One Piece: I Awakened the Ninja Template System - Chapter 4
Chapter 4: Saitama Training
Jack chose one of the houses near the centre of the abandoned village.
It wasn’t the largest building, but most of its walls remained intact. Only one corner of the roof had collapsed, and the front door was still strong enough to close. More importantly, the back room had an undamaged ceiling and a single narrow window overlooking the road.
If anyone approached the village, Jack would have enough warning to hide or escape.
The room itself was filthy.
Dust covered the floor, dead leaves had gathered in the corners, and a thick spiderweb stretched across the window. The wooden bedframe remained usable, although its old mattress had rotted beyond saving.
Jack found a damaged broom in the neighbouring house and spent the next hour cleaning. He swept away the dirt, dragged the ruined mattress outside, and covered the bedframe with several pieces of cloth he found inside an old cabinet.
It wasn’t comfortable, but it was better than sleeping beneath a tree.
By the time Jack finished, the sunlight outside had begun to fade.
He expected to feel hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything since waking on the beach, and the only thing he had consumed was water from the forest stream.
Strangely, his stomach remained silent.
Jack sat on the bedframe and focused on his body. A faint current of energy continuously entered him from the surrounding environment. It was so subtle that he hadn’t noticed it before, but the flow had been present ever since he activated the Ten-Tails template.
Natural energy.
His body was passively absorbing it from the earth, air, and nearby vegetation. The amount was extremely small, yet it was enough to provide the basic energy his body required to survive.
Jack stared at his hands.
“So I don’t need food or water?”
The system confirmed his conclusion.
As long as the Ten-Tails template remained active and natural energy existed around him, his body could sustain itself indefinitely. He wouldn’t die from hunger or dehydration under ordinary conditions.
It was a disturbing thought.
Eating and drinking were such basic parts of being human that no longer needing them made Jack feel as if he had already become something else.
Still, he wasn’t going to complain.
Food would have been his greatest survival problem. He didn’t know which plants were safe, and hunting the oversized animals in the forest was completely beyond his current abilities.
The passive absorption solved both hunger and thirst.
That didn’t mean he had lost the ability to eat. He had drunk from the stream earlier and clearly tasted the cold water. Food could still provide energy and satisfy his hunger faster than passive absorption if his body became badly depleted.
More importantly, taste still existed.
Jack could continue eating simply because he enjoyed it.
However, the Ten-Tails template couldn’t sustain unlimited activity. His energy consumption increased dramatically during intense exercise. The surrounding natural energy entered his body too slowly to replace everything he spent while training or running.
Passive absorption could keep him alive while resting.
It couldn’t fuel endless combat.
The small amount of natural energy also wasn’t enough to activate Sage Mode. For that, he would need to consciously gather an enormous quantity, balance it with his physical and spiritual energy, and possess a body capable of enduring the transformation.
At present, this ability was purely a survival mechanism.
Even so, it was an incredible benefit.
Jack picked up the broad leaf he had brought from the forest and placed it against his forehead.
He guided chakra beneath it.
The leaf remained attached.
He had already made progress while sitting on the ridge, and the remaining proficiency increased quickly now that he could train without constantly watching for Fish-Men.
A notification soon appeared.
[Chakra Control has reached Level 1.]
Jack smiled.
“One step closer.”
He removed the leaf, examined it, and placed it back on his forehead.
The exercise had been extremely effective while his Chakra Control was at level zero. At that stage, maintaining the leaf for a minute had produced progress at an astonishing rate. Under ideal concentration, the lowest stage had advanced almost ten times faster than an ordinary training skill.
Now that Chakra Control had reached level one, however, the growth rate decreased by ten times.
[Chakra Control proficiency increased by 1%.]
Jack waited another minute.
The percentage increased again.
He needed one hundred minutes of continuous training to reach the next level. That sounded tedious, but it was still remarkably fast. An ordinary academy student might spend years learning the same degree of control.
Jack sat cross-legged on the bedframe and continued.
The room darkened as the sun vanished. Moonlight entered through the narrow window, illuminating the floating leaf on his forehead.
Jack occasionally lost concentration. Whenever that happened, the leaf slipped, and he had to begin stabilizing the chakra again. Each mistake taught him something about the flow.
Too much chakra caused the leaf to shake or tear.
Too little allowed it to fall.
The goal wasn’t simply to release energy. He had to maintain exactly the right amount while compensating for every small movement of his head.
The exercise gradually became natural.
After one hundred minutes, another notification sounded.
[Chakra Control has reached Level 2.]
The change wasn’t physical, but Jack immediately noticed a difference in how he perceived his chakra.
Previously, it had felt like water moving through a pipe controlled by an unreliable valve. He could release a general amount but couldn’t precisely adjust the flow.
Now it responded more smoothly.
Jack walked over to the nearest wall and pressed one foot against it.
The tree-walking exercise required him to gather chakra in the soles of his feet and use it to adhere to a solid surface. Too little chakra would make him fall, while too much would damage the surface and push him away.
He focused carefully.
His first foot remained attached.
Jack lifted the second and placed it higher.
For one terrifying moment, his body hung sideways against the wall. Then he took another step.
He was walking vertically.
A laugh escaped him.
“This is incredible.”
Jack continued upward until he reached the ceiling. He transferred chakra to one foot at a time and carefully moved across it.
Soon, he was standing upside down above the room like a human spider.
Blood rushed toward his head, but his feet remained firmly attached.
He looked down at the bedframe.
In the Naruto world, this ability was so common that most trained shinobi barely considered it a technique. They could climb trees and cliffs without using their hands, but almost no one treated it as impressive.
In his previous world, people would have called it a superpower.
Even here, the technique had practical value. It could help Jack scale buildings, cross dangerous terrain, and hide in places where enemies wouldn’t think to look.
Unfortunately, ordinary wall-walking wouldn’t help him defeat someone like Arlong.
Jack checked his progress.
[Chakra Control Lv. 2: 0.1%]
His expression changed.
The growth rate had decreased by another factor of ten.
Holding the leaf in place had provided one percent per minute after reaching level one. Now, practising control while standing upside down gave him only one-tenth of one percent per minute.
He would need one thousand minutes to reach level three.
That meant more than sixteen hours of uninterrupted training.
Jack released the chakra from one foot and almost fell headfirst.
He hurriedly restored the flow, walked down the wall, and returned to the floor.
“Every level becomes ten times harder.”
At this rate, reaching level four would require a massive amount of training.
However, the rate wasn’t actually slow.
Jack’s Sage Spirit was level ten because of the Ten-Tails template. It granted approximately ten times the learning efficiency of an ordinary person.
Without it, reaching level three might require more than one hundred and sixty hours. Advancing beyond that could take months or even years.
His current learning talent was comparable to the greatest spiritual geniuses of the Naruto world.
Indra Otsutsuki, the elder son of Hagoromo and ancestor of the Uchiha clan, had possessed extraordinary spiritual energy and intelligence. He was credited with creating the foundation of ninjutsu itself.
Jack’s Sage Spirit had already reached a similar—or possibly superior—level.
The thought filled him with confidence.
He returned to the wall and resumed training.
For the next five hours, Jack walked across the walls and ceiling. He moved faster whenever the exercise became too comfortable. He practised changing directions, jumping from one wall to another, and adjusting his chakra before making contact.
Several failures sent him crashing onto the dusty floor.
Fortunately, his HP recovery repaired every bruise within minutes.
By the time Jack stopped, his head ached from constant concentration.
His progress had reached only thirty percent.
—
Skill: Chakra Control Lv. 2 (30%)
—
He wanted to continue, but mental exhaustion made the chakra beneath his feet unstable. Pushing any further would produce little benefit and might cause a serious fall.
Tomorrow, he could combine physical exercise with chakra-control training.
Jack checked the window and door, then lay on the bedframe.
The room was quiet.
He had no blanket, pillow, or fire. Insects buzzed beyond the window, and the distant roars of forest animals occasionally echoed through the village.
Yet the Ten-Tails template protected him from the cold and kept hunger away.
Jack closed his eyes.
The next morning, sunlight woke him.
For several seconds, he stared at the damaged ceiling and wondered where he was. Then memories of the billboard, the system, and the Arlong Pirates returned.
His new life hadn’t been a dream.
Jack stood and stretched.
Since breakfast was unnecessary, he could immediately begin exercising. The previous day’s chase had shown how effectively intense physical activity produced experience under the Ten-Tails template.
He needed an organized routine.
After considering several options, Jack chose the most famous training program he knew.
Saitama’s routine.
One hundred push-ups.
One hundred squats.
One hundred sit-ups.
A ten-kilometre run.
In his former world, completing the entire routine once per day would have been difficult. Completing it repeatedly would have caused severe injuries.
Now Jack possessed a level-ten Sage Body, accelerated healing, and passive chakra recovery.
He walked to the centre of the ruined village and lowered himself onto the road.
“One.”
Jack completed the first push-up.
His movements were awkward initially, but the Ten-Tails template allowed him to adapt quickly. His muscles warmed, his breathing settled into a steady rhythm, and the repetitions became smoother.
At the hundredth push-up, a notification appeared.
[Experience gained: 10.]
Jack immediately began squats.
The hundred repetitions produced another ten experience points. Sit-ups gave him the same amount.
Afterward, he followed the road leading around the outskirts of the abandoned village. He estimated the distance using the system and completed ten kilometres by running several circuits.
His lungs burned by the end.
[Experience gained: 10.]
The entire routine awarded forty experience points.
Jack absorbed a small amount of vitality from a tree to restore the energy his passive recovery couldn’t replace quickly enough. Once his CP returned to full, he began another round.
Morning became afternoon.
Sweat soaked his clothes. Dust clung to his arms, and his muscles repeatedly reached the edge of failure. Every time Jack levelled up, however, the system restored his body and washed away the worst of the exhaustion.
Then he continued.
One hundred push-ups.
One hundred squats.
One hundred sit-ups.
Ten kilometres.
The ruined village became his private training ground.
Jack occasionally imagined what Nojiko would think if she saw him running in circles through the destroyed streets. She already believed he was strange. Watching him perform hundreds of squats would confirm it.
Still, embarrassment was irrelevant.
Chew was level twenty-four.
Arlong might be close to level sixty.
If Jack wanted to survive this world, he couldn’t afford to waste a single day.
By evening, he had completed seven full rounds.
Seven hundred push-ups.
Seven hundred squats.
Seven hundred sit-ups.
Seventy kilometres of running.
The training awarded a total of 280 experience points.
Jack collapsed onto the road after completing the final kilometre. His clothes were drenched, and his body felt as if every muscle had been torn apart and repaired multiple times.
A succession of level-up notifications appeared before him.
When the energy finally settled, he opened his panel.
—
Template: Ten-Tails
Ability: Sage Body Lv. 10, Sage Spirit Lv. 10, Wood Release Lv10
Level: 11 (34/78)
Status: Ninja Academy Student
…
HP: 110/110 [Recovers 10% per minute]
CP: 55/55 [Recovers 10% per minute]
…
Skill: Chakra Control Lv2(30%), Transformation Lv1(12%)
—
Jack stared at his level with satisfaction.
He had advanced from level four to level eleven in a single day. His HP and CP had increased dramatically, and his physical condition had improved with every level.
According to the system’s classification, he was now comparable to a third-year academy student.
That still sounded unimpressive, but the numerical increase was significant. He was almost three times stronger than he had been that morning.
More importantly, his growth speed remained absurd.
An ordinary person couldn’t complete seven rounds of Saitama’s routine in one day. Even many trained fighters would collapse from exhaustion or injure themselves permanently.
Jack could endure it because his Ten-Tails template restored his chakra and rapidly healed the damage caused by exercise.
The Transformation skill on the panel came from a separate experiment.
Earlier in the afternoon, Jack realized that he needed at least one useful jutsu before continuing purely physical training. He possessed theoretical information about many techniques, but the Ten-Tails had never attended a ninja academy or learned hand seals.
Its template offered no talent for basic human ninjutsu.
Jack temporarily replaced it with Itachi Uchiha’s template.
The difference was immediate.
Jack’s physical recovery slowed, but his understanding of hand seals became astonishingly sharp. He reviewed the information for the Transformation Jutsu and practised moulding chakra while forming the required seal.
On his first attempt, smoke covered his body before immediately dispersing.
The second attempt transformed his hair but left the rest of him unchanged.
On the third, he became a nearly perfect copy of Genzo—except for the pinwheel, which spun in the wrong direction.
After a few more attempts, the system officially recognized the skill.
[Skill acquired: Transformation Lv. 1.]
Itachi’s learning talent was terrifying.
Jack now understood how a child could graduate from the academy at seven. Techniques that confused normal students for months became simple after only a few attempts when viewed through Itachi’s natural genius.
Once he acquired the skill, Jack reactivated the Ten-Tails template.
Transformation remained on his panel.
Skills learned through one template weren’t lost when he changed to another. The template determined his talent, abilities, and natural foundation, but the knowledge and techniques he personally mastered belonged permanently to him.
That discovery made the system far more valuable.
Jack could use specialized templates to learn different skills and then return to the Ten-Tails for training and recovery.
He was considering which jutsu to learn next when movement appeared near the village entrance.
Jack immediately stood.
A familiar blue-haired woman walked along the road carrying a cloth-wrapped basket.
Nojiko.
She noticed him in the centre of the village and stopped.
Her gaze moved from Jack’s sweat-soaked clothes to the strange circular trail his running had created through the dust.
“What happened here?”
“Training.”
Nojiko looked around. “Were you fighting someone?”
“No.”
“Then why does it look like you spent the day being chased through the village?”
“That was also training.”
She stared at him for a moment before shaking her head.
“I brought food.”
Nojiko had packed bread, fruit, roasted vegetables, and a small piece of fish. It was far more than Jack expected, especially from people forced to surrender most of their money to Arlong.
“You didn’t have to do this.”
“If you die from hunger before your team arrives, those powerful pirate hunters won’t be happy with us.”
Jack couldn’t tell whether she was joking or reminding him that she still doubted his story.
“Thank you.”
They entered his chosen house and sat across from each other at the old wooden table.
Jack didn’t need food, but its smell awakened an appetite he had almost forgotten. The first bite tasted better than he expected.
Natural energy could sustain his body.
It couldn’t replace the pleasure of a warm meal.
Nojiko looked around the cleaned room.
“You made yourself comfortable.”
“I’ve lived in worse places.”
“Where?”
Jack paused with a piece of bread halfway to his mouth.
“Pirate-hunter training camps.”
Nojiko’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Jack quickly changed the subject.
“How long has Arlong controlled the island?”
Her expression lost its faint amusement.
“Eight years.”
Jack already knew the general story, but he needed to understand how reality differed from the anime.
“What happens to people who can’t pay?”
“You saw what happens.”
“They actually eat them?”
Nojiko looked down at her food.
“Sometimes.”
The single word carried more weight than any detailed explanation.
As she continued speaking, the world Jack remembered from television began to feel shallow and distant.
The anime had shown Arlong murdering those who resisted and threatening anyone unable to pay. It had shown villages destroyed, homes burned, and lives treated as worthless.
But reality was worse.
People didn’t simply vanish between episodes.
Families were forced to watch their loved ones die. Some were taken away and never returned. Women feared more than death whenever drunken pirates entered their villages. Anyone who fought back was tortured publicly so others would remember the price of resistance.
Nojiko didn’t describe every cruelty directly.
She didn’t need to.
The pauses in her voice and the cold anger in her eyes revealed enough.
Humans ate fish. Human traffickers kidnapped mermaids and sold them as slaves. Wealthy nobles treated beautiful members of other races as property.
It would have been foolish to believe Fish-Men filled with hatred toward humanity would always show restraint when they held complete power over an island.
This wasn’t an anime anymore.
It was a real world.
And real worlds were cruel.
“I’ve seen too many people die here,” Nojiko said. “Friends. Neighbours. Children who never did anything to deserve it.”
Jack’s appetite disappeared.
Nojiko studied him.
“You aren’t the first person who thought Arlong’s bounty would be easy money. Pirate hunters have come here before.”
“What happened to them?”
“Arlong killed them.”
Her voice remained calm, but the answer sent a chill through Jack.
“One group lasted almost an hour. Arlong left their bodies at the village entrance as a warning.”
She leaned forward.
“If your team isn’t certain they can win, tell them to stay away. And if you lied about having a team, find a boat and leave this island.”
Jack remained silent.
He wasn’t certain of anything.
He couldn’t defeat Chew, much less Arlong. No pirate hunters were coming to rescue him, and Luffy’s arrival date was only an estimate.
But leaving wouldn’t make him safe.
The seas were filled with storms, pirates, Sea Kings, and countless monsters. Even if he somehow escaped the island, weakness would follow him wherever he went.
“If I can’t survive this place, running won’t solve anything.”
Nojiko frowned. “There’s no shame in choosing to live.”
“I know.”
Jack looked at his hands.
In this world, Arlong was only a minor pirate confined to the East Blue. The Grand Line contained monsters who could destroy him effortlessly.
The strongest Emperors possessed power comparable to tailed beasts. Some might even surpass the Nine-Tails.
The Five Elders stood near the peak of the World Government, and above them was Imu—a mysterious ruler capable of treating even those monsters like servants.
Jack didn’t know how much of the future he remembered would remain accurate, but one truth was unavoidable.
Anything was possible in this world.
The only reliable way to protect himself was to become stronger.
Nojiko finished eating and stood.
“I’ll return when I can, but don’t expect food every day.”
“You don’t need to bring any.”
“You’ll starve.”
“I know how to survive in the forest.”
That answer was technically true.
Nojiko gathered the empty containers.
“Be careful. Chew told Arlong about you. They’ll search the nearby villages first, but eventually they may come here.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“No, you won’t,” she said bluntly. “So hide.”
Jack smiled. “I’ll do that.”
Nojiko left before darkness completely covered the road.
Jack watched until she disappeared, then returned to his training room. He placed the leaf on his forehead, channelled chakra into his feet, and stepped onto the wall.
For the next five hours, he walked across every surface of the room.
His movements gradually became smoother. He could change directions without pausing and jump between the walls and ceiling without losing control.
By the time he stopped, Chakra Control had reached level two with sixty percent proficiency.
Tomorrow, he intended to reach level three.
Jack finished his training, and went to sleep.