"Shhhhk! shhhhk!"
The rustle of wind being split echoed through the forest behind Konoha. A figure darted past in a blur, too fast to follow with the naked eye.
"Click!"
A mechanical snap.
A sleek, jet-black sniper rifle, M700, materialized in Kirito's hands, its barrel just over a meter long. He peered through the scope, locking in on a distant target several hundred meters away.
"Bang!"
The sharp crack of a gunshot echoed across the woods.
Traveling at 777 meters per second, the bullet was so fast it left no visible trail, by the time the sound reached the air, the bullet had already hit its mark. Through the scope, the target several hundred meters away had a clean hole in its center. Dead center?
Not quite.
Kirito frowned slightly. The bullet had hit slightly above and to the left of the bullseye.
A breeze tousled his hair. He murmured to himself, "So factors like wind speed, temperature, humidity, and my own micro-movements affect the accuracy... even at this distance..."
"Click."
He cycled the bolt, chambering a fresh round with practiced ease, then aimed at a closer target, about a hundred meters away.
"Bang!"
The bullet struck dead center. A perfect hit.
Kirito gave a faint nod. "Within a hundred meters, I can guarantee accuracy. But…"
That was only true for stationary targets.
Hitting something in motion was a completely different story.
With a flick of his wrist, the M700 vanished into his inventory. His sniping skills weren't yet polished enough for real combat. Unless he was ambushing from a hidden spot, it was still too difficult to reliably hit moving shinobi in a firefight.
"Shing!"
This time, a mid-length katana appeared in his hand, plain, unadorned.
"So in the end… I still need to focus on close combat."
He already had the Assassin's Blade, the sniper rifle, and a variety of throwing weapons, all geared toward mid-to-long-range fighting. What he truly lacked was the ability to hold his own up close.
If he wanted to survive more dangerous missions, he had to fill that gap.
With both hands gripping the sword, he raised it overhead and began a series of basic downward slashes. Again and again.
No chakra-enhanced flourishes.
No elegant sword forms.
Just repetition, over and over.
Kirito, at thirteen, possessed a patience and calm most kids his age lacked. In an era when young ninja brimmed with pride and impulse, his silent discipline was almost strange.
But that was Kirito's way.
He didn't train for glory or dreams of becoming Hokage. He didn't fight to protect some sacred will of fire. He just… wanted to become stronger.
Because being weak, being helpless, was something he couldn't accept.
Whatever else came after, he'd figure it out then.
Still, he wasn't training blindly.
As someone from a third-world dimension, Kirito knew exactly what major events were about to unfold in the timeline. He knew very well the kind of life-or-death battles that loomed ahead.
No matter how little he cared about "defending the village" or "dying for Konoha," if the storm reached his doorstep… he couldn't just sit and wait to die.
So, strengthening himself was no longer a choice, it was a necessity.
…
In such a vast village, a nobody like Kirito, someone not even ranked as a genin, training alone in the outskirts should have gone completely unnoticed.
But fate had other plans.
Because the man at the top, the one who saw all from the Hokage's tower, had taken interest.
The Third Hokage.
Through the all-seeing barrier that encompassed Konoha, Hiruzen Sarutobi could observe any part of the village via his crystal ball. His aged face leaned in, eyes half-lidded as he watched a young boy swinging a blade with quiet focus.
"This child… I remember now. That's the boy from the Hyūga Clan, isn't it?"
Hiruzen's voice was calm, but thoughtful.
"No hand seals. No summoning scrolls. And yet he's able to conjure weapons at will. What a peculiar, and dangerous, ability…"
His gaze lingered on a tree several meters behind Kirito, where a massive trunk, thick enough that three men would be needed to wrap around it, had been completely pierced through by something the boy fired earlier.
"Something that powerful… only a chakra-forged weapon hurled at full force could normally do that."
And yet, Kirito's "weapon," that strange black-barreled tool, had launched a projectile faster than the eye could follow. If used in a surprise attack… even seasoned jōnin could be taken out in a single hit.
Lethality: confirmed.
The Third narrowed his eyes.
Then he noticed something else.
Kirito had been at this for a long time. No rest. No breaks. Just swinging, over and over.
This level of grit… wasn't normal.
"To have such resolve, such patience… can that boy really be the 'worthless failure' the Hyūga Clan claimed?"
Hiruzen frowned thoughtfully.
After all, this was a child born of the Hyūga's branch family. A boy who never awakened the Byakugan, and one of the rare few to fail the Academy graduation exam.
And yet… here he was, quietly training with strange powers that no one else knew about.
The Third picked up a scroll from his desk. He had suddenly remembered something.
"…Might Guy's team submitted a mission report not long ago…"
He unrolled it.
Mission Report:
• Escort mission for noble client
• Rank: C
• Participants: Hyūga Neji, Tenten, Rock Lee, and several convoy workers
• Details: Ambushed on the Qínshan trail by a rogue ninja of jōnin rank. The genin team was overwhelmed. At a critical moment, a convoy worker, Hyūga Kirito, successfully ambushed the enemy and drove him off using clever tactics.
The Third began tapping his desk, deep in thought.
"A boy not even qualified as a genin… managing to ambush and repel a jōnin…"
"That's not something an ordinary child should be capable of."
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200 P.S = 1 Extra Chapters