章 2721: 111
Hinata thought that the start of the jounin skill tests was a bit understated, but not needing to do a 'everyone meets up to get informed of things that could fit on a sheet of paper' dance was far more efficient. What had her confused was Naruto running off again, and it had taken her some time to find him in one of the other dimensions. Even that had only been possible because he'd left a transport pad unlocked for her and Ino.
"What are you working on now?" she questioned one of his clones as she looked at the teams of clones constructing...something, mildly annoyed because it looked like technology.
"Boss decided that he needs a supercomputer or thirty," his clone answered.
"Beyond the 'more computing power than any nation's non-Uzushio computing systems' cores in every major settlement or the insane computing array built into the moon?"
"None of them can keep up with scanning for threats and we're still working on getting the full scanning system constructed."
"Oh. Why is he doing this alone instead of asking for help?"
"Accuracy concerns."
"...accuracy?"
"Mangekyo sharingan and rinnegan examinations are needed to ensure that things are correctly constructed." The clone gestured to a computer terminal nearby. "If you want to look at the plans then feel free."
She did so, and quickly found that things were far beyond anything she'd expected. It looked like technology from a distance, but the plans indicated that the work fully integrated seals and magic throughout the entire construction. In fact, she was having trouble spotting places that seals weren't used, and both they and the technology aspects were defined at precisions that were giving her a headache just thinking about them.
"When did he have time to design this?" she finally asked.
"It started as an improved computer core design and just kind of grew from there," the clone answered. "Only upon realizing that far too much data has to be discarded by the moon's systems did it become a serious consideration for building though."
"Ah. How much can this handle?"
"In theory the finished array could be pushed to a few thousand exaflops per second, but we won't know if it comes close to that in practice until all of the units are built. If projections are accurate then approximately six years worth of monthly scanning the star system should be able to be stored though, which is the bigger concern."
"...you don't even understand that properly, do you?"
"Only because there are a bunch of clones emulating technology division members in the swarm working on the thing feeding me information."
Yeah, that sounded right.
Hiyuki was annoyed at the distances involved in the skill tests. Yes, he knew that jounin had to be able to move around a lot faster than a chunin was expected to, but the skill tests were arrayed over an area the size of one of the larger non-Uzushio countries.
Uzushio was definitely an outlier on that front though, given that they had an entire moon now. That had to make them the largest country by controlled area, though possibly not the largest 'on the planet'.
That aside, he'd finally reached the testing location he'd been aiming for. A probably-not-human proctor was standing there under a basic sun shade in the middle of a large field. He landed next to the proctor and nodded. "I'm hoping this is the taijutsu skill test."
"It can be," the proctor confirmed.
"...what else can it be?"
"Wide area techniques."
"Ah. Am I allowed to test both?"
"You are! Which would you like to start with?"
"Let's start with taijutsu."
The proctor nodded, and suddenly zombies started pulling themselves out of the ground. "Defeat the zombies with taijutsu, optionally holding kunai or shuriken so long as you do not throw them."
Well, that sounded downright generous. The zombies fought much better than expected once he was in the middle of them though, and it was actually a decent workout taking them all out. Groups of the things even showed teamwork, nearly getting good hits on him due to him not expecting that, but eventually he made it through all two hundred and six.
"Why two hundred and six?" he asked as he returned to the proctor.
"A random selection between minimum and maximum numbers is generated," the proctor replied. "And there were two hundred and eight, but it's understandable that you miscounted the ones taken out by you throwing others into groups."
...apparently he'd failed to show off how well he'd been paying attention. "I hope I at least passed."
"You did. Would you like to attempt the wide area techniques test now?"
"Might as well accomplish multiple tests in one stop."
The proctor nodded, and a larger group of zombies started clawing their way out of the ground...at the same time that a ring appeared around them. "Without crossing the line, take out all the zombies with ten or fewer techniques."
Okay, that was definitely being generous. He judged distances, then sketched a circle just inside of the line and activated his rock roller jutsu. What he'd designed as a giant rolling pin formed out of the earth and started rolling in a circle around them, flattening the zombies as it did so. He had to direct it to do a second circle, slightly further out, because he'd hit the maximum length he could get and that hadn't reached quite far enough for fifteen or so zombies at the far edge of things.
When he turned back to the proctor, he was surprised to see that there was now a computer terminal on a stand there. It showed his two completions and showed him a map of other testing stations he could choose to go to.
Orochi had spent three days on the moon with Tsunade and decided that no, she and Mito were not staying there long-term. Ruri had been in full agreement after finding out that 'day' and 'night' lasted a couple of weeks each on the moon. No, dealing with that kind of situation was not something they wanted to do, no matter the research opportunities. 'Day trips', as defined by Earth days and not moon days, were more their style.
That Tsunade was willing to put up with the insanity was a testament to her own research drive though, which was admittedly impressive. If either of them was looking for a more physical relationship it might even be enough to trigger some incidents, but they weren't looking for that right now.
None of this really changed how much work she was doing with the civilian scientists, or the revelations they were coming up with in the process of examining everything Uzushio was letting them examine. Their maps of the star system and important objects within it had gone from approximately 'we know these planets exist' to 'we have a good idea what moons exist around each planet, minus a couple that the Sun has blocked our view' in a remarkably short period of time.
Then there were the communication satellites and documentation needed to use them, currently revolutionizing everyone else's radio technology. There was the caveat that using the satellites meant that Uzushio would be able to monitor things, but the scientists were of the opinion that everything was already being monitored so why throw away the gifted 'and you can use our network' access?
It also seemed that shops on the moon were selling various technological trinkets that scientists were buying up to figure out how they worked. Light strips that took a fraction of the power of normal lighting, flashlights apparently based on the same technology, toys that used the not-radio communication trick that electricity could flow over and had motors inside that were far better than they had any right to be...
How much of it was set up specifically to show off compared to someone deciding that the shops needed inventory and slapping it together was entirely unknown, of course. Probably a mixture of things, given that Konoha's access to Uzushio's technology division records showed that they'd designed most of it but hadn't put it into mass production despite the moon having shops full of inventory of the various items.
One thing Orochi personally liked, and wanted Uzushio to distribute a bit more widely, were the 'baby monitors'. Tsunade had picked one up and being able to keep an ear on a napping Mito from anywhere in the house was a godsend. Even better, you only had to plug in one end and could wear the other on a little belt clip. The same trick was probably incredibly useful for spying as well, especially if it used the not-radio insane-range communication seals, but that felt secondary to childcare right now.
Probably only because she had a small child to care for, admittedly.
Jono was a little surprised that she found herself appreciating the distance between skill tests. They actually served as a way to recover from one test before beginning another, while also serving as a 'can you navigate unfamiliar terrain' test. Not that you didn't get that situation constantly once on proper chunin missions, of course, and even familiar territory frequently had unanticipated changes.
Arriving at what should be the next test station, she frowned. There was no sign of a testing station. She checked her notes, landmarks she could see, used a couple of jutsu to confirm distances...and she was right where the testing was supposed to be. That was concerning, because it either meant it was well-disguised or she'd completely screwed up reading the map. The main thing giving her pause on 'she made a mistake' was that she was dead center in an empty field...for an earth-nature skill test.
Considering that, she dropped into the ground right in the middle of the field, searching for something underground...and almost immediately fell into a small room with a proctor standing there.
"Congratulations," the proctor said as she recovered from the unexpected fall. "You're the first person to seek me out and find me."
"You're well-hidden," she said, looking up at the expansive dirt ceiling. Apparently you could be off by a good twenty feet from the center of the field and still hit the room.
"Part one of passing the test is finding me. Part two is finding a token in the field."
She turned to the proctor. "A...token?"
"Five centimeters in diameter, with a picture of the Earth on it, and a unique serial number etched into the edge."
Ugh. Finding something like that buried in the field was going to be annoying. But she nodded and jumped up to the ceiling, moving through the dirt again to the surface. There were a number of ways to use earth manipulation to either scan through dirt or bring objects up to the surface. She doubted that the circle above the area the proctor was in would hold a token, because stumbling upon one getting in would be counterproductive to testing, so she started a circle outside of that.
It took forty-five minutes to 'sift' enough dirt to find a token, after which she dove back down to the proctor...and ran face-first into another one in the dirt over the underground room. Right on the edge though, making her think that things had been set up with levels of expectations, counter-expectations, and so on. Possibly down to 'some testees will come back in on the edge of the room once they know where that is, so ring that area with tokens to infuriate them when they finally find one further out'.
"Please tell me that there's something else I can do here," she said to the proctor after handing both tokens over.
The proctor gave her a sad smile while gesturing at the console showing a map. "This station permits wood release testing as well, but we know that you aren't capable of using it."
Naruto had checked on the skill tests at the halfway point, the candidates still having half a week to finish things, and found that everything was running approximately as predicted. The pass and fail rates on some individual tests were a little off from what he'd expected, but were still well within specifications. There was a decidedly smaller number of 'needed to answer questions' hits on that team than anticipated though, but an expected rate of questions asked, which seemed to indicate that a better than expected job had been done of pre-populating answers for the system.
Personally simulating two thirds of those participating and getting questions they seemed likely to ask taken care of ahead of time likely helped there, but that was an incredibly imprecise method of populating answers.
He'd also checked on other things, like activity planet-side and the false-positive flagging on the monitoring systems. Most of the latter seemed to be more tied to the current systems having problems processing enough information, but it would be a few weeks minimum before he could start bringing in the supercomputer cluster. Longer if he ran into any major construction problems, or other tasks came up to take more of his time, and then there would be a month or two of testing to ensure that it all functioned properly.
Hinata had needed to be pulled away from the supercomputer plans though as she'd started getting 'ranty'. Things that shouldn't work but did, impossible construction elements, and other such details. She knew that the seals and magic sides of things were why it all worked, but just hadn't wrapped her head around enough to see how yet. Of course, she also hadn't done more deep examinations of the Tome to figure out more internals, and he was reasonably certain that the Tome was still going to be more computationally powerful than any single unit of the supercomputer cluster.
Tadizo had taken three hours running over water to reach the testing station and needed a quick rest before approaching the proctor. "So, what's the goal here?"
"The first stage was managing to reach me at all," the proctor admitted. "Now you need to identify the code on the sea floor below us."
"...there's a code down there."
"Yes."
"This is probably deeper than any body of water any shinobi has ever needed to dive into back on Earth, and you want me to go down to find a code."
"It was labeled as one of the harder skill tests."
That was unfortunately true, and diving had been warned about on the map. He grumbled, but dove into the water anyway. Managing to keep the pressure from crushing him was harder than he was used to as he headed deeper, and he had to coat his little flashlight in chakra to protect it as he didn't have a light-creation jutsu that worked under water. Eventually he found the sea floor though...in theory. There was obviously a constructed mountain under the water for him to find, and circling around it had him spotting six different clues. He committed those to memory and swam back up, climbing back onto the floating platform before unsealing some paper to write the clues down on.
It took him ten minutes to decipher the clues, after probably twenty spent in the water, but the proctor accepted his answer. "Good job. Here's the map, and you can use the transport pad here to return to shore."
"That's nice of you," he admitted, looking at the map. "But I note that the map doesn't tell me where on shore the pad will drop me."
"Which is part of the test, of course. You can know where you are by going across the water yourself or figure out where you ended up by taking the pad."
In hindsight that was an obvious test on its own.
Shino was impressed that they had insect-related skill tests. Information gathering in this case, and thus nothing that required being an Aburame. He was reasonably certain that it could be handled by other insect-using clans across the Elemental Nations, not that he had direct proof. Fu had obviously beaten him to this one as well, and had left little hints behind for him regarding the solution.
She was unfortunately too trusting that the solution would be the same for each person, no matter how 'built in' the solution appeared to be.
Based on that, he'd ensured that he went through and found all the actual clues, deciphering them himself. As expected, he came up with a different answer than Fu's hints implied should be the case.
"Good job," the proctor said once handed the answer.
"Thank you," Shino replied.
"It looks like you need a few minutes to finish pulling your insects out of the system."
"...I do, but that's plenty of time to examine the map to choose my next test."
"Very true."
Twenty minutes later he was on his way to his next chosen test. He'd have to ask Fu why she bothered leaving clues at all when they next met up.
Ryose ran a genjutsu dispel to prove to herself that she was seeing what she thought she was. How Uzushio had stuck a molten lava pool inside of an ice cave at sea level of what looked like a floating glacier was beyond her understanding, but that's what she'd found. There was a proctor standing off to the side, and she moved over to them as she eyed the lava pool. "What do I have to do here?"
"Push chakra into the yellow orb on the pole sticking out of the lava," the proctor replied. "When it goes from yellow to green you've pushed enough in."
"That...wow. Just the implications of safely getting a way to reach the orb make this seem like quite the challenge."
"We've had to save two people already that failed to make a suitable bridge."
"Yeah. Has anyone passed already?"
"Not yet. You're only the third to show up to attempt it."
Well, it had been labeled with a lava symbol, so she wasn't too surprised at that. She reached out to the orb with a chakra string, successfully latching onto it and pumping chakra down the string. It took longer than she thought it should before the orb flickered, and another ten seconds had it change to a solid green. "There you go."
"Congratulations on being the first to figure out the simple solution."
"Is there another test I can perform while I'm here?"
"Not with your skill set."
"Try me."
"There's another orb under the lava holding a token to be retrieved."
"...you're right, there's no way I'm pulling that one off. Where's the map?"
Fu found it interesting that they had insect-related skill tests, given that she knew that the Aburame were one of the few clans that used them. Information gathering was reasonably straightforward with insects as well, and Shino had obviously been here before her. While he'd obviously left clues, she wasn't sure if someone else had been through and possibly messed them up on her so she didn't trust them.
As it turned out, that was the right move as the clues pointed at something that was close to correct but not actually correct. It was a bit harder for her to pull her hive back to her as she'd not lived with them her entire life, but she managed it before going over to the proctor with her answer.
"Good job," the proctor said as a map lit up for her.
"Thank you," she replied, examining the map. She doubted that there'd be more than a couple of insect-related tests, but the map showed a flying one. She liked flying, so that was an obvious next choice.
She would need to find out why Shino had left clues for her, assuming it wasn't just his hive having marked areas and him not cleaning it up afterwards.
Nomio grinned as he worked his way through the maze. Bozane had obviously been through here already and had left markings at key intersections, allowing bypassing of several puzzles through punching the correct codes into the doors to open the path forward. Not all of them, admittedly, only the hardest-looking puzzles. But that fit their general view of things and made it trivial to slip through faster to have more time for additional tests.
He'd just come to another such puzzle, grimacing at the difficulty of the puzzle itself. Yeah, this was not his personal best choice for a challenge. Deciphering the markings left behind was easy enough though, and had him punching the solution code into the left-hand door. That opened without any problem, and he moved forward...only for the door to slam behind him before the floor dropped out from beneath him as though it had never been there.
Righting himself as he fell was easy enough, though the fall took far longer than it should've while also taking far less time than it felt like it had before landing next to the proctor. Blinking and looking up, there was no obvious hole in the ceiling. How in the world had he...
"You've failed," the proctor said, causing him to blink. He then scowled, because Bozane had probably failed as well, making a mistake without realizing it, and there had been no way to go back and fix the markings.
"No second tries?" he asked.
"Not for this test."
"Do I at least get to see a map?"
"No, map access is for successful completions only. Hopefully you noted multiple tests on your previous maps and can reach one of them."
Fuck. He'd barely paid attention to the other points on the last map.
Yoko shook her head as Davaa fidgeted. "What is it that you wish to ask me?"
"Er," he said. "Would you happen to have a brother?"
"I do."
"One that's exceptionally well-traveled?"
"Oh, definitely. I understand he checked in on you somewhat recently."
The man nodded. "Yes."
"He checks in on areas a lot more than I do."
"Ah."
"If that's all that has you nervous, I believe you have a list of requests from your leaders?"
He blinked at her, then nodded. "Er, yes. Though I don't recall mentioning that."
"My brother let me know."
"Oh. The main request is that they're, er, hoping that some of our people could study here more permanently?"
She didn't sigh, but it was close. "You wish to have shrine helpers learn here."
"That would be my interpretation, but they did not put it anywhere near that way. I hope out of ignorance and not malice."
"I am not yet equipped to teach your people. The cultural divide is one of several concerns, and none of my people can speak your language."
"But...you and your brother have no problems?"
"We are unusual cases. I have a priest and priestess seeing if they can learn your language, but it is slow going and there are a number of other considerations that are...more difficult to work with."
"Oh. That isn't likely to be taken well."
"Warnings that your leaders cannot force pupils on me have already been delivered."
The man gulped. "What...kind of warnings?"
"Suitable ones." Inked on their own chests in the middle of the night by clones, but the man didn't need to know that. "There is always a chance that my brother missed some other request though. Were there any others?"
Davaa shook his head. "No, not from them. A couple of local taverns have asked about how to construct a smaller shrine though, as I mentioned the possibility from reading what you provided."
"Ah, now that I can walk you through easily enough."
Bozane swore as he found another set of markings from Himeko. The maze had to overlap with itself if you took wrong paths, maybe to give you a second or third shot if you made an honest mistake, but every single time markings had been left they'd pointed to the wrong door...and generally to an incorrect answer that the wrong door accepted as though it were the right one. Why she'd leave markings like this was also entirely unknown, because why would she expect him or Nomio to find the same skill test?
The problem was that the markings were a significant distraction as he worked his way through the puzzles himself. He'd taken to spending a couple of minutes ensuring that he'd removed all the markings before starting on his own solving, adding a couple of minutes to each puzzle with them. This one was no different, careful cleaning leaving an unblemished puzzle. He then figured out how to arrange things to create the solve path needed and obtained the code, noting that it led to the door on the right this time.
Punching the code in, he continued through the door and ensured that he was ready to reach out and slap a wall in case of another unexpected pit trap. Down the corridor, around a corner, open the door there while watching for traps to trigger...
...and then he found himself with the proctor.
"Congratulations," the proctor said. "You have passed."
"Oh," he said. "Cool. Er, I don't suppose either of my teammates passed?"
"One of your teammates has passed through, but failed."
Yeah, that tracked from the consistently horrible clues left behind.
Ino found it amusing how many tests had been failed on the 'found obvious clues from a teammate or acquaintance and trusted them' front. Admittedly, Naruto's systems for faking those were...less than perfect, a number of those being tested noticing obvious problems. Like the person being faked not having made it into the skill tests. Those fake clues had been left until day three though, so there was less of a 'ran into them before the other person could possibly have left them' problem than you might otherwise expect.
Anyone falling for the false clues was being marked down beyond simply failing their tests. The few people actually leaving clues for teammates were having their clues modified as well, because making it easy wasn't in the plans.
There were also three fights that had broken out between teammates over false clues. A couple where both teammates had gone through the same test and thought the other had misled them and one where only one of the pair fighting had gone through a test but thought that the other had done so and not left a 'I failed this one' warning outside.
She was also pleased with how well infiltration teams had been doing over the past few days. Only one had needed to be pulled out due to mistakes, plus two that had to be called off because of unexpected changes in the plans of their targets and a third where Kisame Hoshigaki had shown up to rob the place and they'd rightfully bailed. They'd now reached the point where enough of the nobles were filtering back to Earth thanks to transport pads to end their ability to openly target large numbers of them, but they had gotten most of their objectives and by all indications hadn't left any significant evidence behind.
...well, except for the infiltrations where they'd intentionally left evidence framing someone else behind, anyway.
They were now down to the last hours of the skill tests and approaching 'prep for the live combat stage'. Which Naruto hadn't detailed for anyone ahead of time, of course, because why would he?
Sasori was proud of himself for having managed to get through the skill tests with minimal use of his puppets. He'd failed once due to not quite being skilled enough with wind chakra, but had done three extra tests to make up for that and prove that it was more fluke than consistent problem. Besides, not everyone could be good with all elements. Now he was ensuring that he'd resupplied, needing to pick up some additional meals and replace a dozen kunai he didn't have time to properly work damage out of before the next stage.
Nobody knew exactly how long they'd have once the skill test stage officially ended in...a little over an hour now. It was possible that those running up to the last minute wouldn't have time to resupply at all, which was why he'd ensured that he made time to swing through the appropriate stores. As it happened, he'd also had time for a proper meal that hadn't come out of a supply scroll.
Finishing checking that he'd purchased everything, he headed for a 'rentable workspace'. Each participant had been given a couple hours of time in those for equipment maintenance and he wanted to do a once-over on the puppets he'd used during the skill tests. There shouldn't be any problems as he had checked them before putting them away, but it was far better to be safe now than to be sorry later.
Sakura looked over the gathered chunin a mere thirty minutes after the skill tests had ended. "I had thought that I might be disqualifying some of you due to injuries, but those of you who were injured had the sense to make time to get your injuries looked at before this meeting. We've also only eliminated two people due to not making it to the meeting on time."
There were some snickers at that.
"However," she continued. "I can't tell you what the next stage will bring as you aren't starting it immediately. Those of you who have already prepared have been noted, but you have a full twenty-four hours to ensure that you are properly rested and supplied. What I can tell you is that when you meet back here, assuming you are not late, you will be assigned teammates for the next stage. Barring issues with sufficient numbers, your teammates will come from other villages and we will be striving to avoid pairing you with teammates from close allies as well."
That got their attention, and the general mood after that was obviously 'worried'. But there were no audible complaints, which she appreciated, and she sent them off a minute later.
Doing this for Karin was annoying, but nowhere near as annoying as dealing with a shinobi that had somehow blown up their own hand with water chakra in the process of failing a skill test.
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