Chapter 16: Konoha Skynet Project
"Was that... a compliment?"
Tsuruma Nobuyuki smiled. He enjoyed being praised.
He glanced around at the other second-year students and noticed that, after Utada Hayabusa's words, the way they looked at him had changed slightly.
The faint hostility that had lingered when he first arrived had disappeared. Instead, their gazes carried a mix of envy and admiration.
Of course, Hyūga Neji—his face still bruised—was an exception.
As they returned to their seats, Neji shot Nobuyuki a sharp look.
"Next week, we fight again!"
Nobuyuki turned his head, smiled, and responded softly, "Gladly."
With that, neither of them spoke for the rest of the lesson.
Planning the Next Step
After school, as he walked home, Nobuyuki carefully analyzed Neji's challenge.
"In pure taijutsu, the Gentle Fist still holds a clear advantage. Even though I won today, it took too much effort—it's not sustainable. I need to develop mid-to-long-range attacks to handle opponents who are tough in close combat."
He sighed. The real problem was that he didn't have access to the right jutsu.
"Iruka-sensei already taught me a basic sealing technique—One Thread Light Formation. Asking for more jutsu from him would seem greedy, and honestly, I doubt he knows many advanced ones anyway."
"My best bet is to gain the attention of the Third Hokage, the 'Professor.' If I can make him take notice, maybe he'll pass down some techniques."
For now, though, his only option was to rely on ninja tools.
Even as he mapped out a plan, Nobuyuki felt a nagging sense of frustration.
He hated this feeling—having to wait, relying on factors outside his control.
"Patience. Stay patient."
He muttered the words to himself, calming his mind. His experiences from his past life had taught him one crucial lesson—impatience destroys opportunities before they even appear.
He slowly extracted his chakra and performed the One Thread Light Formation again. Watching his skill level rise bit by bit in his mind, his agitation faded.
After repeating the process three times, exhaustion crept into his body. Yet, sleep refused to come.
So, after pacing around his yard for a while, he turned towards the small mushroom cultivation house behind his home.
A Discovery in the Mushroom House
Inside the room, he instinctively formed hand seals, focused his mind, and entered a state of chakra perception.
Immediately, his world shifted into a grayscale void, except for the delicate hyphae infused with his chakra, glowing with a faint aura.
Since his battle with Neji, his perception had improved greatly inside this mushroom house.
"Strange… even my experience points in chakra perception grow faster here."
In this chakra-vision, the hyphae appeared like a vast, interconnected network, extending through the cultivation medium, greedily absorbing water and nutrients.
However, something unusual caught his attention.
"Huh?"
Among the mass of growing hyphae, one strand was behaving differently.
Instead of stretching toward the culture medium, this particular hypha had broken through the soil and spread underground.
It was faint—barely noticeable in chakra perception—but it was definitely there.
"What the hell? A fungal jailbreak?"
Nobuyuki chuckled at the thought.
Curious, he followed the path of this rogue hypha.
It didn't take long to realize that it had connected with an underground mycorrhizal network—a natural fungal system that exchanged nutrients between plants.
This single strand acted as a middleman, exchanging the chakra-infused nutrients from Nobuyuki's mushrooms with those collected by the underground network.
Tracing it back, he found the source—a mushroom larger than the rest.
His expression turned strange.
"Even mushrooms know how to manipulate others to make life easier for themselves?"
He wasn't particularly interested in the power dynamics of fungal colonies, but just as he was about to stop analyzing, inspiration struck.
"Wait… what if I extend my chakra through this middleman hypha and into the underground network? Could I expand my chakra perception throughout Konoha?"
His heart pounded with excitement.
If this plan worked, he would have his own information network—his own Konoha Skynet.
At that point, who would dare underestimate him?
And once he had access to real intelligence, wouldn't he be able to acquire the jutsu he needed?
Nobuyuki wasted no time.
He placed his hand near the middleman hypha and attempted to channel chakra into it.
A Harsh Reality Check
But reality hit him hard.
The fungal strands could absorb chakra, but only in small amounts. Most of it dissipated into the air before they could take it in.
Even the little they absorbed was hoarded by the middleman hypha, which slowly distributed it at its own pace, completely ignoring Nobuyuki's grand ambitions.
He sighed.
"My chakra control isn't good enough. If I had techniques like chakra threads or medical ninjutsu for cellular-level infusion, this would work much better."
"And even if I succeed, I can't exactly command fungi. They aren't like Akamaru—they don't understand orders."
Still, Nobuyuki wasn't discouraged.
If his chakra control was lacking, he would train it.
If the hyphae wouldn't follow orders, he would experiment and cultivate a responsive strain.
Because if he did manage to build a Konoha-wide surveillance network, he would have a true advantage in this world.
More importantly, it would be his first true secret technique.
And there was one more thing—
"Going slow isn't necessarily a bad thing. It gives me time to master sealing techniques and improve the concealment of my network."
Because if he rushed things—
And the Anbu discovered his Skynet too soon…
That would be bad.
But if **