Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!
A dozen shuriken flew from different directions, all striking the wooden training post in front of him without exception.
The young boy narrowed his eyes, looking with grim satisfaction at the results of his training.
"Thirteen shuriken hitting their mark simultaneously... At this level, I should be able to match Itachi in his early years, right?"
As far as the eye could see, the ground was a mess, littered with traces of intense combat. It was clear someone had been conducting high-intensity training here.
"In the blink of an eye, I'm already five years old!"
Hatake Kusuo lowered the ninja tools in his hands, lying down on the grass and gasping for breath as he stared at the sky.
"I can't believe it's been so long since I transmigrated to the world of Naruto, but my system still hasn't arrived. In this world dominated by broken bloodlines, the pressure to survive is no joke!"
That's right, Hatake Kusuo's previous self was a top student from Earth. He had worked tirelessly to get into a prestigious university, only for an unexpected car accident to send him to this world.
To make matters worse, just as he arrived, the Nine-Tails Rampage occurred, and both of his parents were killed.
If he didn't happen to have a cousin named Hatake Kakashi—yes, the very same one famously mocked by countless Naruto fans as 'Kakashi of the 50/50 Odds'—even surviving would have been a problem!
He had assumed that, like other transmigrators, he would get a system, possess a golden finger, punch Madara Uchiha, kick the Sage of Six Paths, and walk the path to the pinnacle of life. But unexpectedly, he had waited for five years, and the system he yearned for still hadn't come.
"Looks like I was thinking too much. Systems and all that... they're just lies from novels. They don't actually exist!"
"Five years! This is the world of Naruto, a place where an ordinary person can die from a single misstep. Even Konoha itself gets destroyed several times in the future. Without a cheat, how am I supposed to survive?" Kusuo cursed under his breath.
It was precisely this sense of pressure and anxiety that had pushed him to start his training early.
Fortunately, the Hatake clan was a renowned and powerful family, so there was no shortage of medicinal herbs for strengthening the body. Kusuo didn't have to worry about damaging his foundations with his intense regimen.
Through this inhuman early training and the accumulation of his efforts, Hatake Kusuo was able to simultaneously throw and hit with thirteen shuriken at the tender age of five.
This feat alone was enough to shock many people.
Even the Hokage might not have been able to achieve this at the same age.
Of course, he couldn't compare to a genius like Itachi Uchiha, who could calculate the trajectory of shuriken after they collided with each other. After all, Itachi was from the Uchiha clan and had the assistance of the Sharingan.
As for himself, he was just an ordinary person. Perhaps his only advantage was the future opportunity to learn the sword techniques left behind by the White Fang of the Leaf, Hatake Sakumo.
Training for an entire day was a considerable burden for the still-young Hatake Kusuo. There was no rest, only relentless effort.
As a result, Kusuo was now on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion, almost unable to breathe. He was drenched in sweat, his chest heaving at an astonishingly rapid pace.
[Ding! Host's single-day breath count has reached 100,000! Activating the Ultimate Role-Playing System!]
Just then, a mechanical, synthesized voice suddenly echoed.
Hearing it, Hatake Kusuo froze for a moment before his face broke into an ecstatic grin.
"Five years! Do you have any idea what I've been through these past five years? My golden finger has finally arrived!"
Indeed. The system might be late, but it will never be absent.
"System, explain your functions to me!" Kusuo recited silently in his mind.
[Replying to Host, this is the Ultimate Role-Playing System. As the name implies, the Host needs to draw character templates through a lottery and then role-play as them. The higher the unlock percentage of the character you are playing, the stronger you will become.]
[The power level of the character templates will be automatically adjusted to fit the current world!]
Hatake Kusuo's eyes lit up. This meant that no matter what character he drew—even the weakest goblin—the system could adjust it to become the strongest goblin in the world of Naruto!
However, he was confident that his luck wasn't so bad that he would draw such a useless template.
"System, begin the template draw!"
[Selecting template...]
[1%]
[2%]
[3%]
After a dazzling lottery animation, the template finally settled on the image of a gentle-faced swordsman with a high ponytail, wearing a red haori, and bearing a distinct mark on his forehead.
It was a man of incredible presence.
It was none other than the pinnacle of power from the world of Demon Slayer, the creator of Sun Breathing, the formidable existence who forced Muzan Kibutsuji into hiding until his death from old age—Yoriichi Tsugikuni!
[Congratulations to the Host for successfully drawing the template: Yoriichi Tsugikuni!]
[Synthesizing character template... Template fusion complete!]
In an instant, Kusuo felt as if something extra had been added to his body. Then, a vast amount of knowledge about swordsmanship and breathing techniques appeared out of thin air in his mind.
"Yoriichi Tsugikuni, huh..." he murmured, a smile curling on his lips.
This luck was simply too good!
Yoriichi was the absolute ceiling of power in the Demon Slayer world, an entity capable of delivering 1,500 slashes in a single second. A monster-like powerhouse.
Even if his base attack power might differ from the standards of the Naruto world, one must not forget the system's enhancement! With the system's blessing, a fully unlocked Yoriichi would be an absolutely game-breaking existence!
This was the genius who created his own Breathing Style, awakened the Mark, and accessed the Transparent World! If not for the limitations of his own world, Yoriichi's achievements would have been even greater. He was hailed as the strongest man in centuries, a man who single-handedly suppressed an entire era.
Kusuo believed that once the Mark was fully developed, it would be no weaker than the Eight Inner Gates!
And then there was the Transparent World—the ability to predict an enemy's next move by observing the flow of their muscles and blood. It was practically a combination of the Byakugan and Observation Haki!
"Excellent!"
"By role-playing a genius like Yoriichi, I should inherit his monstrous talent, right?"
"With this, achieving the pinnacle of swordsmanship in the world of Naruto is no longer just a dream!"
With the system's activation, the template fusion brought a massive surge of energy into Hatake Kusuo, sweeping away all the fatigue from his earlier training.
Right now, gripping a wooden sword, he was filled with an overwhelming urge to test his newfound power.