can't hit anyone."
"Alright, your turn," Mugetsu said, looking at Obito.
"Okay!" Obito nodded eagerly, walked to the river, formed hand seals, and released his own Great Fireball.
…Only to have an awkward result.
The fireball that burst out was barely the size of two human heads—comically small compared to the massive inferno Mugetsu had unleashed.
"Obito, it's okay, even a small—"
"Guy, just spare me," Obito cut him off immediately, not needing any of his "motivational" weirdness.
Mugetsu smiled, "Do you know why your Great Fireball is so different from mine?"
"…Because I haven't mastered it well enough?" Obito replied hesitantly.
"There are three reasons," Mugetsu explained. "First, your chakra control is poor—you can't properly utilize your limited chakra.
Second, your nature transformation training is weak. You can't convert enough chakra into flames efficiently.
Third, you simply haven't mastered the Great Fireball Technique properly."
Mugetsu then took out a slim booklet, handing it to Obito.
"These are my notes on cultivating Fire Release chakra nature transformation. Read it, memorize it, and practice accordingly. This will solve your problem with nature transformation."
Obito's foundation was leagues behind Shisui's. Mugetsu had spent nearly the first month helping Obito rebuild the basics, squeezing in Fire Release: Great Dragon Fire along the way, which was why he hadn't handed this over sooner.
If it weren't for this sudden training mission, he had planned to save this for the next semester.
Too much information at once would only overwhelm Obito.
[You have gifted your disciple the Fire Release: Chakra Nature Transformation Training Manual. Due to your disciple's immense gratitude, you have received a major critical reward: Fire Release: Intelligent Hardwork (Mastery).]
Mugetsu blinked in surprise. He hadn't expected Obito's gratitude to trigger such a massive critical reward.
And Intelligent Hardwork wasn't some ordinary Fire Release either—it was a B-rank technique used by Kakuzu's fire-attribute mask, known for its destructive power. Combined with the Wind Release: Pressure Damage Intelligent Hardwork had previously drawn, it could instantly create a raging sea of fire strong enough to incinerate an entire forest.
A flood of training memories surged into Mugetsu's mind. For a brief moment, it felt like he had become a shinobi who had trained Intelligent Hardwork in solitude for thirty years, honing just this one Ninjutsu to the absolute pinnacle of mastery.
"I'll read it every day!" Obito hugged the booklet like it was a priceless treasure.
Mugetsu smiled. "There's one more thing—first, we work on your chakra control."
Obito's tree-climbing and water-walking basics needed to be rock-solid before anything else. After that, Mugetsu's refined water-walking intensive regimen—developed during his training with Asuma—would come into play.
Obito didn't know what Mugetsu had in mind, but just recalling those torturous weekend sessions made him nervous. He had a bad feeling it would be brutal.
But this time… it was his own request. All he could do was brace himself and see it through.
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