Another two months passed. During those two months, Namikaze Minato and Mirai successfully skipped another grade. Both were assigned to Class Two of the third year and gradually gained a firm foothold among the third-years.
Some might ask: the first-year advancement requirement was "Excellent," the highest rating. What about advancement in the second year? If it still involved testing the training subjects, wouldn't the requirement be the same? Could a first-year student rated "Excellent" in every subject directly skip to the sixth year?
That was certainly not the case. In fact, although the ratings of "Fail," "Pass," "Good," and "Excellent" were the same across different grades, the standards for those ratings differed slightly. For example, in the first-year endurance running event, students had to complete one kilometer in under three minutes and five kilometers in under eighteen minutes for the event to be rated Excellent. For an Excellent rating in the second-year endurance run, one kilometer had to be completed in under one minute and forty-five seconds, while five kilometers had to be completed in under seventeen minutes. Therefore, no one could skip directly from the first year to the sixth.
Because of this, even the top students of the first and second years had to put in tremendous effort to advance successfully into the third year. Namikaze Minato and Mirai were no exception. By the third year, the two were no longer as outstanding as before and instead occupied a solid position in the upper-middle ranks. However, they each had their own strengths. Like Namikaze Minato, Mirai still could not throw very well, but due to his age, he held an advantage in events that relied primarily on physical fitness.
At this pace, although Mirai's progress was a little too slow, he was not overly dissatisfied. He simply could