I Hope It's Not Too Late!

Shinji waved it off, unconcerned, and Shizune and Ebisu looked even more bewildered.

They had just come from the command center, so they knew the current scores of all the trainee squads.

Setting Shinji's squad aside, the best-performing squad among the others was Yakumo's, with only 470 points. The weaker squads had as few as twenty or thirty.

Under these circumstances, Shinji's squad had somehow racked up over a thousand points—more than double Yakumo's score in second place. How could that not shock them?

Still, no matter how shocking it was, the facts were right there before them.

The captured rogue ninja, tied up and alive, were proof enough. Shizune could only suppress her doubts and say to Shinji, "We'll take these rogue ninja back to the command center for now. The exam isn't over yet, so you should keep—"

Shizune swallowed the last word: "trying."

With such a huge lead over the second-place team, and so few targets left on the wanted list, Shinji's squad could probably do nothing at all for the rest of the exam and still win!

The thought gave Shizune a headache.

The purpose of this exam was to select the next generation's promising candidates, so Tsunade had placed great hopes on Yakumo. She wanted Yakumo to become the village's next-generation leader, rise smoothly into the upper ranks, and surpass her to become the village's first female Hokage!

Everything had been going smoothly. Yakumo's performance was beyond reproach, and she had won everyone's respect in every regard, just like the Fourth Hokage, who had emerged out of nowhere during the Third Shinobi World War.

But then Shinji had suddenly appeared on the scene, catching Shizune completely off guard.

"I need to notify Tsunade as soon as possible."

Shizune thought to herself. Then, burdened with worry,