After explaining all the rules—in fact, there was only one—the proctor quickly left the testing grounds, leaving the candidates staring at one another in dismay.
Looking around, Kanna saw faces filled with grief, resentment, fear, indifference, numbness, and even excitement.
There were 120 of them. They would fight in pairs, and only those who survived would pass.
Even if your opponent was your friend, your brother, or your sister, you still had to strike!
Kanna wanted desperately to quit. He knew that even though he had inherited this body as a transmigrant, he stood no chance of surviving a fight to the death against these "peers," who had been trained as ninja since childhood.
Unfortunately, quitting wasn't an option. Kirigakure's graduation ceremony was brutal, but the resources it poured into each class were immense. There was a reason for that: Kirigakure's graduation survival rate was at best 50 percent. Once you counted those who killed each other, or lost themselves in the bloodshed and struck down bystanders, the survival rate was often only 0 to 40 percent. In other words, each class produced roughly 0 to 50 Genin.
Going from a hundred or so people to just thirty or fifty—what a terrifying death rate that was for those youths! And what kind of elites would the survivors become?
Under these circumstances, could anyone quit after receiving Kirigakure's careful instruction? Impossible! In the history of Kirigakure's graduation exams, there had only ever been victors and the dead. There had never been a failure who walked away alive!
Kirigakure's history was full of cases like this: someone who couldn't bring themselves to attack a classmate at first, or was so afraid they wet themselves, only to display a strikingly cruel nature after killing a classmate to pass. Whether they had truly been heartless all along or had grown numb after that ordeal, Kirigakure didn't care. As long as you dared to take the first step and kill a friend or loved one, Kirigakure would recognize your potential. Otherwise, you were a waste.
As Kanna thought to himself, his gaze inadvertently met someone else's.
The eyes were as uneasy as a deer's, pure and guileless, and beneath them was a pair of large, bright eyes.
Their owner was a pretty girl—the same one who had reminded Kanna to enter the testing grounds not long ago. Now she was watching him nervously.
Is she my opponent? Kanna seemed to realize. His heart grew even heavier. Did he really have to attack a girl who was only ten years old?
Or would she kill him instead?
But Kanna's heart soon turned cold. He saw the girl's gaze grow more resolute as she held his. First, she clasped her hands in front of her chest, closed her eyes, and murmured something, as if praying. Then she took a deep breath, reached to her waist with her right hand, drew a Kunai, and held it across her chest, facing Kanna warily.
To Kanna, the girl was a stranger. But he believed that the original owner of this body had been her friend. The girl, however, had accepted reality and made up her mind.
She would kill Kanna, her former friend, and leave this hellish place! Carrying the will of the friend she had killed with her own hands, she would do her best to survive in this world!
That was the cruelest part of Kirigakure's graduation exam. The companions who once shared their meals now had to fight each other; the close friends who had helped and competed with each other, and talked about their dreams together, were now forced to make a terrible choice.
Live, or die?
All around them, people had made up their minds. Faces that had once met with laughter were now cold as ice, and arms that had once embraced one another now gripped weapons tightly. Some were crying, some were silent, and some were sneering.
Without anyone noticing, the crowd slowly spread out. Some formed pairs and faced off; others turned and ran, disappearing into the wilderness as their opponents followed close behind. Some, after struggling with their emotions, even smiled in relief, hugged their siblings tightly, and then closed their eyes to await death.
Kanna came back to himself and saw the unnamed girl slowly bend at the waist, her feet set apart in a stance that let her strike at any moment.
She's about to attack me! Kanna remained expressionless, pivoted, and abruptly retreated behind another pair, blocking the girl's view of him.
The exam had only just begun. The other candidates hadn't even dealt with their own opponents yet, so Kanna wasn't worried about anyone but the girl attacking him.
But how could he defeat her? Kanna didn't have a clue yet. He couldn't win in a direct fight. His only hope was that something unexpected would happen.
That was right. With his life on the line, Kanna had made up his mind too. He would kill her!
If he didn't kill her, he would die!
If he didn't kill her, she wouldn't spare him either!
He would stake his conscience, his life, his past, and his future on killing her and surviving!
But Kanna would soon learn just how outrageous the "unexpected turn of events" he was hoping for would be.
In the middle of the crowd, a boy with a face covered in white bandages, short hair standing stiffly on end, barely visible eyebrows, and a long sword strapped to his back suddenly strode toward his opponent without hesitation.
His steps were firm, and he carried an air of grim determination!
Though the boy's expression was hidden, his opponent—a tall, sturdy boy—could tell from his eyes that he meant to kill him!
"Zabuza, are you really going to attack me?" The tall boy frowned and shouted, "Are you going to attack your friend? Your own brother?"
The boy named Zabuza wasn't moved at all. He kept walking toward him, one step at a time.
"If we join forces and resist, they won't dare do anything to us! Zabuza, snap out of it! Don't fall for those adults' tricks!" The tall boy faced Zabuza and kept trying to persuade him.
"You're right. I agree." Zabuza stopped in front of him, put his right hand behind his back, and gripped the hilt. "But goodbye, my friend," he said indifferently.
A flash of silver. Before the boy could react, Zabuza brought his sword down in a single slash, cutting from his head to his abdomen and gutting him. The boy collapsed, dead in an instant.
Thud! The boy's body hit the ground, jolting everyone present. The first victim had appeared.
No one knew whether Zabuza had hesitated before killing his friend, or whether he regretted it now. Even when "murder" unfolded right before their eyes, hardly anyone seemed surprised.
From the moment they'd heard the exam rules, many had realized that this would be a hellishly brutal trial.
"Brutal! And what a fast sword!"
Through a gap in the crowd, Kanna saw the fallen body and the scarlet blood spreading across the ground. His thoughts churned, but then he witnessed something unbelievable.
Zabuza had already passed his exam, but he didn't stop. Instead, he raised his long sword and swept it around him!
Splurt, splurt! As blood sprayed through the air, four more youths fell, their faces still marked by confusion and disbelief.
Zabuza's ferocity immediately frightened the students around him, but he wasn't finished.
Thud! Zabuza stomped hard and charged at a girl. His left hand darted out and seized the arm she'd raised to counterattack with her weapon. At the same time, his right hand drove the long sword straight through her left chest.
"Cough..." Blood seeped from the girl's mouth. Her body went limp, and she slid off the sword.
Kanna's pupils contracted. He knew he had encountered a rare but never entirely absent kind of person in Kirigakure's history: a young butcher, born with a bloodlust for killing!
Kirigakure had no shortage of graduates who killed several people, but the Zabuza Kanna was seeing now—someone who killed indiscriminately, without the slightest reason—was the first of his kind in history. At that moment, because he didn't know the name, Kanna hadn't yet realized that the boy slaughtering everyone ahead of him was the infamous Kirigakure ninja, Momochi Zabuza.
So he also didn't know that the final survival rate for this class would shatter Kirigakure's record, reaching an all-time low of less than one percent.
Without the slightest hesitation or wavering, a boy who hadn't even earned his ninja qualifications would kill every single one of the more than one hundred candidates in this class!
(p.s. I'm really sorry. After I got home, I spent all my time playing around or hanging out with my buddies, so I only wrote this much. I deleted the old big giveaway and rewrote this. No one's going to make the opening sound like a student essay or complain that the protagonist's name sucks now, right?)
Before you continue