Old man Sarutobi…was a beast.
Despite how genial and kind the elder Hokage was, that was not at all present during Daiki's training with him. He was given little time to rest and he was drilled from sun up to sun down and beyond.
Taijutsu drills until his limbs ached. Multiple chakra control exercises at once. A new jutsu to learn every single day. And that was just the early morning practice.
From there, they would move on to taijutsu sparring, atop the walls, atop the ceiling, atop the pond within the huge cavernous training room itself. Daiki was given no quarter and no mercy at all. He would fight the old man with pure taijutsu and get his absolute shit kicked in.
Sarutobi Hiruzen's perosnal taijutsu styles were the Monkey Fist, a style his clan learned from the Monkey summons. And the Drunken Monkey, a style he created personally based on that.
But that was not all he used. The Academy Style, The Inuzuka's Beast Claw Style, the Uchiha's Interceptor Style, The Strong Fist, the Hyuuga's Gentle Fist even his own Feather Fist Style and more beyond, Taijutsu Style's belonging to other villages.
The old man slipped between so many different fighting styles, that after five days Daiki had long since lost count.
From there, he would be given a half an hour break to eat and recover. Before being thrown right back into it with running through drills of the jutsu he already knew and what he was in the process of learning.
And then they would spar again, with everything at their disposal. Daiki's at least.
Because the old man never once used a Jutsu Daiki didn't already know, had seen already or was in the process of learning.
And each time, even while they fought, the man would coach him, pointing out his mistakes, give him advice on what he was working on while at the same time beating him black and blue.
Even with his Heavenly Star Seal, even when drawing upon the Lightning Chakra Mode…Daiki never once managed to defeat a single one of the mans Shadow Clones.
And he sent quite a few to train him when he was busy each day. Especially since the last thing on the agenda each night, was to spar with five of his shadow clones at once, each one using a different fighting style.
He lost horribly. Each and every single time.
And Daiki loved every second of it.
Never had he been so beaten, never had he felt so exhausted in all his life. Never before had anyone pushed him to his limits and beyond as much as Sarutobi Hiruzen.
Even with his regeneration and Jinchuuriki status, by time the sixth morning of training under the Third Hokage rolled around and Daiki was roused awake in the morning after being literally beat unconscious…his mind was heavy, his body aching with phantom pains from multiple dozens if not hundreds of wounds that had long since healed.
"Ugh…" Daiki rolled over in the rather luxurious, soft king size bed that was present in the living area provided within the training cavern under the Hokage monument, before pushing himself up and out of the bed a moment later.
He had only just awoken, but, he couldn't afford to waste any time of his time at all training under the old man.
He washed in the bathroom the wake himself up, summoned new clothes from his Dimension Force Seal, ate a quick, crappy metal and made his way out into the main training hall.
As he did, he called idly upon his status to check out his progress.
Chakra Capacity: 192,700/192,700 (Low-Tier Kage)
Chakra Control: 317/500
Lightning - (Expert): The Heavens Spark
Water - (Expert): The Sea Parts Before You
Wind - (Master): The Gale Bows
Earth - (Adept): The Earth Shakes.
Fire - (Novice): Simmering Power
Fuinjutsu - (Advanced): The breath hitches.
'Damn.' he whistled, impressed in spite of himself. The progress he'd made in the last five days, had been nothing short of explosive.
Even for him. Everything had risen by more than twenty five points skill wise, his Taijutsu had outright risen a full fifty and his Genjutsu, even while not learning any new ones, had risen dramatically from how much he'd been force to use it to even stave the old man off for even a second more during the spars they had.
And beyond that, not only had his lightning affinity risen up to the expert level, he'd outright hit the mastery point of the Wind element. Alongside Earth and Fire appearing on his status' as affinities now.
It was kind of ironic that he'd mastered the outright worst element, polar opposite of his first affinity before any else.
'Well, it's not like I've actually been training my lightning affinity all that much lately.' he mused. The increase in ability had risen from Advanced to Expert simply because each day, the old man Hokage would give him a new lightning jutsu to learn and expected him to get them down before he got another more or less.
Honestly, it would have been outright impossible without all his shadow clones training diligently within Isobu's dimension.
But, it was amazing either way...because he now had an affinity for every single element!
A moment later, he dismissed the status screen as he opened the door of the living space and left, entering the training space.
He was not at all surprised to find a familiar old man dressed in his battle gear, casually sitting on a comfortable armchair that looked completely out of place in the training area, nursing a cup of tea.
"Good morning Daiki-kun," Hiruzen greeted him warmly, "You took a whole minute longer to come today, I was almost afraid you were going to boycott training today."
He was teasing, but Daiki snorted anyway, "If it wasn't for Isobu, I might have," he shrugged. Like, he could not stress enough, the old man and his clones literally beat him unconscious every night, even with his absurd vitality and healing, it usually took time to wake up normally from that and Isobu forced him to stay unconscious and rest his mind as long as possible on top of that, "Honestly, it's no wonder the Sannin turned out to be complete monsters if this is how you train your students."
He'd only been at it five days and increased his ability two affinities, gained two new ones, rose up a rank with one and learned literally over ten jutsu. Five lightning, two earth, one wind, the old man's Fire Style: Fire Dragon Missile jutsu with coaching from him.
Hell, the old man had even known the Poison Mist jutsu and helped him get it down in that time as well in-between kicking his ass up and down the cavern.
Sadly, he hadn't managed to get that equipment shadow clones jutsu down yet though.
But yeah, the Sannin trained under old man Sarutobi for years. They would have either become complete monsters under him or died in the process.
Honestly, the older generation of ninja were made of some real tough shit back in the day, he was barely managing to keep going even with his healing abilities.
Hiruzen who was about to raise his cup up to his lips paused and laughed lightly, "Oh Daiki-kun, I'm afraid I didn't train them even closely to as intense as I'm training you, unlike them, we only have a week together for the moment," his eyes twinkled with amusement, "In fact, I was not even planning on training you this hard, but I was forced to escalate because of how quickly you have been progressing and just the sheer amount of endurance you have. If I trained my old students as I did you, I don't think they would have survived long."