As the sun sank in the west, Senju Hashirama, reluctant to leave, looked pitifully at Lady Mito, hoping she would take back her order. In the end, he suffered the fate of being gently dragged away by Lady Mito.
Sarutobi Hiruzen shivered under a single glance from Lady Mito, then prudently stood up and took his leave, not daring to cast a single glance at his beloved Lily the entire time.
*Click.*
As the door closed, the ward plunged into darkness once again.
Artoria rubbed her temples with a slight headache, pulled herself up to stack two pillows together, and finally lay down with an expression of utter comfort.
"System-ge, how can we exchange for my Red Dragon Reactor?"
"The host merely needs to strive to enhance your strength, and you will be able to exchange for it sooner or later."
Enhance strength to exchange—it seemed this was one of those quests where you had to raise your strength to unlock the next task.
At this thought, Arthur felt somewhat disappointed and dejected, exiting the conversation with System-ge and returning to reality.
......
Time flew, and in the blink of an eye, Arthur was discharged from the hospital. Truth be told, it wasn't really a big deal to begin with; honestly, there hadn't even been any need to send him to the hospital in the first place—just lying down somewhere for a few hours probably would have done the trick.
He hadn't told anyone about his discharge, so no one came to pick him up. Besides, it wasn't anything serious anyway; having people come to escort him would have triggered his social anxiety.
He planned to check on his two shops. He had left in such a rush this morning that he had forgotten to put up a closed sign on the doors, and he had no idea how his two little shops were holding up right now.
Since his home was set up inside the sushi restaurant, Arthur headed to Arthur Casino first, figuring that after inspecting the sushi restaurant he could go straight into today's training.
With that, Arthur happily pushed open the door, only to find a middle-haired, black-haired middle-aged man with a scroll strapped to his back, joyfully gathered together with a dozen regular patrons, shouting at the top of his lungs:
"Big, big, big! I'm betting big this round!"
"Yosh! Did you all hear that? Lord Hashirama is betting small! I believe in Lord Hashirama, I'm betting small too!"
"Damn Shuiyu! Lord Hashirama clearly bet big! I'm betting small too!"
Arthur: "......"
Wasn't he just acting all reluctant to part with me back at the hospital? Is this how reluctant you are?!
"Oh! It's Lily! How did you know I was here? Are you here to look for me? Wait for me to finish this round, I'll definitely win my money back this time."
"......"
No, I didn't know you were here, I am not here to look for you, and I certainly don't think you're going to win this round...
"Teacher Hashirama..."
"Ah... wait, wait, wait," Hashirama said nervously, staring at the dice cup being held and shaken relentlessly by a burly man.
"Teacher Hashirama..."
"Hai-hai, hold on a second, this round I'm definitely..."
Before Hashirama could finish, the burly man stopped moving. As the cup was lifted, the numbers on the three dice were revealed.
Three, one, four—a total of eight points. Small.
"Ah! What? Lily, you're saying Tobirama is looking for me? It's about the Ninja Academy? There's no time to lose, let's go!"
Hashirama looked at Arthur with an expression of righteous obligation, even resting a hand on the latter's shoulder for fear that he might run away.
Arthur looked at Hashirama with a stiff expression. "......"
Why on earth did I ever agree to become this guy's disciple? I want to die...
"Is Lord Hashirama trying to run away again?!"
"Are you going to *Nigerundayo* again?! That's so despicable, Lord Hashirama!"
"Lord Hashirama, you're going to teach Lily bad habits."
"Ha... hahaha, how could that be? When have I ever run away... hahahahaha." Hashirama scratched his head awkwardly. Seeing that escape was impossible, he had no choice but to leave his money behind, grab Arthur, and vanish from the spot using Body Flicker.
......
The Valley of the End—or rather, what would eventually become the Valley of the End.
For now, it was still a scenic spot blessed by geomancy, quite suitable for cultivation.
Arthur and Hashirama had just flickered straight to this location.
"Where is this...?"
Arthur looked around, seeing nothing particularly special. Was he finally going to instruct his humble self, then?
"This is a place I really like. Whenever I'm bored, I come here to walk around," Hashirama grinned, casually setting down the scroll from his back and placing it in front of Arthur.
"What's this?"
"Open it and see for yourself. Tobirama asked me to give it to you."
Arthur opened the scroll. Inside were various ninjutsu techniques. At a glance, there were several hundred of them, ranging from the lowest-level Three Body Techniques to some common A-rank ninjutsu.
Just as he wanted to examine them closely and begin learning ninjutsu, a large hand thrust a piece of paper toward him.
Before Arthur could ask, he heard Hashirama say:
"This is chakra test paper. It can test your chakra nature. Using ninjutsu that matches your attribute will yield twice the result with half the effort, but if you use skills with a mismatched attribute, it will consume about twice as much chakra."
Arthur nodded gently, putting on a look of sudden realization. He already knew all of this, but Hashirama obviously didn't know that he knew. Unless necessary, he still had to put on an act to give this middle-aged man a shred of self-esteem—after all, he was teaching quite earnestly.
As Arthur was thinking, his hands weren't idle; one of his hands had already channeled chakra into the test paper.
*Crack.*
The test paper split right down the middle into two halves.
"Wind nature. Not a bad attribute at all," Hashirama chuckled, rubbing Arthur's head.
Actually, Arthur believed that no matter what attribute he had, this teacher would have said the same thing.
"Come on, start training! The evaluation is in two more days. Oh, if there's anything you don't understand, remember to ask me." Hashirama walked off to the side.
Arthur nodded gently. He looked at the scroll, his mind already set on a target.
First was the Shadow Clone Technique. Mastering this would make future training twice as effective with half the effort. It was an absolute artifact for farming experience, highly rated—a must-have!
Next came the shape transformation and nature transformation of the wind attribute—to roughly describe it, something like Asuma's style. If his talent was good enough, he might even be able to push it further.
"Shadow Clone Technique!"
*Ding... Shadow Clone proficiency +1.*
"Shadow Clone Technique!"
"Ding..."
After an entire night of work—even wearing Hashirama out and sending him off—the Shadow Clone Technique finally reached level two.
The main reason was that the first level took nearly four hours, but after that, it became simple. Using clones to level up, it only took two hours to advance a level.
His current stats had changed to:
"Name: Artoria
Age: 5
Ninjutsu: E+ (207/500)
Taijutsu: D+ (496/5000)
Genjutsu: E+ (278/500)
Chakra: D (55/1000)
Noble Phantasm: Invisible Air Level 2 (C) (462/500)
Ninjutsu: Shadow Clone Technique Level 2 (205/500)
Shop Coins: 5500
Evaluation: Chunin"
With the Shadow Clone Technique, farming stats would only get faster and faster from now on.