Alone in her room, reading about city building, Sakura can't help but sit around contemplating the world around her. Others had to do this right on the first try without a manual, or places like the villages wouldn't exist. Every settlement before the villages era had to work without step-by-step guides, so she shouldn't stress about it, but she still does. She's not very good at this kind of thing, and the nerves alone make it hard to sit still long enough to learn how to be good at it.
Oh how she stresses about it. One would think knowing the answer and pushing herself into it would reduce the stress and let her mind calm her, but that doesn't work at all. She gets more stressed at every single word she doesn't quite understand, or terminology the book uses. How dare it use terms it hasn't explained yet? She doesn't care if there's a glossary that's just bad writing! She shouldn't have to stop reading to go to the back of the book, find a page number, go read an explanation, then go back. That's absurd, that's ludicrous, how do people study this kind of stuff for fun?
"I should check on myself." It's been a long time since she's decided to give herself a look, and she can't help but feel like her mildly depressive mood would be heavily lifted to find she's made serious progress somewhere.
First, her stats. She looks at them with hope in her eyes and a thirst for progress!
She's not getting meta progression in any games tonight, she should look at her own basic improvements.
[Sakura Haruno
Party Contribution Level: 22
HP: 138
Chakra: 46
Strength: 43
Constitution: 46
Dexterity: 42
Agility: 46
Mental: 101
Control: 220
Charm: 15]
That's a lot. She can't help but smile at all that. When did she get so much charm? So much chakra, her health is so much greater than the last time she checked!
She's grown a lot, and a sense of peace crawls over her. The only thing that stands out as weird is the Party Contribution Level, she didn't have that before, that's completely new. Is her system changing, or is it because she's cleared a dungeon now? She's on level with the dungeon they just cleared, and they were on level at the time. So either she's on par with them now, or one of them is weaker and she's on par, or she got a lot stronger from the dungeon clear and she was holding them back.
It doesn't feel like she could have gotten stronger from it, she spent so much of it injured and trying her hardest not to fall down and cease. It was terrifying.
It's an interesting statistic.
She moves onto her Skills, it's the only way. One step at a time. The first thing that catches her eye is that Lying Badly is gone. She's now in that awkward area where she can't really lie, but weaponizing it doesn't really work. This is technically a debuff, but she's happy to see it gone.
[Skills:
[Body Replacement +: You've used the Body Replacement Technique in a live combat situation with enough proficiency you can now do it without hand signs. This skill can be Evolved, please ask your Sensei about the "Whispering Goddess" Technique.]
[Sleeping++: You've slept enough that you find it a lot easier to get to sleep, and need a lot less sleep. You awaken from a full rest with a reset state, and gain moderate buffs for the first few hours of being awake.
A Reset is Accrued after a full 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep.]
[Crossbow Moderate: You are now less likely to hit your teammates or yourself, and may find that things just happen to work out even if they should not. You don't suffer an aim penalty at medium-short range anymore.]
[Kenjutsu Skilled: You officially know enough about Kenjutsu to get in there and brawl with your blade out and your soul at your fingertips. The weapon flows in your hand like a set of longer arms, and you have significant bonuses in combat when using your sword. You find it very easy to channel your chakra into any chakra-receptive sword, and you do an eighth of the damage to yourself in the event of a sword accident. You are very dangerous.]
[Mudshot: C Rank Earth Ninjutsu where the user generates mud from their stomach and then shoots it from their mouth, covering the enemy in mud and slowing/weighing them down.]
[Water gun: D Rank Water Ninjutsu where the user generates some water from their stomach and then shoots it from their mouth, hitting the enemy with a pressurized blast.]
[Rollout: C Rank Earth Ninjutsu where the user covers themselves in a ball of stone covered in spikes, and rolls around. Fragile]
[Water Shuriken: D Rank Water Jutsu where the user generates water into specific sharp shapes in between their fingers for throwing purposes. Does not hold up to pressure.]
[Mental Mapping: When accessing a new area, you are very good at mentally mapping it for later use.]]
All in all, her new skills are about where she expected them, even if the skill upgrades catch her by surprise. Some of them have more implications than others. Sleeping and Body Replacement + in particular have her eyes shining with glee.
She already knew about her new ninjutsu, and she had already felt better with her sword during practice earlier, even if it had been with a wooden sword because Higurashi still has her real weapon. It is good to know if she gets a Chakra blade instead of a demonic life sucking jerk, she can use her chakra with it instead of kunai.
Crossbow moderate implies reality warping, which makes her iffy on if it actually does anything, but the flavor text feels nice so she allows it without too much thought.
Back into the breach for her traits!
[Traits
[Land Owner: You own at least one significant portion of land, and therefore gain 10% increased rewards from any and all forms of Rent Payment]
[Water Affinity Lv 3
Earth Affinity Lv 3
Proto-Fire Affinity Lv 2
Proto-Lighting Affinity Lv 2
Proto-Wind Affinity Lv 1]
[Dungeon Hunter: You have hunted down and completed a Dungeon. You will find it easier to spot them in the future. You also possess a Contribution Level in your statistics. Dungeons are intended for 3 person parties, so all three people should be on level or greater than the dungeon to even it out.]
[Dungeon Completionist: You have completed a Dungeon to its limit, and received a completion reward, all Dungeon Completion rewards require 1 less clear. This bonus excludes 1 Shot Dungeons.]
[Savior of Wave: You are known in Wave as their savior, you receive discounts at Wave shops, gain favor faster with Wave citizens, and will find Wave citizens 50% more likely to fight for you.]
[Named Hero: You have a landmark named after you. You officially generate 25% more renown.]
[Good with Kids: You have befriended one too many kids for it to be normal. It's officially abnormal, meaning you are 25% better with children than you were before! Make your social checks with confidence!]
[Petty Thief: For stealing a lot of petty goods like clothes, food, or materials, you are now able to sell stolen goods more convincingly and are less likely to be caught.]]
Yeah so, some of that is nice. Some of that feels nice.
Some of that not so much. The most notable are Savior of Wave, Named Hero, Good with Kids, and Petty Thief. Petty Thief is probably almost exclusively from Tsunami, and isn't a particularly valuable trait. She doesn't intend to make stealing a big part of her career, she just needed clothes and the woman wouldn't hand them over willingly and no one in Wave could make her clothes! Not in a reasonable time and with their resources…
She doesn't even really consider it stealing, they weren't paid for the huge mission they should have been paid a lot for, she saved them possibly hundreds of thousands of Ryo, she took a few outfits. Cry her a river. The alternative was fighting nude and uh, fuck that.
Good with Kids is good, but she wishes it hadn't worded it like that. Instead of being proud of her accomplishment, she feels a little icky and she's not even sure why. Also, if she can magically make them like her more, do they even really like her more?
Named Hero is probably a bad thing, because renown is what gets you in the bingo book. Kakashi is probably looking into it to ensure she's not wanted somehow given the early events of Wave, but she's pretty sure she's not. She'd have a 'wanted' trait or something, maybe bounty?
Lastly, Savior of Wave, it makes it sound like she's gonna turn Wave into an army and that's just, not happening. They're broke, hungry and poor. She wouldn't accept a discount if they tried to give her one… Them liking her more is nice, even if it brings up the same issue as Good with Kids.
She can't complain about her new traits and status and skills, she likes what she sees, she just wishes there was more. She'll have to spend some of the free time trying to get a few more skills or traits. It can't be that hard to train specifically to learn something new, and they give magical bonuses so it can't be a bad thing to have more. Her main worry is how much time they have. Kakashi has them running boring D ranks again that she barely even remembers because she's spending the entire time reading. Naruto's making more money on this business of his so he's not all there because he's thinking about how many clones he needs to send where, and Sasuke's not all there because Sasuke's never all there.
Eventually, Kakashi will drop another C rank mission on them, hopefully an actual C rank this time. It probably will be… Maybe.
"I'm done reading." She grumbles, hopping back on her PC to play more city-building games. The routine differentiation between games and reading keeps her sane, even if she'd rather it was just gaming. It's hard, and her people keep dying, it makes her worry enough about Wave she finds she opens the status page for Wave periodically just to calm her nerves. They're doing fine, well, they're improving at least. They're not going to do any better or worse in the few minutes between checks but she's still tapping the button and hoping for a miracle all of a sudden.
"I hope this doesn't end up invading my dreams."
Little did she know.
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