July 16th, early morning.
Team 7 assembled at the training ground—
"Not bad! You've got my flair from back in the day, hahaha!" Jiraiya was immensely pleased—his students had not only passed the preliminaries, but all three of them had made it through.
Of course, Jiraiya knew about what had happened halfway through the preliminaries—
"I'm sure you understand now that sometimes, preserving yourselves first is also for the sake of ultimate victory," Jiraiya said sternly.
Since the "mysterious attacker incident" was still confidential, Jiraiya did not spell anything out.
When Jiraiya heard that Akaseki and Ranwu had been attacked, he was worried at first and had even anxiously asked the Third Hokage to withdraw, only to be refused—You're not the one taking the genin exam!
It was only after hearing that Akaseki and the others had adopted a conservative strategy that Jiraiya finally breathed a sigh of relief.
To keep competing under those circumstances—
That took true grit and a willingness to take risks!
What also gratified Jiraiya was that they had not simply charged in recklessly. In the end, they had held on to their previous gains, steadily expanded their score, and retained fourth place.
Before the attack, if Minato's points were included, Team 7 had actually been in first place.
"All right, it's still too early to celebrate. The final round is in half a month, and I don't need to stress how important it is. These last two weeks are also your final chance to improve!" Jiraiya said.
The fierce preliminaries had already given these genin a deeper understanding of combat and their own abilities. What came next was to turn that "experience" into genuine growth in combat strength through training—
"Akaseki, Ranwu, your clansmen have already told me that special training has been arranged for