(14th of October, year 52 AK)
After having a good night's sleep, Yuta repeated the time-travel a few more times and went all the way back to the day, when Shisui would check his performance with the three genjutsu techniques he taught him.
Later that day Yuta was training by the lake as Shisui appeared next to him.
"Hey, Yuta, how is your progress?" Shisui asked casually.
"Shisui-senpai, I've got the hang of it, I think." Yuta replied as he stopped his training and looked at Shisui.
"Just call me by my name, no need for formalities. Now show me how you do it, cast the techniques on me one by one." Shisui said casually.
Yuta skillfully cast Sly Mind genjutsu on Shisui.
Shisui was quite surprised at how fast Yuta went through the sequence of hand seals and of how potent his first time genjutsu was. He looked around, observing the effects of the Sly Mind genjutsu without resisting it, and found it quite decent, and considering it's only a first time Yuta used genjutsu, it could be described as an exceptional result, he thought.
Yuta maintained the jutsu skillfully and without much problem, until Shisui easily dispelled it after a while.
"Not bad at all, Yuta, you cast it like if you've been using it for a long time already, such level of proficiency on your first try is impressive!" Shisui commented.
"Is it really that impressive though? You've dispelled it like it was nothing..." Yuta replied while being a little annoyed, but still, he was quite happy with his results of training for all that time.
The more Yuta trained with genjutsu, the more he was discovering new aspects and nuances to it, like for example, he could improve the genjutsu by forming a more precise intent and visualizing the results more clearly during the molding of chakra, or he could make it more difficult to notice and dispel by manipulating his chakra more subtly and precisely when the jutsu hits the target and while it's active.
While there is so much room for growth with this type of genjutsu, Yuta already starts feeling a little dissatisfied with it, as he felt that genjutsu had much more potential than just casting a predetermined effect of a jutsu, like Sly Mind or Hell Viewing, but still, he doesn't know yet how to even start to approach his vague ideas about genjutsu he has.
"If you could incapacitate me with just those simple jutsu, my Jonin rank would be for nothing, would it?" Shisui replied with a smile, "Now continue with the next one."
Yuta performed the other two genjutsu one by one on Shisui for him to test it out.
"This is good, you might become a powerful genjutsu-specialist in the near future, it's your first time performing genjutsu on a proper target and you are already quite efficient with it and your genjutsu have decent potency already." Shisui concluded, "But don't get overconfident, your genjutsu still has a lot of room to grow, I'll send a shadow clone whenever I'm in the village for you to train genjutsu on."
"Yes, thanks Shisui." Yuta replied gratefully before Shisui left.
'I know my genjutsu has a lot of room to grow, that's why I came back into the past to train more with it. Also, I need to get much more accustomed to it and master all its aspects so I could move further and learn more advanced techniques.' Yuta thought as he continued his training routine.
...
After two weeks of training on genjutsu with Shisui's shadow clone's help, Yuta expectedly only improved a little, since it was more than half a year since he started to train with genjutsu already, and the rate of his improvement is slowed down since then.
After another training session by the lake with Shisui's shadow clone, after Yuta exhausted his chakra, Shisui said whit a conflicted expression, "Something is not right."
"What do you mean?" Yuta asked, but he already had an idea of what exactly was bothering Shisui.
"You haven't improved much in these two weeks." Shisui said hesitantly, "I expected you to improve much faster than that. Your initial results were great, and I expected you to get much better in the first weeks."
"Don't worry about it, it's fine." Yuta sighed and said dejectedly.
"Well, if you don't want to talk about it, I won't ask further." Shisui said casually, although Yuta wasn't able to notice but he was a little sad that it seems Yuta didn't fully trusts him, but still, he was fine with that, he believed that Yuta didn't have any ill intentions and he could see that Yuta genuinely thought of him as a friend. And if Yuta has to keep something a secret from him that much, it only means there was a good reason for it, and he won't dig into it any further.
"Thanks." Yuta replied gratefully.
...
Yuta resumed his day-to-day routine, he attended the academy classes to only read on next grades topics during the lessons, as he already went through all these classes before and knew what they were all about. After the academy's classes he was training either in genjutsu with Shisui's shadow clone, or with Water-Walking on his own.
As for his physical training workout – he perfected his optimal workout routine, and he spends two to three hours a day going through it. With trial and error he found it was the most optimal regime for his physique, since if he trains less than that then his results will decrease significantly, and if he trains more than that, then his results only improve very little, and since he was using time-travel quite often, he didn't want to push himself too much for too little value, especially not when that value could be lost later on.
The days flew by, then months, and the end of the first grade of the academy came with a series of exams and tests. Yuta went through all of the exams, same as the last time, scoring first place in the written tests, third place in shurikenjutsu, and in taijutsu he ended in the middle of the class.
Yuta briefly thought about repeating the same time period once again to train in genjutsu even further, but decided not to, he would have enough time in the future, and he could create a time loop later on, but for now, he was fed up with this unending first year of the academy and wanted to move on.
Especially since it would be only at the next year that they would be taught the three basic academy jutsu, and Yuta can't wait for that any longer.
His genjutsu training progressed quite a lot in this half a year period with Shisui's help, now Yuta understood that these three basic genjutsu techniques are just tools for him to start and advance in the genjutsu mastery, they are not that great on their own and only could be used against Genins, as any experienced Chunin will recognize them and dispel them quickly.
And with how much more chakra Chunins generally have, it is much harder to affect them with genjutsu, especially with such basic genjutsu like those Yuta had mastered.
Sure, Yuta could improve his mastery with these jutsu further and make them more potent and harder to dispel, but that won't help much, at its absolute maximum potential they would probably work on the less skilled Chunins at best.
And as Yuta progressed with his genjutsu training, he now understands genjutsu better, and he already had some ideas of the techniques of his own. The genjutsu field is much more versatile than ninjutsu and allows his imagination to go wild with all the possibilities there are.
There was generally are two directions in which Yuta could currently improve in the genjutsu arts, first is to improve his techniques, for that he could either learn more complex techniques than those three that he already mastered, or he could create techniques of his own, that would be more time consuming and difficult than learning already existing jutsu, but it provides greater benefits, as he would be able to hone and tailor such techniques to be best suited for his own use.
As for the second direction, it's to learn how to add a medium for his genjutsu techniques to bypass the general limitations of the regular genjutsu. When Yuta thought about that, he was naturally inclined to choose sound as his genjutsu medium, since he saw potential in such techniques from the anime.
But as of how he could use sound waves to cast genjutsu, he doesn't have any idea even where to start.
'Those few sound-based genjutsu that I remember from the anime – all of them used some kind of an external instrument to cast genjutsu through sound, like flute or bells. Should I find some kind of an instrument of my own? Sigh, Shisui encourages me to explore my own ideas and try different things and to find my own path in the genjutsu field, instead of learning more techniques that was already made by others...'
'At first, I was expecting to learn some advanced jutsu directly from him, but I guess that's not what would be the best for me, at least in Shisui's understanding. He guides me to master different aspects and nuances of genjutsu through improving my mastery over those three basic genjutsu, but for the more advanced stuff – I guess it's about time I come up with some good ideas of my own and try to implement them, I should be able to do it by now.'
'I guess I should start by trying to create my own genjutsu first, at least I have a clear idea how to do it by now. And as for the medium for the genjutsu, since I have no idea where even to begin, I'll save it for the later.'
'If I accomplish both those objectives by the end of the next academy year, I wouldn't have any problem with my early graduation.'
--- AN ---
Got some rough outline ideas about power scaling in numerical value, let me know what you think.
Rough level comparison
10G=1C; 10C=1J; 10J=1K; 10K = 1SS; 10SS = 1Kaguya.
(G-genin level; C-chunin; J-jonin; K-kage; SS rank(Hashirama/Madara))
You could argue that Hashirama (SS rank) will decimate no matter how many Genins and will be worth more than 10k Genins that this power scaling suggests, and that would be true, but this power scaling is just for rough understanding and not for the multilevel comparison. Also, the exact power of a character could fluctuate, for example I would say that Hashirama = 1.5SS while Madara = 1.2SS (slightly weaker), while 1SS – is a standard of a one average SS rank spherical shinobi in a vacuum.
Academy graduates are around 0.7G; After half a year as Genin = 1-1.5G; 2-4 years as Genin and those who has at least some potential grows up to 3-5G (strong/promising Genin, but still not on Chunin level yet); after reaching 7G they become eligible to get promoted through a Chunin exam or to get promoted directly through merit.
But all this was about normal average shinobi, very different from Konoha-11 and those two monsters – Naruto and Sasuke, Konoha-11 after less than a year after academy was already one foot into Jonin-level combat strength, only lacking experience and some skill-honing.
Maybe it should be like 3G=1C; 3C=1J etc., so it would be less of a gap between ranks. What do you think? I personally think that having a big gap between ranks is a good thing.
Thanks to Loalola, creationking, ParadoX691, waltersaaron16, Daoistbm0BeO and Jayroy_63 for the power stones.