Kaiji then went to the weaponry shop owned by the same large-build, tanned-skin shop owner named Daichi.
He purchased a new set of weights, this time with a 50% increase in difficulty: 180 pounds of weights for each wrist and leg.
He also returned the previous ones to get a discount applied to the price of the current ones.
...
He then went back to his room at the Genin Corps facility.
He sat down on his mat and took out his newly given book from Akane for Iryo Ninjutsu.
Though he wasn't very inclined to start with theoretical lessons but he had no other choice if he wanted to learn Medical Ninjutsu.
He first took the book named 'Understanding Anatomy and Physiology'.
He opened it and started reading. After a few minutes of reading, he shut the book abruptly.
He groaned in annoyance. "Ugh, I really hate it," he said, frustrated.
"Well, I have to read them all if I want to learn any Healing Jutsu."
For now, he closed the book and put it back into the storage scroll. He then took out the scroll of Basics of Kenjutsu.
He unrolled it and started reading it without any hint of annoyance.
Reading something you are interested in is very engaging than things you are not.
The Kenjutsu scroll didn't waste time with anything extra.
Just after telling about what Kenjutsu was and how it was useful, it directly wrote the main part of the training.
First, it was written about understanding the absolute basics of handling a sword and moving correctly.
It listed four key practices that focused on understanding how to hold a sword properly, the parts of the blade, and why balancing was important.
The FIRST practice was Mastering the Grip.
It described a few grip forms.
It required spending hours just holding the sword, finding the most natural and stable grip that suited oneself.
SECOND was Basic stances.
It included practice of basic foundational stances such as Chūdan no kamae (middle stance), Jōdan no kamae (High stance), and Geden no kamae (low stance).
This focused on having a stable base and good posture, first without the sword, then with the sword.
It required holding each stance for extended periods.
THIRD was Basic footwork. It included learning simple sliding steps (Suriashi) and turning movements described in the scroll.
Practicing moving while maintaining stances was crucial.
Last was Basic Cuts (Suburi).
It included practicing the simplest cutting motions: Straight down (vertical), Straight Across (Horizontal), and simple diagonal cuts.
This required practicing slowly, focusing purely on the correct motion and trajectory, and practicing for 1,000 of these cuts without aiming at anything specific.
This was all for basic Kenjutsu learning written in the scroll.
After reading Kaiji sighed lightly after reading it all for an hour straight.
"So it includes proper sword grip, foundational stances, basic Kenjutsu footworks, and fundamental cutting motions," he summarized to himself.
He stretched lightly and step outside of his room.
He saw many other members of the Genin Corps department.
Some were tiredly going inside their rooms, while a few were even coming out of their rooms as if they had only just woken up.
Kaiji then went towards Hiroshi's room and saw that the door was slightly open.
He opened the door to enter and saw that Hiroshi had returned and was sleeping on his mat.
He thought of not bothering his sleep, as Hiroshi was looking quite tired from his mission.
It was the time of late afternoon. Kaiji decided to practice Kenjutsu. He went to a less frequent training field of the village.
He took out his one sword from another storage scroll, which also contained the scroll of Earth Style: Earth Wall Jutsu.
He practiced for mastering his Grip over the sword. He practiced for a few hours as evening fell.
He then went to have dinner at Tsumuji Snacks Shop. Afterwards, he went back to his room and practiced earth Familiarisation meditation.
He then read 'Understanding Anatomy and Physiology' for a little bit, even though he was getting quite uninterested from it. While reading, he drift to sleep.
...
The next morning was the same as usual, he woke up early and did his morning training.
After completing his morning training, he got ready for the day.
He was called by Ryota and told he got another mission.
Kaiji sighed, knowing he might not get enough time to practice all the things he had planned but he still be able to make time in between them.
...
Two months passed just like that. And thankfully, Sasori didn't kill Satei yet.
In this time, Kaiji had done three more C-rank missions and now had a total of four missions on his record.
Hiroshi also got some other missions, but none of them were together.
In this time, Kaiji had seen quite improvement.
In Earth Nature, he now was practicing the third step, the step of subtle external influence.
He was trying to make a small amount of soil and pebbles subtly react to chakra directed at it.
After he was able to sense and understand earth nature chakra through prolonged meditation within the 2nd week, he started practice circulating chakra within his body trying to make it heavy and dense like earth.
This came out to be much more difficult than he expected, but through continuous practice within this time, he was able to successfully transform the nature of his chakra itself and was now practicing the third step.
He calculated that if things progress like this, he might able to start learning Earth Release Ninjutsus in next month or two.
Even in practicing the Seven Heavens Breathing Method, he had gained quite a success.
Though he hasn't started experimenting with Unlocking Breathing Activation, as he has yet to learn any medical ninjutsu to be safe during the process, he was able to create a link between his chakra and the breathing techniques he had been practicing every morning after calisthenics.
He had even started practicing Taijutsu with combining breathing techniques and Chakra.
His Lung capacity had also increased quite a bit, along with his stamina, from all those morning training sessions.
He believed that he could now start practicing with Unlocking Breathing Activations, but he didn't want to rush, especially as he had yet to learn any Medical Ninjutsu.
And for medical ninjutsu books, he had finally completed two of those three heavy books.
Now he could start learning practical Iryo Ninjutsu from next month once he completed last one.
After all, he had sacrificed his few hours of night sleep while reading those books at night to memorize those details.
"Though it wasn't completely bad," he mused, reflecting on the theoretical study.
"After all, I am getting to learn about a lot of stuff about Ninja's body and various herbs and poisons, it was actually worth it."
•••