Konoha Drunkard

Time flowed relentlessly through Shanks' training. Two years had passed since his return from Kirigakure. During those two years, Shanks hadn't left Konoha except for his monthly missions, dedicating himself daily to training and researching the Flying Thunder God Technique. Through tireless effort, he finally sensed spatial distortion a year ago and found a connection point for a special hand seal kunai within the chaotic space. Perhaps his spatial talent wasn't strong enough, so using the Flying Thunder God required a buffer period, or rather, finding the connection point within the space to the hand seal kunai, unlike Tobirama Senju and Minato Namikaze who could unleash it instantly. However, this was enough for Shanks. He didn't need the Flying Thunder God for combat; he had already developed his Naruto version of Shave. Therefore, the Flying Thunder God was still useful for support and rescue. In those two years, Shanks' swordsmanship had reached the pinnacle of a swordsman, but he still had no clue how to become a great swordsman. His dual-color Haki had been mastered to a high level, and now he could even hold his own against tailed beasts other than the Nine-Tails. Shanks' Observation Haki range has expanded to cover the entire Hidden Leaf Village, but he still can't quite grasp the level of predicting the next five seconds. However, given how much his strength has improved in just two years, Shanks is already quite satisfied. Keep in mind that he is now a fully-fledged Kage-level clerk, and one of the top Kage-level fighters at that. Meanwhile, Hatake Sakumo is only at the Quasi-Kage level, as he has Anbu duties to attend to and doesn't have as much time for training.

The village itself didn't change much in the two years that followed. The biggest change was in the upper echelons of Konoha. The head of the Uchiha clan was injured by the Second Tsuchikage during World War I. He returned to the village and spent a year recuperating, but he didn't recover and instead passed away a year ago. His son, who is also the grandfather of the future second male lead, succeeded him.

Not only the Uchiha clan, but all the major clans in Konoha were experiencing a continuous succession of new clan heads. However, the biggest change at the highest levels of Konoha was not these changes. The biggest change was the establishment of three high-ranking advisors below the Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi: Danzo Shimura, Homura Mitokado, and Koharu Utatane. Danzo Shimura even proposed to Hiruzen Sarutobi, citing the need for better protection of Konoha, that a new department be created for him, named Root!

However, none of this had much to do with Shanks. Shanks remained the same as before, training as usual and taking on missions as usual. While the ninjas always attended the village's high-level meetings, Shanks never did.

In his previous life, Shanks hated meetings the most. Don't even think about getting him to attend those boring meetings. Even Hiruzen Sarutobi couldn't control him, since even Tobirama Senju couldn't manage him back then.

The only person who can keep him in check right now is Mito Uzumaki, but in recent years Mito Uzumaki has been living a secluded life and has no interest in returning to the village.

In the past two years, the Senju clan has dispersed most of its members to intermarry with the commoners in the village. Now, there are only a few families left in the Senju clan territory. This also fulfills the goal of sending the entire clan of Hashirama and Tobirama Senju to the village.

To everyone else, the Senju clan seemed to have declined, but Shanks knew that this was the true way for a family's bloodline to survive for a long time. Perhaps many years later, there would indeed be fewer and fewer people with the surname Senju, but the people of Konoha would all be descendants of the Senju clan.

Decades later, the Uchiha clan, whose bloodline was the most intact, was wiped out, leaving only the second male lead among its members. At that time, the Uchiha clan truly declined.

"Tsunade and the others are about to graduate, and I hope you can be their captains and mentor them. After all, I'm the Hokage and don't have time to take them on missions." Today, Shanks was summoned to the Hokage's office by Hiruzen Sarutobi. In the two years since then, Hiruzen Sarutobi has aged considerably. Being the Hokage is no easy job; he's only 22 years old, but with that full beard, he really looks like a middle-aged man.

"Wouldn't that make me a generation younger than you for no reason?" Shanks said, annoyed.

“…cough, cough…” Hiruzen Sarutobi choked on the smoke.

"The classes will be assigned the day after tomorrow. You can go to the school to pick up the three of them then." Hiruzen Sarutobi couldn't accept Shanks' wild imagination.

"Um"

Shanks closed his eyes after he finished speaking.

Hiruzen Sarutobi saw that he hadn't left after agreeing, so he stood there with his eyes closed.

"You..." Hiruzen Sarutobi saw that Shanks had kept his eyes closed for so long, and was about to ask him if there was anything else, but before he could finish speaking, Shanks disappeared.

Hiruzen Sarutobi was exasperated. "If the Second Hokage knew he was using the Flying Thunder God Technique like that, would he jump out of his coffin and beat him up?"

Shanks instantly returned to the house using the Flying Thunder God Technique. He had only intended to show off, but who knew it would take so long to find the connection point. He didn't have Tobirama Senju's keen sense of space, so he had to search slowly. Moreover, the location of the connection points within the space wasn't fixed each time, so getting up took a lot of time, which was why Shanks couldn't use it for combat.

.........

Three days later, at the Ninja Academy! This year's graduating class are all third-year students. Currently, the Ninja Academy is a three-year system, but it will become a six-year system starting next year. Hiruzen Sarutobi felt that taking on missions too early was not a good thing; not everyone is a genius.

In the third-grade classroom, everyone looked at Tsunade and her two friends with a mixture of envy and fear. The fearful gazes were mainly fixed on Tsunade, since anyone would be scared after being beaten for two years, let alone eight or nine-year-old children.

"What are you looking at? Haven't you ever seen a beautiful woman before?" Tsunade couldn't stand the way they were staring at her, so she stood up, put her hands on her hips, and yelled at them.

The people in the classroom shuddered and quickly looked away. One of the teachers from the Senju clan sighed inwardly. After all, she was their clan's princess; they couldn't afford to offend her.

"Alright, you've graduated. From now on, you're all true ninjas. I hope you can live well in the future." The Senju clan teacher spoke with a hint of warning.

After all, the mortality rate for graduating too young is too high. In previous years, less than one-tenth of ninjas actually survived, and most of them were members of clans; commoners rarely survived. This is why Hiruzen Sarutobi wanted to change the age limit for the academy.

"Now let's start the class assignments. Class 1: Extra A, Extra B, Extra C, Jonin in charge, Extra D... Class 10: Tsunade Senju, Orochimaru, Jiraiya, and Jonin in charge, Shanks Uzumaki! Alright, that's all for the class assignments. Your Jonin in charge will come and get you together in a bit."

"Wow! It's Shanks leading the team! What great luck!"

"There's nothing we can do. They are the Hokage's disciples, and the team leaders are either White Fang or Shanks."

After the teachers of the Sarutobi clan finished assigning classes, the students in the classroom exclaimed in surprise when they heard that the Jonin leading Tsunade's team was Shanks from Konoha! They started to discuss it amongst themselves.

Red-haired Shanks and White Fang of Konoha are heroes of the village. When they first started school, their legends were already circulating in the village. They could recite these stories by heart: how they carried out an S-rank mission at the age of eight, and how they assassinated the Second Kazekage before the age of ten, leading to the early defeat of Sunagakure in World War I.

Everyone wants a powerful ninja to be their team leader; it will give them prestige when they go out in the future. The people in the classroom looked at the three of them with envy.

Tsunade, on the other hand, didn't care; to her, it didn't matter which Jonin led the team. Orochimaru, however, clenched his fist slightly, a little excited. After two years of training under Hiruzen Sarutobi, Orochimaru had gained some understanding of powerful ninjas. He no longer vaguely knew these ninjas were powerful as a child, but didn't understand why. In these two years, he clearly knew just how powerful a village's Kage could be. "He could assassinate a village's Kage at nine years old; I wonder how powerful he is now. Will he become like his teacher?"

Jiraiya calmly and arrogantly said, "What? You want a 12-year-old brat to be my team leader? Unless he can beat me, I won't accept it."

"That idiot," Orochimaru habitually sarcastically remarked.

"Idiot!" Tsunade was speechless.

The students in the classroom glared at him angrily; they had never seen anyone so shameless.

36. Shanks' team is asking for flowers and to add this to their favorites.

Time passed, and ninjas continued to come into the classroom and take students away, leaving only Tsunade and her two companions in the class. Tsunade sat calmly in her seat, contemplating life, while Orochimaru remained the ever-quiet and handsome man. Only Jiraiya's fingers tapped incessantly on the desk, making a constant "tap tap tap" sound. Orochimaru gave him a disdainful look; he had just been boasting so much, and now he was incredibly nervous.

"Jiraiya, you idiot, if you make another sound, I'll smash your head in!" Another half hour passed and Tsunade couldn't take it anymore.

"Uh..." Jiraiya shrank back, terrified of Tsunade after being beaten up by her for the past two years. Even if Tsunade was really tough, Hiruzen Sarutobi could still beat her up whenever he wanted, and Hiruzen would always act like nothing had happened.

"That bastard, if he doesn't come soon, I'll go home and gamble away all his secret stash of money!" Tsunade's fiery temper finally snapped. She knew Shanks all too well; he was usually so lazy that he might have even forgotten about it.

"Haha! I'm late, sorry!" Just as Tsunade was about to explode, Shanks appeared at the door, without the legendary prank.

"You bastard, it's already noon! I've been waiting for you since this morning!" Jiraiya retorted angrily. He was afraid of Tsunade because Tsunade-sensei would beat him up, but he was never afraid of Shanks because Shanks was usually easy to talk to and often joked with him.

"Haha! I was preparing your teaching materials all night, so I went to bed too late and couldn't get up," Shanks boasted. In reality, he had been drinking with Kino and the others in the mission room all night, and he couldn't get up because he had drunk too much.

"Don't think I don't know what you did last night. You're still reeking of alcohol, you bastard!" Tsunade exploded and slammed her fist on the table.

"Bang!" The table ended its life.

"Tsunade, don't be so violent. I'm worried about how you'll find a boyfriend if you keep going like this," Shanks said lazily.

"That's right, that's right..." Jiraiya hadn't even finished agreeing when "bang!" he collapsed to the ground with a bump on his head.

"Alright, Class 10, come with me on this mission." Shanks said, then led the way out.

Ten minutes later they arrived at Akimichi's yakiniku restaurant.

"Uncle Chihiro, five servings of barbecue!" Shanks led them into the barbecue restaurant and sat them down.

"Your apology is quite sincere. I'll forgive you for the sake of the barbecue!" Jiraiya didn't expect Shanks to treat them to barbecue before leading them on a mission.

"You're overthinking it. Your mission is to watch me and Tsunade eat barbecue," Shanks rolled his eyes at Jiraiya.

"Why can Tsunade eat but we can't, and we have to watch you eat?" Jiraiya's mouth was agape.

"Nonsense, I just woke up and didn't have breakfast, so I'm hungry. Tsunade is my niece, how could I possibly let my niece go hungry? What if she gets sick from hunger?" Shanks said matter-of-factly.

“Hmm, that makes sense,” Tsunade agreed wholeheartedly.

"What? This is so unfair! You're being biased!" Jiraiya protested.

"Let me teach you a lesson. There's no such thing as fairness in this world. If you're so capable, try being reborn into the Senju family in your next life, and I'll still favor you. Look how calm Orochimaru is. He's just quietly being a handsome man." Shanks raised an eyebrow.

"Tch!" Jiraiya scoffed.

"..." The handsome man Orochimaru.

Half an hour later

The barbecue was devoured by Shanks and Tsunade, with Shanks eating most of it and Tsunade not eating much.

"Alright, now let me tell you about our class. We're pretty familiar with each other, so I'll skip the introductions. Since your Hokage teacher is usually quite busy, I'm usually the one leading you on missions. After each mission, you should go to the Hokage Building to find your teacher, and he'll train you as usual. Do you understand now?" Shanks said after he finished eating and drinking.

"Understood," Tsunade and Orochimaru replied.

"What? So you just led us on missions. And then we have to go to the teacher to learn? You're nothing special," Jiraiya said shamelessly.

"There's not much I can teach you. I can teach Orochimaru Water Release, but Tsunade, you have Fire and Wind Release, and I don't know any of those. Tsunade already knows Super Strength Fist, so I can't teach you two. After all, it was taught to me by the First Hokage, and I need Tsunade's permission. As for my swordsmanship and taijutsu, they're rather special, special talents bestowed upon me by the Uzumaki clan. Even if I taught them to you, you wouldn't be able to learn them," Shanks said, shrugging his shoulders.

"Stop talking nonsense and get on with the mission." Tsunade said with great enthusiasm.

"Alright, let's go to the mission room first. Uncle Chihiro, this meal is on the Hokage's tab."

“…” Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru gave him a disdainful look.

"Because it's not wartime, you recent graduates will have to start with D-rank missions," Shanks explained as he walked.

"What? I thought it was an S-rank mission," Jiraiya complained idiotically.

"..." Shanks' lips twitched.

The current Sannin are all at the Chunin level, with Tsunade being slightly stronger, given her incredibly powerful punches. Next is Orochimaru, a ninjutsu genius with a perfect mind, but limited by his physical abilities and his status as a commoner with limited chakra. Jiraiya... is in that awkward stage, somewhere between Genin and Chunin.

"Brother Kino, you're up so early? I can't get up until noon," Shanks greeted Kino as he entered the mission room.

"Haha, well, I'm on duty these days. It's good that you can even get up. Kawamura and the others are probably still drunk," Kino laughed.

"..." The three legendary Sannin sneered at Shanks, "What the hell is this preparation material...."

"Haha, well, the Hokage made me lead the class, so he gave me a few simple D-rank missions, like cleaning ditches and rivers," Shanks said.

"What! I don't want to clean the ditch!" Tsunade reacted the most. Cleaning the ditch, damn it! It'll make it stink; just thinking about it makes me sick.

"Well, okay then, don't clean the ditch." Shanks also thought that if Tsunade came home smelling bad, he would be scolded to death by his sister-in-law, Miho.

"Then how about these four tasks? Help Mrs. Wada clean her room, help Mr. Inoue repair the well, help Mrs. Shinichi pick all the fruit from her orchard, and clean up the trash on the riverbed near Training Ground No. 4. What do you think, Princess Tsunade?" Kino was quite sensible. After all, it wasn't good to make the granddaughter of two generations of adults do some dirty tasks.

"Okay, these four will do," Tsunade nodded after hearing this.

"Thanks, Brother Kino," Shanks said, then left with the three of them, leaving several teams still choosing missions in the mission room filled with envy. "Look at them, they get to choose missions, but the missions choose them."

"Alright, these are the four tasks you need to complete today. After you finish, you can go find your teacher. I will give you the reward money tomorrow morning." Shanks finished speaking and watched them do the tasks before finding a place to rest.

The three ninjas were quite enthusiastic about their first mission and finished it in less than half a day. After that, Shanks sent them to the Hokage Building and then left them to their own devices.

............

After working on the D-rank mission for over a month, the one who couldn't stand it the most was Tsunade.

"Shanks, let's do something different tomorrow. I can't take it anymore, it's just cleaning and picking up trash every day." Shanks had been bothered by Tsunade all night. She kept him locked up in his room and wouldn't let him go anywhere.

"Alright, alright! Isn't it because your Hokage teacher is going to tutor Jiraiya? With his skill level, doing any other mission would be suicide. I'll ask around for you tomorrow, okay?" Shanks shifted the blame to Hiruzen Sarutobi. This month was the most carefree month Shanks had had in two years. He didn't have to complete his monthly mission quota. Every day, he sent a clone to lead the Sannin on missions, while he continued to live a life of debauchery with his drinking buddies, Kino and Taiga.

The next day, Tsunade still wouldn't let him off the hook, and made him go and tell Hiruzen Sarutobi that he wanted to take on a C-rank mission.

Actually, there's no need to tell Hiruzen Sarutobi about this. A newly graduated ninja team could take on slightly easier C-rank missions after completing 100 D-rank missions yesterday, but Shanks keeps putting it off. It's a rare day of relaxation; he doesn't even have to do his monthly A-rank mission.

"This mission was given to me by the Hokage, so it's a bit special. We'll meet at the village entrance at 9:25 tomorrow morning," Shanks said to the three of them after they all arrived.

"What kind of mission is so special? Is it an S-rank mission?" Jiraiya asked.

"It's a special mission, but I can't say now. We can talk about it when we meet tomorrow." Shanks rolled his eyes. "You think you're so tough? Don't you have any idea how arrogant you are? All you do is talk about S-class missions all the time..."

"Then why is it 9:25?" Jiraiya really had no idea.

"Because I always get up at nine in the morning, it takes me about twenty-five minutes to get here from home." Shanks finished speaking and then ignored the three of them, disappearing into the distance.

37. The difference between a bottom-of-the-class student and a scientist. (Requesting flowers/favorites)

The next day, Jiraiya and Orochimaru were waiting at the village entrance early in the morning. Jiraiya, sporting dark circles under his eyes, leaned against a tree, nodding repeatedly. Orochimaru was reading a book analyzing ninjutsu.