Just like the school bullying he'd seen in Japan in his previous life, the Naruto world, as a Japanese anime-style setting, had the same problem, and it was severe.
Even in his previous life, people with elite backgrounds could be bullied, and the Naruto world was no different.
If someone was eccentric, socially withdrawn, good-looking, or had great grades, as long as they did not fit in, they were likely to be targeted by classmates and upperclassmen.
And the civilians of Konoha did not care about your status at all.
Whether you were a commoner or from a ninja clan, they would bully you all the same.
Kushina, who was meant to become the Nine-Tails jinchuriki, protected by Mito and Tsunade, and closely watched by the Third Hokage and the ANBU, still faced bullying at school.
Hinata, the eldest daughter of the Hyuga main house, in a future where the Uchiha were gone and the Hyuga had effectively become the top clan in Konoha and the ninja world, also faced bullying at school.
And in both cases, their families, their backers, and the academy did not intervene.
Likewise, when others were bullied, their families and the academy did not step in either.
They even tolerated it, and sometimes encouraged it.
In a war era where even academy students could be sent to the battlefield if manpower ran short, it was better to be bullied into quitting and go home to live as an ordinary person than to die at an enemy's hands.
If you did not have the courage to resist, how would you ever face bloodshed and assassination later?
What was the point of a coward becoming a ninja?
Yami understood this less than a week after enrolling. So he deliberately built a cold persona, provoked conflict with upperclassmen, and used his mature mindset and the ninja basics he had learned early to beat down a sixth-year student. From that battle onward, he became famous.
In the eyes of the teachers, and certain other people, Yami was already a civilian genius.
With parents who were jōnin, and martyrs at that, his future looked bright.
His only flaw was that he did not fit in.
They believed it was probably the trauma of losing both parents in childhood.
If that knot could be untied, then he would likely become a main pillar of the village someday.
To untie Yami's knot, a trigger was needed.
So would that trigger be a person, or an event?
…
When he entered the classroom, Yami sat at the second desk from the back row.
The academy desks were designed for three students.
But Yami sat alone.
Not because he had driven his seatmates away, but because even after the entrance exam, the academy had an observation period.
During that period, if a student still could not refine chakra, it meant that while their physical and spiritual energy might meet the baseline, they lacked the qualities needed to be a ninja, and they would be advised to withdraw.
Every first-year class had cases like that.
Class One had already lost three students, including Yami's two seatmates.
When Yami walked in, the previously noisy classroom quieted immediately.
At the very least, the students around Yami did not dare speak loudly. They only whispered.
The students in the row in front of him kept their heads down and did not even dare talk.
Only the girls who liked Yami's face and strength continued to secretly glance at him, yet they still did not dare approach.
That was a good thing. At least no one came to annoy him.
Yami rested his chin on one hand and spun a pencil with the other. On the surface, it looked like he was killing time, but in truth he had already fallen into his usual habit of thinking.
After awakening his space-time ability, Yami had not updated his strategy guide again, and he rarely went into the basement.
With power that was not inferior to the highest bloodline abilities, he no longer needed to follow the original plan and turn himself into some stitched-together monster.
So most of the strategies meant purely for gaining power had already been discarded by Yami.
But some parts of the plan remained.
One of them was right at the beginning.
Snatch Kushina first.
In the original story, Minato's rise was not just talent. It also depended on two major benefactors.
One was Jiraiya, who brought him connections and the Flying Thunder God Technique.
The other was Kushina, who brought him Tsunade's support and Uzumaki sealing techniques.
With help from those two, Minato was effectively recognized by two of the Sannin and the Hokage. Later, once Kushina could use the Nine-Tails chakra, he would have Konoha's strongest as a backing so solid that even Danzo could not do anything to him.
Just like how some people in Yami's previous life shot up the moment they married the right person.
As long as he could take Kushina first, Yami, as a transmigrator, was confident he could soar as well.
If his talent were not good enough, if his background were weak, or if he were not in the same class and same year as Minato, Yami would not dare think like this.
But once he discovered he was in Minato's class, he understood.
This was a chance to defy fate.
That was why he gave up the idea of befriending peers or becoming close friends with clan kids, and instead crafted the persona of a lone, unapproachable genius.
Only bonds could heal his inner knot.
Kushina, whose clan had just been wiped out, was the same kind of person as him. They were each other's medicine.
With that setup, Yami believed Hiruzen and Mito behind him would not stop Yami from getting close to Kushina.
Unless Minato was Hiruzen's actual son, and Kushina had been sent as a gift to please that son.
If that were the case, then fine. Yami would accept it.
Otherwise, Kushina was his. He was taking her first.
Yami's weaknesses right now were obvious: chakra control, and the amount of space-time chakra.
As a transmigrator, he had long since mastered tree climbing and water walking with his feet. His chakra control was already strong. Even newly graduated genin were not as good as him.
But even that level of chakra control still could not let him use space-time chakra to perform techniques.
If space-time chakra could manifest outside the body, then it could definitely be used to perform techniques. It was simply extremely difficult.
So how could he raise his chakra control further?
Yami had several methods.
First, the Rasengan.
This A-rank technique developed by Minato required no hand seals. It was not only the peak of shape transformation, but also advanced chakra control.
It was also the only technique in the original story with a fully revealed training method. Yami remembered it vividly. The moment his hands and feet could move, he wrote the method down.
If not for his chakra capacity and control still being insufficient, he would have started training already.
Second, medical ninjutsu.
If he could master the Chakra Scalpel, his chakra control would grow even stronger, and his hands might even become black blades as well.
Third, sealing techniques.
This was the highest level of chakra control. Like space-time abilities, its lower bound and upper bound were both absurdly high.
Sealing techniques did not play fair. Even the Ancestor of Chakra fell to seals.
Yami was very curious whether the Strength of a Hundred Seal could solve the problem of his space-time chakra amount being locked.
If it could, then Yami would gain another life-saving trump card.
That thought appeared the instant he discovered the bottleneck inside his body.
And because of that, Yami became even more determined to snatch Kushina first.
(End of Chapter)
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