"Mhmm..." Contemplating how best to proceed, Takezushi mindlessly took grain after grain of rice and planted them uniformly in the rice paddy as he was lost in his thoughts. 'Let's see, I have access to chakra. Albeit a pitiful amount, it should be enough to perform better than most other kids my age. Yet that isn't really what I should be thinking about, is it? Rather, how best should I use this pitiful amount of chakra in my body?'

Taking a short stop as he looked at his hands, Takezushi thought, 'Should I cultivate Yang to make the most with my vitality and physical strength? Or would it be better to pick up Earth or Water Release to make the task of tending to the fields easier…' Takezushi squinted his eyes in deep thought if only for a moment before he chose the former over the latter.

'Improving physical strength and endurance should be my top priority… If not for the fact that it will make all aspects of this shitty slave work evidently easier, then because it will make surviving this rough start infinitely easier.' Shaking his head, Takezushi returned to his life as a junior rice farmer as he picked up the pace and planted dozens for rice grains every minute.

Opting to cultivate his abilities with Yang Release, Takezushi's body would fill with vitality every couple minutes. But because of his god-awful control over chakra, most of it went to waste and only alleviated a small amount of fatigue. Though for this point in time — literally less than one day into training — anything was better than what he would have received as a quirkless person.

In this manner, over ten hours passed with Takezushi mindlessly planting rice as he cultivated his physical strength with manual labor as well as his proficiency in the aspect of Yang Release. As the evening was coming to a close, Takezushi was still in the field with a little over half of the twelfth basket of grain when his mother returned from managing the other plots of land.

Only after she called for him did Takezushi stop. Looking over the plot of land her three-year-old son had planted in just a measly ten hours, Aiko stuttered as she asked, "Z-zushi… H-how many baskets of grain have you planted thus far…"

Heavily fatigued after the day's long effort, Takezushi despondently responded, "A little over twelve."

It was like she had seen a ghost as she dragged her son back to the logistics shed that held all the tools and crops they would use on the field and anxiously confirmed that he was telling the truth. 'How is that even possible! Taichiro could at most fill in a quarter of an acre a day and little Zushi has filled in over a tenth of an acre? That's insane!' It was unfathomable to her how her son, who was just barely old enough to not be considered a toddler, could manage to do 40% of a grown adults' work.

Looking back at her son, the featureless pupils of his eyes brought her to think, 'Could it be the effect of his quirk?' Taking a knee, Aiko looked right at Takezushi and asked, "Son… I never did ask how you knew you have a 'super-strong' quirk."

"My quirk?" Takezushi said as he brought his hand to his chin, continuing, "All I know was that last night I woke up in the middle of the night with a bunch of information stuffed in my head. It must be information about my quirk as I saw my own eyes change with all sorts of cool powers appearing every time my eyes changed shape or color!"

"So… you're saying that with these new featureless eyes you already have access to one of those 'cool' powers?"

Sighing, Takezushi responded, "Sadly, no. In my dream, I was clearly grown up like dad, with my body and quirk much more grown-up. I don't think I'll have access to my quirk's superpowers until I grow a bit older." This was the best half-truth he could accept telling his mother as it was both vague enough to keep her curiosity at bay and informative enough to let her know he wouldn't become powerful overnight.

"But your featureless eyes… What power do those hold?" Taking from what Takezushi said, Aiko deduced that he should have access to at least one of his quirks powers, considering the fact that his eyes had already changed.

"Mhmm… I wasn't able to see much about the other eyes' powers, but in my dream, I remember that with these featureless eyes, my eyesight will become better as they mature. I still don't know how to activate the eyes, but with time, I'll be able to increase how much I see. Both in distance and direction..." Takezushi knew a better way to describe his Byakugan's power with the words "range" and "field of view," but the nagging soul of the transmigrator egged him to tone down his vocabulary, lest his mother think there was something odd.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Oh, ok..." Just like that, Aiko dismissed the conversation after telling her son that she would go out of their land to get their rations for the day. She left Takezushi in their wooden cabin by himself and returned about an hour later with a small bag of food.

Upon entering the wooden cabin and getting Takezushi to sit next to her, Aiko gave him his part of their daily rations and quietly ate off to the side. Comparing the rations he received with yesterday's ration, Takezushi couldn't help but ask, "This… is more than usual, right?" On his plate, there were three pieces of bread, a cup of rice, and a soggy piece of boiled chicken — the dregs of yesterday's meal for some of the other, higher-performing, slaves.

"Yes… Even with your father's, passing… Our combined work was more than enough to feed both of us; at least for once a day..." They still weren't performing enough to be fed several times a day, but that was to be expected from their "quirkless" heritage. Of course, now that Takezushi would effectively be growing stronger by the day, their path in life of perpetual misery would slowly shift for the better.

Savoring their petty meal, as the evening was coming to a close, Aiko closed off the door of the wooden cabin and took to her side of the small house to find a bit of reprise in her sleep. There wasn't anything else for her to do aside from continuing her work on the field for tomorrow's payout, but the same couldn't be said for Takezushi.

The three-year-old Takjezushi even after a day of hard labor still had the mind to practice molding chakra. He would have preferred starting chakra control training to sustain the bit of Yang Release he had practiced throughout the day for longer to work harder, but with his still-abysmal reserves of chakra, it was best that he kept meditating if only for the next couple days or weeks until his reserves of spiritual energy caught up to the levels of his physical energy.

Thus, Takezushi's life as stabilized into planting rice during the morning all the way through to the evening, while cultivating spiritual energy after his work until he collapsed from exhaustion. It was a miserable existence for any child his age to live through, but for every moment of hardship, he was one moment closer to being strong enough to escape his current circumstances.

The first week of this perpetual training cycle was the worst he experienced as his malnourished body could be described as tortured from the training he inflicted on it. But with his increasing reserves of chakra and control of Yang Release, the amount of work he finished every day slowly increased; if only by an additional percent of an acre planted.

After the first week, his body had almost accepted being constantly sore from all the grueling work he did during the day and by his third week, he had completed the large plot for cultivating rice. With his strength growing at a visible pace, Aiko became both proud and saddened to see Takezushi working so hard; blaming herself for selfishly have a child only to have to work for her sake…

She taught Takezushi to tend to some other plots of land with different crops and for a whole half a year, Takezushi's strength with regards to farm work visibly improved. When he got to the point of being able to provide three meals a day for both himself and his mother of decent quality, he stopped inefficiently training himself with mere farm work and only kept at it to provide sustenance for his family.

Yes… as a mere four-year-old, Takezushi trained up a physical body strong enough to rival two fully grown and well-nourished adults who were proficient in farm work; and that was only the front he kept up for his "masters." He obviously couldn't have reached this level had it not being for the methods his quirk bestowed onto him nor could his feeble four-year-old personality had been able to suffer through the months of anguish without the help of the transmigrator.

Moreover, it was only because he focused on Yang Release and the aspect of his physical body that he had grown so physically strong. It was only time for things to get truly insane after a year of perpetual training. By then, he had amassed enough Chakra and Control to perform the first broken ability his quirk had bestowed onto him…

[Status

Name: Takezushi Sakuraboshi

Quirk: Otsutsuki Progenitor

Strength: Awful (Comparable to the combined strength of five quirkless adults)

Agility: Awful (Comparable to a sprinting cyclist)

Chakra: Mediocre (About the same as the average five-year-old from the Ninja World)

Control: Mediocre (About the same as the average five-year-old from the Ninja World)

Yang Shape Transformation: Partial Achievement (Able to learn and partially alter lower-level Genin Yang Ninjutsu)

Yang Nature Transformation: Pending (Yet to be started)]

Looking at his status, it may seem like Takezushi would continue practicing Yang Release and begin cultivation of Genin Level Yang Release Techniques, but in reality, the totality of his focus was intent on practicing a Non-Elemental Jutsu; the most broken Non-Elemental Ninjutsu within his memories, the Shadow Clone Jutsu…

With his current reserves he could only safely split him chakra into thirds to create three "shadow clones," but that was only a best-case scenario that would require a much better level of Control. What Takezushi hoped for was only to create a single shadow clone and successfully split his chakra reserves in half. With the borderline-broken shadow clone, his training would speed up exponentially; literally…

Thanks to the shadow clones' nature of returning their experiences to the original ninja, Takezushi could speed up the training of all aspects of ninjahood aside from taijutsu. Yet that apparent flaw could be negated by having his true body practice taijutsu as his "army" of clones practiced chakra control and methods. Just the thought of it left him gleaming for the bright future that lay ahead…