The Third Hokage finally decided to first dispatch a portion of the Village's ready-to-deploy Ninja to the Land of Bears, ensuring at least that the Land of Bears would not be completely occupied by the Hidden Mist Village.
To be frank, the Hidden Mist Village was just joining the fun in this Ninja World War; the key was the battle results of the other four Villages.
As long as the land of the Land of Bears was not lost, and the Land of Fire was not directly attacked by the Kirigakure, it would be enough.
Following the Third Hokage's order, hundreds of Ninja rushed to the Land of Bears as an advance force for support.
A month later, Konoha would send even more Ninja to support the Land of Bears.
Uchiha En, being a student, was unaware of the Village's actions; he had no access to intelligence channels.
The only thing that made Uchiha En feel something was amiss was that prices in the Village had risen significantly, especially for war materials.
Uchiha En worried that if prices kept rising, once his survivor's pension was issued, there would probably be nothing left after buying supplies.
Fortunately, the survivor's pension was issued to Uchiha En two days later.
Just as he had expected, the clan did not manage to secure much money for him.
Uchiha Hiroshi had previously said the pension was 2 million Ryo, but after it was issued, the actual amount received was 2.1 million Ryo—only 100,000 Ryo more was secured.
After Uchiha En received the money, he spent 600,000 Ryo to purchase a sealing scroll.
He then spent nearly 1 million Ryo purchasing various kinds of war resources.
After these transactions, he was left with only a little over 400,000 Ryo from his pension.
"No matter the world, money just slips away so fast!" Uchiha En sighed, looking at the money in his wallet.
Over the next few days, Uchiha En took some time to familiarize himself with the supplies he had, preventing the awkward situation of not knowing how to use them on the battlefield.
Before he knew it, a week had passed.
Today was the day Uchiha En and Uchiha Shisui had agreed to meet.
Therefore, after school that day, Uchiha En did not go to the river for training but returned directly to the Uchiha Clan compound, then jogged to the training ground where he was supposed to meet Shisui.
Shisui arrived even earlier than Uchiha En. When he saw Uchiha En, he quickly waved and shouted, "En-senpai, I'm here!"
When Uchiha En saw Shisui, he used a Body Flicker Technique to jump right in front of him.
"Body Flicker Technique! Uchiha En, you actually learned the Body Flicker Technique!" exclaimed a spiky-haired boy wearing goggles next to Shisui.
"Obito? Why are you here?" Uchiha En asked, momentarily stunned.
"En-senpai, Obito-senpai and I are neighbors. When he heard you were going to teach me the Body Flicker Technique, he insisted on coming along, saying he was afraid you might trick me," Shisui explained helplessly.
"Uchiha En, when did you learn the Body Flicker Technique?" Obito asked.
"Not long ago."
"But you sparred with Hyuga Asana before..."
"I didn't know it then."
Obito fell silent upon hearing this. How long had it been since Uchiha En sparred with Hyuga Asana? For Uchiha En to have already learned the Body Flicker Technique—his progress was too fast!
Uchiha En couldn't be bothered to waste words on Obito. Setting aside the current Obito, he had absolutely no good feelings toward the future Obito.
Everyone witnessed how kind Minato Namikaze was to Obito, yet Obito committed the act of killing his master. Calling Obito heartless and despicable felt like an insult to the phrase itself.
Just because of that, Uchiha En did not want much interaction with Obito.
"Shisui, how is your Tree Climbing and Water Surface Walking practice coming along?" Uchiha En asked.
"I have completely mastered both of those techniques."
"Is that so? There's a tree right over there, show me!" Uchiha En said, pointing toward a large tree outside the training ground.
Shisui nodded and ran over. Uchiha En followed him out of the training ground, and Obito hesitated before chasing after them too.
After the three arrived at the woods, Shisui wrapped his feet in Chakra and walked step by step from the tree trunk up to the crown.
Uchiha En could tell that Shisui walked very steadily, without the slightest stagger, indicating that his mastery of this technique was excellent.
In other words, Shisui was already doing very well in Chakra control, enough to learn the Body Flicker Technique.
"Good. Shisui, your Chakra control meets the standard. Next, I need to test your reaction speed. Let's head back to the training ground!"
"Wait! Uchiha En, aren't you supposed to be teaching Shisui the Body Flicker Technique? Why are you messing around with this random stuff?" Obito asked, blocking their way.
"Obito-senpai, En-senpai *is* teaching me the Body Flicker Technique!" Shisui replied.
"That's right, this isn't random stuff. The two prerequisites for learning the Body Flicker Technique are Chakra control and Neural Reaction Speed." After speaking, Uchiha En and Shisui returned to the training ground together.
After hearing Uchiha En's words, Obito recalled Shisui's tree climbing movements and muttered to himself, "What's so great about that? It's just tree climbing! I can do it too!"
Obito then wrapped his feet in Chakra and approached the tree trunk.
Predictably, he fell off the tree trunk.
Unwilling to give up, Obito attempted it multiple times, but without exception, he failed.
Returning our attention to the training ground, Uchiha En had prepared some stones. He had Shisui stand a good distance away, and then Uchiha En threw the stones at him to see how many Shisui could dodge using his physical reaction speed.
The test officially began. Initially, Uchiha En didn't throw the stones with much force, and their speed wasn't fast, so Shisui successfully dodged all of them.
Seeing this, Uchiha En gradually increased his strength, and the speed of the stones increased accordingly. Shisui had not activated his Sharingan yet, so he had no enhanced dynamic vision. Facing these stones, he was merely dodging based on physical instinct.
"Whoosh~"
As a dust-covered Obito returned to the training ground, a blur flashed past his eyes.
Obito instinctively looked toward the direction of the blur and saw that Shisui had dodged the attack of the blur simply by leaning slightly sideways.
Immediately afterward, several more blurs assaulted him, and Shisui avoided them all.
Obito was completely stunned by the sight. He couldn't even clearly see attacks moving at that speed, let alone dodge them. How was Shisui doing this?
Uchiha En was also slightly shocked internally. Shisui had not activated his Sharingan, so logically, it should have been impossible for him to clearly see the trajectory of the stones and dodge in advance, yet he had done exactly that.
He perfectly dodged every incoming stone. Uchiha En felt ashamed of his own reaction speed in comparison.
"No wonder this kid will later earn the title 'Shisui of the Body Flicker Technique.' Based solely on this reaction speed, the Body Flicker Technique might as well have been tailor-made for him," Uchiha En thought to himself.