My First Chunin Exams Had Nothing to Do with Me

No matter how happy he was, without any savings, it was impossible to feel happy when it came time to pay.

Two kids had spent over 1,500 Ryo without even really eating their fill. That was enough for a week's worth of Ichiraku Ramen. With no income, the steady outflow of money felt especially painful.

On the way home, he stopped by a butcher shop and picked out several different kinds of meat. What if? What if it was just the pork from that particular shop that tasted bad?

Clearly, things did not turn out in the better way.

Enduring the pungent stench, he entered the pigsty. There was one old sow and two boars. Thinking about how he could not bring himself to eat boar meat, he felt a little sorry for all the feed he had given them.

But now that he had found the problem, he had to solve it.

Pigs seemed to have more than one litter a year. That meant at least two or three litters annually, right? Thinking of the piglets that had died in the pen before, he calculated the timing. If he was lucky, they could still have another litter this year. When that happened, he would unload all their magazines, then raise them properly.

August arrived.

With Shadow Clones, the efficiency of all sorts of tasks had increased significantly.

The first sweep of the Uchiha Clan Grounds had been completed.

His total savings had reached as high as 2.7 million Ryo. For the entire Uchiha clan, that might not even amount to a fraction of one Asuma bounty. It was damn shabby.

But for an isolated, weak, helpless Uchiha sole survivor like himself, having too much would only make it easier to attract hatred.

...What the hell was he afraid of? There was no hatred at all. He was just saying it to comfort himself. Sigh.

A quantitative change led to a qualitative change. Once he searched enough houses, he could find anything.

There were hundreds of houses here. Even if he opened a few hundred treasure chests, he should get at least three to five SSRs. Even if the chests were low-level daily free chests, surely some SRs would show up, right?

He found ninjutsu scrolls for all five elements and genjutsu scrolls, though none were above A-rank. There were large numbers of duplicate Fire Style scrolls, along with a few Wind, Earth, and Lightning ones, but he was still missing Water Style scrolls.

Naturally, he tried using them. The results were obvious: aside from Fire Style and Lightning Style, the success rate and effectiveness of his other ninjutsu were indeed greatly reduced.

When he used Wind Style: Gale Palm, it was not even as strong as a fan on its third setting. A fan could even keep spinning, while he could only produce a single gust.

He should honestly master the Lightning and Fire Chakra Nature Transformation he already possessed before thinking about anything else. And there was genjutsu too. Early on, genjutsu paired with the Sharingan could solve many unnecessary problems. In the anime, Uchiha Sasuke often charged in head-on without using genjutsu when he was young. Sometimes it made people sweat for him.

He also found two ninjutsu scrolls for small Summoning Beasts, but without seeing the process of drawing the Jutsu, they were rather useless.

The guardhouse-like buildings around the clan grounds had probably also been thoroughly searched by the Anbu. There were no gains in terms of ninjutsu. He did not find a single Fuinjutsu or Medical Ninjutsu scroll.

However, there were still plenty of Konoha's signature secret techniques,

Such as Jiraiya's works, Jiraiya's works, and Jiraiya's works...

Jiraiya was not the only one who wrote books, but the titles "Three Ninja" and "Sage" were excellent marketing. Seeing was believing—among all the works he found, Jiraiya's truly were the most numerous.

He had to study them when he had time. Once Jiraiya died, there would be a huge gap in the market. Could more than thirty years of knowledge accumulation really lose to some lecherous old man?

It was a vast red-ocean market.

If he could make money from it, then Uchiha could make money from it too!

With money in hand, the Greenhouse Construction Plan was also put on the agenda.

The farmwork in the fields had come to an end. The remaining vegetable plots could steadily and continuously produce vegetables until winter. It would be nice if he had a sales channel, but vegetables were not worth much. Spending time selling them every day would be a loss instead. The only fate of the surplus was becoming dried vegetables, Canned Goods, or feed for livestock.

Hiruzen Sarutobi came by once to give him a subsidy. Following the principle of mutually building goodwill, he gave back a bag of vegetables he could not finish and five jin of rice.

Hiruzen Sarutobi: Naruto only complained at him and gave him a sour face because he would not tell him about his parents, while Sasuke would not even let him leave empty-handed. People really were afraid of comparison.

There was no way he could stab the Hokage at such a young age. He still needed him up there to block people like Danzo. He would die sooner or later anyway, and he did not have many years left. The blame could be left to Orochimaru.

The Chunin Exams were held twice a year. Among them, the joint exams held by the five ninja villages took place once every three years, somewhat like the Olympics.

The preliminaries had nothing to do with him, but the official matches were open to the public. The seating was limited, so tickets had to be purchased.

This event in early August was hosted by the village. Although it was not as grand as the joint exams and no daimyo had come to watch, the stands were still packed in an era lacking entertainment.

Bringing binoculars had been the right choice. He had not yet awakened the Three Tomoe Sharingan. The Two Tomoe Sharingan was still usable in actual combat, but its effects inevitably weakened over long distances.

A ticket cost 500 Ryo, but as long as he got to see a few complete sets of Hand Seals, it would not be a loss.

A Chunin Exams without Tailed Beasts, without an attack on Konoha, and without the death of the Third Hokage always felt as though something was missing.

It gave him the illusion that, if he were up there, he could easily exchange a few rounds with them.

Throwing kunai, throwing Shuriken, Taijutsu, and occasionally a few clan secret techniques. But he could not learn another clan's secret techniques just by watching without anyone to guide him.

Over two days of matches, those dozen or so ninja used Fire Style only a few times, Earth Style once, Wind Style once, and Water Style twice.

So Konoha really had no one left until his own graduating class, huh?

He did not know what that Water Style was called. It just sprayed water outward. Whether he could use it or not, he had at least gathered all five elemental styles now. He could try them slowly.

Unable to find friends to play with, Naruto nevertheless had the experience from working over the past few weeks, so he could find Uchiha Sasuke's Shadow Clones.

They were either in the vegetable fields, preparing the original body's three meals for the day, or reading. They were easy enough to find.

"Found you, Nanny Clone! Why are none of you around? There are so few people in the village today."

Nanny Clone? Damn, that nickname made him sound like some middle-aged woman.

He knocked Naruto on the head with a fist. "That sounds awful. Call me Sasuke. No nicknames!"

"Ow, ow, ow. Fine, Clone Sasuke. But did you all go do something together without inviting me?!"

So he absolutely had to use a nickname, huh?

"You searched for so long. If you couldn't find anyone, didn't it occur to you to just ask around?"

Naruto: ...

Naruto was unhappy~ Revenge successful!

"We went to watch the Chunin Exams. You keep saying you want to become Hokage, but you don't even know about the Chunin Exams?"

Naruto's face was full of question marks. "Chunin Exams?"

"After graduating from the Ninja Academy, you become a genin. Pass a collective assessment, and you become a chunin. What, future Hokage-sama, don't want to become a chunin?"

"I do! Where are the exams? I want to watch too!"

Having finally found something interesting, Naruto was brimming with enthusiasm.

"Yesterday and today. It's probably already over by now. You didn't ask yesterday..."

"If there's a next time, it should be around March next year."

Naruto instantly deflated.

"When you get back, can you tell me about the interesting things in the Chunin Exams?"