The Ninja Academy's sparring test had been called off because so many Medical Ninja had arrived. In the end, the students' scores were calculated based on their teams' results when the test was stopped.
As a result,
neither Team Yakumo nor the team of Shinji, Sasuke, and Neji had achieved particularly good scores.
For the other, more ordinary students, this was undoubtedly good news.
At least the gap between their scores and those of the prodigies hadn't widened again.
In any case, with the much-anticipated sparring test over, the students at the Ninja Academy finally got a brief chance to relax.
In the classroom,
Shinji gazed lazily out the window as his classmates' chatter filled his ears.
"Have you heard? All the volunteers from the other villages who came for the First Hokage cell transplants died!"
"What? Every last one?"
"Serves them right! They were coveting our village's Wood Release!"
"Shh, I'll tell you a secret. Those volunteers didn't all die. One of them survived and was sent to the intensive care unit."
"What?!"
"Could that guy have succeeded too, just like Yakumo?"
As he listened, the corners of Shinji's mouth lifted.
Letting the Sunagakure volunteer survive had indeed set off a storm of rumors in the village. Now, even eight- and nine-year-old students at the Ninja Academy were talking about it.
And, to Shinji's surprise, the atmosphere in the village had grown strangely tense as well.
Neither the Konoha High Command nor the other four villages had made any public statement about the matter. They had all fallen into an eerie silence.
Others might have been baffled, but Shinji knew exactly what it meant.
The quieter things were, the more serious the situation had become. That was precisely why everyone was wary of one another and afraid to make