On his way back home yesterday, Yuta bought some groceries for his four days he will be staying in the village before the next mission. Today Yuta woke up early and currently thinking about his training routine for the time being, as he will no longer be trained by Koichi every day.

‘Well, entering time-loop is not convenient for the time being, so I will leave it for later. Doing physical training all the time as I did before is not efficient now, as I have to practice nature transformation, and Koichi will not approve it either if I will only do physical training.

If I want to continue to improve my physical body with training at a good rate, I have to spend at least four hours with intense physical training, it will be not as good as all-day training, but it should grant me 75-80% of the benefits of all-day training, so it’s not that bad either. If I don’t want to be forced to return to this point in time later on just to re-do my physical training – four hours a day physical training is a bare minimum, so I will do just that.

Fuinjutsu study and practice I can left for the shadow clone during the night time, it will not progress very fast, but I can improve in Fuinjutsu with that gradually, that will do for now, and later on I can focus on it more in the time-loop.

For practicing sensory technique, I can use it more during the missions, as I did on the last mission, I used it a lot during those four days, that much will do for now.

So, my training routine for the time being will be four hours of physical training, two hours of Genjutsu training as I have to continue to improve in it, and the rest of the time is for the nature transformation training for the fire nature as my main affinity. I should also practice the Fireball jutsu and try to master it and increase the fireball speed, so maybe I could actually hit the enemy one day with my Fire release, I will aim to make small and fast projectiles with it.

I also have a few interesting idea for jutsus, but that have to wait for the next time-loop, as I don’t have time for it now.’

After deciding about his new training routine Yuta went to meet with Koichi. Making his way to the team-two reserved training grounds Yuta found Koichi and after a brief greetings he received a couple of scrolls on advanced Fuinjutsu theory.

After that Yuta started his training. Nothing much happened during this four days and time has come to go on the next mission.

On the fifth day in the morning team-two gathered at the training grounds and went for the mission. They arrived at the Hokage Tower and went for the reception of the mission hall at the first floor where Koichi searched through the available missions and picked the mission for the team, it was escorting mission.

After that they went out and go in the direction of the village gates, on the way Koichi spoke.

“Our employer is a traveling merchant Akira Takahashi with his group, we will be escorting them to the Land of Tea, all the way to the Degarashi port. It will be quite long trip as we will be moving with the merchants.”

“Are there no better missions?” Hikari asked annoyedly, she is not happy after hearing their mission description at all, “Like bandit extermination or something, where we don’t have to waste so much time, by the way how long it will take?”

“Around ten days to get there and two days to get back” Koichi said coldly, “It will be up to two weeks-long mission. And you should be ready to accept any mission, and not just the kind that you prefer. For the time being we will be taking all kinds of missions so you can become accustomed to all of them.”

“Sigh, fine…” Hikari replied dejectedly.

Team arrived at the meeting spot close to the village gates and found a group of dozen of merchants and confronted them. Akira, the head merchant, is a middle age man with a black beard and mustache, after hearing Koichi’s introduction of the team exclaimed angrily, “What is this all about?! I paid for a shinobi and received a bunch of kids instead?!”

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“All three of them is skilled Genins” Koichi said calmly with ‘I-don’t-give-a-sh*t look’, “And I’m a Jonin and I also will be there”

After Akira glared angrily at Koichi for some time he sighed and said, “Fine, it seems there is no way around it, just do your job well and protect us…”

With that 10 merchants and 4 shinobi went out of the village in the direction of the Lant of Tea.

The journey went surprisingly boring without any accidents, attacks or anything like that, the group went by the road and visited a few small towns on the way, on the 9th day they crossed the border with the Land of Tea and on the 12th day they arrived at the Degarashi port at evening.

After escorting the merchants to the entrance of the town team got their confirmation paper from Akira and went in the Konoha’s direction without entering the town.

‘Finally, what a huge waste of time, if not for me using sensory technique all the way it would be completely useless… At least we had a lot of time while traveling so slow and able to cook normal food and not just stay on ration bars all the way…’ Yuta thought while going at full speed with his team back to the Konoha.

During the way back nothing happened either, the team successfully arrived at the Konoha gates on the 14th day late at night.

“You can go rest now” Koichi said after they entered the village, “I will submit the mission report tomorrow, you can collect your payment after that.”

On the way home Yuta thought, ‘Damn, what a boring mission, I guess last time we were just lucky to stumble upon rogue shinobi… Or maybe Koichi intended everything to be like that, he accepted first mission expecting the tough fight for us, and after that he intentionally accepted a long and boring mission to teach us a lesson or something…’

The next day Yuta came at the team-two training grounds, met Koichi and collected the payment that amounted to 5k ryo, as mission total value was 45k.

With that the routine of Yuta being a Genin shinobi continued, he was training while staying in the village, with occasionally going to some restaurants with his teammates once or twice a week, team-two taking C-rank missions 3-4 times a month, depending on the missions duration.

It was as Koichi said before - all kinds of missions, like wild beast exterminations, escorts, bandit exterminations and stuff like that, but there were not many chances to fight, as killing occasional bandits and wild beasts, even big ones, is just too easy and Yuta can’t consider it ‘fighting’. For the next two months everything went just like that, without any additional confrontation with any shinobi.

During this time Yuta had to kill around a dozen bandits and at this point he is no longer have any problem with that, now killing for Yuta is just a routine, and that was normal considering that most of the time he spend with his team and killing was normal for all of them from the start, and Yuta adopted their attitude towards it fast.

After returning from a long mission one time, on the way to Hokage Tower team heard a rumor about Chunins exams that were held not long time ago.

Hearing that Hikari asked annoyed, “Sensei, there was Chunin exams? Why were we not participated in it?”

“It’s being only four months since you graduated” Koichi replied, “I admit that you are skilled enough, all three of you, but you are too young, only Itachi is already 8, and you Hikari and Yuta are still 7. If I would submit you for the Chunin exams now, it would attract a lot of criticism. And you still have to gain more experience as a shinobi, so I have decided to apply you for the next Chunin exams, skipping this one.”

“Okay then, when it will be?” Hikari asked dejectedly.

“In the six months’ time” Koichi said.

‘Hmm, so six months before the Chunin exams then, if there would be no problem, I should become Chunin at eight and a half years old, that is quite astonishing career for a shinobi considering that normally Genins graduate from the academy at the age of 12. To think more about the exams, I always had a question about it, and it’s a good time to ask about it now.’

“Sensei” Yuta said curiously, “The Chunin exams held twice a year, right? And I heard that there is only a dozen or even less than that participants, who are promoted during it each time, but there is a lot of Chunins in the village, is there other ways to be promoted to the rank of a Chunin?”

“Of course there is” Koichi replied, “In the Chunin exams usually participating only skilled Genins of the young age, this is to show the strength and potential of the village to everyone. To be promoted this way is very beneficial for your future shinobi career, and it will be easier for you to be promoted to the rank of Jonin later on.

But you also can be promoted the normal way directly by the Hokage after working as a Genin for three-five years and having a good mission record. And you also can be promoted during the war period, as during the war all that is important is your skills on the battlefield.”

‘So that how it is then.’ Yuta thought.