With at least one jutsu of each element under my belt at C rank it was now time for me to spend some points to learn higher ranked jutsu. Something my sensei had drilled into my head was that in most cases B rank jutsu were the bread and butter of high rank shinobi instead of A or S rank jutsu. The reason for this was that B rank jutsu were at the sweet spot where they cost a reasonable amount of chakra and were fast and strong enough to be lethal in nearly ninety percent of cases.-
A rank and S rank jutsu were for sure more powerful than B rank jutsu but also tended to take quite the amount of time to perform or took unreasonably high amounts of energy. Take a quite famous A rank jutsu in Konoha for example, the Chidori. This jutsu was created by Kakashi of the sharingan but came with serious drawbacks in that using it required extreme senses due to the speed it gave causing the user to get tunnel vision. The jutsu also required a large amount of chakra that made it a finisher or opener type technique rather than one you can spam in most cases.-
While I knew that I had the chakra to spam A rank jutsu I also knew that the best route to grow would be to master B rank jutsu first. It was like learning how to cook, a step by step type deal rather than a jump straight in and hope for the best type deal. With that in mind I chose a single jutsu from each element starting with[Demonic illusion: Tree binding death] that was a yin release genjutsu. It was a binding type Genjutsu that made the target think they were bound in a tree that grew around them that was based on Hashirama Senju’s wood release.-
Next was the earth release [Earth rampart jutsu] that creates a wide and tall wall of solid earth that can defend against powerful attacks as well as be used to trap enemies. Then i chose the fire release jutsu [Dragon flame jutsu] that created three dragons of fire that were for focused attacking rather than area of effect like fireball jutsu. A skilled user could even use the dragons to encircle a target in a violent blaze that turned them to ash.-
For lightning release I chose [Static charge jutsu] that unlike it’s harmless sounding name implied was anything but harmless. It was one of the jutsu created in the attempt to copy the Raikages lightning chakra mode jutsu and wreathed the user in powerful currents of lightning that served as a powerful defense. It was a failed copy though as it was weaker than the Raikages jutsu and beyond defense and proximity damage didn’t have any of the other effects of the Raikages jutsu. I chose this jutsu in hopes that i could figure out how to fuse it with Kibas lightning cloak ability to create a weaker but otherwise comparable version of the Raikages jutsu.-
Moving onto water release I chose [Thousand needles of death jutsu] that used the surrounding water to create thousands of water needles that fell like raindrops from all directions. My reason for taking this jutsu was pretty clear as this was the sort of jutsu that played really well with my poison technique as I believed that if I could use poisoned water it may even be elevated to A rank. Finally I took [wind sickle jutsu] for my wind release option as it was a direct upgrade to my hawks wind blades that also utilized chakra flow to make it very sharp.-
This was chosen so that I could hopefully figure out how to use chakra flow with the rest of the elements as well. Unfortunately there were no yang release jutsu publicly available so I was stuck with the good old medical ninjutsu for that category. I suppose I could attempt to create my own but that would probably take me quite some time and thus was a future project. For now though I began to work on mastering these new jutsu and I have to say that the difficulty spiked from C to B rank.-
I only needed a week or two for C rank jutsu but B rank were a whole other game as the handsigns went from about a dozen or slightly less to four or five dozen due to the complexity of the jutsus. I could move my hands fast but signing out so many signs took even me nearly thirty seconds which in a fight was way too long. Most jutsu were used in a matter of two or three seconds or less so thirty seconds was enough time for an enemy to crank out dozens of jutsu.-
Thankfully the learning process for shortening the amount of handsigns needed was the same as the previous rank in that I just needed to manually mold my chakra rather than rely on handsigns to do it for me. I fond that I could easily lower the amount of needed handsigns from forty or fifty to twenty but after that it took longer to lower it. It was simply because of how damned complex the molding was that I needed to take it step by step to remove each additional hand sign by manually molding my chakra.-
It took me a month and a half to remove all the handsigns from the first of my chosen jutsu. At this time it was finally time for my previous class to graduate from the academy. This was something Naruto was super excited about and he kept bugging me to try and figure out who his jonin sensei was going to be. This was despite me telling him that there was no way a Chunin like me was going to know something like that.-
When the day came around for the tests for graduating to start I chose to wait for the news with Teuchi at Ichiraku.
“Think he’ll score high?” the man asked casually.
“He better after all the help I gave him to get to this point. I love the guy but he has the attention span of a housecat when he’s bored.” I said with a helpless sigh.
“HAHAHA! Yeah that sounds like Naruto alright. Any plans on what you’ll be doing with him after he graduates?” he asked after laughing.
I shrugged “Depends on who his sensei is to be honest. Some Jonin are more hands off than others from what I know and depending on what he ends up with I will either personally teach him some stuff or just leave it to his sensei.” I said honestly.
The man nodded “Seems like a solid enough plan. I wasn’t a ninja myself though so I can’t really say much to help I’m afraid.” he said sadly like he was sorry for not being more help.
“Hey you are one of the only people in the village who didn’t treat Naruto like dirt for some inexplicable reason so I won’t have any of that self depreciating talk out of you, not about this you hear me?” I said firmly and the man nodded with a smile.
“You really are something else Kenzo.” he said softly.
I shrugged “I’m just me, nothing more and nothing less.” I said with a grin.