章節 2695: 85
Naruto was slightly amused by the reactions of many of his shinobi to finding out that the first 'arriving visitors' to the examination island were nobles taking flying machines. Some were going to spend the entire exam period on the island while others were going to head back to their homes during the break before the finals. Some of that seemed to depend on if they had trusted people to watch over interests, but being able to brag that they were some of the first non-shinobi on the island was worth quite a bit to many of them.
Having 'front row seats' for seeing what the testing was like was just an added bonus, given that this time they were broadcasting all stages of the exam.
Teleportation-based access for those who weren't cleared to access the island in Uzushio and Konoha would come after a week or so of nobles arriving by flying machine, when the island had settled into place. The last few nobles would take off from the coast of the Land of Fire, after being able to watch the island fly into position, taking advantage of one of the flying machine compatible ships anchored there.
Of course, the nobles weren't the first non-shinobi on the island at all, because a bunch of civilians had been brought over to run hotels, restaurants, and shops. They weren't really 'arriving visitors' though, so arguably didn't count. The nobles certainly weren't going to consider 'common workers' to count in their bragging. A couple of families were considering aiming for permanent shops on the island, in the hopes that it would be decently busy year-round for the next decade or so just because of the novelty of it.
Sasori had to admit to being incredibly impressed with the quality of Uzushio's medic-nin...but found Naruto's personal skills a bit frightening there. The medic-nin in general apparently did things alone that most villages would need teams of medic-nin to even consider doing, but only after it had happened did anyone tell him that Naruto had personally regrown his body in a couple of hours.
This was apparently followed by ensuring that his regrown body could at least use the five basic chakra natures, keying blood-linked training items, duplicating his puppet body and Hiruko to a much higher quality standard, writing up a list of problems with his protection method for others taking control of his puppets, and producing an antidote for his poison. This had been followed by waking him up in his new body the morning after arriving in the hospital.
In theory, the duplicate puppets could've been built ahead of time, as could the analysis of his protection method and the examination of his poison and creation of the resulting antidote. But Naruto had previously flash-built an incredibly advanced puppet, so Sasori had no trouble believing that all of that had been accomplished by the young man in that time period. In fact, he was assuming his own recovery and waking up had probably taken far longer than the rest.
Then there had been relearning walking on his own, which had been easier than expected. Getting into proper fighting shape was going to take longer, of course, but his chakra was already stronger than it had been. Learning to eat again, and noticing hunger pains or the signs that he'd not had enough water, had been more annoying. Then there was noticing the signs of over-eating or consuming too much water. He was a little embarrassed to admit that the former of those had come up when eating Deidara's spread of chakra-enhanced food.
"It feels wrong that I'm being tapped for puppet testing," Sasori said as he examined the area he'd been assigned on the examination island. "I'm not exactly considered to be all that skilled by Uzushio standards, even with as few puppeteers as there are in the ranks."
"Uzushio is the only nation with paperwork puppeteer users," Naruto replied. He was almost certainly a clone, but short of trying to dispel it there wasn't any good way to tell that. "We can't hold other puppet users to that standard even before taking into account that most of our genin can't use that technique either. They'll get there eventually, but the more traditional methods need to be tested at this level."
"And here I thought that you'd pushed for all the genin to be able to make shadow clones."
"Oh, that's an eventual goal, but with non-Uzumaki the chakra building takes far longer. It'll probably be ten to fifteen years before we can expect all graduating genin raised in the village or its outposts to be able to make three paperwork clones and then we'll still have to worry about those that weren't raised with access to the chakra boosting tricks."
"There are old stories about Konoha's chakra meters needing to have lower meters put in for non-Uzumaki. You're looking to make those more credible, aren't you?"
"Why would we need to make the truth more credible? That still holds true for Uzumaki that descended from those who kept up any basic chakra usage at all and if anything the more annoying part is putting in better protection buffers so that particularly powerful Uzumaki don't explode the things anyway."
Well, that painted a particularly worrisome picture. Those with tailed beasts bound to them were very likely on the 'particularly powerful' side of things, but who knew how many others that classification applied to.
Ino glared at her three truth-seeking balls. Hinata regularly used a couple of hers as precision tools when working on technology, though tended to grumble that she couldn't make them directly emulate anything complicated. A few days ago, Naruto had revealed that he was regularly using all nine of his in the process of building larger-scale items, apparently thanks to pretending to be Hinata and figuring out some of her tricks because of that, which had Hinata off trying to manage broader use of hers too.
The two of them were a bit insane that way though. Ino had trouble getting the things to do more than form basic tools. Then again, she wasn't all that good with seals or technology and also suspected that she only had three of the things because she didn't have anywhere near as deep an understanding of chakra and natural energy as the other two did. Sure, the 'less-direct descendant' explanation made sense, especially with some of the now-known history of the Yamanaka clan, but not enough sense in her opinion.
Asking Naruto and Hinata to write up their views of how chakra and natural energy worked hadn't helped. The twelve books each of them had produced had been devoured by a bunch of others, but Ino apparently didn't think in the correct way to understand them. There she was at least in good company, as three out of four people that looked over the books just got headaches.
Unfortunately, training with the things required either being in another dimension or on a far-away island due to their destructive potential. Naruto had obviously done the former, leaving islands for Ino and Hinata. The trench in the general direction Ino was glaring at her trio in, gradually filling with seawater from where it met the ocean a kilometer away, was a good object lesson in why you didn't experiment with them in populated areas. She'd not even intended for that kind of destruction to happen, it just had.
...she flinched as she thought of how many such mishaps Naruto and Hinata must've had working with nine at once.
Orochimaru looked around as they stepped off of the arrival pad they'd been deposited on. It was one of many in the area, though the entire layout was a bit weird. Not uniform in any way, but without looking disorderly either. Ringed by plants, but nothing in the open area, with the ground oddly-colored between the paths. She made sure that she had a solid grip on Ruri's leash, the harness having proven to be a better way to keep her from running off than any other option, and ensured that the first group was far enough off the pad for the second group to arrive.
When the second group arrived, Guren in the center this time, they all followed the path out and up a set of stairs. There were a few small elevators for those who would have trouble with the stairs as well, but that didn't apply to any of the group. This led up to an observation ring around the area, and looking down had Orochimaru blinking.
"It's a map?" she said, eyes darting over the collection of arrival pads. The one they'd arrived on was positioned in the correct place for the Land of Sound, centered in the country's borders. Konoha and Taki had two pads each, and Uzushio had five spread out a bit more. Two for the main island, two for Amegakure, and one for their dock facility on the mainland near the Land of Hot Water. Tellingly, there was even a pad for the Land of Iron, though that hadn't seemed to be on the public list of destinations available from Oto's pad.
"Not exactly a bad way to set up an arrival area," Guren noted as Iwa teams appeared on their pad. "Though reworking things as you add more pads could get complicated."
"All of the arrival points appear to be designed to accept up to three pads. The public pads, a private in-village pad, and then...perhaps a second public pad near the country capital? Though Taki's likely private pad will require some investigation."
"We've got permanent access to their country for missions or reaching the ocean to the north of them," a familiar voice said. Orochimaru turned to find Naruto, or one of his clones, standing there. "No daimyo to worry about, unlike the Land of Sound, and they already had a decent relationship with Konoha."
Orochimaru frowned. "And using the general permission to access portions of the Land of Iron outside of the core mountain range wouldn't work due to all ocean access being cliffs along there."
"Well, that and said permission is for escort missions, accessing their trade points, and hunting down criminal shinobi so that they don't have to. They don't want to be used for general travel or ocean access even if the latter was trivial to manage without crossing the mountain range."
"I suppose that makes sense. Did they allow you to install a transport pad set, or is the arrival pad present for them merely wishful thinking?"
"They agreed to us installing a pad a few days ago, but asked that it not be publicly accessible for now. That means that someone with suitable access in our systems has to unlock travel for them to reach it, but they were okay with that."
"A few days ago?"
"After they'd sent a couple of samurai to Taki's public pad and confirmed they could trigger travel to Konoha's and back, specifically. They'd already declined to participate in the exams due to having a very different ranking system, but Mifune expressed interest in spectating and possibly opening a deeper trade relationship with Uzushio."
Now that was a bit of a shock. "A trade relationship? Last I heard you don't need to import anything."
Naruto grinned. "But we're the only exporter of quality chakra-conducting metals. Literally everyone else with access to them forbids selling the raw materials at all. The Land of Iron's samurai are...less effective with normal metal blades, only the most talented earning access to the limited supply of chakra-conducting blades they can produce, and Mifune very obviously wants to correct that problem."
Fuck. As if the Land of Iron's samurai weren't problematic enough when hired outside of their borders, now they were looking to purchase metals to make more dangerous swords with.
"But that's not why you're here," Naruto continued. "You'll want to check in at the arrival desks to get your accommodation information for your stay. A full team of medics will be available in the morning to look at Guren, as requested, but you can swing by today for some of the smaller issues you asked about." He then paused, and looked down at Ruri. "Though I'm not sure what prompted leashing Ruri here. She seemed well enough behaved when visiting Uzushio."
Orochimaru sighed. "She's become prone to bouts of 'zoomies' since starting proper training with the chipmunks. They claim it's a good sign for her being able to become a sage later, but the sudden need to dart off to examine things or hide is...problematic."
"And that was before she learned to shrink herself," Guren added with a tone of suffering.
"That has made it more problematic to deal with as she can get smaller than I can. Luckily her clothing shrinks with her, and thus the harness shrinks with her. When she's older she'll learn to exclude things from the effect so that she can use it to escape bindings."
"How does training induce 'zoomies'?" Naruto asked. A fair question, and one that Orochimaru had asked as well.
"Technically it's more the food they provide during training preparing her for consciously pulling in natural energy later. She's young enough that the occasional sliver of natural energy the specially-grown nuts draw in goes a long way."
Naruto was waiting when the Land of Iron pad deposited a group of samurai. The group had landed in a defensive formation and immediately took in their surroundings.
"If I'd wanted to kill you on arrival I could have dumped you into much more hostile environments," Naruto pointed out.
"Assuming you didn't just kill us in our sleep," Mifune replied. "But I personally trust that you have more honor than that. Which doesn't mean that I would allow my men to let their guards down."
"After you've checked in we can take a quick swing through the hospital to have your injuries looked at."
"We don't have any recent injuries to worry about."
"Your skull never healed properly from your fight with Hanzo and you shouldn't need to hide a metal plate under bandages to cover the weakness. We can take care of that in under an hour, and give your men quick check-ups as well if you'd like."
Mifune blinked, then narrowed his eyes. "Very few people know about that plate."
"I can see through solid objects, as can most Hyuga."
"Ah, yes. Some shinobi are even worse security nightmares. I'd forgotten about that detail. Our medical staff were unable to do much more than I currently have though. How certain are you that your staff is better?"
"I'm personally better. Regrew an entire body recently, so putting your skull back together won't be a problem."
"...an entire body?"
"Can't go into details, but they tried to make themselves essentially not a living thing. Failed in a subtle way, had to replace basically everything. Honestly not sure how their brain worked before rebuilding them."
It was obvious that the man wasn't quite sure what to think about that, but an hour later his skull had been put to rights and a few other less serious lingering issues had been taken care of. His men were also given a once-over and had their own minor issues taken care of.
"I have to admit that your healing is far more effective than I expected," Mifune said as he replaced the bandages on his forehead. "This also makes a request I was planning on making safer."
Naruto sighed. "You want to do an exhibition match against me to test my skills with swords?"
"Indeed."
"I'm not a swordsman or a samurai, no matter how many 'legendary blades' or copies thereof I carry around."
"Copies?"
"I don't have the original Nuibari or Hiramekarei." And Tenten hadn't actually been told about duplicating the latter from the cut-off piece thanks to just flooding it with chakra until it regrew the rest of the sword, then snapping the new sword in two to repeat the process to get a proper pair. She'd probably demand he make a dozen more sets if she knew it worked that way and he'd only done so in trying to figure out how the whole process worked.
He'd given up on figuring that out. It obviously wasn't seal-based and had taken prohibitive levels of chakra for any piece not connected to a handle.
Mifune took a moment before nodding. "I see, and I would not expect you to be properly respectful of blades. To a samurai, no shinobi is properly respectful of their weapons, even those who consider themselves to be specialists. I merely wish to evaluate you."
Naruto shrugged. "I'm sure my skill level isn't up to yours."
"It does not need to be."
A looked down at the area they'd just climbed out of, blinking as he realized that the odd appearance was because it was a map. "That's a clever way to mark where people will be arriving from."
Darui took a look and nodded. "They've got room to expand too."
"Obviously able to add in additional pads where they don't have a full set."
"The entire area is only about a third of the size they seem to have allocated, based on the positioning of the obviously non-structural walls. Almost like they're expecting to need to add countries further out eventually."
It didn't take long to determine that the observation was correct and there was significant room for expansion in all directions except for to the north on the map. "Interesting. There are some settlements further west, but for the most part I think you find summoning clans out that way. Makes me wonder if this is just future-proofing in case the existing population expands a bit or if they anticipate actually reaching further out."
"We've got holdings further south," came from behind them, causing the entire group to jump and spin around. What looked to be Naruto was standing there, but it was also probably a clone. "Though examinations of populations further out indicate that this continent is the only one that had any significant development of chakra. I'm not actually sure that some of the populations examined have the potential to develop chakra as they currently stand, which has led their societies to develop very differently."
"...there are humans who have no ability to use chakra as we know it?"
"Yep. Couple of isolated pockets of exceptions, likely where people from here traveled and settled down, but in general it seems like if you're not on this continent then chakra isn't a thing. Fits with it originating here from a single family though, so it isn't exactly a historical aberration."
"How far have your people traveled to find that out?"
"By our estimates, we've mapped maybe around an eighth of the planet in any capacity at all, but have a general idea of what things might be like further out due to copying maps others have made on the edges of where we've explored. Exploration teams are working on plans to go out much further though."
A half-nodded as he processed that. "And with your ability to set up teleportation pads you can arrange secure travel out and back, giving you access to trade goods that no other nation will be able to provide."
"Maybe. Might be too much effort depending on the state of the other societies. One continent is reportedly in a very long war though, so hiring out more combat-inclined teams could be an option there."
Well, that was probably one of the better ways to handle shinobi that were too inclined to violence. Send them to be violent somewhere else where the enemy was unlikely to ever be able to find you.
Hanabi frowned as he looked at where the puppet wasn't moving correctly, which was obviously his fault. During class today Himeki had noticed that things were wearing away too quickly on a couple of joints, but the adjustments to try to correct for that had made an entire limb stop moving correctly. Adjusting the joints otherwise wasn't within his capabilities with the strength of the wood used, and he couldn't replace the rubber material either, so he was probably going to have to visit Yoko and get her help if Hinata and Naruto didn't visit in the next few days.
It didn't take long to put the joints back the way they had been, and testing showed that things were moving correctly again. Cleaning up the tools and putting everything away took longer, but he finished in time to be moving before he was summoned for taijutsu practice. Himeki joined them on the way, smiling as she grabbed his arm. She'd gotten a bit more 'clingy' since a couple of Aburame girls had joined the puppet class, afraid that her lack of interest or skill with puppets was going to cause her to 'lose' him or something.
Being intellectually fine with the existence of the Aburame clan did not mean he was okay with the idea of being intimate with a living insect hive.
Really, the bigger issue for Himeki was the near-certainty of being put on a different genin team than him. Hyuga were basically never put together on a single team without really good reason, and he was almost certainly going to end up going into an infiltration team. Without being able to hide her rabbit features she was unlikely to be able to do the same, even if she was very good at keeping up the solid disguise jutsu to hide her eyes.
...perhaps when he was talking with Yoko about puppets he could ask about getting Himeki a shapeshifting seal?
Onoki nodded as he finished off the snack Deidara had provided. "I see you've improved your culinary skills."
"Got a boost to my elemental control after I tested at jounin level for Uzu," Deidara admitted. "Makes it a lot easier to not accidentally push explosion release into everything and let me get into forging training."
"Forging?"
"Still early in it, but getting chakra into the metal means I can give weapons special tricks. Like Naruto's exploding kunai and shuriken."
Ah, that made a lot of sense. "You seem to be doing a lot better now that you have outlets that aren't blowing things up."
"I see a couple of Yamanaka regularly now too and am considering teaching at the academy once I've made more progress with forging, hm."
"...what?"
Deidara grinned. "Teaching others how to knead chakra into things and encouraging them to get the explosion release bloodline means more explosions."
Well, that was a relief. Encouraging him to help others blow stuff up was probably more constructive than containing him too.
"So," Deidara continued after a moment. "Have you flown up to the top of the wall to look down over the edge yet?"
Onoki shook his head. "No, I haven't. When Kurotsuchi is done ensuring that the teams are set in their hotel rooms we might take a quick look though."
"Did she bring a recipe book?"
"Yes, you two can trade recipes later."
"Cool."
"You can probably come back and visit more often, especially if the extra talks I plan on having with Naruto work out."
Deidara blinked and looked confused. "Extra talks?"
"I was able to convince the Daimyo to allow me to attempt to negotiate an official alliance with Uzushio, in part because you joined their ranks. That I admitted they provided the recipe and information needed to produce his new favorite food likely helped."
"Ooooh. Do you have a cooking corps now?"
"Yes. Kurotsuchi is in charge of them for now and is currently the only one producing 'Daimyo-grade' results. The others are getting better and the lower-quality items still sell out before lunch."
Shibuki watched as Fu flew off towards where she'd been told Shino could be found preparing to help out, shaking his head. "I don't think she even realizes that she's attracted to him."
"Not sure he's figured out the reverse," Naruto commented from where he very obviously had not been standing a moment ago.
"You are far too good at that."
"It isn't my responsibility to get you to pay proper attention to your surroundings."
"Bah."
"I thought you might like to know that there have been sixteen attempts so far to hire Uzu to find where you relocated to. It seems that we're one of the only ones that noticed your initial move."
"And they know you know where to find us because we're using your transport pads to get in and out now."
"That's our best guess, yes. She's used to using her access card in Konoha, so she'll probably be fine when she makes it back. You'll be using your cards and pins to get into your hotel rooms."
"Well, that's convenient."
"Easier than issuing less-secure hotel room cards, at least on our end. That said, someone mentioned that you might be having issues allowing Konoha access to your private pad?"
Shibuki grimaced, because it was a little embarrassing that they couldn't follow the seemingly-simple instructions for that. "We've had some hiccups, yes. Ideally, Konoha should be allowed to grant access instead of requiring that we add each individual shinobi."
"Ask them to share the group designations they want to use for access with your system, then you can add those designations to the allowed list for the pad. Or for anything else you want to use them for, really."
"...that sounds too easy."
"The system is supposed to be easy to use so that you don't have to call us for help constantly, but interactions across individual village authentication systems are unavoidably more complicated for security reasons."
"It's uncomfortable being this close to Naruto," Gaara said as they started following the directions they'd been given to their hotel. Kankuro was handling the sign-in for the rest of the teams and would join them later.
"Because he's got a firm grasp on the sand in the area?" Temari guessed.
"Yes."
"Do you think that's how he's actually making the island fly, controlling a giant mass of sand inside of it?"
That was an interesting theory, at least. "I don't think he'd go that route. Keeping things stable while sleeping would be difficult. We know he has the ability to fly without sand, so adapting that makes more sense. Besides, I doubt that even Naruto has the range needed to keep an island of this size in the air."
"He can make an army of clones."
"And coordinating them safely, without them running out of chakra and creating sudden holes in the lifting force, would be far too much trouble. I'm more interested in the requested 'demonstration match' for Kankuro, because an unnamed Uzushio chunin doesn't sound impressive enough for the nobles."
"We assume that they've got people wanting to be puppeteers, since they obviously have access to the basics needed. Just like Konoha has started to train some. Feels like the goal is to leave us sitting in the proverbial dust if we don't get our puppeteers to innovate hard though."
"Hopefully Kankuro will manage a decent showing."
Mei looked over the edge of the wall surrounding the island. "Huh. That's pretty far down."
"Pity they have a net in the way," Ao commented.
"...why is that a pity?"
"All of our shinobi should be able to dive into the water from this height with no injuries, but we can't test them due to the net."
"Interesting point, but if any of them failed we'd almost certainly lose them from this height. Better to test if they can use the distance-viewing jutsu to spot anything of use on the Land of Water's coastlines visible from up here. I can easily identify four port towns and one of our secure docks, though the latter being visible from this angle annoys me."
Ao blinked, then ran through some hand seals and focused. Then he activated the implanted byakugan and frowned. "That is a problem. The various protections against it being spotted weren't extended over it properly, just set up to hide it from the water. We're just barely skirting the upper edge of the illusion here." He then paused. "Huh. The island is remarkably stable."
"It's an island. I'd be concerned if it wasn't stable."
"...it's flying."
Mei was about to retort before she realized that he was right. A normal island being stable? Expected. But this wasn't a normal island, it was literally floating in the air. Evaluating things based on that had her frowning. "How the hell did they get a flying island to be this stable? And come to think of it, shouldn't there be more wind up here?"
"There isn't always more wind at greater heights, but the byakugan reveals a barrier of some kind forming a bubble over the island. Presumably it also keeps the air pressure high enough to be comfortable."
"Well, that's one less mystery. It just adds several more to the list, such as how you even create a barrier of that size. Do you think it prevents people from flying in or out as well?"
"That wouldn't surprise me, but Uzushio and Konoha have the most flight-capable shinobi right now so they might not be concerned about that."
"Ah, right. They were even advertising flying machines to get here for nobles with more money than sense."
"We could have gone to the other side of the island to see the ships said flying machines were launching from."
"I've seen them already. They're more impressive up close."
"...when did you see them 'up close'?"
"When I was testing the transport pads and visited their dock facility on the mainland. They gave me a quick look at the upper surface of one that was docked there, and even let me see one of the flying machines. If I wasn't already certain that we wouldn't be provoking them then that probably would've given me justification not to on its own. I'd swear that they're intentionally setting themselves up to be as untouchable as they can manage on all fronts to 'encourage' everyone to not even think about trying to wipe them out again."
Ao shrugged. "Not like the rest of us don't try the same."
Mei sighed. "The rest of us are chumps when compared to Uzushio. They made their point several times over with their previous chunin exams and they seem to be assuming nobody got the message then."
"To be fair to them, that's honestly a reasonable assumption."
"Yeah, can't fault them for the entirely reasonable assumption that the world is full of idiots."
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