The Second Round

No matter what means Minato Namikaze had used to get the Queen of the Land of Snow to help, the fact was that she had brought her daughter to Konoha to hold concerts, even if only for a year.

In any case, by the end of that year, Naruto's district had recorded the largest population of all the districts.

No one particularly cared about that result.

A loss was a loss. The candidates were not judged solely on their results.

Of course, having no results at all definitely would not do either.

The ones at the very bottom were Kakashi Hatake and Nara Shikamaru.

And neither of them cared much about this first round of candidacy.

For them, making it into the second round was fine. If they could not...

That seemed fine too?

Most of the ten candidates showed no particular reaction to the final rankings.

Only Naruto and Sasuke were extremely excited.

Naruto declared that this was the first time he had beaten Sasuke in a non-combat field.

Sasuke stubbornly retorted, "You relied on your parents! It doesn't count! It absolutely doesn't count!"

Naruto grinned. "Why doesn't it count?! My parents' help is my strength too. Didn't you have your brother help you as well?"

Sasuke stubbornly insisted, "Anyway, it doesn't count."

Yep, the two had started bickering again.

Once the first round's population test was over, the second round followed immediately after.

Second-round test: innovative inventions.

No matter what kind of research it was, as long as they developed something new, they would earn points in this round.

Not one of the candidates from the first round had crossed Yuya's bottom line, so no one was eliminated.

Either they simply had not thought far enough to consider doing whatever it took to attract residents.

Naruto, for example.