D-ranks and Purchasing Three Techniques!

2 days later

Naruto stood behind his team with a bored look as they waited outside the Hokage's office. His team's routine had been practically the same every single day.

Kakashi always being 3 hours late.

Only completing a single D-rank mission.

Kakashi would split the money and dismiss the team.

Almost instantly, Sasuke would leave, with Sakura trailing behind him.

After subtly observing his team during their time spent together, Naruto identified the common behaviours of his team.

Sasuke spent most of his time deep in thought. He rarely initiated a conversation with others unless he needed something and only responded when asked something.

Meanwhile, Sakura spent most of her time thinking about and talking to Sasuke. Thankfully, she had stopped hitting and shouting at him since the Genin exam, although she would occasionally make a snarky comment when the villager's treatment of him was brought up.

On the other hand, Kakashi seemed like a nice but strange guy. In his opinion, nobody could read porn out in public places and not be a weirdo. He appreciated that the man hadn't ignored him when the civilians treated him like he wasn't there, with the silver-haired Jonin occasionally coming to check on him. So it was a mystery as to why, if he was that caring, did he leave him tied to the post?

However, one thing that Naruto had noted was that Kakashi was a lazy Jonin instructor. Maybe he was waiting for some reason to train them or hadn't made a training schedule. Whatever the reason was, he had yet to make any efforts to teach the group, content with just observing them.

Naruto felt it was fortunate that he had the initiative to train independently instead of waiting to be taught something. As a result, he had mastered the leaf sticking exercise, with all of his clones able to keep the leaf attached to their heads indefinitely. They can even adhere the leaf to their hands, elbows and knees while moving about.

The increase in chakra control had yielded some visible results that Naruto was quick to notice. He was able to create approximately 10% more clones while creating the exact number he wanted. It was also easier to transform the right amount of chakra into earth/lightning natured.

After mastering the leaf sticking exercise, the clones had started on the more advanced chakra control exercise, tree walking. Naruto was also glad that near the main training grounds was a small lake, meaning he had a nearby source of water for when he eventually moved on to water walking.

Naruto shivered for a moment while thinking of the lake. He cursed his perfect memory as he could clearly remember the horrors of Kakashi performing the Konohagakure Secret Finger Technique: 1000 Years of Death on him. While involuntarily thinking about it, Naruto delicately shifted a few inches further away from Kakashi.

…

As the team handed in their completed mission for the day, the moment the Hokage dismissed them, Naruto spoke out. "Hokage-sama, I request permission to perform additional D-rank missions on my own."

Compared to hearing the shocking news that a Genin wanted more D-rank missions, the Hokage was more surprised at how Naruto had addressed him. While he had noticed some changes in Naruto's attitude over the past few days, he didn't realise that their relationship had deteriorated to this extent. 'This isn't good.' Hiruzen thought to himself.

In addition, Kakashi had made some concerning reports about the civilian's overall attitude towards Naruto during missions. During the past two missions, the Jonin had written additional notes in their mission reports of blatant mistreatment of Naruto from the civilians issuing the mission.

"And why do you want to do more D-ranks, Naruto-kun?" Hiruzen asked, wanting to draw more information out of Naruto. If Kakashi's reports on the villager's attitudes toward the blonde were accurate, why would Naruto ask for additional D-rank missions?

Naruto was confused at the sudden line of questioning, not expecting to be investigated for wanting additional missions. Yet he didn't even need to think about his reply as it had been on his mind the past few days. "I need money."

'Money?' After hearing that, Hiruzen understood. Naruto was now a Genin of Konoha, so he was no longer eligible for the stipend that orphans could receive.

The Hokage knew that Team 7 only performed 1 D-rank mission a day, which meant that they earnt from 1250-5000 Ryo a day depending on the mission difficulty and pay. That was barely enough to support the minimum needs of a ninja, even less so for a growing boy living on his own like Naruto.

Hiruzen guessed that the others made no mention to perform additional D-rank missions because they all had money to fall back on.

Sakura Haruno lived with her civilian parents, and she didn't need to buy food or pay rent. Sasuke Uchiha had inherited his family's wealth and would be able to claim the wealth of his clan upon promotion to Jonin. While Kakashi had his savings from his Jonin missions.

"Well, we have an overabundance of D-rank missions, Hokage-sama," Iruka interjected, bringing the Hokage from his thoughts.

Hiruzen nodded in agreement. The number of D-rank missions that Konoha was getting was growing larger and larger as of recent. As a result, there was a backlog of missions, and the villagers requesting them started sending complaints about how long their requests took to be completed.

"I suppose I could allow it. Nothing in the rulebook states that a Genin in a team cannot apply for missions alone." Hiruzen acquiesced.

"Thank you, Hokage-sama." Naruto bowed in politeness while inwardly cheering in happiness. Now he could finally start saving for some of the Ninjutsu in the library that he had his eyes on.

Under the gaze of most of the room's occupants, Naruto walked over to the missions section and chose 5 missions that had zero chance of him getting hurt. He vetoed any heavy lifting tasks alongside any missions that involved animals, such as dog walking.

"Are you sure you want to accept so many missions, Naruto-kun? If you fail to complete them, you will be fined and have a mark on your record." The Hokage queried while giving a subtle reminder of the consequences of failure.

"Don't worry, Hokage-sama, I am well aware." Naruto placated before conjuring 5 shadow clones, distributing one mission to each clone. The clones read their respective tasks and proceeded to leave the building to complete them.

Unbeknownst to the Hokage, Iruka and Team 7, the moment the clones left the building, they transformed themselves into nondescript Genin that could be found anywhere in Konoha.

Naruto knew that the villagers would ignore him if he came to their houses or businesses to complete missions. They barely gave him any direction, even when he was with his team. If he went alone, they might decline him, forcing him to hand the mission back.

Thankfully, it was pretty easy to fool the civilians with a simple transformation because most didn't have a shred of ninja training.

…

The main Naruto stood in the room with the still shocked occupants and tilted his head, wondering why everyone was staring at him. "What?"

'Shadow clones? I see. If Naruto-kun continues to send clones to do missions, maybe we will be able to get rid of this backlog, and I won't have to deal with the annoying civilian complaints.' Hiruzen thought in glee, happy that his paperwork would be reduced in the future.

Kakashi then led the team away, leaving the Hokage and his aides. Hiruzen had a thoughtful look, pondering over everything he had noticed about Naruto's change in attitude.

Kakashi had reported that Naruto, while aware of the unfairness he was receiving, wasn't showing any resentment towards the villagers for his mistreatment. However, after reading the rather detailed reports, Hiruzen wouldn't be surprised if he did.

But suddenly, Naruto developed an inexplicable resentment towards him. Maybe it was because he had kept it from the boy that he was the Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi? Hiruzen guessed that perhaps the blonde had finally digested everything that had happened a week ago, with the implications only just sinking in.

Hiruzen took a breath of his pipe. If he didn't know the reason behind the sudden change of attitude, there was little he could do to fix it. Over the years, he had received reports on Naruto's behaviour and attitude. One thing that hadn't changed was his stubbornness. The boy wouldn't forgive him unless he understood and apologised for what he did wrong.

*Clunk* The Hokage was distracted from his thoughts as one of his assistants suddenly placed a large stack of paper in front of him.

Hiruzen inwardly cursed Minato for leaving him with the burden of being Hokage with the endless paperwork. 'Maybe it's time to start considering a new successor.' He thought to himself as he started on his new workload.

…

Over the course of the next two weeks, Naruto's clones had been reporting to the mission's office, submitting their completed tasks before leaving with another one.

Naruto reached into his pocket and pulled Gama-chan out. Gama-chan was so full that he couldn't eat anymore, and the rest of the Ryo had to be stored at home thanks to the constant missions.

Speaking of D-rank missions, Naruto was surprised at the large number and wide variety. While many involved mundane tasks such as babysitting, dog walking, or even catching a cat called Tora, there were just as many that revolved around learning some type of skill.

As Naruto had dubbed them, the 'Skill missions' weren't as popular as the standard missions because they required Genin to learn a civilian life skill, which in their minds, wasn't what they signed up to do.

In addition, even though skill missions are more challenging and require Genin to learn a skill, the payment was the same as standard missions. So if the income was the same, Genin would rather complete the more straightforward mission instead of making their life harder. As a result, there were always many skill missions on the roster.

When Naruto had initially learnt about the skill missions, he had also inwardly agreed that it wasn't practical to learn a civilian skill if he was becoming a ninja.

Yet after thinking about it, he wasn't going to be a ninja all his life, and not everything can be solved by ninja arts. So with the mindset of just trying it out, he took a food preparation mission issued by one of the restaurants in Konoha.

It was a relatively straightforward task to peel potatoes, carrots and other vegetables, preparing them for the chef and their assistants to use. After understanding what to do, Naruto found it easy due to strong control of his body from the ninja training.

By virtue of being bored, he had spent a lot of time out of boredom watching and listening to the chefs as they taught their apprentices. Due to his impeccable memory, Naruto subconsciously started learning the basics of cooking.

It had started out with simple tasks such as learning how to use a knife to chop, slice and dice. However, the knife skills Naruto learned soon became more advanced as he learned techniques such as julienning, brunoise and chiffonade.

In the wake of unconsciously learning these techniques, Naruto developed an interest in cooking. The only thing he ate at home was instant ramen because it was cheap, tasty food. So one thing remained on his mind.

If he learnt how to cook, wouldn't he be able to make homemade ramen? It might not be as good as Ichiraku's, but it would undoubtedly be better tasting than instant ramen would ever be.

As a result, Naruto spent a day at the civilian side of the library, taking a break from reading books on mathematics, medicine and the various ninja arts. Instead, he focused on reading about cooking.

After reading multiple books, he learnt about the importance of marinades, herbs and spices, and even the final presentation of food to make the dish look better.

While reading, he had also stumbled upon food's nutritional information, which was interesting enough for him to pick up several other scrolls on the subject.

Before reading these scrolls, Naruto had never thought much about food before, only knowing that he had to eat food to survive and that fruits and vegetables were healthy.

Yet, upon finishing the books on nutritional information, he learned about the 7 major groups of nutrients, which are substances that the body needs but could only be obtained by eating a variety of foods.

In particular, learning about one of the major classes of nutrients, proteins, had solved an issue that had been plaguing him for almost a week. As despite having created a more efficient training plan from the books in the library, his physical training had been slowing down.

Initially, he had thought it was the sudden change in routine or due to overtraining. Yet even after returning to the original exercise regime or taking a day's break, his progress had practically stagnated.

Upon learning about the nutritional information of food, such as proteins, Naruto concluded that he wasn't getting enough protein in his diet, which consisted of mostly ramen.

Even when he splurged some days and ate multiple bowls of instant chicken ramen, he had consumed nowhere near the required amount of protein to build muscle, even more so for a growing boy like him.

At that point, Naruto had finally taken one of the lessons his mother had said to heart. 'Don't be a fussy eater.' If he wasn't willing to eat anything but ramen, didn't that make him the fussy eater that his mother said?

As a result, Naruto spent the rest of the day learning different cooking techniques, recipes and the nutritional information of different foods such as red meats, white meats, fish, vegetables, fruit and other processed goods such as flour.

In addition, he took kitchen missions more often, paying apt attention to everything the chefs were doing, secretly stealing their techniques to make his food taste better.

After almost 2 weeks of learning, Naruto didn't consider himself a master chef, but he could cook tasty food that wasn't ramen. Because he changed what food he purchased his food expenses did increase quite a lot.

However, he was once again making rapid progress in his physical training, and he wasn't always hungry between meals, so the blonde accepted the small downside.

Yet, even after knowing that ramen wasn't healthy, Naruto couldn't cut it out of his diet completely. Every time he ate it, he remembered the kindness of Teuchi and Ayame, with them giving him a bowl of ramen even though he couldn't afford it. So he made sure that he would only eat homemade or Ichiraku ramen whenever he felt a craving.

After learning about cooking from D-rank food preparation missions, Naruto told his clones to focus on the other D-rank tasks that contained life skills.

As long as the task had some sort of skill requirement, Naruto took it. His clones had accepted several D-rank missions from the local pharmacies in Konoha, putting some of the medical knowledge he had learnt in the library to practical use.

He learned how to differentiate between different medical plants while also learning to harvest the plants himself. In the meantime, he had also picked up on herbal salve recipes for injuries, chakra exhaustion and cold and flu.

Naruto considered himself to always have a small green thumb, so he was excited when he saw the gardening missions. He had several potted plants that he had been raising even during the Academy (although he now knew them to be weeds).

Therefore, Naruto learnt all about taking care of and identifying different varieties of plants. He had also bought some spice plants such as basil, chives, thyme and mint. Eventually, he hoped to expand his small garden, maybe planting some of the medicinal herbs he knew of from studying medicine.

With his eyes opened by the existence of D-rank 'skill missions', Naruto didn't understand why ninjas hated them so much. While he didn't exactly enjoy catching the demon cat Tora with his team or any D-rank missions where he had to deal with the villagers, assignments such as working at the drug store were exciting.

Naruto had no doubt that he would thank himself for spending the time to learn how to cook or plant and utilise multiple medicinal herbs and spices one day.

…

While thinking about what he had learnt over the past 2 weeks of D-rank missions, Naruto walked out of the library with a D-rank and 2 C-rank techniques in his hand.

The D-rank technique was the Shunshin. It allowed a ninja to travel between two points at an almost untraceable speed while using a puff of smoke to disguise their movements. After reading its description, Naruto realised that this was the technique that Kakashi would use whenever he would suddenly appear in front of them.

The C-rank techniques were earth release techniques. Although splitting his nature transformation clones into two groups that studied earth and lightning had resulted in his progress speed reducing, he was still advanced enough to learn C-rank techniques.

The first earth technique was a defensive technique called Earth Release: Earth Shore Return. It involved the user slamming their hands on the floor to flip a giant wall of earth in front of the user, durable enough to withstand C-rank techniques.

The second earth technique was a supplementary/reconnaissance technique called Earth Release: Hiding Like a Mole. Upon usage, the earth around the user would turn into fine sand, which they could dig up to 40m deep. They could sense their position and what was happening on the surface using magnetic forces.

Naruto smiled at his choice of techniques. Initially, he was hoping to get an offensive technique; however, there weren't many good offensive earth style techniques. On the other hand, there weren't many lightning techniques in Konoha, although there was a B-rank technique that he had his eyes on when he saved up enough Ryo.

In any case, speed, defensive and escaping/hiding techniques were just as, if not more useful than any offensive technique he could have purchased. You couldn't attack the enemies if you were dead after all.

After looking down at the scrolls, Naruto moved towards training ground 7 to learn them as fast as possible.

Author's notes: Here's chapter 7 containing all of the food and nutritional information that I know a lot of people were wanting to see Naruto learn. I tried to make some sort of logical thought process in how Naruto learnt about it while making him encounter struggles because he didn't know about it before.

Hopefully, I am doing a good job of not just shoving everything down your throats, otherwise, it would be pretty easy for me just to write 10 chapters of the different training methods alongside any difficulties.

I can probably guess that some people are wondering why I am focusing on Naruto learning nature transformation early. Don't be too worried, he won't be slinging around 100s of different elemental techniques, however, I do have a plan for nature transformation (some might be able to guess since I have left hints in some places)

Thanks for all your suggestions, feel free to send more via review or by PM! I hope you enjoyed it.