Naruto: Kage of Kages

Barring the two incidents that spiced up Shiki’s routine, his regular training was quite formulaic, even if calling his training process normal or regular would basically be spitting on the efforts of other shinobi because the way he trained and progressed could only be described as abnormal.

For his basic elemental jutsu Shiki elected not to go through basic nature transformation practice for two main reasons.

The first was that D rank elemental jutsu, even C ranked ones, generally do not require specific nature transformation training owing to their basic principles, even if properly mastering nature transformation does increase their power and efficiency.

The second reason was the boy’s still quite low affinities. Practicing right now was nearly pointless as it did not bring him any immediate gains.

Sure, Shiki could practice in preparation for the future and get a small boost to the basic elemental jutsu he had just learned but when his affinities reach suitable levels, this kind of training will show much greater results and proceed with far greater speed.

That aside, the jutsu he selected were ones that would either still be useful when Shiki improved his nature transformation or that despite losing future utility, they would lay a foundation for more advanced jutsu.

The first was the Fire Release: Flamethrower. A jutsu that was pure simplicity, mold fire nature chakra and breathe it out as a gout of flame. It lacked any sort of shape transformation like turning into a ball so it had poor range while its power was easily dispersed.

Still, it was the basis for all fire release jutsu that were breathed out the user’s mouth and when Shiki’s own power increased, Fire Release: Flamethrower would not only become quite powerful, it was a jutsu so simple that with a little practice and affinity, hand seals could be skipped.

For Wind Release, the boy struggled to find meaningful or long term useful D rank jutsu so he just learned Wind Release: Breakthrough that enabled him to blow out a strong gust of wind or create a small whirlwind to deflect small projectiles and soften falls.

It was a weakened version of the more commonly used Wind Release: Great Breakthrough which was C ranked. Despite its inherent limitations, it was still useful for the current Shiki so the boy was not displeased with it.

Next was the Lightning Release: Elekiter that emitted electricity from the user’s palm to shock enemies on contact. Useful for non lethal takedowns due to its paralysing effect and also served a secondary purpose as a decent gateway jutsu for learning other lightning jutsu.

For earth release, Shiki learned the Earth Release: Practice Brick, the most basic earth jutsu in the whole world that any shinobi regardless of affinity could easily learn. It was a very weak version of the Earth Flow Wall that Kakashi used.

It required surrounding earth to perform whereas the Earth Flow Wall can be spawned from mud spat out by the user and its defensive power was also much weaker but it was still a great gateway jutsu for Earth Release and useful for the current Shiki.

Finally there was water release and there was only one choice Shiki could make, a jutsu still viable even in high level fights as the user’s process increased.

The Water Release: Hiding in Mist which despite usually not having Water Release attached to its name, normally being called Ninja Art: Hiding in Mist, remained a water element jutsu.

Moving on from elemental jutsu, there were the Yin and Yang Release techniques.

For Yin, other than the standard Chakra Sensing that was previously mentioned, Shiki also learned Chakra Camouflage.

This technique hid his chakra signature from other sensory ninjas like the more common Chakra Suppression but unlike it, still allowed him to use other jutsu in conjunction.

As for Yang, the boy learned the most basic medical jutsu he could find which was still C rank, a testament to the difficulty and complexity of medical ninjutsu.

The Medical Jutsu: First Aid, a fundamental technique that could stop or at least slow bleeding, delay the spread of poison, relieve pain and speed up the healing of minor injuries.

Despite being lacking in healing power, it could produce many useful minor effects and lacked the very high requirements in chakra control and Yang Affinity that most medical jutsu demanded and was plenty useful in sustaining moderately injured patients until a proper medic could be found.

As for standard ninjutsu, Shiki went absolutely wild with several B and A rank jutsu, some that he developed himself on the fly from sudden inspiration. Unburdened by what could be currently considered his only real flaw, the boy could truly showcase his full genius.

Even if it lacked a path for further development, Shiki still mastered the regular Clone Jutsu which was not only easy but fast. He could now create large amounts of immaterial clones with no hand seals at all but in the end, it was just for show, serving as a momentary distraction at most.

The only other jutsu he mastered fully was the D rank Temporary Paralysis Jutsu. It was a simple short range immobilization technique that even genin could easily learn and most chunin could master it fully with no issue.

However, its binding power was directly proportional to the potency and quantity of the chakra put into the jutsu so a powerful elite jonin with full mastery could completely restrain several regular chunin with no issue but a genin might only be able to do for ordinary people.

Regardless, even against marginally weaker opponents it was good enough to restrain them for a moment or two, creating opportunities for attacking so Shiki felt it would be useful to learn, even more so considering how easy for him it actually was.

Another jutsu the boy had nearly fully mastered was one useful even for high level shinobi, the Area Scanning technique. It allowed its user to flow their chakra in waves through solid surfaces.

This would allow Shiki to map out both regular terrain and entire structures while also detecting enemy combatants. While the information regarding detected individuals was not great, with experience, the user could still deduce things like build and overall skill level from it.

Temporarily moving away from new Jutsu, Shiki also made an effort to improve the basic ones he already knew like the Body Flicker and his derivative the Flicker Flash the progress was not that big but the jutsu certainly felt smoother to use even if their effectiveness did not change much.

With all the clone based training, Shiki’s mastery of the Shadow Clone Jutsu also reached a quite respectable 50% which led Shiki to learn the very efficient Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu that was contributed to Mito’s library by its creator, the Third Hokage himself.

Despite its somewhat complex nature, it was a very efficient and conceptually simple jutsu. Hard to learn but very easy to use, exactly the type of jutsu well suited for the current Shiki with his great learning ability but still low raw power, by the boy’s standards at least.

Its function was to create physical copies of through projectiles using the principles of the Shadow Clone jutsu.

 A skilled user could turn a single shuriken into a massive cloud of razor sharp steel with very little chakra spent.

But when Shiki was done learning it to a level he deemed acceptable, a surge of inspiration filled him and two new jutsu ideas illuminated his mind. One required fuinjutsu so he left it for the shadow clone to handle it later but the other was pure ninjutsu.

The boy had been regularly spending part of his time practicing the Substitution Jutsu, reaching a good 60% and felt that shadow clones were some of the best tools for it due to their ability to fool the enemy.

But using a whole shadow clone for that was just wasteful, and so, Shiki set out to develop a specialized combination that he called the Shadow Substitution Jutsu.

It allowed its user to evade an attack rapidly while leaving behind a special shadow clone that despite lacking the ability to move around, much less fight, it could take several hits and simulate the resulting injury, only dispersing after a set time limit rather than through damage.

Basically, it was a perfect fake out dummy.

Shiki spent quite a bit of time since removing all the combat ability of a clone and replacing it with the ability to take damage was not easy.

In fact, the boy deduced that to perfect the jutsu and make it truly convincing, he would require extensive medical knowledge but for now, the jutsu was 30% completed and mastered, regular opponents would not be able to tell the difference without a close examination anyway.

Beyond that, as previously mentioned Shiki created his Chakra Cutter, a blade of pure chakra formed around his hand and recreated the Rasengan, mastering both to 50% and even making a variation of the latter, the Compression Ransengan, smaller but with greater penetrative power.

The final two ninjutsu that the boy got down to a neat 30% were the Transparent Escape Jutsu, a Jiraya original created for peeping purposes, it made the user invisible and, with higher mastery, could mask scent as well.

And the other one was the Hiding in Surface Jutsu that allowed the user to meld into almost all solid surfaces and travel through them without disturbing, a great jutsu, for hiding, escaping and infiltrating.

But if Shiki had anything he was proud of the most in regard to this training period, it was his progress in fuinjutsu.

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