Bab 122: Naruto Chapter 122
Konohamaru looked at the things in his pouch. Once they had reached training ground twenty-three, he realised that they hadn't even had a look into the pouches and didn't know what they had to work with. He had pointed it out to the other two. It was a bit embarrassing to have made such a beginner mistake.
At least they had realised it before entering the critical area. It would have been really embarrassing if something in the pouches could have helped them pass this test and they simply didn't know about it, because they didn't take the time to see what they had to work with.
"Are these masks standard equipment?" Riku asked frowning.
"Not that I know of," Konohamaru replied, "Try channelling some chakra into them to see if they have seals on them."
Riku, who had the masks in his pouch, did so with one and a seal appeared.
"That's some kind of filter seal. Smart. I would bet that it protects you against things like sleeping drugs and poisons on missions. Which means, it might be that we will be confronted with that during this test," Nintaro stated.
"Very well possible. And Naruto sensei mentioned seals like these when he described useful seals that could save your life on a mission. I suggest we put them on when we enter the training ground. We might not need them, but it never hurts to be cautious," Konohamaru declared.
The other two nodded and tied the masks over their lower faces, checking that they sat properly to not let any air through without being filtered by the masks. The seals activated immediately, as they were made to react to being in general contact with the chakra points of a person's face.
"Okay, first is reconnaissance, we will carefully examine the training ground to find out what kind of traps there are, if we recognise a seal, we note the kind and position, but don't act before we have come back together. Try to not trigger anything," Konohamaru told the other two, who nodded, "We should take fifteen minutes to search for the item and the traps, then assemble, make a full plan and then act together."
"Sounds good," Nintaro agreed.
"Let's do it that way," Riku added.
They went into the training ground and split up, searching for anything out of the norm.
...
Naruto's clone watched Konohamaru's team. Training ground twenty-three was fairly standard, it had a middle-sized pond, for training in water walking, there were some training posts for taijutsu and weapons practice and of course many trees. He had hidden the item for this group in a hole in a tree that was about halfway into the training ground.
It was of course now surrounded by simple traps with seals and without. Basically, weapons shooting arrays and the sleeping gas seals. There also were some paint bombs in the mix, to give them something else to look out for.
So far, they had done fairly well. They had found and disabled five of the six sleeping gas seals after they had come back together to report their findings and make a map of the training ground and the location of the item they needed.
The sixth seal had been triggered, as it had been the one that was hidden best, but as they wore the masks, they didn't fall to it. They still quickly shut it down, as they didn't want to let too much gas stream out.
They had also neutralised the three kunai and senbon shooter seals and had taken the weapons inside.
Nintaro had a very healthy opinion of getting more resources, meaning, stealing from the enemy was always the best way to proceed, as it saved funds on your part. Well, coming from a civilian family, he would know about the costs, as it would be outside the normal budget.
Konohamaru had never had to deal with financial matters to replace training equipment, as he was the Third Hokage's grandson and Riku's family was well off, which meant he never had to worry about not getting something. Probably a reason why he was quite lazy. He never needed to work for things, they were just given to him.
The one paint bomb in the mix had been intentionally triggered, as none of the three knew how to stop it from going off, as Naruto had combined it with a seal that would trigger it if it sensed a chakra signature a certain distance away from it. Konohamaru had spotted the trigger seal, but didn't know how to disable it, even if Naruto had covered it in class.
Nintaro and Riku didn't remember it either, but a safe way to go about a seal like that was intentionally triggering it while you were out of reach. A well-aimed kunai from Riku did the job, as he had directly hit the paint bomb seal. It was a valid solution to the problem, even if not the most elegant one.
Once they had double checked that no more traps were in their way, they collected the item, a necklace with a red pendant, from a hole in a tree, next to a second envelope.
"Okay, we managed this part, seemingly these are new instructions," Riku said.
"Are they written in code again?" Konohamaru asked.
"There is just one line in code," Riku replied.
"What does it say?" Nintaro asked.
"No idea, I suck at remembering those code symbols," Riku admitted.
"You should really catch up on it, Riku. Honestly, this is the first code we learned at the academy," Nintaro commented and looked at the symbol, "Ah, it says, channel chakra into the scroll."
"Probably a seal will activate to reveal the message. Smart of sensei," Konohamaru approved.
Riku did so and two scrolls popped out of two storage seals that became visible with chakra.
"Invisible sealing ink. Wow, that's so cool," Nintaro exclaimed astonished.
"Definitely. It must be really difficult to draw a seal without being able to see it," Konohamaru mentioned, knowing how hard it was to do it while you could see what you did.
"Well, Naruto sensei is a sealing master after all," Riku said and opened one of the scrolls, "This has just normal writing on it. It says: 'To finish the mission, you have to collect the two other pendants in green and blue'. Where should we find them? Does the second scroll say anything about that?"
Konohamaru was reading that scroll.
"It has a list of the teams and the pendants they will collect first. It seems that we must find a way to defeat two teams that have the right pendants to finish this mission. The scroll has all teams and all colours on them, which means, we can determine which teams to go after."
"Do we know who was on which team?" Riku asked, "I mean, I know the ones on teams one and two, as some of my friends are on them, but not the others."
"Moegi is on team six and Udon on team eight. We are team five, then Hanabi is on team ten and Usagi on team eleven," Konohamaru listed.
Nintaro took out a notebook and write down what they knew, adding some names he remembered. They managed to get a fairly decent list put together, with at least two teams that had the pendants they would need each. They knew that there were about thirty teams overall in the test, but they could just get about half of that determined.
"This shows, any kind of information is valuable. We will have to remember that for future exercises. I mean, it would have been much easier to write down who was on which team in the beginning. And even if we didn't need that knowledge later, it wouldn't have hurt to have it either," Nintaro commented.
"Well, this is a training exercise after all, and I doubt we will forget this anytime soon, which was probably the reason Naruto sensei did it," Konohamaru deducted, "He seems to be somebody that prefers learning by doing, and making mistakes while they don't cost you too much."
"Seems like it," Riku nodded, "It will be hard to fight two teams. We don't know too much about their abilities, and we didn't learn that much at the academy either. I'm not that good at taijutsu. Any of the children from larger clans would beat me immediately."
"We have to try and ambush them. And avoid Hanabi's team if possible. I heard she already has her byakugan, which would make sneaking up on her team futile. That eye can look through walls," Konohamaru informed them.
"Shit. So unfair. Well, nothing to do about it. Her team has a blue pendant to collect, but the same goes for team two. We don't know where the other teams are. And we also need to avoid getting our pendant stolen, which the other teams will try," Nintaro pondered.
"How about putting a storage seal somewhere where nobody would think to search for it?" Riku suggested, "Like the inside of a sleeve."
"Good idea, Riku. That way it couldn't be stolen as easily, and we learned how to draw and transfer a storage seal in class," Konohamaru nodded and took out the sealing supplies that were in his pouch.
He took five minutes to carefully draw a storage seal and then activated it. After that he transferred it from the sealing paper onto the inside of Nintaro's left sleeve and Riku sealed the pendant into it.
It wasn't visible from the outside, and most others would try searching on their persons or in their pouches for it. Once they were done, Konohamaru put the sealing supplies away and they left the training ground to find a team to battle for their item.
Naruto's clone nodded satisfied about a good plan and added some bonus points for the plan how to hide the pendant.
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