(11th of October, year 50 AK)
"Hey, you. You're finally awake." The tired and harsh voice of an old woman sounded nearby.
'Sigh...'
After Yuta found himself inside the Root base, he didn't linger for long and immediately time-traveled back and skipped the whole cutscene of the Root recruitment procedure.
The idea of going through the Root instead of the Ninja Academy was brief and Yuta rejected it straight away. Going through the Root is too dangerous, Yuta was worried that a dangerous situation might happen there, and he wouldn't be able to escape through the time-travel quickly enough and die.
There is also the brainwashing that Yuta was unsure if he could properly resist and pretend that he was a loyal subordinate of that scum Danzo, hence although Root may teach Yuta some valuable stuff he won't learn anywhere else, he dismissed the idea and time-traveled out of there straight away.
One awkward conversation with Chitose later, and Yuta laid back into bed.
'Root huh...' Yuta thought, 'That would be the hardcore mode difficulty, I'm not a fan of that, no thank you, as if I would ever voluntarily join Root, no, not happening, not ever!'
...
'First time I was going through my messed-up memories and appeared depressed and weak for the first two weeks, hence Root didn't take me, I guess. Now I was started to train right away, and they changed their minds about me... So, no training for me for the next two weeks.'
'Well, at least now the mystery of the bunch of kids disappearing overnight is uncovered, I guess...'
Yuta proceed with pretending to be depressed and he idled around and lay in bed for the next two weeks, finally, the day had come when Yuta found himself in the morning of the day when a bunch of kids disappeared, this time he was in the orphanage though.
There was a commotion among the remaining kids, the same way as Yuta remembered from his first time going through it.
"Where is Tsuyoshi go?" One of the kids asked confusedly looking at the empty bed, "Where is everyone?"
Yuta observed a bunch of confused kids silently.
Chitose comes and calms down the kids, lying about them being taken by the relatives again.
'What a bitch! With what I remember about the Root training from the anime, half of those kids would end up dead even before they could become Root shinobi, maybe even more than half!' Yuta thought as anger builds up in him, 'She probably sold the kids to the Root or something, I wonder how much the life of a kid is worth these days, probably not that much...'
Yuta felt bad about this, he liked Chitose a little, and now that he discovered what happened here, he couldn't look at her the same way as before.
'Whatever. All this crap is not my business and not my problem, I have my own life to worry about.' Yuta cleared his mind and dismissed the whole situation from his list of priorities.
'It is only the beginning of my new life and there is so much bullshit that is already going on. This shinobi world sucks, I'm here for so long already and I didn't even learn any cool ninjutsu yet! Two out of ten, not satisfied at all!' Yuta thought jokingly.
On this day Yuta started training again, and once again he found his body completely untrained and weak.
'This is becoming a thing, wasn't it...' He thought while breathing heavily on the ground.
"Hey, are you all right Yuta?" Manabu came to check on Yuta.
'This again...'
"I'm... I'm fine..." Yuta said through his intense breathing.
"What's got into you all of a sudden?"
"I'm training."
"Training? What for?" Manabu was a little surprised.
"For the Ninja Academy of course. I heard there would be an entry exam."
Manabu chuckled a little after hearing Yuta's reasoning, "Haha... I see. Well, good luck kid."
'Sigh... I think I'm starting to get used to it... Not sure if it is a good thing though...'
The days flew by and then months, Yuta was training each day, with rare occasional conversations with Manabu here and there.
After two months Yuta tried to ask Chitose for permission to go outside so he could resume his chakra training exercises, but got bluntly rejected.
Later on, during April, Yuta accompanied Chitose and two boys from the orphanage, Atsushi and Naoto to the academy for their entrance ceremony.
Although Yuta didn't want to go and listen to Hiruzen's two-hours-long speech again, he still wanted to be allowed to go outside and resume his Tree-Climbing and Water-Walking exercises, hence he asked Chitose to go with them, as the last time she gave him this permission was right after their trip to the academy.
Everything went the same way as before, Atsushi passed and Naoto failed. As they were on their way back to the orphanage, Yuta glanced at Naoto.
'He is so out of it like his whole life ended... To think about it, I was also looked somewhat like that after I failed the academy entrance test, but unlike Naoto, I always had a way to fix things... I didn't really feel as bad as he does, didn't I...'
'I just felt frustrated by the whole situation and later on I was angry because of how guilty and aged Manabu looked later on, all because of those bastards that decided that it was fine to target a kid that did nothing wrong, just because the said kid was taught by Manabu a little...'
'I'll totally find whoever did this and have my revenge some day.'
...
'I did promise myself that, but now that I think about it, is it even justified to punish a person for something they didn't even commit in this timeline?'
...
'Well, it is justified from my point of view, they did target me and they did harm me, it's all because of it that I have to relive all this year and a half, it's because of it Manabu was hurt, felt bad and blamed himself, even if he doesn't remember it anymore - I still remember.'
As they returned to the orphanage, Yuta asked Chitose for permission to go outside by himself and was finally allowed to do so.
Yuta's days flew by, he was training each day, and also going outside to do chakra exercises in private.
It was a boring routine with little to no entertainment, Yuta was suffering from the boredom going through it for the second time.
...
Finally a year has passed and tomorrow is the day of the Ninja Academy entrance ceremony again.
During this time Yuta returned to his physical form he had before the time-travel, even a little better than that, as he exercised with familiarity from the start this time, knowing what he is doing, as well as his chakra was much stronger due to having much stronger spiritual energy this time, and that was also played a role in improving his physical condition as well.
His spiritual energy grew significantly during this time, Yuta estimated that it's enough to time-travel fourteen days back in time now, compared to the five days he was able to time-travel when he failed the academy's entrance test, it grew almost three times over.
When Yuta was recently tried the Water-Walking, he finally felt that he should have enough chakra now to properly train with this exercise, it was still hard and he couldn't find the right balance to stand on water even a little, but at least he had enough chakra to even try to do it properly now.
The next day, Chitose led Yuta, Kenta, Kiyoshi and Saki to the academy.
Yuta glanced at the other kids.
'Those three again, did they manage to pass the test last time? I wasn't paying attention back then... This whole rinse-and-repeat thing feels more and more like a video game to me, am I losing my grip on reality? I guess time traveling wasn't a good thing for the mental health, who would've thought, huh...'
Although Yuta thought that way, he wasn't actually worried about his mental state and about losing his grip on reality that much. On the contrary, after experiencing the dangers of this world first-hand two times already, and being able to resolve the situation both times only thanks to his time-travel, he now felt that his Time Control ability, and the only application of it that he discovered so far – the time-travel, is his lifeline in this harsh new reality.
Feeling that way, Yuta unconsciously embraced his time-altering power, and everything else was secondary, hence if his mental state was in a way of properly using the time-travel, then his mental state has to adapt and get used to the side effects of the time-travel, one way or another, it's as simple as that.
Shortly after they arrived at the square in front of the Hokage Tower and the Ninja Academy, a long speech of the Hokage happened once again, it drained quite a bit of Yuta's mental energy, but at this time, as Yuta was listening to this speech for a fourth time already, he was somewhat getting used to it and it not bore him that much as before.
He just kind of phased through it and time flew by quickly, Yuta felt almost the same way he used to feel during the long bus rides in his previous life, when he kind of dozed off through the ride and an hour of travel didn't feel that long.
Afte that the kids were led to the academy and then to the training ground, the same one as Yuta remembered. The same procedure went by and the same guy, Goichi Yano, introduced himself and the test began.
When time came for the last test, the marathon, Yuta was a little nervous, he knew that there was no reason for him to being targeted this time, but still, he couldn't shake the feeling that he still would.
During his fourth lap around the training grounds, Yuta was tense and glancing through the trees on the side all the time, but, the fourth lap ended and the fifth started without any interruptions, Yuta finally felt how tension is subsiding and relaxed a little and continued with his marathon.
'You thought you could get rid of me that easily? You said there is no second chances once you got failed? And here I am, what about that, huh?' Yuta thought jokingly while finishing the marathon among the top ten percent of the students.
'Student's huh... Well, now I'm the Ninja Academy's student as well. Finally, damn it...' Yuta thought, while being a little frustrated about all the struggles he went through just to get to this point, it was unnecessarily hard, he thought.
'Did I miss the difficulty settings during the time I was choosing my Time Control ability back in the black void or something?' Yuta thought jokingly, 'Maybe I did miss that, and it was set on the hard difficulty by default...'
--- AN ---
I can't believe it's chapter 18 already... In my last fic I reached the academy by the chapter 6. Is there something wrong with the pace of the story's progression, and should I speed up things? Let me know in the comments what do you think about it.
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Currently there are 3 advanced chapters on Patreon (patreon dot com /SycoreNovels). There will be up to 20 advanced chapters in the future.
Thanks to Loalola, Hastyar_Hyper, Jayroy_63 for the power stones!