Hinata and Ino exited Ren’s hospital room in a morose mood and silently walked through the village, gloom clinging to them like a fine coat. Only when the girls almost reached the entrance to the Yamanaka compound did Ino finally break the silence.

“What… what do you think, Hinata?” She asked in an unusually subdued and unsure tone.

Hinata quietly glanced at Ino, her lips quirking downward. “Does it matter?” She quietly asked, her eyes glinting with resolve, “I will be strong, Ino. Strong enough that nobody will be able to disregard me.” She truly believed there was no other option for her anyway. “I will be a kunoichi. For Ren. And for myself.”

Unlike Ino, Hinata didn’t think she needed to find her resolve. She already had it. The… revelations about her village did shake her but to be frank, she was able to shrug it off before they even left Ren’s room.

Her own family practiced slavery on their own blood. Hearing that the village was doing something scummy did not really surprise her as much as it probably should.

Her speech, however, seemed to cheer Ino up and the blonde suddenly forcefully shook her head before letting out a small frustrated yell, “Fine! Don’t think I’ll be beaten so easily, bitch! I will become the strongest kunoichi of this village out of sheer spite if necessary! Just you wait.” Ino huffed out a labored breath at the end of her proclamation, making Hinata roll her eyes.

“Bimbo… that’s going to be me.” She said in a matter-of-fact tone, causing both of them to stop and stare at each other.

“…”

“…”

“I liked you better when you were shy.” Ino abruptly interrupted the silent staring contest after a few moments.

“And I liked you better when you didn’t speak to me.” Hinata retorted.

The girls grinned at each other and Ino offered Hinata her fist for a friendly bump.

“May the best Yaman-, I mean, kunoichi win.” Ino said with a grin, the mistake clearly intended.

“Don’t worry, I will.” Hinata said with a friendly smile, bumping her fist against Ino’s before they separated.

Back in his hospital room, Ren stopped focusing on a spy seal he had sneaked on Ino, letting it dissolve into chakra with a rueful chuckle. It was not exactly the unshakable resolve they would need to develop one day, but he could work with rivalry.

For now, it was good enough.

…

A few days passed and Ren was finally out of the hospital. Funnily enough, he got another paid leave out of it. For a second, his mind involuntarily thought that it almost made encountering Yagura worth it before he shook that thought off.

Well, he wasn’t going to complain. Less work and more time for his seal work was always appreciated.

Especially now that he has experienced combat against a jinchuuriki, which showed him he still lacked proper heavy-hitting options. And wasn’t that a proper ‘what the hell’ kind of revelation? His exploding seals would kill even jonins once they hit. But apparently, jinchuuriki were a different breed and needed something with more oomph.

‘All in due time.’ Ren wryly thought.

He was currently sitting on the grass in training ground forty-one, leisurely leaning his back on a tree while mirthfully watching Hinata and Ino covered from head to toe in the mud. The blonde Yamanaka was almost frothing from her sheer anger and even the usually reserved Hinata looked like she wanted to smash somebody’s balls into a paste with her gentle fist.

Needless to say, Ren was having a lot of fun. His massive smirk probably did not help the girls’ mood, but that just made the situation funnier for him so he openly laughed at them anyway.

They just had to deal with it. Ren called it anger management training but all three of them knew it was bullshit.

They were learning the Hiding Like a Mole technique… or well, trying and failing.

Oh, Ren was sure Ino would get it by tomorrow. Not only was her nature Earth but she could also abuse her Yamanaka mind bullshit to somehow practice in her mindscape. She was definitely going to show up tomorrow, smug and preening like a peacock but she will have the technique down the pat. So, Ren decided to enjoy this rare moment where the Yamanaka…

Ino abruptly slipped in her control of the technique and came back out of the ground covered in even more mud while loudly cursing at Ren, making him chuckle when some of the mud slipped into her mouth, causing her to gag.

“Tsk. Tsk. Such a dirty mouth, Ino-chan.” Ren called out with a shit-eating grin. He really couldn’t resist.

Hinata, on the other hand, just threw a furious glare at him before she focused back on the technique and slowly burrowed into the ground.

Her approach was slower than Ino’s, but she was making visible improvements with each attempt. Her Byakugan was helping her a lot to identify and correct what she was doing wrong.

The principle was simple. Make the ground ‘soft’ enough around their body to be able to move through it with their chakra. The application, though. The goal was to do that without getting dirty. That was a good measuring stick to ascertain if one had mastered the technique.

But the girls were still a way off from that point.

A bit further on the side, near the treeline to Ren’s right, were four shadow clones, Two belonging to Ino and two to Hinata. They all sat cross-legged on the grass with a leaf in their hands and practiced the first step of elemental chakra training.

Hinata focused on lightning, her natural affinity, while Ren had Ino try her hand at splitting the leaf with wind chakra. Since the blonde was going to be using a sword, the wind nature would be more beneficial for her than earth nature. It was a pity, but then again, with her mindscape training bullshit, she had a good shot at learning all chakra nature exercises one day as long as she didn’t get lazy.

Ren was really pushing them in their training. The kiddy gloves were off. His students were good. But they could be better. And he would be damned if he didn’t torture them into it.

Honestly, if any jonin knew what he was teaching the girls, they would be exasperated. The two of them were not even proper genin yet and Ren was teaching them stuff even some experienced chunin hadn’t learned.

But the fight with Yagura kinda spooked him enough to kick his ass into gear. The girls were graduating from the academy at sixteen. Ren didn’t think that wanting them to be solid Jonin-level combatants by that time was too much. The kiddies in the anime managed it with half the effort and Ren was not going to be beaten by an animated show.

No matter how much suffering his cute little minions had to go through to reach that level. It was all for the greater good and therefore justice was on his side.

Plus ultra!

Somebody might question his intelligence because he used his chakra to help the girls form four shadow clones through the cooperation method, sacrificing his own training time and resources for them.

Someone might even call him stupid for giving them access to his important seals like the gravity ones or teaching Hinata his exploding seals.

Ren smiled as he remembered Hinata squealing and jumping up and down in glee like a little girl when she finally managed to apply her first explosive seal on a tree trunk just yesterday during their training.

It was adorable and he liked seeing her so happy.

To be honest, Ren put considerable time into thinking about his decisions when it came to teaching. It wasn’t an easy decision to share his work. He put in tens, if not hundreds, of hours into designing his seals. Giving his students access to them was not done on a whim.

When he first unwillingly gained Hinata as a student, he spent hours agonizing over how seriously he should train her. He could have easily just made her good enough to graduate academy with good marks.

It wouldn’t even take him two hours of half-assed effort three days a week to accomplish that.

But being selfish would hurt him in the long term. He needed a team. People he could trust. People he could count on during the war. And the best way to get them was to raise them himself.

He was embracing the grooming culture, baby!

Jokes aside. Due to chakra, Hinata and Ino are also mentally much more mature than he was at eighteen in his previous life. At that point, it’s called courting, instead of grooming.

Or at least, that’s what Ren heard from that one perverted friend on the interne… ah. Probably not the best dude to ask for advice.

But when it came to the girls’ ninjutsu skills? Ren was going to go all groom-master on them, zero democracy included. His Pokem-, he meant to say that his future teammates would be trained to be great!

There was just no other way for him than to ‘raise’ his own teammates since he didn’t have a genin team and as much as Konoha liked to brag that they were the greatest due to their teamwork, it was really hard to find a reliable and capable long term team for the common ninjas who were not from the elite course, and therefore blessed with jonin instructor who literally manipulated the kiddies to become the bestest friends possible, Will of Fire style.

Yes, he could have befriended Sasuke and Naruto, but Ren didn’t really want to end up in the same position as Sakura. After all, it wasn’t certain that he could ever reach their eventual level. He hoped so. And he was going to give it his all.

But sadly, it was easier said than done. He didn’t have a super sage sugar daddy willing to throw unearned and unreasonable power-ups his way every time he was about to lose.

Neither did he have red eyes that seem to get more and more ridiculous with every evolution as if they were purposefully designed for a main character that just wasn’t supposed to lose.

Nor did he have an angry fox demon in his gut that translated to an infinite energy hack and who would pull his ass out of danger by turning him into an orange hulk-wannabe whenever he was about to lose a fight.

Yeaaaah, that getting to their level thingy? Ren was still kinda at the drawing board when it came to having a solid idea of how to accomplish it.

That’s where Ino and Hinata came in. They were going to be strong. They had their own advantages that would allow them to become S-rank in the future. And training them kinda took care of developing a good relationship with them.

With how strong they would be upon graduation, Ren doubted their genin teams would last past the chunin exam. There will be too much of a gap in skill and power to allow for good teamwork.

Alas, sacrifices had to be made. All according to the plan.

Once the girls are chunin, they can stay on their genin team… but they are also completely free to leave and form their own team with other ninjas from the village. How convenient, right?

Having good teammates who could keep up with him was invaluable in this world. Trying to do everything alone was just not going to work. Ren wasn’t arrogant enough to think he could solo Narutoverse.

Especially not when the Fourth Ninja War erupted. Even if he and both girls get to the S-rank level, surviving would still be hard. Even as a team.

Properly teaching Hinata and Ino was an investment for the future. One he dearly hoped would pan out because he really wanted teammates who could last a bit longer than three seconds when his team inevitably found itself on the wrong end of jinchuuriki’s wrath the next time.

That was pretty much his evil master plan for surviving the future.

Underwhelming? Lame? Not good enough?

Well, tough luck. It was the best he got. Sadly, he didn’t get an overpowered golden finger that would allow him to one-hit KO Kaguya so…

Yeah, it sucked. He tried not to think too much about it because it would just make him depressed.

… No wonder his clones were all so nihilistic.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep