Strongest Shinobi - Volume 1 Chapter 25 Chuunin Exams.

A few weeks had passed and Izana could finally take the Chuunin exams. He had been put in a team that had only two members, though it was only temporarily.

One was a boy from the Inuzuka clan. He had a small black pup on his shoulder. He was called Inuzuka Ren. He was very energetic and loved to talk.

The other one was a girl from the Sarutobi clan. She had short black hair and was mostly adept at using wind release. She was called Sarutobi Miyu. She wasn’t particularly sociable, but she and her team mate seemed to have a thorough understanding of each other.

The three of them had trained a lot in the past two weeks to get a clear picture on the others good and weak points and to become good a cooperating. Through that they had become closer and learned to cover each others weak spots.

Miyu was good at Ninjutsu and was adept at Taijutsu. She could fight fairly well and had a decent understanding on battle strategies. Her weak points would be that she was thinking too much during the fight and would lose focus at some points.

Ren would be able to cover her in those moments and let Miyu think of a battle tactic. They could cooperate fairly well and were able to cover each others weak spots.

Ren was mostly Taijutsu and a bit ninjutsu. He used techniques that were only accessible to his clan, but didn’t use techniques that weren’t of his clan.

He had a good cooperation with his ninja dog and would be able to disrupt the enemies thinking. Izana would play his part in taking down the enemy with his genjutsu or would attack him with his Katana.

Besides that Izana used his fire and wind release. He didn’t show the releases he got from Ryuujin, nor did he use his mangekyo or the summoning techiniques he had learned from Jiraiya. He would only use those when necessary and he judged it was fine for know with just his kenjutsu, Taijutsu, genjutsu and his own affinity related ninjutsus.

So far they had gotten a clear view of what the other was best or worst at and were confident that they would be able to work together.

Except for training with the other team mates, Izana also visited Shisui. He had wanted to talk to Itachi, be he wasn’t home that often. Shisui had been able to take relatively good care of himself, despite being visibly impaired. One of the reasons Izana had looked for Shisui was to aks him about Danzo, while the other was seeing if he could use his regeneration on Shisui’s eyes.

The latter proved to be more difficult that expected. Despite that, with enough practice, it should be possible. Shisui told Izana what he knew about Danzo, which was very little. Danzo was very secretive and mostly let his subordinates do the work. Danzo’s own capabilities weren’t known. Shisui only knew he was a thorough schemer.

It didn’t matter though, he would find out what Danzo was up to and make sure his plans would fail. It was clear Danzo was scheming against the Uchiha, so Izana would make sure to protect his clan, even if he had to make Konoha an enemy to do it. Well, he planned to avoid that outcome as much as possible.

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Once inside th examination building, they were led towards a big classroom. Inside, there were many Genin’s who were all taking the exam. So far, Izana could see people from multiple villages, Sunagakure, Amegakure and even Kumogakure.

Izana and the others from his temporary team sat down near the wall, away from the other candidates and waited for the proctor to arrive. The Genin from the other villages looked vigilantly at each other, while keeping their distance.

Once every few minutes they would talk, but that would only be amongst their own team mates. Before the situation could get even tenser, the examiner walked in. There were two examiners, one was an unknown man with a scar going diagonal down his face, while the other was Izana’s one time only kenjutsu teacher, Gekko Hayate. Beside them were a few other Shinobi who looked at the candidates with stern looks.

The head proctor stepped forward, looking intimidatingly at all the genin’s in front of him.

“My name is Morino Ibiki an I will be your Proctor. Don’t even think about getting violent or you will be disqualified immediately.” Morino held up little cards with numbers on it.

“We will now proceed with the first stage of the exam. These cards will be handed out and they will determine where you’ll be seated. This is a written test, there will be no fighting between candidates as of now, without the permission of your proctor.”

Hayate handed each candidate their number cards and once everyone had them they all went to find their spot. Izana was pretty much cut off from all the people from Konoha and was surrounded by either Genin from Suna or from Ame.

“I will explain this only once and I won’t answer questions so listen well. Rule one. The written part of the exam works with a point reductions system. You start the test with a score of ten points. For each answer you get wrong, a point will be deducted. Rule number two. You will pass or fail determined on the combined number of point of your team, not your individual points.”

Everyone started to grumble but didn’t curse, as Morino seemed very angry the moment someone would question or made even a singel remark.

Izana didn’t really care how the points were rated, as he had made enough preparations along with his other team mates. Izana had made sure to ram in enough information in their heads in the little time he had. Even then, they could always try to cheat. It was only a matter of being caught or not.

“Rule number three. The people who came with me, The sentinels positioned all around the classroom will be tasked with watching you for any sign of cheating. everytime you get spotted cheating, two points will be subtracted. They can easily spot you and if you’re caught five times, you will de dismissed before the test has been scored. If you want to be shinobi, then show us how exceptional you can be.”

The candidates all became worried about how difficult the test would be, while others seemed to wonder if they could even make it past the first exam.

“One more thing. If one team member hits zero points, then the whole team will fail.”

The whole room became tense as Izana could see multiple people become pale as a sheet, while others banged their head against the tables in despair about their team mates.

“The final question won’t be given out until the last fifteen minutes. You’ll have one hour total to answer all ten questions.”

Morino looked at the clock and once the hand for the second hit the twelve, he shouted at them to begin.

Izana looked at the sheet that was handed to him and once he saw the questions, he was glad he had reviewed content that was harder than Jonin level. He was even more gratefull that Jiraiya had deemed in necessary to let him experience all the scenarios that were described in the questions.

To summarise the content, I would mostly be at the mission level of upper chuunin or Jonin. They were about the knowledge they should have and how to handle certain situations and analysing situations. There was even questions about decoding codes.

Though the Genin were from different villages, the way they handled certain situations should be mostly the same. The questions were simply stated and made sure that every shinobi from each village could aswer it, without giving away information about their respective village.

Izana sighed in relief that he had also made Miyu and Ren learn this, as he wasn’t sure if they could’ve answered these questions if he didn’t. Then they would have to cheat and copy answers from others and they weren’t nearly skilled enough to do that.

As the clock ticked on, Izana had aswered all the available questions within fifteen minutes. He still had thirty minutes to go and reviewed his answers for any faults. From the corner of his eye, Izana could see other people peeking at other people’s test papers using all sorts of jutsus and techniques. Izana made sure his was out of sight, even placing a low level genjutsu for the Genin that would peek his way.

They could cheat, but don’t even think about trying to steal HIS answers. If they needed to get answers so badly, then they could steal from someone else.

From time to time, teams would get called out and got dismissed. They were immediately orders to leave the room.

When the last fifteen minutes started, nearly twently teams had already failed.

With the last fifteen minutes to go, Morino called out.

“The tenth and final question. Before I tell you about the last questions, there are some rules you need to be aware of, they are made especially for this question. Rule one. Each of you can choose not to be given the final question. Though if you choose not to take the last questions, even if you get the other questions correct, you’ll get a zero. Then you and your team mates will fail the exam and will be dismissed.”

Confusion and terror spread around the room as they all began to curse in their heads. If only one team mate would choose to forfeit, then they would all fail.

“The other rule is that if you decide to take the last question and fail to answer correctly, then not only will you fail the exam, you will be barred from taking the chuunin exam ever again.”

This time the whole classroom paled in fear. This was simply unheard of. Fail to answer correctly and you fail and can’t take it again. Decide to forfeit and you fail as well, but then you could at least take the exam again.

Like that, multiple people left the classroom. They all decided it wasn’t worth it and they would just try it again.

Like that only a couple of teams remained.

After he waited a little more, no others stood up. Luckily Ren and Miyu didn’t stand up. Otherwise he had to wait another year to take the exam and it would definitely be different as they all depended on which proctor you would get.

As no one else left, Morino nodded as if he was satisfied with the extremely low number of candidates left. Only twenty teams remained.

“The there is only one thing left to tell you.” Morino said as he looked at the remaining candidates.

“You’ve all passed this exam and are moving on to the next.”

Silence ruled the room as everyone was too shocked and relieved to make a sound.