Chapter Eighty-Nine: Sakura Haruno Advances with Purpose

“Sakura, your role is a very important one.”

Another of Naruto’s shadow clones stood beside her and said,

“Sasuke and I are both front-line fighters. If our squad is going to have every role properly covered, then you have to take responsibility for being both our field medic and our operator of precision equipment. Otherwise, we’ll be nothing but a pair of sledgehammers—good for brute force and nothing else, completely incapable of carrying out more complex missions.”

I understand all that, but this special training is just too brutal.

Inwardly, Sakura Haruno shed a bitter tear for herself.

These days, she spent most of every day buried in books on battlefield first aid.

Whether it was the combat emergency manuals Naruto had provided, ordinary medical texts used by civilians, or the introductory materials on basic medical ninjutsu from the Leaf Hospital, Sakura studied them all with desperate intensity.

Fortunately, she had already gone on several missions and seen blood before, so she did not carry too much psychological burden while learning such things.

Under Naruto’s guidance, she had started again from the very basics—suturing wounds and performing hemostasis techniques—striving to make every movement exact and flawlessly practiced.

And thanks to Sakura’s extraordinarily delicate chakra control, she grasped the fundamentals of medical ninjutsu almost as soon as she learned them. Otherwise, these days would have been even harsher.

Besides that, Naruto was also teaching her how to fight using steam-powered weaponry.

“Quick, quick, quick!” Naruto clapped his hands and shouted. “The targets are about to launch! You have to move into position fast and fire at once! Before they leave the designated range, you must hit every single target with precision!”

Sakura darted swiftly through the forest.

Around the target field, Naruto had arranged numerous firing points among the branches of the surrounding trees.

With the aid of the steam-powered maneuvering gear at her waist, Sakura kept landing on point after point. Naruto was helping her train her mobility.

As Naruto began a loud countdown, Sakura, aided by the universal mechanical hand, carefully checked every weapon on her body.

“All right, countdown! Three, two, one! Launch!”

Naruto’s mechanical hand activated all the surrounding target launchers at once.

Bang bang bang bang—

Countless targets the size of tennis balls shot out simultaneously in every direction.

“Damn you, Naruto! You’re doing this on purpose just to make my life hell!”

Sakura’s inner self cursed, then immediately raised the steam crossbow in her hands and fired in rapid succession.

She had personally maintained the crossbow’s springs and pressure valves, and it was in excellent condition.

As Sakura pulled the trigger again and again, more than a dozen rounds flew out, every one striking a distant moving target with perfect accuracy.

But that was only part of them. Many more targets still danced through the air.

Next, Sakura poured chakra into the runes of her aetheric short blade and activated a ninjutsu.

For the moment, the technique showed no visible effect. But when Sakura raised her steam-powered gauntlet and launched a shuriken, the jutsu revealed itself at once.

The single shuriken speeding through the air suddenly multiplied into thousands upon thousands, smashing the vast majority of the remaining targets.

What she had used, through the aid of the aetheric short blade, was a Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique. It was a jutsu Sakura had learned from Sasuke.

At the time, she had used learning ninjutsu as an excuse to get Sasuke alone so she could do something romantic, perhaps even flirt a little.

Sasuke had seen straight through her intentions, but he had still taught her the technique with complete seriousness. The experience had left Sakura deeply questioning life.

If she had charm, then yes—Sasuke had indeed spent time alone with her learning ninjutsu.

If she had no charm, then yes—Sasuke had still only spent time alone with her learning ninjutsu.

Sakura ignored the remaining targets. Just as they were about to fly beyond the designated area, a cluster of little machines suddenly sprang up from beneath the fallen leaves and began thumping out shell after shell, blasting every escaped target to pieces.

It turned out that while circling the range earlier, Sakura had secretly scattered a number of gear-launchers in ambush.

Activating them now was perfectly timed, and they shot down every last target.

“Excellent! A perfect score!”

Naruto loudly announced Sakura’s result, then called out again,

“Now then, next event! Within the time limit, you must quickly destroy a heavily armored target! Are you ready?”

“If I say I’m not, will you pause the training?”

“Of course not... take this!”

As he spoke, Naruto activated another machine.

With the earth shaking violently, a large target robot clad in thick armor burst up through the ground and rose into view.

Bzzz—

The target robot emitted a low mechanical hum. A red flash lit its single eye as it locked onto Sakura in midair.

Boom boom boom boom—

Several large target shells fired at once and shot straight toward her.

Sakura swiftly drew the steam rifle from her shoulder and fired repeatedly, destroying the incoming shells, then swung the muzzle toward the robot itself.

When every round in the barrel had been spent, she had failed to leave so much as a mark on the armor.

But Sakura did not lose heart. She rapidly fitted the psionic amplifier onto her longbow, then loosed a single arrow that pierced the bull’s-eye in an instant.

With a sharp crash, the target robot’s outer armor completely disintegrated, exposing the fragile core beneath.

Sakura seized her final weapon and shouted, “Take this, damn it!”

Then she swung the steam-powered war hammer and streaked through the sky like a falling star. With a thunderous impact, she smashed a deep crater into the earth. At the bottom, all that remained were countless fragments of the robot.

“Whoa! That felt amazing!”

Leaning on the steam-powered hammer, Sakura thrust a fist into the air and shouted in delight.

“This is still the one that feels the best to use!”

At that moment, the way she looked at the power hammer was almost like a man gazing at his beloved.

“Very good, Sakura.” Naruto emerged holding a score sheet and said to her, “Forty-five seconds from start to finish, one hundred percent target destruction, and you used every weapon. Taking both precision and tactical variety into account, I’m giving you a ninety-eight.”

“Huh? Then why did you deduct two points?” Sakura asked, utterly baffled.

Naruto shrugged. “Because you emptied your rifle magazine without achieving the corresponding result. That was unnecessary waste.”

A vein bulged on Sakura’s forehead.

“If you had prepared specialized dragon-breath rounds, armor-piercing explosive rounds, or sensor-jamming rounds, then whether you used them to damage the target robot or disrupt its detection systems, that would have been one thing. But the problem is, you used ordinary anti-personnel ammunition. Against heavy armor, it was useless. That counts as a misjudgment of the battlefield, so I had to deduct two points.”

Naruto was still there giving his detailed explanation.

Sakura finally snapped.

The study plan Naruto had made for her was already absurdly complicated. The training exercises were difficult, the standards were mercilessly high, and now he expected her to think through every possibility in such exhaustive detail as well. Wasn’t this just making things hard for her on purpose?

By now, Naruto’s explanation sounded to Sakura like nothing more than nitpicking, and she exploded completely.

“To hell with your waste!”

It seemed Sakura’s inner self could no longer suppress itself. She swung the great hammer straight at him, and Naruto’s shadow clone vanished with a pop.

Huff... huff...

Bracing herself on the hammer, Sakura panted heavily.

And yet, as she looked at the final result she had achieved, a weary smile still rose to her face.

“Naruto! Sasuke! I’m going to catch up with both of you!”

She clenched her fist tightly.

“One day, I’ll be the one protecting you!”