Game of Shadows by Adrian King1

CHAPTER 8

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto nor The Gamer. I own nothing, really.

Chapter 8

Two days after my chat with Iruka-sensei, I added Senbon to my Shurikenjutsu practice. It didn't go too well, but it wasn't horrible, probably due to the level of the skill. That didn't make throwing them any less uncomfortable. They were completely different to kunai and shuriken, which were the things I was used to. So, the first couple of classes the skill didn't really go up at all. Once I got the gist of it though, it skyrocketed to this:

[Shurikenjutsu

Shuriken Throwing – Lvl 12

Increases accuracy against a stationary target with a shuriken by 100%.

Increases accuracy against a moving target with a shuriken by 20%.

Kunai Throwing – Lvl 12

Increases accuracy against a stationary target with a kunai by 100%.

Increases accuracy against a moving target with a kunai by 20%.

Senbon Throwing – Lvl 7

Increases accuracy against a stationary target with a senbon by 70%.]

It leveled a lot faster than its counterparts had, which surprised me quite a bit at first. It didn't take me long to formulate a decent theory about the reason though. My best guess was that its fast development was due to a combination of my improved Dexterity stat and me already having a decent accuracy with other Shurikenjutsu weapons.

Sadly, as showed, the other skills didn't go up much or at all. I guessed they would stay the same until we started practicing with moving targets, which Iruka had confirmed would happen after the first half of the academic year. That meant those skills would stay the same for a month and a half. It didn't bother me too much, I had enough skills to deal with as it was.

An interesting development was that there were a couple of people that followed me into taking Senbon too. Those were, Sasuke, Ino and much to the surprise of everybody, Shikamaru. Everybody but me, that is. After our little chat while playing Shogi, my Nara friend had started training more. He wasn't a hard worker by any means, we wouldn't get rid of his lazy nature anytime soon, it seemed. But he did start joining our spars more often. He had also started working a lot on his Shurikenjutsu, a lot for someone like him at least. I was just happy he was taking his training more seriously.

His newfound motivation didn't go unnoticed by our other friends for long. The reactions had been varied but ultimately, all of them had ended confused. Confused by his explanation that is. 'I'll train for the sake of my unremarkable life' he had said. Nobody besides me got his meaning but they stopped asking after a while.

However, it did have one more consequence, and that was that it motivated everyone to train harder. Naruto and Chouji started to spar almost all the time while we stayed in any of the two clan compounds. Shino even started hanging out with us more and he joined Shikamaru and me in our extra Shurikenjutsu training.

One more change to my everyday routine was the addition Free Running. Once I took a look at it, it had instantly replaced Running as favorite skill.