- Location
- Origin Unknown
And now I'm thinking about lizards… Saurial would love this.
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Tome of the Orange Sky (Naruto/MGLN)
- Thread starter CmptrWz
- Start date
- Crossover
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- Tags
- mgln naruto naruto uzumaki complete
And now I'm thinking about lizards… Saurial would love this.
- Location
- Europe
One on the head, one on the neck or both on the neck (forwards & backwards).
The real weirdo would continue to collect them, so the sides of the neck could be protected too, while also having a head and limbs ones, plus one for on a hat.
That it would actually help in keeping track of his (chakra) training....
That's the bonus, right?
Chapter 88 - Flying Island First Stage
Ino looked over the gathered genin, aware that several civilians that had earned honorary forehead protectors had needed to be turned away today.
"Good morning," Ino said. "You are here because you hope to prove yourselves and earn a promotion to chunin. We're doing things differently than you were expecting though. The entire first stage is a solo stage, and those of you that pass will be forming teams before the second stage." She held up an armband. "Each of you will be issued an armband to track your progress through this stage. There are categories on the armband. The last time we did this you only needed one personal completion and five unique ones across your team, but that is not the case this time. Each of you needs five completion markings by the end of the five-day testing period, a meager one completion per day. There are also category groupings, and you will need completions in at least three categories."
The genin looked shocked and worried about that, and she let them stew for a moment before she continued. "So that you don't waste time, each station is marked with the category it applies to. There are a small number of stations marked with multiple categories, and at the time of completion you will be asked which category you wish it to be counted towards. You will not be able to change the category for such a station afterwards, so choose carefully. Exceptionally good performances will almost certainly end up broadcast, as will exceptionally poor performances."
Getting everyone their armbands took a few minutes as there were a lot of genin here. Once that was done Ino looked over the group. "Okay. You all have your armbands, and they will allow you to travel through all the gates. The entire island perimeter is open to you for finding and completing tasks, but the central forest is still off-limits. It is on each of you to find the testing stations you need, using whatever means you can figure out."
When she dismissed the group she paid attention, and marked down the identification numbers of the four that had paid enough attention to grab a copy of the paper maps that had been slipped into the back of the room and left face-down on the tables.
Yumino had considered attempting a couple of the more 'mental' challenges likely available in the starting area, but figured that swinging through after failing to accomplish five things on a loop of the island would be the better plan. She was also a decent sensor, and was hoping that would help her find less-obvious testing points. Bursts of chakra down a side path had her heading that way, and she found...
...kids?
A group of six younger kids with a single older shinobi, apparently in the middle of a tree-climbing lesson. The sign just outside of the field did say this was a testing point though, so she entered the field and approached the group.
"Good morning," the older shinobi greeted. "Would you like to help some students learn to control their chakra?"
Normally this kind of thing was...held off until you were older. Sticking things to yourself was what you'd normally throw at kids this age, instead of adding in all the headaches of needing to reinforce your own body in addition to sticking your feet to a vertical surface. But she thought that this was probably part of the test, so nodded and moved over to a boy that was obviously not reinforcing his body.
Over the course of an hour she was surprised as three of the kids managed a few steps up the trees, but after that point they obviously needed a rest.
"Very good job," the older shinobi said. She thought he was patting her arm at first, only to feel a pulse of chakra and realize that he was adding to her armband. "Not many your age seem to have the patience to teach."
"Thank you," she replied. She'd actually forgotten that this was a test at some point.
"Good morning," Naruto said to Onoki as the man sat down in the temporary office on the flying island.
"Morning," Onoki replied. "I apologize for any...misstatements during negotiations, given how long it's been since I was able to do formal alliance discussions. My Daimyo prefers to only enter into such things from a position of power normally."
"Not like I have a lot of experience with it either, and he's mellowed out a bit after finding that there were benefits to working with other villages."
"That he has, though I suspect his brother-in-law vanishing and the dealings he'd been involved with coming to light also helped."
"Funny that. Tragic how that all went down."
"Without the written reports I wouldn't have believed that your people were involved at all. Worth every ryo and you're the only ones that can trace the job back to me."
"Indeed. But discussing jobs that shouldn't be discussed isn't the reason we're meeting today. Your requests for changes to the treaty are...incredibly minor, and nowhere near what I was expecting."
Onoki snorted. "You were almost insultingly straightforward in your initial response, with an entire range of levels of cooperation to choose from in order to line things up on both sides. My Daimyo was honestly a bit shocked as well."
"Wasn't expecting you to want to pay for a summoning contract as part of things."
"That's at the Earth Daimyo's insistence, after we talked security over and came to the conclusion that someone could open a transport pad for others but not a summoning stone."
"Ah. That is an unfortunate reality. We've had to severely lock down the couple of civilian-usable transport pads we've got for security reasons as well. Needing to pass through two security stations on the way into the village annoys our merchants."
"We only reluctantly let merchants into our village at all, but you probably knew that already."
"You've asked about an additional option for the summoning contract though, and I'm curious why."
The man shook his head. "I figure that I can't be the first one to think about using such a system to retrieve traitors. It won't help as much if they can remove themselves before they run, but how many are going to do so? Especially if I keep that function locked down a bit more securely so that only a few are allowed to remove anyone from the contract."
"The problem with a plan like that is the 'permission to be summoned' clause of the contract, which is kind of important for not accidentally pulling people out of missions and such. That integrates deeply enough that even if your traitor is still present on the contract then they can just stop letting people summon them."
"That does sound problematic, and I'm not informed enough about how the contracts work to claim true understanding."
Naruto shrugged, then flipped through a few papers. "I have to say I was surprised to find that you were willing to let Uzushio accept missions from your civilians."
Onoki sighed at that. "That was the Earth Daimyo's decision, in part because it helped offset the cost of the telephone system and I suspect to try to force us to focus more on food production for him and other nobles."
"I repeatedly find myself happy that Uzushio has a single leader instead of two."
"Lucky you."
"I get all the paperwork."
"The 'between two leaders' paperwork is probably worse in volume and banality."
Tohi watched as replays of genin attempts at testing played on the bar's televisions, occasionally interspersed with 'example' completions from the testing phase of each station. Usually when a genin had an utter failure in their attempt, though first thing in the morning there had been more examples because genin hadn't actually gotten very far yet. The whole thing had gone somewhat slowly today, and the first attempt at an 'earth' challenge had just played.
It was kind of understandable that most of the 'elemental' stuff today had been fire and water due to those two being closest to where all the genin had started. Earth was obviously within reach of the genin in a day's trip while hunting for testing stations, and wind was closest in the other direction, but only those ignoring potential stops in the middle were going to head straight for any of the elemental outposts.
This morning's map showed quite a bit of distance to cross the island. It was like seven towns all near each other, and probably most of a day's trip walking if you didn't stop to check out things in the middle. The genin were expected to be able to visit six total of the seven if they did a single loop over the next five days, with repeated stops to attempt challenges, which just showed how fast even young shinobi could move. Only the center of the island was off-limits right now.
His personal interest was more in seeing what might be useful. He'd not had a lot of reason to hire shinobi for much more than bandit-clearing, though knew they could do more than that. Seeing a kid reshape a rocky field to form a defensive wall had him thinking about how useful that could be if the rocks in the soil could be manipulated into a wall separating fields in a few minutes instead of a few weeks.
Then there were the medical feats. Like when they brought out one kid being tested because another had lost their hand when screwing up a sword challenge. There had been an older shinobi monitoring the one being tested on the medical test, ensuring that nothing was done wrong as the severed hand was reattached as though nothing had happened. They'd been good enough to pass despite scowling at helping someone from a 'rival village', and had obviously softened a little at being thanked by their patient despite the scowling.
Yesterday's testing with the 'kill or otherwise get past a violent bear' bit had also gotten him thinking because that was a lot more 'real world' for him as far as threats went. Wild animals could be problems, and being able to take them out in any number of ways was a good thing. That the older, and presumably stronger, shinobi had largely been able to manhandle the bears out of the way while the kids generally ended up killing the beasts had been an interesting detail as well, and the videos of 'shrine maidens in training' taking bears out with throwing knives was going to have him more respectful than usual the next time he visited a shrine. Just in case.
Unfortunately, he was reasonably certain that having even a genin-level shinobi 'on staff' was going to be far too much trouble. Probably couldn't even afford one that could reattach a severed hand, since that seemed to be a bit more unusual. But surely 'regional outposts' would exist for rapid response reasons alone when time was of the essence? Or if they didn't, they should, so that you didn't have to wait for a messenger to make it to the main village and get back again. Ensuring that such a location was near his estate and businesses, and included at least one medic on-hand at all times, shouldn't be too difficult. Sure, it would benefit a couple of his rivals as well, but it was more honorable to defeat them through superior quality anyway.
His musing was interrupted by a clip starting of a genin attempting 'the swarm'. Which looked fine at first, standing in the middle of an empty field, until suddenly it became obvious that the kid was the target of a horde of zombies. And doing quite well at taking them down without getting hurt, despite the zombies looking to be more coordinated than most bandits he'd had the misfortune of running into.
But he'd already known that shinobi were excellent bandit deterrents. The thing that had him sweating was the 'summon swarms of zombies' trick. He really hoped that only worked in well-prepared areas.
"What?" Yoko asked, blinking after having been asked about 'proper forehead protectors' a couple days after the genin tests.
Tokishi fidgeted with her 'honorary genin' forehead protector. "We're wondering if there's any way to be 'shrine maiden' kunoichi. You're obviously training us to at least genin ability."
"You mean like I'm paid to be the primary maintainer of the shrine here?"
"No, not tied to Konoha, or Uzushio, or at least not directly? Like, with a 'shrine' forehead protector, to show that we've trained to defend the shrines we take care of, but aren't necessarily 'combat' kunoichi? Asami thinks that requiring basic medical skills and being able to make some of the basic seal tags we sell to merchants to keep bandits away should be needed too."
"Those tags are...harder than they look, but I've already figured out how to work around that. But why would you want to make a...I don't know, 'village hidden in the shrines'?"
Tokishi blinked. "...as a sign of the quality of the shrine maidens compared to those who probably can't defend their shrines? You said that there are priestesses in some countries that are trained to use chakra too."
Yoko had to admit that so far nothing horrible-sounding had been brought up, and she had given them explanations of things while helping them generate 'light' chakra. "And how would this 'village' work?"
"Connect the shrines with a telephone network, and maybe transport pads hidden in the shrine buildings so we can move around more easily? That would also let us be discreet places that Konoha and Uzushio teams could come and go from, as we'd essentially be a 'vassal village' of the two instead of actually independent." She produced a slip of paper from one of her pockets. "We even brainstormed other effects that seals might let the shrines provide, as not everywhere needs clean water. Uzushio uses seals to help grow crops, and mention was made of hot springs that 'purify' people. That's noticeable when you do it, so setting something up that creates that kind of effect around the honden of a shrine would likely convince a lot of civilians."
...informing the girls that the shrine was technically managed with seals might've been a mistake, but Yoko did have projects in motion that could be trivially adjusted for this and Odoroki would probably love the escalation. Especially with all the 'obviously legitimate because their gods are providing aid to the area' tricks seals could provide compared to shrines without seals. Taking the list of ideas, she noticed that it was more than just 'honden effects'.
"I'm going to have to clear anything even remotely like that with my brother and the Hokage," Yoko finally said. The girls didn't know that she was Naruto and he was her, but something like this would need to be run by Shisui as well. And she'd probably need to severely alter a few things she'd already built, come up with additional items for variety, and determine how 'leadership' and 'promotions' would work for a 'village' made up of decentralized shrine maidens.
Building a summoning contract for them, if only for the registration with various systems aspects, might also be a good idea. Most of them didn't have the chakra to summon anyone else at least...though testing to see if they could summon themselves to a stone might not be a bad idea either as that was a much smaller chakra cost. Hmmm. It would definitely make for a good emergency exit option, and then have transport pads available to get back to their shrines instead of shrine-specific summoning stones?
Yazo had spent the night between the wind and lightning areas, having lucked out and picked up 'defend against fire' and 'use wind' markings yesterday. Both sadly in the same 'elemental' category on his armband, but he needed five total markings so that wasn't a big deal. He figured he should focus on the areas between the elemental points though, so had checked a little more carefully here.
Which led him to the station he'd found. What looked like an arrival stone from a transport pad was sitting at the base of the wall, with a ladder and sign pointing up to the top. It wasn't an elemental grouping station, and now he was curious, so he climbed the ladder and found himself at a platform sticking out over the wall.
"Welcome to the daring leap," a kunoichi greeted. "All you need to do in order to get this marking is visit my partner."
He blinked. "Your partner?"
"Down on the floating platform."
"...floating platform?" She gestured at the edge of the platform they were on, and he looked over. Sure enough, very far down, past a pile of mysteriously-floating rings, was what looked like a floating platform bobbing slightly on the ocean's surface. He gulped. "What's with the rings?"
"Pass through all the rings of a given color without breaking any of them and you get a prize. The large red ones are worth a small prize, the medium yellow ones a larger one, and the best prize comes from passing through all the small green rings. Prizes invalid if you use flying abilities as this is a test of falling, but flying down to the floating platform still gets you a marking."
"That sounds like you've turned a test into a game."
"Maybe we have. Wanna give things a shot?"
He had no clue how the rings were just floating there, and examined the patterns they formed. The red rings you could probably hit just by jumping correctly, the yellow ones would require at least a small amount of control over your fall, and the green ones were hard to see and definitely required being able to be precise in where you were going. But he'd practiced cliff-diving and avoiding obstacles, so he thought he had a chance. The biggest question was how he'd fare hitting the water.
Two minutes later he was falling through the air, twisting and turning while using bursts of wind chakra to help change the direction of his fall. Feeling the rings out with chakra instead of trying to keep them in sight was also helping, and he'd decided to go crazy and try and pass through all three sets of rings on a single trip down. The green ones were his primary focus, but they seemed set up so you could go for all of them. Barely. He nearly put his head through the last green ring thanks to detouring through the last yellow one, but managed to correct himself before he struck the ring, and then he braced for impact with the water.
Swimming over to the floating platform, noting that it seemed to be heading towards him to help, had been easy enough. His chakra needed time to recover before he'd be water-walking.
"Impressive," the shinobi on the platform said after he'd climbed aboard. "One completion marking and all three prizes!" A pat on the armband and a pulse of chakra was likely the completion marking, and then three scrolls were pulled out of seals. "The small prize is a set of explosive kunai in a single-use storage scroll, so you'll want to be ready to store them when you pull them out. The medium prize is three hot meals in a single-use storage scroll, so pay attention to the labels since once you unseal them you can't put them back in. And lastly, the large prize is a two-person tent with privacy and anti-dojutsu seals guaranteed for ten years so long as you follow the care instructions. It seals into an integrated storage tag."
Yazo accepted the three scrolls, putting them into a pouch before using the transport pad on the platform to return to the island.
Mei sighed as she looked over things on her desk. Even a couple of days away had far too much paperwork build up and she had to work her way through the backlog. Her meeting with Naruto had been less productive than hoped, but with any luck the Daimyo would be happy with the adjusted terms proposed for getting a telephone system installed in the Land of Water. Not one for inside of Kiri in general, just a couple of access points so that they could be called, but it would still help with communicating across the various islands and would connect to the 'wider network' so that calls could be made to other countries with telephones installed.
It wasn't an alliance, merely a purchase, and the back and forth negotiation trying to get more for less had been more intense than expected. Naruto was immune to her feminine charms, wasn't intimidated by her strength due to being able to wipe the floor with her, and had no need for basically anything the Land of Water currently produced. Being an island nation meant that Uzushio already handled fishing and boats, and all indications were that they did both better than the Land of Water in general.
Access for Uzushio teams to pass through the Land of Water with only notification for completing things such as seal maintenance for their customers, where Kiri didn't or couldn't provide the same services right now, was the sticking point. It was entirely reasonable from her point of view, but the Daimyo might disagree and set her back to negotiating for something else instead.
Noni had watched the genin for three days now, alternately amazed by their accomplishments and exasperated by their failures. Why someone who couldn't swim would leap into a large body of water was beyond her for one, but at least five genin had needed to be rescued from the water area for that alone. That two of those five had been saved by other genin was nice though, one causing the water to act like an octopus to drag the drowning genin to shore and the other walking across the water to drag their apparent-cousin to safety.
Both had gotten markings for that, but she wasn't sure what those markings were.
She had no clue how anyone could survive the 'daring leap' test, let alone manage to get prizes from it. Most of the genin doing that one damaged one of the rings on the way down, but a few had been shown getting prizes. From the footage, there were also at least four points where that was set up on the walls. Or maybe it moved day to day?
Seeing kids lift giant boulders, race through swinging blades, bounce across a pit of spikes when not walking upside-down on the planks over the pit, and more were all impressive in their own rights too. Then there were the ones that she felt were more her speed, like proving they could think through solving logic problems or planning out a mock mission. There were even 'get into this locked building' tests, and sneaking through an area without being spotted.
For some reason, the cameras following their every move didn't disqualify the genin on that last one.
Gaara looked over maps of the Land of Wind, mildly annoyed that he'd not been able to arrange for anything with Naruto but unable to blame his fellow leader. They were too much 'in flux' right now, populations moving around, so installing anything significant would require far too much adjustment almost immediately. No, requesting that they wait until civilian migrations stopped happening at their current levels made sense.
The Wind Daimyo wasn't going to like it though.
At least the genin were reportedly doing well. Being able to have people monitor the highlights here in Suna and runners get updates from the exams thanks to the transport pads made keeping tabs on things a lot easier. He still wasn't sold on the longer 'first stage' dance being done, but had to admit that testing individuals for skills made far more sense than testing teams for those same skills. Especially with how the finals worked.
What he definitely wasn't sure about was the 'teams can be made across village lines' aspect of the second round. Naruto hadn't cleared that with anyone...but everyone that had checked agreed that the agreements didn't forbid it. Several things believed to be required were merely traditional or assumed as well, for that matter.
It was fitting that the 'God of Paperwork' had essentially forced the rest of them to pay attention to the actual agreements and not just how things had always been done.
Okachi swore as he dodged streams of fire. He had nine markings, but only across two categories because he'd not paid proper attention to things. That alone might cost him promotion, but this test could be applied to the physical category he'd not gotten any markings for yet. Assuming he was fast enough to not get burned without blocking the fire itself, anyway, as making it through by blocking meant he would get the 'counter fire' marking instead and he didn't need any more 'elemental' markings.
Jump, duck, slide, spin around a convenient post and let the fire hit the post, backflip over that stream but drop straight to the ground to let the next one pass over him...
Ten minutes of making his way through the area, culminating in diving through a ring of fire at the end. Panting, he looked up at the kunoichi proctor, who nodded. "Good job. You got a little singed, but nothing hit you directly."
"Wooo," Okachi said. That meant he was done and could spend the night in a proper bed.
Orochimaru's eyes flicked over the scroll in front of her. She'd not expected Naruto to have no problem with handing over notes on the improved zombie seals, though she was starting to think it was because it had now been properly Uzumaki-fied. Understanding anything here was going to be nearly impossible. Trading some of Jugo's enzymes and notes on them and some spare ryo for the zombie seal notes and a basic telephone system for the Land of Sound had probably still been worth it though.
Ruri would at least be able to call a couple of her friends that were now in Uzushio...and that may very well be part of why the price had been 'reasonable'.
That request had also obviously been anticipated, because the telephone system had been installed before the end of the day and Ruri had made her first call on it after dinner. The entire thing was fascinating and infuriating at the same time, because there was no way to safely dismantle it to attempt to figure out how to duplicate it. Or just customize it further, even. Far too much of it was 'out of reach'.
Which wasn't to say that Orochimaru wasn't coming up with options anyway. There were hookup points not in use that she could assign numbers to on her own, and she had computers she thought she could interface with the system in various ways. A cradle to attach a remote unit's handset to, and a conversion of data to and from audio, could likely be used to copy information across the network. It would need some experimentation, and wouldn't be secure, but she didn't think any of her remote computers were secure against Uzushio infiltrators anyway.
With only a few hours left to go, Nize had found her team. She was happy to find that both of them had made it through, and they'd traded stories of the tests they'd found. Dotsu was the only one of the three that had dealt with zombies as anything more than a ranged target, Tazo had found but not been eligible for six different bloodline tests, and Nize herself had been the only one of the three to notice the camping test just outside of the gates. How much of that was due to the use of genjutsu and other redirections to keep people from noticing a test while someone else was in the middle of it compared to just them having different priorities was hard to tell...but not one of them had actually run into someone else being tested.
Zero interaction during an actual test, with that many participants, over five days? It felt impossible, but some questioning of others that appeared to be done confirmed it...with the exception of tests that ended up using one genin's failure as the launching point for a different genin's test. Patching up injuries or rescuing a now-stuck genin being the examples they'd gotten. Outside of those they had no stories of anyone seeing someone else being tested at all.
It baffled all of them, and had gotten the others they'd asked thinking as well.
But eventually they had to focus on other things, so she changed the subject. "Do you think we get to choose teams, or is that going to be forced on us?"
Dotsu frowned as he processed that. "I hope that we get to choose, but I don't think that was specified."
Tazo shook his head. "I checked with sensei and we get to pick teams, we're just not limited to our village or allied villages. We should be able to stick together unless we think that splitting up is a better plan."
"Oh good. We're reasonably balanced across our specialities. Ending up on a single-focus team when going into a team combat round would be horrible even before not being familiar with your teammates."
Nize had to agree with that. "So we're good there. Think we should get ahead of things on resupplying ourselves? We just spent most of a week running around and eating into our rations at a minimum. I didn't really touch my weapon pouch, but if you two did..."
Tazo grimaced. "Lost half my pouch to a bad decision on the second day, so yeah, I should pick up some replacements. Grabbing replacement rations is a good idea too, because I don't know how long we'll have before we get thrown into the next stage."
Finding suitable stores hadn't taken long, and the prices were more than reasonable. Better than back home, and everything came in storage scrolls. They all ended up getting more than they'd normally carry just because the offerings looked to be higher-quality than they were used to for the price, and she'd never even considered dragging some of the food on offer on a mission before finding pre-filled scrolls on the shelf. The only problem was that all of the scrolls were single-use so they couldn't unseal them to examine them ahead of time.
"Good morning," Ino said. "You are here because you hope to prove yourselves and earn a promotion to chunin. We're doing things differently than you were expecting though. The entire first stage is a solo stage, and those of you that pass will be forming teams before the second stage." She held up an armband. "Each of you will be issued an armband to track your progress through this stage. There are categories on the armband. The last time we did this you only needed one personal completion and five unique ones across your team, but that is not the case this time. Each of you needs five completion markings by the end of the five-day testing period, a meager one completion per day. There are also category groupings, and you will need completions in at least three categories."
The genin looked shocked and worried about that, and she let them stew for a moment before she continued. "So that you don't waste time, each station is marked with the category it applies to. There are a small number of stations marked with multiple categories, and at the time of completion you will be asked which category you wish it to be counted towards. You will not be able to change the category for such a station afterwards, so choose carefully. Exceptionally good performances will almost certainly end up broadcast, as will exceptionally poor performances."
Getting everyone their armbands took a few minutes as there were a lot of genin here. Once that was done Ino looked over the group. "Okay. You all have your armbands, and they will allow you to travel through all the gates. The entire island perimeter is open to you for finding and completing tasks, but the central forest is still off-limits. It is on each of you to find the testing stations you need, using whatever means you can figure out."
When she dismissed the group she paid attention, and marked down the identification numbers of the four that had paid enough attention to grab a copy of the paper maps that had been slipped into the back of the room and left face-down on the tables.
Yumino had considered attempting a couple of the more 'mental' challenges likely available in the starting area, but figured that swinging through after failing to accomplish five things on a loop of the island would be the better plan. She was also a decent sensor, and was hoping that would help her find less-obvious testing points. Bursts of chakra down a side path had her heading that way, and she found...
...kids?
A group of six younger kids with a single older shinobi, apparently in the middle of a tree-climbing lesson. The sign just outside of the field did say this was a testing point though, so she entered the field and approached the group.
"Good morning," the older shinobi greeted. "Would you like to help some students learn to control their chakra?"
Normally this kind of thing was...held off until you were older. Sticking things to yourself was what you'd normally throw at kids this age, instead of adding in all the headaches of needing to reinforce your own body in addition to sticking your feet to a vertical surface. But she thought that this was probably part of the test, so nodded and moved over to a boy that was obviously not reinforcing his body.
Over the course of an hour she was surprised as three of the kids managed a few steps up the trees, but after that point they obviously needed a rest.
"Very good job," the older shinobi said. She thought he was patting her arm at first, only to feel a pulse of chakra and realize that he was adding to her armband. "Not many your age seem to have the patience to teach."
"Thank you," she replied. She'd actually forgotten that this was a test at some point.
"Good morning," Naruto said to Onoki as the man sat down in the temporary office on the flying island.
"Morning," Onoki replied. "I apologize for any...misstatements during negotiations, given how long it's been since I was able to do formal alliance discussions. My Daimyo prefers to only enter into such things from a position of power normally."
"Not like I have a lot of experience with it either, and he's mellowed out a bit after finding that there were benefits to working with other villages."
"That he has, though I suspect his brother-in-law vanishing and the dealings he'd been involved with coming to light also helped."
"Funny that. Tragic how that all went down."
"Without the written reports I wouldn't have believed that your people were involved at all. Worth every ryo and you're the only ones that can trace the job back to me."
"Indeed. But discussing jobs that shouldn't be discussed isn't the reason we're meeting today. Your requests for changes to the treaty are...incredibly minor, and nowhere near what I was expecting."
Onoki snorted. "You were almost insultingly straightforward in your initial response, with an entire range of levels of cooperation to choose from in order to line things up on both sides. My Daimyo was honestly a bit shocked as well."
"Wasn't expecting you to want to pay for a summoning contract as part of things."
"That's at the Earth Daimyo's insistence, after we talked security over and came to the conclusion that someone could open a transport pad for others but not a summoning stone."
"Ah. That is an unfortunate reality. We've had to severely lock down the couple of civilian-usable transport pads we've got for security reasons as well. Needing to pass through two security stations on the way into the village annoys our merchants."
"We only reluctantly let merchants into our village at all, but you probably knew that already."
"You've asked about an additional option for the summoning contract though, and I'm curious why."
The man shook his head. "I figure that I can't be the first one to think about using such a system to retrieve traitors. It won't help as much if they can remove themselves before they run, but how many are going to do so? Especially if I keep that function locked down a bit more securely so that only a few are allowed to remove anyone from the contract."
"The problem with a plan like that is the 'permission to be summoned' clause of the contract, which is kind of important for not accidentally pulling people out of missions and such. That integrates deeply enough that even if your traitor is still present on the contract then they can just stop letting people summon them."
"That does sound problematic, and I'm not informed enough about how the contracts work to claim true understanding."
Naruto shrugged, then flipped through a few papers. "I have to say I was surprised to find that you were willing to let Uzushio accept missions from your civilians."
Onoki sighed at that. "That was the Earth Daimyo's decision, in part because it helped offset the cost of the telephone system and I suspect to try to force us to focus more on food production for him and other nobles."
"I repeatedly find myself happy that Uzushio has a single leader instead of two."
"Lucky you."
"I get all the paperwork."
"The 'between two leaders' paperwork is probably worse in volume and banality."
Tohi watched as replays of genin attempts at testing played on the bar's televisions, occasionally interspersed with 'example' completions from the testing phase of each station. Usually when a genin had an utter failure in their attempt, though first thing in the morning there had been more examples because genin hadn't actually gotten very far yet. The whole thing had gone somewhat slowly today, and the first attempt at an 'earth' challenge had just played.
It was kind of understandable that most of the 'elemental' stuff today had been fire and water due to those two being closest to where all the genin had started. Earth was obviously within reach of the genin in a day's trip while hunting for testing stations, and wind was closest in the other direction, but only those ignoring potential stops in the middle were going to head straight for any of the elemental outposts.
This morning's map showed quite a bit of distance to cross the island. It was like seven towns all near each other, and probably most of a day's trip walking if you didn't stop to check out things in the middle. The genin were expected to be able to visit six total of the seven if they did a single loop over the next five days, with repeated stops to attempt challenges, which just showed how fast even young shinobi could move. Only the center of the island was off-limits right now.
His personal interest was more in seeing what might be useful. He'd not had a lot of reason to hire shinobi for much more than bandit-clearing, though knew they could do more than that. Seeing a kid reshape a rocky field to form a defensive wall had him thinking about how useful that could be if the rocks in the soil could be manipulated into a wall separating fields in a few minutes instead of a few weeks.
Then there were the medical feats. Like when they brought out one kid being tested because another had lost their hand when screwing up a sword challenge. There had been an older shinobi monitoring the one being tested on the medical test, ensuring that nothing was done wrong as the severed hand was reattached as though nothing had happened. They'd been good enough to pass despite scowling at helping someone from a 'rival village', and had obviously softened a little at being thanked by their patient despite the scowling.
Yesterday's testing with the 'kill or otherwise get past a violent bear' bit had also gotten him thinking because that was a lot more 'real world' for him as far as threats went. Wild animals could be problems, and being able to take them out in any number of ways was a good thing. That the older, and presumably stronger, shinobi had largely been able to manhandle the bears out of the way while the kids generally ended up killing the beasts had been an interesting detail as well, and the videos of 'shrine maidens in training' taking bears out with throwing knives was going to have him more respectful than usual the next time he visited a shrine. Just in case.
Unfortunately, he was reasonably certain that having even a genin-level shinobi 'on staff' was going to be far too much trouble. Probably couldn't even afford one that could reattach a severed hand, since that seemed to be a bit more unusual. But surely 'regional outposts' would exist for rapid response reasons alone when time was of the essence? Or if they didn't, they should, so that you didn't have to wait for a messenger to make it to the main village and get back again. Ensuring that such a location was near his estate and businesses, and included at least one medic on-hand at all times, shouldn't be too difficult. Sure, it would benefit a couple of his rivals as well, but it was more honorable to defeat them through superior quality anyway.
His musing was interrupted by a clip starting of a genin attempting 'the swarm'. Which looked fine at first, standing in the middle of an empty field, until suddenly it became obvious that the kid was the target of a horde of zombies. And doing quite well at taking them down without getting hurt, despite the zombies looking to be more coordinated than most bandits he'd had the misfortune of running into.
But he'd already known that shinobi were excellent bandit deterrents. The thing that had him sweating was the 'summon swarms of zombies' trick. He really hoped that only worked in well-prepared areas.
"What?" Yoko asked, blinking after having been asked about 'proper forehead protectors' a couple days after the genin tests.
Tokishi fidgeted with her 'honorary genin' forehead protector. "We're wondering if there's any way to be 'shrine maiden' kunoichi. You're obviously training us to at least genin ability."
"You mean like I'm paid to be the primary maintainer of the shrine here?"
"No, not tied to Konoha, or Uzushio, or at least not directly? Like, with a 'shrine' forehead protector, to show that we've trained to defend the shrines we take care of, but aren't necessarily 'combat' kunoichi? Asami thinks that requiring basic medical skills and being able to make some of the basic seal tags we sell to merchants to keep bandits away should be needed too."
"Those tags are...harder than they look, but I've already figured out how to work around that. But why would you want to make a...I don't know, 'village hidden in the shrines'?"
Tokishi blinked. "...as a sign of the quality of the shrine maidens compared to those who probably can't defend their shrines? You said that there are priestesses in some countries that are trained to use chakra too."
Yoko had to admit that so far nothing horrible-sounding had been brought up, and she had given them explanations of things while helping them generate 'light' chakra. "And how would this 'village' work?"
"Connect the shrines with a telephone network, and maybe transport pads hidden in the shrine buildings so we can move around more easily? That would also let us be discreet places that Konoha and Uzushio teams could come and go from, as we'd essentially be a 'vassal village' of the two instead of actually independent." She produced a slip of paper from one of her pockets. "We even brainstormed other effects that seals might let the shrines provide, as not everywhere needs clean water. Uzushio uses seals to help grow crops, and mention was made of hot springs that 'purify' people. That's noticeable when you do it, so setting something up that creates that kind of effect around the honden of a shrine would likely convince a lot of civilians."
...informing the girls that the shrine was technically managed with seals might've been a mistake, but Yoko did have projects in motion that could be trivially adjusted for this and Odoroki would probably love the escalation. Especially with all the 'obviously legitimate because their gods are providing aid to the area' tricks seals could provide compared to shrines without seals. Taking the list of ideas, she noticed that it was more than just 'honden effects'.
"I'm going to have to clear anything even remotely like that with my brother and the Hokage," Yoko finally said. The girls didn't know that she was Naruto and he was her, but something like this would need to be run by Shisui as well. And she'd probably need to severely alter a few things she'd already built, come up with additional items for variety, and determine how 'leadership' and 'promotions' would work for a 'village' made up of decentralized shrine maidens.
Building a summoning contract for them, if only for the registration with various systems aspects, might also be a good idea. Most of them didn't have the chakra to summon anyone else at least...though testing to see if they could summon themselves to a stone might not be a bad idea either as that was a much smaller chakra cost. Hmmm. It would definitely make for a good emergency exit option, and then have transport pads available to get back to their shrines instead of shrine-specific summoning stones?
Yazo had spent the night between the wind and lightning areas, having lucked out and picked up 'defend against fire' and 'use wind' markings yesterday. Both sadly in the same 'elemental' category on his armband, but he needed five total markings so that wasn't a big deal. He figured he should focus on the areas between the elemental points though, so had checked a little more carefully here.
Which led him to the station he'd found. What looked like an arrival stone from a transport pad was sitting at the base of the wall, with a ladder and sign pointing up to the top. It wasn't an elemental grouping station, and now he was curious, so he climbed the ladder and found himself at a platform sticking out over the wall.
"Welcome to the daring leap," a kunoichi greeted. "All you need to do in order to get this marking is visit my partner."
He blinked. "Your partner?"
"Down on the floating platform."
"...floating platform?" She gestured at the edge of the platform they were on, and he looked over. Sure enough, very far down, past a pile of mysteriously-floating rings, was what looked like a floating platform bobbing slightly on the ocean's surface. He gulped. "What's with the rings?"
"Pass through all the rings of a given color without breaking any of them and you get a prize. The large red ones are worth a small prize, the medium yellow ones a larger one, and the best prize comes from passing through all the small green rings. Prizes invalid if you use flying abilities as this is a test of falling, but flying down to the floating platform still gets you a marking."
"That sounds like you've turned a test into a game."
"Maybe we have. Wanna give things a shot?"
He had no clue how the rings were just floating there, and examined the patterns they formed. The red rings you could probably hit just by jumping correctly, the yellow ones would require at least a small amount of control over your fall, and the green ones were hard to see and definitely required being able to be precise in where you were going. But he'd practiced cliff-diving and avoiding obstacles, so he thought he had a chance. The biggest question was how he'd fare hitting the water.
Two minutes later he was falling through the air, twisting and turning while using bursts of wind chakra to help change the direction of his fall. Feeling the rings out with chakra instead of trying to keep them in sight was also helping, and he'd decided to go crazy and try and pass through all three sets of rings on a single trip down. The green ones were his primary focus, but they seemed set up so you could go for all of them. Barely. He nearly put his head through the last green ring thanks to detouring through the last yellow one, but managed to correct himself before he struck the ring, and then he braced for impact with the water.
Swimming over to the floating platform, noting that it seemed to be heading towards him to help, had been easy enough. His chakra needed time to recover before he'd be water-walking.
"Impressive," the shinobi on the platform said after he'd climbed aboard. "One completion marking and all three prizes!" A pat on the armband and a pulse of chakra was likely the completion marking, and then three scrolls were pulled out of seals. "The small prize is a set of explosive kunai in a single-use storage scroll, so you'll want to be ready to store them when you pull them out. The medium prize is three hot meals in a single-use storage scroll, so pay attention to the labels since once you unseal them you can't put them back in. And lastly, the large prize is a two-person tent with privacy and anti-dojutsu seals guaranteed for ten years so long as you follow the care instructions. It seals into an integrated storage tag."
Yazo accepted the three scrolls, putting them into a pouch before using the transport pad on the platform to return to the island.
Mei sighed as she looked over things on her desk. Even a couple of days away had far too much paperwork build up and she had to work her way through the backlog. Her meeting with Naruto had been less productive than hoped, but with any luck the Daimyo would be happy with the adjusted terms proposed for getting a telephone system installed in the Land of Water. Not one for inside of Kiri in general, just a couple of access points so that they could be called, but it would still help with communicating across the various islands and would connect to the 'wider network' so that calls could be made to other countries with telephones installed.
It wasn't an alliance, merely a purchase, and the back and forth negotiation trying to get more for less had been more intense than expected. Naruto was immune to her feminine charms, wasn't intimidated by her strength due to being able to wipe the floor with her, and had no need for basically anything the Land of Water currently produced. Being an island nation meant that Uzushio already handled fishing and boats, and all indications were that they did both better than the Land of Water in general.
Access for Uzushio teams to pass through the Land of Water with only notification for completing things such as seal maintenance for their customers, where Kiri didn't or couldn't provide the same services right now, was the sticking point. It was entirely reasonable from her point of view, but the Daimyo might disagree and set her back to negotiating for something else instead.
Noni had watched the genin for three days now, alternately amazed by their accomplishments and exasperated by their failures. Why someone who couldn't swim would leap into a large body of water was beyond her for one, but at least five genin had needed to be rescued from the water area for that alone. That two of those five had been saved by other genin was nice though, one causing the water to act like an octopus to drag the drowning genin to shore and the other walking across the water to drag their apparent-cousin to safety.
Both had gotten markings for that, but she wasn't sure what those markings were.
She had no clue how anyone could survive the 'daring leap' test, let alone manage to get prizes from it. Most of the genin doing that one damaged one of the rings on the way down, but a few had been shown getting prizes. From the footage, there were also at least four points where that was set up on the walls. Or maybe it moved day to day?
Seeing kids lift giant boulders, race through swinging blades, bounce across a pit of spikes when not walking upside-down on the planks over the pit, and more were all impressive in their own rights too. Then there were the ones that she felt were more her speed, like proving they could think through solving logic problems or planning out a mock mission. There were even 'get into this locked building' tests, and sneaking through an area without being spotted.
For some reason, the cameras following their every move didn't disqualify the genin on that last one.
Gaara looked over maps of the Land of Wind, mildly annoyed that he'd not been able to arrange for anything with Naruto but unable to blame his fellow leader. They were too much 'in flux' right now, populations moving around, so installing anything significant would require far too much adjustment almost immediately. No, requesting that they wait until civilian migrations stopped happening at their current levels made sense.
The Wind Daimyo wasn't going to like it though.
At least the genin were reportedly doing well. Being able to have people monitor the highlights here in Suna and runners get updates from the exams thanks to the transport pads made keeping tabs on things a lot easier. He still wasn't sold on the longer 'first stage' dance being done, but had to admit that testing individuals for skills made far more sense than testing teams for those same skills. Especially with how the finals worked.
What he definitely wasn't sure about was the 'teams can be made across village lines' aspect of the second round. Naruto hadn't cleared that with anyone...but everyone that had checked agreed that the agreements didn't forbid it. Several things believed to be required were merely traditional or assumed as well, for that matter.
It was fitting that the 'God of Paperwork' had essentially forced the rest of them to pay attention to the actual agreements and not just how things had always been done.
Okachi swore as he dodged streams of fire. He had nine markings, but only across two categories because he'd not paid proper attention to things. That alone might cost him promotion, but this test could be applied to the physical category he'd not gotten any markings for yet. Assuming he was fast enough to not get burned without blocking the fire itself, anyway, as making it through by blocking meant he would get the 'counter fire' marking instead and he didn't need any more 'elemental' markings.
Jump, duck, slide, spin around a convenient post and let the fire hit the post, backflip over that stream but drop straight to the ground to let the next one pass over him...
Ten minutes of making his way through the area, culminating in diving through a ring of fire at the end. Panting, he looked up at the kunoichi proctor, who nodded. "Good job. You got a little singed, but nothing hit you directly."
"Wooo," Okachi said. That meant he was done and could spend the night in a proper bed.
Orochimaru's eyes flicked over the scroll in front of her. She'd not expected Naruto to have no problem with handing over notes on the improved zombie seals, though she was starting to think it was because it had now been properly Uzumaki-fied. Understanding anything here was going to be nearly impossible. Trading some of Jugo's enzymes and notes on them and some spare ryo for the zombie seal notes and a basic telephone system for the Land of Sound had probably still been worth it though.
Ruri would at least be able to call a couple of her friends that were now in Uzushio...and that may very well be part of why the price had been 'reasonable'.
That request had also obviously been anticipated, because the telephone system had been installed before the end of the day and Ruri had made her first call on it after dinner. The entire thing was fascinating and infuriating at the same time, because there was no way to safely dismantle it to attempt to figure out how to duplicate it. Or just customize it further, even. Far too much of it was 'out of reach'.
Which wasn't to say that Orochimaru wasn't coming up with options anyway. There were hookup points not in use that she could assign numbers to on her own, and she had computers she thought she could interface with the system in various ways. A cradle to attach a remote unit's handset to, and a conversion of data to and from audio, could likely be used to copy information across the network. It would need some experimentation, and wouldn't be secure, but she didn't think any of her remote computers were secure against Uzushio infiltrators anyway.
With only a few hours left to go, Nize had found her team. She was happy to find that both of them had made it through, and they'd traded stories of the tests they'd found. Dotsu was the only one of the three that had dealt with zombies as anything more than a ranged target, Tazo had found but not been eligible for six different bloodline tests, and Nize herself had been the only one of the three to notice the camping test just outside of the gates. How much of that was due to the use of genjutsu and other redirections to keep people from noticing a test while someone else was in the middle of it compared to just them having different priorities was hard to tell...but not one of them had actually run into someone else being tested.
Zero interaction during an actual test, with that many participants, over five days? It felt impossible, but some questioning of others that appeared to be done confirmed it...with the exception of tests that ended up using one genin's failure as the launching point for a different genin's test. Patching up injuries or rescuing a now-stuck genin being the examples they'd gotten. Outside of those they had no stories of anyone seeing someone else being tested at all.
It baffled all of them, and had gotten the others they'd asked thinking as well.
But eventually they had to focus on other things, so she changed the subject. "Do you think we get to choose teams, or is that going to be forced on us?"
Dotsu frowned as he processed that. "I hope that we get to choose, but I don't think that was specified."
Tazo shook his head. "I checked with sensei and we get to pick teams, we're just not limited to our village or allied villages. We should be able to stick together unless we think that splitting up is a better plan."
"Oh good. We're reasonably balanced across our specialities. Ending up on a single-focus team when going into a team combat round would be horrible even before not being familiar with your teammates."
Nize had to agree with that. "So we're good there. Think we should get ahead of things on resupplying ourselves? We just spent most of a week running around and eating into our rations at a minimum. I didn't really touch my weapon pouch, but if you two did..."
Tazo grimaced. "Lost half my pouch to a bad decision on the second day, so yeah, I should pick up some replacements. Grabbing replacement rations is a good idea too, because I don't know how long we'll have before we get thrown into the next stage."
Finding suitable stores hadn't taken long, and the prices were more than reasonable. Better than back home, and everything came in storage scrolls. They all ended up getting more than they'd normally carry just because the offerings looked to be higher-quality than they were used to for the price, and she'd never even considered dragging some of the food on offer on a mission before finding pre-filled scrolls on the shelf. The only problem was that all of the scrolls were single-use so they couldn't unseal them to examine them ahead of time.
- Location
- Bosnia
It's called Modem, Orochi-chan. But great idea. Just make sure no one ever develops MySpace or Facebook or T... actually forget about modem, terrible idea, never gonna work!
What's the odds that part of the damned testing is "can they identify rations/supplies that have been tampered with before using them?"
Because this absolutely feels like a setup for that kind of test.
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
They are EXPLICITLY between tests right now, if I understand correctly. They have been told the first test is over but have not formed teams for the second yet. That implies they should be in "rest and resupply in an allied village" mode.
Hold up! Isn't that a minigame from one of the Legend of Zelda installments?
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Why yes, yes it is. It's from Twilight Princess.
Tangent
Crazy-Big Ideas!
- Location
- Pensylvania, United States
It's also infuriating to get all three prizes even separately, let alone in a single run.
So the genin who did exactly that should receive special notice for being able to do that as a genin.
I think you mean "Automatically promoted to Chunnin, with special notice regarding promotion to Jounin when they're ready."
- Location
- France
Can't remember it being in TP, been too long since I played it. The ones that came to mind for me was the game island from Skyward Sword and the challenges in Tears Of The Kingdom where you get the clothing set that gives you better control while free falling...
YuffieK
(Verified Ninja Princess)
Being able to fall 'with style' is not a suitable enough reason on its own for chunin promotion. It has definitely made the highlight reel though.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
While I have Skyward Sword, I haven't really played it yet. Been wanting to finish Twilight Princess first, and for a fairly long time I struggled with the first mini-dungeon in the Twilight Realm. But the cannon guy on the lake sets up a mini-game that's virtually identical to what is described in the story. I think it's set up after you beat the game's version of the water temple. But I'm not too sure anymore. You get fired from the cannon to get to the upper platform (which for some reason is just floating in the air). Then to get down you have to jump. But there's an optional skydiving mini-game that can net you a Heart Piece. The rings as I recall are made of rupies that get collected if you pass through the middle.
Tangent
Crazy-Big Ideas!
- Location
- Pensylvania, United States
Maybe, but I think Naruto would insist that the gennin prove that the genin has at least the minimum remaining requirements for becoming a chunin, otherwise he'd just be a Special Chunin the same way that some ninjas are Special Jonin just because they are really good at some skills but are otherwise denied the rank of being a full Jonin for whatever reason.
Granted, if the genin can control his fall that well, he probably more than meets any other requirements to make it to Chunin during this exam anyway. I'm just stating that Uzushiogakure currently has some pretty exacting standards for gaining and retaining ninja rankings, and getting by with just one special skill isn't something they let slide.
Shure friendly wilige turf but NOT u turf so ies out for potentioal betrayl/sabotage should be included
First, use spellcheck if you have it. Please.
Second, stuff like that could potentially lead to other villages losing faith with Uzushio, as it's all too easy for sabotage to lead to an "accident" happening.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
I can read English, American English, and bad English. And yet I have no idea what the above actually says. I can puzzle out most of the words, yet the meaning eludes me.
Should I get you some dressing for their word salad?
- Location
- Scotland
I think he meant to say "Sure, it's friendly village turf but it's not YOUR turf so you should still keep an eye out for potential betrayal or sabotage."
IMO while all Ninja need to be rather cautious about such things pretty much 24/7 I believe they don't have to worry here due to this being Naruto's village and him wanting to appear utterly badass to the point nobody is wiling to mess with him but also friendly enough that no-one will really want to mess with him. This is a fine line to walk and sabotaging the Chunin hopefuls in this manner both isn't his style and would be detrimental to his goals so I'm gonna have to say that in this case it's exactly what it says on the tin.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
There's also the fact that if the shops were selling intentionally defective goods and/or poisoned food, this would affect Uzu genin too. Not to mention the fact the civilian store owners would be drawing the ire of ninja while destroying the reputation of their store, and know it. It's not like Team Yurei (under Naruto and Hinata's leadership) who were running a food cart before and during the exams. That was genin (and higher ranks) knowingly buying food from opposing ninja without thinking about if it could be tampered with. Something which I'm sure all the other Hidden Villages hammered into their forces as being a bad idea in the wake of chunin hopefuls getting hit with binary poisons from a hostile ninja ran food cart.
Avetho
Ghost-Piloting a BioMech from the Final Eon
- Location
- The KBC Void that contains Laniakea Supercluster
Considering its Uzu, its not substandard, its gonna be superstandard. In fact, its kinda stated to be of superior quality by Nize, one of the genin, at the end of the chapter, or at least the food supplies at the very least. How very Uzu of them, to outclass everyone in every possible way XD
Chapter 89 - Flying Island Second Stage
Hinata looked over the assembled teams of genin. Nine of the teams were split across non-allied villages, and if you ignored Konoha and Uzushio those were the only teams crossing village lines at all right now. There were two remaining genin that had passed the first stage but hadn't managed to get on a team, both from Oto. Their original teammates had all made it through as well, but had opted to fill in holes in the teams of other villages instead of dealing with the two.
Given the way they'd been reacting? Orochimaru certainly wasn't going to be saying anything about the decision.
"Good morning," Hinata finally called out. "Today you will be entering the Forest of Challenges. Many of you are likely expecting a scroll battle, and you aren't necessarily going to be disappointed. The difference is that none of you are getting handed scrolls. Inside of the forest are hidden testing areas, each with a limited number of scrolls." She pulled out a set of three scrolls, though each was marked 'sample'. "You need to present all three of offense, defense, and stealth scrolls to enter the central tower, each held by a different team member. These scrolls can only be obtained through completing team challenges." The scrolls vanished, and a pedestal lifted from the ground. It had three small alcoves in it. "Each challenge is triggered. All three members of a team need to push chakra into the pedestal for the challenge. The pedestals glow while a team is attempting the challenge linked to them and sink into the ground when they're out of scrolls."
The pedestal sank back into the ground as clones of hers came in. "If you can't find a scroll then you can claim them from other teams." She gestured at her clones, and the paperwork they were carrying. "You will each need to sign waiver forms and get a gate assignment. You will have until noon to turn in your waivers and get to your assigned gate. At noon, as shown on the clocks over the gates, the gates will open. Five minutes later they will close and lock. If your whole team isn't in the forest by the time the gates lock? You've failed. Once the gates open you will have seven days, a hundred and sixty-eight hours, to get into the central tower. Oh, and no maps will be provided."
Being told that there were no maps had the teams looking incredibly nervous, and several were already planning before they even got their waivers.
Fu had dragged all the failed genin back to Taki with her, though wasn't sure why Shibuki had left those who had failed the first 'genin' test behind when he returned to Taki. The couple that had failed the first stage, for what she thought were stupid reasons, had been replaced on their teams by Oto genin for the second stage.
Seeing the way the two 'stranded' Oto genin acted, jumping to work with another village instead was probably the smart decision.
Turning in the final reports had been easy enough, leaving reprimanding the genin to Shibuki for now, and then she did a quick check of the village while thinking about the week she'd been able to spend with Shino on the island. He'd volunteered to help out with the exam as Uzushio didn't have enough shinobi for such a large number of participants, and she'd then volunteered to help him because she had plenty of chakra for his insects to consume so that they could reproduce rapidly.
They'd worked together to set up a giant hive of insects for his testing station, to ensure that there were always plenty of insects to see if genin could handle being swarmed, but he couldn't maintain the numbers on his own so she'd needed to help out the entire first stage. She'd actually slept in the hives instead of the hotel room she could've used, at least until last night, and by the end of the first stage they found that some of the insects had bonded with her instead of him.
She was too tough and healed too fast for them to burrow into her like they did with him, so they'd put together a quick portable hive box for her. Figuring out a more permanent solution was going to be needed as well, but deciding what that should look like was harder. He had a couple of hives he kept in puppets now, but she flew and there was only so much you could get a large puppet to do there.
Well, she'd already replaced her large scroll of sealed supplies and weapons with strings of smaller metal tags obtained from Konoha. Perhaps she could start carrying a hive box like she used to carry the scroll? Making it look like a scroll could even keep enemies unaware of what she was carrying...
"A defense challenge," Seitan said, looking at the pedestal that they'd found on a small hill in a clearing. "Do you think we have to defend the hill against attackers?"
"...I'm more concerned about the symbol for ice on it," Nohisa said. "Does that mean ice monsters?"
"No clue. Kiyoko, what do you think? Should we attempt it?"
Kiyoko frowned as she looked around, before grimacing. "I think we can't trust that the challenge is here."
"...what?"
"Why would the pedestals need to glow during a challenge? Surely it would be obvious that the challenge is active...unless the ones attempting it are somewhere else."
"Oh."
"I've also noticed a couple of other teams just...vanishing, and one of them appeared to my senses again a few minutes ago."
Seitan shared a look with Nohisa, then the two grabbed scrolls with heavier jackets in them. "Ice is probably a warning that it'll be cold then."
Kiyoko nodded and got out her own heavier jacket, then the three placed their hands in the alcoves of the pedestal and pushed chakra in. A pull dragged them away, and a moment later they were in an icy cave. Another pedestal, taller and with a second set of alcoves where the top of the original pedestal had been, was between them...with writing on it. The top line looked like it was part of the pedestal design, while the bottom line was in a box that implied it was put in place afterwards.
Use the upper alcoves to return, with or without the scroll.
To earn the scroll, defend the cave from the ice monsters.
"Shit," Nohisa said, looking around. "We need to get a couple of walls up across the mouth of the cave."
Seitan wasn't arguing, but Kiyoko got moving first. She was better with terrain manipulation anyway.
Naruto looked over his notes on the enzymes Orochimaru had provided, then the notes on examinations of various Uzumaki. It seemed that a partial set of the enzymes existed in Uzumaki, likely helping explain some of their massive chakra reserves as those pieces seemed to be involved in converting natural energy to mana faster than would normally happen. That would keep 'pressure' on your core as you grew up and result in much larger reserves.
They'd not considered that aspect of things before, but figuring out how to duplicate that into children as an inheritable trait was probably going to be added to the hospital's project list. Recreating Orochimaru's seals that added them to the bloodstream was also an option, especially for older shinobi.
A ding from a bell had Naruto looking up, then nodding as one of his clones moved to monitor. Accidentally stabilizing four dimensions he'd intended to dismantle had been slightly annoying, but he'd figured out a way to get use out of them and safely taken care of the two most dangerous ones. Getting things set up for the challenges had followed, though only a third of the challenge pedestals in the forest sent teams into other dimensions. The big problem there was that very few people could keep an eye on the teams as they attempted things. So long as he only observed before a team was obviously in need of rescue he wasn't violating the exam agreements though, and reports on how each team handled those challenges were going to be part of evaluations anyway.
It was still a couple of days before the trap pedestals would activate and rise out of the ground, and whether or not anyone would risk trying to use them was unknown. You'd have to be really stupid to do so, or tricked somehow perhaps. Maybe being really desperate due to failing to get any scrolls yet? Though if that was the case they were probably going to fail anyway. To cover bases, and ensure that nobody would be complaining, he'd gathered all the sensei for the teams and shown them an example trap pedestal after the gates had locked, compared to sample pedestals for each scroll type, and there had been universal agreement that triggering a trap pedestal should fail a team.
"...that's a giant dog," Tokari almost whimpered as she looked at the giant thing.
"At least it isn't a zombie?" Kirisa said. "Though dealing with giant anything isn't something we learned how to handle in Oto."
"Taki doesn't exactly cover it either."
Moreo nodded as he glanced around. "Yeah, though Fu has enough chakra to play monster."
"...she does, yes."
"We've got a couple of tall trees in good positions to get closer to the head, but it obviously knows we're here. Either because our chakra was registered for it when we used the pedestal or because it can smell us, probably both. I can distract it while you two get into position to attack it?"
Kirisa glared at him. "Are you trying to keep us out of harm's way?"
He blinked in response. "I primarily use earth techniques, so I'm comparatively useless in the trees, and what makes you think the trees are going to be safer? You'll be in biting range and that thing is big enough to knock down the trees!"
"Oh. Sorry. I'm used to guys either being all macho needing to protect the girls or completely dismissive of the value of the girls at all. You obviously aren't the latter, so I kind of defaulted to assuming the former."
Tokari shook her head. "Unless you have problems with operating in the trees then I think it's a good plan. He keeps the dog focused on the ground, then we aim for the eyes as an obvious weak point."
The other two nodded, and twenty minutes later they'd gotten the scroll after the corpse of the giant dog just...dissolved following skewering what should've been its brain with kunai.
"Nobody indicated how many teams can pass this time around," Akira noted. He'd helped run one of the seals testing stations in the first stage, and hadn't been impressed with those who had found him. Even with the lower standards for being low-rank kids they were horrendous.
A sealing novice should be able to slap together a mild explosive tag, given how many of their failures to produce other things should explode anyway. The impressive failure of the kid that had been tasked with inking an explosive tag and instead ended up sealing the tag within itself had at least been interesting though.
Yameki nodded as she put down her cup. "Nobody asked."
He looked over to her, as did several others in the room that had been helping with the skill testing. "Ah. Do you know?"
"It's variable."
"...variable?"
"The goal is at most twenty-two teams, but 'particularly impressive' challenge completions can supposedly add bonus scrolls into the mix."
"Oh."
"Hold up," Tsukao said. "What defines 'particularly impressive'?"
Yameki shrugged. "The seals controlling the challenges. Presumably based on completion time, amount of chakra used at varying levels, number of one-hit kills. That kind of thing. Though always through demonstrating skills that the core scroll doesn't demand, supposedly. So maybe stealing a scroll from something you were supposed to kill might count for stealth, going on the offensive on a defensive challenge to drive them away instead of just holding your ground, that kind of thing?"
"So it isn't some kind of 'that looked awesome' thing?"
"Only if the team is in another dimension and Naruto decides that they did something worth rewarding, and I believe his goal there is to either mark it down on the paperwork or give them gifts instead of adding to the bonus scrolls."
Akira groaned. "He's sending genin to other dimensions? How, and how the hell did you find out?"
Yameki grinned. "There are occasionally benefits to volunteering to help test things sight unseen. How it works is far beyond my ability to understand though, but honestly that's fairly normal with the Uzukage."
"You had to say that there weren't enough zombies," Botoshi spat out as he bisected a zombie.
Tomisu let loose with one of the fire attacks she was good with to clear a hole in the swarm the pedestal had just spawned around them, then backflipped over Ichine so he could more easily create an earth wall on that side of the pedestal. That took a moment, and then they were repeating the process on the other side. When they were done the zombies were mostly being funneled through two points. Ichine started reinforcing the walls and making it difficult to climb over them while Botoshi took one entrance point and Tomisu took the other.
The walls gradually grew and angled outwards to make them harder to climb and easier to collapse on top of the zombies if desired. Tomisu was clearing more zombies at once because Botoshi was limited to those that had gotten in reach of his sword. Water release to flush corpses out of the way occasionally provided a breather on his part though.
Eventually they'd held their position for twenty minutes and the pedestal rang like a bell. The attacking zombies dissolved, and when they placed their hands back in the alcoves a scroll appeared on top of the pedestal.
Shisui nodded as he looked over the proposed plans. "You do know that intentionally creating any kind of 'minor village' is always a headache, right?"
"Can't be any worse than accidentally laying the groundwork for a major one," Yoko retorted.
"...fair point. But setting up a village of 'shrine maidens', that would spread across the continent, might be more contentious. It will be obvious that they're tied to Konoha and Uzushio as well."
"Most of the continent is looking for excuses to have better relations with Uzushio for trade alone."
"Also a fair point. Setting up an information network in this particular manner would be particularly brazen and seen through immediately."
"The primary goal is to set up shrines in areas that need the shrines to improve their quality of life. Generating water, improving crops in the immediate area, clearing out pollutants, that kind of thing. It was the shrine maidens, emboldened by their honorary genin status, that asked about turning the whole thing into a 'hidden village'."
He blinked at that, as knowing that put the whole thing in a different light. "So it's more of a shrine defense village asked for by the shrine maidens themselves?"
"That's their intent, though they admitted that being a vassal to Konoha and Uzushio meant that they'd be in a perfect position to have transport pads hidden for getting around."
"Meaning that information gathering would be a minor benefit, if it happens at all. Hmmm. Has anyone checked with the Daimyo to get his opinion?"
Yoko shook her head. "No, because agreements specifically state not to so that he can truthfully deny knowledge."
That...was honestly a good point, and probably something that it would be nice if more of the civilians took into account. "Well, I don't think I have any actual objections, beyond the headache it'll be to get other countries to agree to setting the shrines up with an obvious village affiliation."
He signed his approval of the basic plan, wondering how the details would pan out...and how quickly that would happen, for that matter.
Three days in, with only two of the three scrolls they needed and a spare offense scroll due to ambushing idiots, they'd found a new pedestal.
"A stupidity scroll?" Yasuzane said as he read it. "And...all-consuming acid?"
Matasa finished his series of genjutsu detections, frowning. "That appears to be what it says, yeah."
"...why the hell would anyone even think about activating this?"
"Well, I can slap a seal-anchored illusion on it to make it look like a stealth pedestal. Maybe with 'darkness' instead of the acid?"
Rinaya chuckled as she kept an eye out around them. "That sounds like a great way to get someone else to fall for it."
"But I'm more concerned with the fact that we've just trusted every other pedestal we've found without actually doing much in the way of checks. We'd have fallen for a genjutsu on one of these too."
Yasuzane joined Rinaya in shuddering at that thought. The three worked together to get Matasa's illusion in place though, and then left the clearing to hopefully find either a real stealth pedestal or a team with a stealth scroll.
Sasuke looked over the corpse of the man he'd just killed, ensuring that it was actually a corpse and not about to jump up again, seemingly ignoring the group of kids staring at him in fear. Deciding to grab a bunch of kids to sell into slavery while everyone was distracted with the chunin exams was actually reasonably clever, as far as bandit tactics went. It just hadn't gone unnoticed, even if they hadn't been informed of problems until after the kids had been grabbed.
Having a transformed clone come in to release the chains on the kids, comfort them, and check them for injuries was reasonably simple. Better than dealing with them flinching at being approached by the man that had just killed their captor. Cleaning up the mess only took a few minutes, the kids gradually realizing that he wasn't just there to take them from the kidnapper without paying for them, but getting the kids back home was going to be a problem because part of things had been killing off their parents. Which meant that the kids were orphans, and tracking down if they had other family that would take them in wasn't going to be instant. Kiba had an entire team working on that right now though, plus a request for a longer-range check on a couple that weren't from the immediate area.
There was a decent chance that most of the kids would end up being handed over to Konoha, as all but the siblings from traveling merchants obviously originated in the Land of Fire, but giving them a chance to decide if they wanted to go there or Uzushio might happen too. That was outside of Sasuke's responsibility to determine either way, at least once Kiba's team was done checking for surviving family members. For now the bulk of things was going to be treating injuries, gathering belongings when possible, and preparing to hunt down the man's business partners.
Jone looked at the pedestal. The two other inactive ones they'd found so far had both had forest symbols, but this one had a lava symbol. Before now they'd thought that it was just because it was the forest of challenges, but this implied differently.
"Lava implies a lot of heat," Kuko commented as she looked around. "But this...doesn't seem like a good place for lots of heat?"
"We might be dropped into an underground lava chamber or something," Teze suggested, before digging through a pouch and pulling a scroll she'd brought out. "My uncle gave me a 'keep cool in hot weather' technique that I've not had a good chance to practice. Might help?"
That was appreciated, and they all ran through it a couple of times. It seemed simple enough, just impossible to test in the absence of hot enough weather. Then they circled the pedestal and activated it, only to suddenly find themselves standing in an unbearably hot location with a taller pedestal between them.
Use the upper alcoves to return, with or without the scroll.
The scroll you seek is protected by the lava beast. Defeat it!
A look around showed that the entire place was a hellscape and it was already obvious that the 'hot weather' technique wasn't anywhere near enough for this kind of heat. There was also one obvious path away from where they were standing.
"I'm suddenly thinking we don't need a second offense scroll after all," Kuko said.
"Agreed," Jone said, shifting his hand to the upper alcove. The other two did the same, they pushed chakra in, and found themselves back in the forest with their hands over the original pedestal.
They still needed to find a 'stealth' pedestal or plan on defeating a team that already had that scroll, but the original hope that they'd be able to trade a spare scroll for someone else's spare had just been thrown out the window.
Yomori looked up at the next clip of a challenge playing on the broadcast. It seemed that the team had been dropped into the sand world this time, though where that actually was hadn't been explained. It wasn't in the Land of Wind at least. Really, none of the places looked like they should exist normally. Icy mountains that might be something suitably far north...if the lighting had been right for it. Lava that went far beyond anything you'd find in even the largest volcanos. Endless mountains that he supposed might merely be the middle of some other continent. And then the seemingly endless desert.
The shinobi watching from his bar had commented that this was beyond anything that Uzushio had done in the joint exam with Konoha, and seemed to think that was because Konoha had intentionally held them back. At the same time, several of them wanted to give some of the challenges a try for themselves and at least two had written letters requesting access after the genin were done.
Even with this being 'unusual' though, it definitely showed that shinobi had to put a lot more effort in than it looked like. It was one thing to assume that chakra just made everything easier, and that shinobi were lazy for relying on others to produce things for them. Seeing what counted as 'genin' level before, and the things they were being put up against to prove that they might be 'chunin' level? Not just in attacks though, because things he'd never thought about had been brought up. Shinobi had to know how to best set up a campsite for defense when escorting clients, how to cook meals without generating smoke when they didn't want to be seen camping themselves, clean and maintain their equipment in horrible conditions. Then there were things you ideally never saw shinobi doing, such as moving unseen through crowds, or things he just didn't associate with shinobi, like healing injuries in themselves or others.
Even if you only picked up some of those skills, based on the kind of shinobi you wanted to be, there had to be an insane amount of training to get from 'genin' to 'chunin', and presumably a similar bump in skill to get to 'jounin' level.
"So," Yomori said in a lull of orders, just after a shinobi commented on an apparently-tricky manipulation of sand. "How long does it take to reach that kind of skill level?"
"Depends on the person," the shinobi replied. "It's...well. Hmmm."
"It depends on how much chakra you have," another shinobi piped up. "You saw the chakra meter bit in the 'are you genin' phase, right?"
"I did," Yomori acknowledged.
"Humans are generally born with a fixed potential for chakra, though nobody's quite sure why your parents having a pile of chakra helps improve your own because it's been proven that it isn't genetic. Without training you don't reach your potential at all, and with it that can still be a hard cap in your abilities. I'm never going to make it past chunin due to that. Learning to manage some of the things the kids are throwing around would be hard for me in general."
"He's right," the first shinobi said. "At least regarding chakra, I think he's got a chance at making at least special jounin if he puts the work in. The problem is that there's a balancing act. If you don't have enough chakra you spend too much time trying to build your chakra, but if you have too much as a child you spend too much time learning to control it. The latter is the better problem to have for being a powerhouse as an adult, but at the age the genin are at they're going to want to be 'middle of the pack'. Enough chakra to be able to train in actual use of it but not so much that they struggled to control it a few years ago."
Yomori nodded. "I see. So how much effort it takes varies with the potential of the person, and those we're watching now have had the opportunity to practice actual skills instead of needing to spend time on basics?"
"Yep."
"Then where does someone like the Uzukage fall?"
The two shinobi shared a look, before the second one gulped. "The Uzukage is an Uzumaki. They're already weird cases. More chakra than most even without training, better natural control on average...but he was then bound to the remains of the one-tail...and that should've screwed him over. But he knows a technique that lets him boost his training significantly."
"Rumor has it that he uses that to spend more time training every day than most manage in years," the first shinobi added. "It lets him be in multiple places at once, and lets his real self focus all of its training on physical exercises while his chakra and mind train elsewhere."
"Even things like building the island they're running the exams on likely counted as training for him, and at least one of his girlfriends was bound to the remains of the two-tails and is likely doing the same thing. The other girlfriend...we aren't sure about, but she's got to be strong to keep up with them after they were bound to the remains of tailed beasts."
Hmmm. So the Uzukage was an outlier in multiple ways, and still probably spent more time training than anyone in other fields would see as 'reasonable'. Looking at the kids throwing around impressive attacks, and thinking back on all the non-attack stuff they needed to know, had him respecting the amount of effort they had to put into things a bit more.
...and had him thinking that his son was not going to be attending the academy unless he could prove he was more dedicated than he appeared to be already.
Inaki stared at the pedestal. "You want to activate this one?"
"Yeah," Hyohashi said. "We've failed four others and not been able to find anyone we can beat that has scrolls already."
"It's labeled stupidity, and all-consuming acid. There's no way it isn't a trap!"
"A test if we're willing to take risks, assuming it isn't just someone else having managed to change the carvings to keep others from an easy scroll."
Okay, she had to admit that he was right about that being a potential option, except that the pedestals had proven to be impossibly durable already. Though that could possibly be overcome with some bloodlines. She still thought activating it was stupid, so turned to Yokko to see what he thought. "Your vote?"
"Having pedestals that shouldn't be activated makes sense as an instant fail condition," Yokko said after a minute. "But we're probably going to fail anyway at this point, so that isn't really a downside. Someone having disguised an easy challenge to keep others away, or it being a special test for those willing to take the risk, is probably something we need to seriously consider."
She wasn't a fan of that logic, but couldn't exactly refute it. They had less than a day before the end of the stage and no scrolls to show for it. After some back and forth discussion she was convinced that they should at least give it a shot. Placing their hands in the alcoves, they shared a worried look, then pushed chakra in. A moment later they were standing in a room with no pedestal at all.
"Wow," a voice said. "Last I heard, nobody had disguised that one, so you didn't even get tricked into using one of the trap pedestals."
They turned to see a shinobi standing there. Yokko sighed. "We weren't likely to pass anyway."
"Not if you were willing to use a trap pedestal you weren't. Though I suppose waiting until the last eighteen hours before trying puts you above the four other teams that used one of them without another team slapping a genjutsu on it first."
Inaki blinked. "Wait, we're the fifth team to activate one of those without it being disguised as a more-legitimate one?"
"Yep. The other four all jumped at the chance back on days three and four. Everyone else until now just failed to spot a genjutsu."
"At least they thought about it before activating it," Yumon-sensei called as he entered the room. "They considered their chances, acknowledged it might be a trap, and decided that it was worth the risk of being ejected early to find out for sure."
"Really?"
"They repeatedly hit challenges that required skills they didn't have, gave a good effort at several and abandoned those they obviously had no hope of managing when realizing that was the case, and unfortunately ran into teams that were able to counter them too effectively. A decent attempt, but luck wasn't with them this time. But they will be spending time learning to use their newly-enhanced elemental control so that they don't get trapped without options like this again."
Yeah, that was fair. And with any luck their next exam attempt would be somewhere less insane than Uzushio.
Given the way they'd been reacting? Orochimaru certainly wasn't going to be saying anything about the decision.
"Good morning," Hinata finally called out. "Today you will be entering the Forest of Challenges. Many of you are likely expecting a scroll battle, and you aren't necessarily going to be disappointed. The difference is that none of you are getting handed scrolls. Inside of the forest are hidden testing areas, each with a limited number of scrolls." She pulled out a set of three scrolls, though each was marked 'sample'. "You need to present all three of offense, defense, and stealth scrolls to enter the central tower, each held by a different team member. These scrolls can only be obtained through completing team challenges." The scrolls vanished, and a pedestal lifted from the ground. It had three small alcoves in it. "Each challenge is triggered. All three members of a team need to push chakra into the pedestal for the challenge. The pedestals glow while a team is attempting the challenge linked to them and sink into the ground when they're out of scrolls."
The pedestal sank back into the ground as clones of hers came in. "If you can't find a scroll then you can claim them from other teams." She gestured at her clones, and the paperwork they were carrying. "You will each need to sign waiver forms and get a gate assignment. You will have until noon to turn in your waivers and get to your assigned gate. At noon, as shown on the clocks over the gates, the gates will open. Five minutes later they will close and lock. If your whole team isn't in the forest by the time the gates lock? You've failed. Once the gates open you will have seven days, a hundred and sixty-eight hours, to get into the central tower. Oh, and no maps will be provided."
Being told that there were no maps had the teams looking incredibly nervous, and several were already planning before they even got their waivers.
Fu had dragged all the failed genin back to Taki with her, though wasn't sure why Shibuki had left those who had failed the first 'genin' test behind when he returned to Taki. The couple that had failed the first stage, for what she thought were stupid reasons, had been replaced on their teams by Oto genin for the second stage.
Seeing the way the two 'stranded' Oto genin acted, jumping to work with another village instead was probably the smart decision.
Turning in the final reports had been easy enough, leaving reprimanding the genin to Shibuki for now, and then she did a quick check of the village while thinking about the week she'd been able to spend with Shino on the island. He'd volunteered to help out with the exam as Uzushio didn't have enough shinobi for such a large number of participants, and she'd then volunteered to help him because she had plenty of chakra for his insects to consume so that they could reproduce rapidly.
They'd worked together to set up a giant hive of insects for his testing station, to ensure that there were always plenty of insects to see if genin could handle being swarmed, but he couldn't maintain the numbers on his own so she'd needed to help out the entire first stage. She'd actually slept in the hives instead of the hotel room she could've used, at least until last night, and by the end of the first stage they found that some of the insects had bonded with her instead of him.
She was too tough and healed too fast for them to burrow into her like they did with him, so they'd put together a quick portable hive box for her. Figuring out a more permanent solution was going to be needed as well, but deciding what that should look like was harder. He had a couple of hives he kept in puppets now, but she flew and there was only so much you could get a large puppet to do there.
Well, she'd already replaced her large scroll of sealed supplies and weapons with strings of smaller metal tags obtained from Konoha. Perhaps she could start carrying a hive box like she used to carry the scroll? Making it look like a scroll could even keep enemies unaware of what she was carrying...
"A defense challenge," Seitan said, looking at the pedestal that they'd found on a small hill in a clearing. "Do you think we have to defend the hill against attackers?"
"...I'm more concerned about the symbol for ice on it," Nohisa said. "Does that mean ice monsters?"
"No clue. Kiyoko, what do you think? Should we attempt it?"
Kiyoko frowned as she looked around, before grimacing. "I think we can't trust that the challenge is here."
"...what?"
"Why would the pedestals need to glow during a challenge? Surely it would be obvious that the challenge is active...unless the ones attempting it are somewhere else."
"Oh."
"I've also noticed a couple of other teams just...vanishing, and one of them appeared to my senses again a few minutes ago."
Seitan shared a look with Nohisa, then the two grabbed scrolls with heavier jackets in them. "Ice is probably a warning that it'll be cold then."
Kiyoko nodded and got out her own heavier jacket, then the three placed their hands in the alcoves of the pedestal and pushed chakra in. A pull dragged them away, and a moment later they were in an icy cave. Another pedestal, taller and with a second set of alcoves where the top of the original pedestal had been, was between them...with writing on it. The top line looked like it was part of the pedestal design, while the bottom line was in a box that implied it was put in place afterwards.
Use the upper alcoves to return, with or without the scroll.
To earn the scroll, defend the cave from the ice monsters.
"Shit," Nohisa said, looking around. "We need to get a couple of walls up across the mouth of the cave."
Seitan wasn't arguing, but Kiyoko got moving first. She was better with terrain manipulation anyway.
Naruto looked over his notes on the enzymes Orochimaru had provided, then the notes on examinations of various Uzumaki. It seemed that a partial set of the enzymes existed in Uzumaki, likely helping explain some of their massive chakra reserves as those pieces seemed to be involved in converting natural energy to mana faster than would normally happen. That would keep 'pressure' on your core as you grew up and result in much larger reserves.
They'd not considered that aspect of things before, but figuring out how to duplicate that into children as an inheritable trait was probably going to be added to the hospital's project list. Recreating Orochimaru's seals that added them to the bloodstream was also an option, especially for older shinobi.
A ding from a bell had Naruto looking up, then nodding as one of his clones moved to monitor. Accidentally stabilizing four dimensions he'd intended to dismantle had been slightly annoying, but he'd figured out a way to get use out of them and safely taken care of the two most dangerous ones. Getting things set up for the challenges had followed, though only a third of the challenge pedestals in the forest sent teams into other dimensions. The big problem there was that very few people could keep an eye on the teams as they attempted things. So long as he only observed before a team was obviously in need of rescue he wasn't violating the exam agreements though, and reports on how each team handled those challenges were going to be part of evaluations anyway.
It was still a couple of days before the trap pedestals would activate and rise out of the ground, and whether or not anyone would risk trying to use them was unknown. You'd have to be really stupid to do so, or tricked somehow perhaps. Maybe being really desperate due to failing to get any scrolls yet? Though if that was the case they were probably going to fail anyway. To cover bases, and ensure that nobody would be complaining, he'd gathered all the sensei for the teams and shown them an example trap pedestal after the gates had locked, compared to sample pedestals for each scroll type, and there had been universal agreement that triggering a trap pedestal should fail a team.
"...that's a giant dog," Tokari almost whimpered as she looked at the giant thing.
"At least it isn't a zombie?" Kirisa said. "Though dealing with giant anything isn't something we learned how to handle in Oto."
"Taki doesn't exactly cover it either."
Moreo nodded as he glanced around. "Yeah, though Fu has enough chakra to play monster."
"...she does, yes."
"We've got a couple of tall trees in good positions to get closer to the head, but it obviously knows we're here. Either because our chakra was registered for it when we used the pedestal or because it can smell us, probably both. I can distract it while you two get into position to attack it?"
Kirisa glared at him. "Are you trying to keep us out of harm's way?"
He blinked in response. "I primarily use earth techniques, so I'm comparatively useless in the trees, and what makes you think the trees are going to be safer? You'll be in biting range and that thing is big enough to knock down the trees!"
"Oh. Sorry. I'm used to guys either being all macho needing to protect the girls or completely dismissive of the value of the girls at all. You obviously aren't the latter, so I kind of defaulted to assuming the former."
Tokari shook her head. "Unless you have problems with operating in the trees then I think it's a good plan. He keeps the dog focused on the ground, then we aim for the eyes as an obvious weak point."
The other two nodded, and twenty minutes later they'd gotten the scroll after the corpse of the giant dog just...dissolved following skewering what should've been its brain with kunai.
"Nobody indicated how many teams can pass this time around," Akira noted. He'd helped run one of the seals testing stations in the first stage, and hadn't been impressed with those who had found him. Even with the lower standards for being low-rank kids they were horrendous.
A sealing novice should be able to slap together a mild explosive tag, given how many of their failures to produce other things should explode anyway. The impressive failure of the kid that had been tasked with inking an explosive tag and instead ended up sealing the tag within itself had at least been interesting though.
Yameki nodded as she put down her cup. "Nobody asked."
He looked over to her, as did several others in the room that had been helping with the skill testing. "Ah. Do you know?"
"It's variable."
"...variable?"
"The goal is at most twenty-two teams, but 'particularly impressive' challenge completions can supposedly add bonus scrolls into the mix."
"Oh."
"Hold up," Tsukao said. "What defines 'particularly impressive'?"
Yameki shrugged. "The seals controlling the challenges. Presumably based on completion time, amount of chakra used at varying levels, number of one-hit kills. That kind of thing. Though always through demonstrating skills that the core scroll doesn't demand, supposedly. So maybe stealing a scroll from something you were supposed to kill might count for stealth, going on the offensive on a defensive challenge to drive them away instead of just holding your ground, that kind of thing?"
"So it isn't some kind of 'that looked awesome' thing?"
"Only if the team is in another dimension and Naruto decides that they did something worth rewarding, and I believe his goal there is to either mark it down on the paperwork or give them gifts instead of adding to the bonus scrolls."
Akira groaned. "He's sending genin to other dimensions? How, and how the hell did you find out?"
Yameki grinned. "There are occasionally benefits to volunteering to help test things sight unseen. How it works is far beyond my ability to understand though, but honestly that's fairly normal with the Uzukage."
"You had to say that there weren't enough zombies," Botoshi spat out as he bisected a zombie.
Tomisu let loose with one of the fire attacks she was good with to clear a hole in the swarm the pedestal had just spawned around them, then backflipped over Ichine so he could more easily create an earth wall on that side of the pedestal. That took a moment, and then they were repeating the process on the other side. When they were done the zombies were mostly being funneled through two points. Ichine started reinforcing the walls and making it difficult to climb over them while Botoshi took one entrance point and Tomisu took the other.
The walls gradually grew and angled outwards to make them harder to climb and easier to collapse on top of the zombies if desired. Tomisu was clearing more zombies at once because Botoshi was limited to those that had gotten in reach of his sword. Water release to flush corpses out of the way occasionally provided a breather on his part though.
Eventually they'd held their position for twenty minutes and the pedestal rang like a bell. The attacking zombies dissolved, and when they placed their hands back in the alcoves a scroll appeared on top of the pedestal.
Shisui nodded as he looked over the proposed plans. "You do know that intentionally creating any kind of 'minor village' is always a headache, right?"
"Can't be any worse than accidentally laying the groundwork for a major one," Yoko retorted.
"...fair point. But setting up a village of 'shrine maidens', that would spread across the continent, might be more contentious. It will be obvious that they're tied to Konoha and Uzushio as well."
"Most of the continent is looking for excuses to have better relations with Uzushio for trade alone."
"Also a fair point. Setting up an information network in this particular manner would be particularly brazen and seen through immediately."
"The primary goal is to set up shrines in areas that need the shrines to improve their quality of life. Generating water, improving crops in the immediate area, clearing out pollutants, that kind of thing. It was the shrine maidens, emboldened by their honorary genin status, that asked about turning the whole thing into a 'hidden village'."
He blinked at that, as knowing that put the whole thing in a different light. "So it's more of a shrine defense village asked for by the shrine maidens themselves?"
"That's their intent, though they admitted that being a vassal to Konoha and Uzushio meant that they'd be in a perfect position to have transport pads hidden for getting around."
"Meaning that information gathering would be a minor benefit, if it happens at all. Hmmm. Has anyone checked with the Daimyo to get his opinion?"
Yoko shook her head. "No, because agreements specifically state not to so that he can truthfully deny knowledge."
That...was honestly a good point, and probably something that it would be nice if more of the civilians took into account. "Well, I don't think I have any actual objections, beyond the headache it'll be to get other countries to agree to setting the shrines up with an obvious village affiliation."
He signed his approval of the basic plan, wondering how the details would pan out...and how quickly that would happen, for that matter.
Three days in, with only two of the three scrolls they needed and a spare offense scroll due to ambushing idiots, they'd found a new pedestal.
"A stupidity scroll?" Yasuzane said as he read it. "And...all-consuming acid?"
Matasa finished his series of genjutsu detections, frowning. "That appears to be what it says, yeah."
"...why the hell would anyone even think about activating this?"
"Well, I can slap a seal-anchored illusion on it to make it look like a stealth pedestal. Maybe with 'darkness' instead of the acid?"
Rinaya chuckled as she kept an eye out around them. "That sounds like a great way to get someone else to fall for it."
"But I'm more concerned with the fact that we've just trusted every other pedestal we've found without actually doing much in the way of checks. We'd have fallen for a genjutsu on one of these too."
Yasuzane joined Rinaya in shuddering at that thought. The three worked together to get Matasa's illusion in place though, and then left the clearing to hopefully find either a real stealth pedestal or a team with a stealth scroll.
Sasuke looked over the corpse of the man he'd just killed, ensuring that it was actually a corpse and not about to jump up again, seemingly ignoring the group of kids staring at him in fear. Deciding to grab a bunch of kids to sell into slavery while everyone was distracted with the chunin exams was actually reasonably clever, as far as bandit tactics went. It just hadn't gone unnoticed, even if they hadn't been informed of problems until after the kids had been grabbed.
Having a transformed clone come in to release the chains on the kids, comfort them, and check them for injuries was reasonably simple. Better than dealing with them flinching at being approached by the man that had just killed their captor. Cleaning up the mess only took a few minutes, the kids gradually realizing that he wasn't just there to take them from the kidnapper without paying for them, but getting the kids back home was going to be a problem because part of things had been killing off their parents. Which meant that the kids were orphans, and tracking down if they had other family that would take them in wasn't going to be instant. Kiba had an entire team working on that right now though, plus a request for a longer-range check on a couple that weren't from the immediate area.
There was a decent chance that most of the kids would end up being handed over to Konoha, as all but the siblings from traveling merchants obviously originated in the Land of Fire, but giving them a chance to decide if they wanted to go there or Uzushio might happen too. That was outside of Sasuke's responsibility to determine either way, at least once Kiba's team was done checking for surviving family members. For now the bulk of things was going to be treating injuries, gathering belongings when possible, and preparing to hunt down the man's business partners.
Jone looked at the pedestal. The two other inactive ones they'd found so far had both had forest symbols, but this one had a lava symbol. Before now they'd thought that it was just because it was the forest of challenges, but this implied differently.
"Lava implies a lot of heat," Kuko commented as she looked around. "But this...doesn't seem like a good place for lots of heat?"
"We might be dropped into an underground lava chamber or something," Teze suggested, before digging through a pouch and pulling a scroll she'd brought out. "My uncle gave me a 'keep cool in hot weather' technique that I've not had a good chance to practice. Might help?"
That was appreciated, and they all ran through it a couple of times. It seemed simple enough, just impossible to test in the absence of hot enough weather. Then they circled the pedestal and activated it, only to suddenly find themselves standing in an unbearably hot location with a taller pedestal between them.
Use the upper alcoves to return, with or without the scroll.
The scroll you seek is protected by the lava beast. Defeat it!
A look around showed that the entire place was a hellscape and it was already obvious that the 'hot weather' technique wasn't anywhere near enough for this kind of heat. There was also one obvious path away from where they were standing.
"I'm suddenly thinking we don't need a second offense scroll after all," Kuko said.
"Agreed," Jone said, shifting his hand to the upper alcove. The other two did the same, they pushed chakra in, and found themselves back in the forest with their hands over the original pedestal.
They still needed to find a 'stealth' pedestal or plan on defeating a team that already had that scroll, but the original hope that they'd be able to trade a spare scroll for someone else's spare had just been thrown out the window.
Yomori looked up at the next clip of a challenge playing on the broadcast. It seemed that the team had been dropped into the sand world this time, though where that actually was hadn't been explained. It wasn't in the Land of Wind at least. Really, none of the places looked like they should exist normally. Icy mountains that might be something suitably far north...if the lighting had been right for it. Lava that went far beyond anything you'd find in even the largest volcanos. Endless mountains that he supposed might merely be the middle of some other continent. And then the seemingly endless desert.
The shinobi watching from his bar had commented that this was beyond anything that Uzushio had done in the joint exam with Konoha, and seemed to think that was because Konoha had intentionally held them back. At the same time, several of them wanted to give some of the challenges a try for themselves and at least two had written letters requesting access after the genin were done.
Even with this being 'unusual' though, it definitely showed that shinobi had to put a lot more effort in than it looked like. It was one thing to assume that chakra just made everything easier, and that shinobi were lazy for relying on others to produce things for them. Seeing what counted as 'genin' level before, and the things they were being put up against to prove that they might be 'chunin' level? Not just in attacks though, because things he'd never thought about had been brought up. Shinobi had to know how to best set up a campsite for defense when escorting clients, how to cook meals without generating smoke when they didn't want to be seen camping themselves, clean and maintain their equipment in horrible conditions. Then there were things you ideally never saw shinobi doing, such as moving unseen through crowds, or things he just didn't associate with shinobi, like healing injuries in themselves or others.
Even if you only picked up some of those skills, based on the kind of shinobi you wanted to be, there had to be an insane amount of training to get from 'genin' to 'chunin', and presumably a similar bump in skill to get to 'jounin' level.
"So," Yomori said in a lull of orders, just after a shinobi commented on an apparently-tricky manipulation of sand. "How long does it take to reach that kind of skill level?"
"Depends on the person," the shinobi replied. "It's...well. Hmmm."
"It depends on how much chakra you have," another shinobi piped up. "You saw the chakra meter bit in the 'are you genin' phase, right?"
"I did," Yomori acknowledged.
"Humans are generally born with a fixed potential for chakra, though nobody's quite sure why your parents having a pile of chakra helps improve your own because it's been proven that it isn't genetic. Without training you don't reach your potential at all, and with it that can still be a hard cap in your abilities. I'm never going to make it past chunin due to that. Learning to manage some of the things the kids are throwing around would be hard for me in general."
"He's right," the first shinobi said. "At least regarding chakra, I think he's got a chance at making at least special jounin if he puts the work in. The problem is that there's a balancing act. If you don't have enough chakra you spend too much time trying to build your chakra, but if you have too much as a child you spend too much time learning to control it. The latter is the better problem to have for being a powerhouse as an adult, but at the age the genin are at they're going to want to be 'middle of the pack'. Enough chakra to be able to train in actual use of it but not so much that they struggled to control it a few years ago."
Yomori nodded. "I see. So how much effort it takes varies with the potential of the person, and those we're watching now have had the opportunity to practice actual skills instead of needing to spend time on basics?"
"Yep."
"Then where does someone like the Uzukage fall?"
The two shinobi shared a look, before the second one gulped. "The Uzukage is an Uzumaki. They're already weird cases. More chakra than most even without training, better natural control on average...but he was then bound to the remains of the one-tail...and that should've screwed him over. But he knows a technique that lets him boost his training significantly."
"Rumor has it that he uses that to spend more time training every day than most manage in years," the first shinobi added. "It lets him be in multiple places at once, and lets his real self focus all of its training on physical exercises while his chakra and mind train elsewhere."
"Even things like building the island they're running the exams on likely counted as training for him, and at least one of his girlfriends was bound to the remains of the two-tails and is likely doing the same thing. The other girlfriend...we aren't sure about, but she's got to be strong to keep up with them after they were bound to the remains of tailed beasts."
Hmmm. So the Uzukage was an outlier in multiple ways, and still probably spent more time training than anyone in other fields would see as 'reasonable'. Looking at the kids throwing around impressive attacks, and thinking back on all the non-attack stuff they needed to know, had him respecting the amount of effort they had to put into things a bit more.
...and had him thinking that his son was not going to be attending the academy unless he could prove he was more dedicated than he appeared to be already.
Inaki stared at the pedestal. "You want to activate this one?"
"Yeah," Hyohashi said. "We've failed four others and not been able to find anyone we can beat that has scrolls already."
"It's labeled stupidity, and all-consuming acid. There's no way it isn't a trap!"
"A test if we're willing to take risks, assuming it isn't just someone else having managed to change the carvings to keep others from an easy scroll."
Okay, she had to admit that he was right about that being a potential option, except that the pedestals had proven to be impossibly durable already. Though that could possibly be overcome with some bloodlines. She still thought activating it was stupid, so turned to Yokko to see what he thought. "Your vote?"
"Having pedestals that shouldn't be activated makes sense as an instant fail condition," Yokko said after a minute. "But we're probably going to fail anyway at this point, so that isn't really a downside. Someone having disguised an easy challenge to keep others away, or it being a special test for those willing to take the risk, is probably something we need to seriously consider."
She wasn't a fan of that logic, but couldn't exactly refute it. They had less than a day before the end of the stage and no scrolls to show for it. After some back and forth discussion she was convinced that they should at least give it a shot. Placing their hands in the alcoves, they shared a worried look, then pushed chakra in. A moment later they were standing in a room with no pedestal at all.
"Wow," a voice said. "Last I heard, nobody had disguised that one, so you didn't even get tricked into using one of the trap pedestals."
They turned to see a shinobi standing there. Yokko sighed. "We weren't likely to pass anyway."
"Not if you were willing to use a trap pedestal you weren't. Though I suppose waiting until the last eighteen hours before trying puts you above the four other teams that used one of them without another team slapping a genjutsu on it first."
Inaki blinked. "Wait, we're the fifth team to activate one of those without it being disguised as a more-legitimate one?"
"Yep. The other four all jumped at the chance back on days three and four. Everyone else until now just failed to spot a genjutsu."
"At least they thought about it before activating it," Yumon-sensei called as he entered the room. "They considered their chances, acknowledged it might be a trap, and decided that it was worth the risk of being ejected early to find out for sure."
"Really?"
"They repeatedly hit challenges that required skills they didn't have, gave a good effort at several and abandoned those they obviously had no hope of managing when realizing that was the case, and unfortunately ran into teams that were able to counter them too effectively. A decent attempt, but luck wasn't with them this time. But they will be spending time learning to use their newly-enhanced elemental control so that they don't get trapped without options like this again."
Yeah, that was fair. And with any luck their next exam attempt would be somewhere less insane than Uzushio.
- Location
- USA
So basically anywhere else! Because Naruto has done his absolute best to make Uzushio the most insane place in the Elemental Nations.
- Location
- Scotland
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. That is exactly it. I was also just thinking that Naruto is to regular Uzumaki sealmasters what they are to everyone else
(insanely beyond their understanding to the point that even trying gives you migraines).