Capítulo 2699: 89
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.
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder