Chapter 10

The previous matches had been uneventful.

Inuzuka Kiba's group, Aburame Shino's group, and Sakura Haruno's group had all passed.

The other group to advance was Shimura Yasuda's side.

Now it was finally Sasuke and the others' turn. "I'm enough on my own."

"Hinata, Naruto's eyesight isn't as good as yours. Keep a close watch on the next fight for me."

"In your future training, you should move in this direction too."

Sasuke stood up, his tone indifferent.

"Huh?!"

"Why's it like that? I want to go up there and fight too!"

Naruto shouted, his face full of unwillingness.

"Mm."

Hinata did not say much, only nodded.

"Naruto, do you want to take first place?"

"Isn't your dream to become Hokage? Wouldn't starting by taking first place make it way more exciting?"

The corner of Sasuke's mouth curled up.

"Seems like... that's true..."

"But... fine, I'll listen to you."

Naruto's hands were itching for a fight, but Sasuke's words had indeed hit him where it counted.

"Just you alone?"

"Aren't you looking down on us way too much?"

"Hmph! Even if you're an Uchiha, we're confident we can take you down!"

Seeing Sasuke walk out alone, the three people opposite him felt insulted.

"So handsome, Uchiha Sasuke!" [girls screaming]

"What a poser, so damn smug!" [boys in unison PS: including Naruto]

"Lightning God Mode!"

Sasuke did not waste a word and went straight for his big move.

Fine arcs of electricity began to dance around his body.

"Lightning Release?!"

"He's going straight to ninjutsu?"

"He's showing his trump card this quickly? What is he trying to do?"

Iruka's strength was average, but his eye was not bad.

With one glance, he saw that Sasuke had used Lightning Release.

But... he had not seen him form seals at all...

Could it be... ninjutsu without seals?!

[9/10]

At that moment, the panel popped up before Sasuke's eyes.

Huh?

Itachi's here too?

Sasuke's heart tightened.

I didn't even do anything special. What's Itachi so surprised about?

This Lightning God Mode isn't the first time he's seen it...

Sasuke grumbled inwardly, but the result was not bad.

At the same time, it gave him a new idea.

Since Itachi was watching, he had to put on a proper show.

As soon as the thought fell, Sasuke's figure vanished from the spot.

"Body Flicker Technique?!"

"No, there were no chakra fluctuations. Taijutsu?"

"That's not right either. He clearly used Lightning Release just now!"

This instantly left Iruka completely baffled.

Bang bang bang...

In the blink of an eye, all three people opposite him fell to the ground together.

They passed out on the spot.

Iruka hurriedly rushed over and checked them. After finding that they were only unconscious, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.

After all, it was not as if people had never died during this kind of sparring before...

"Ding, congratulations, host. You have successfully shocked Itachi 10 times."

"Reward: Eye Technique: Pit of Naraka, Soul Interrogation, 1 mysterious experience card."

After taking down those three people, the system prompt sounded beside Sasuke's ear.

Two B-rank genjutsu, and one experience card.

It was just that the experience card still had a question mark on it.

"System, use it."

Sasuke did not like hoarding things, so he opened the card directly.

The instant the question mark disappeared, Sasuke froze.

The content displayed by this thing made his heart jolt hard.

Used well, this could save his life!

Sasuke suppressed the excitement in his heart and returned to the team.

"Hinata, you saw that fight clearly just now, right?"

"Do you have anything to say?"

Sasuke got straight to the point. "You asked me just now where the spots with the least chakra on their bodies were, and where the exact acupoints were... was it so you could land that kind of absurdly precise attack?"

Hinata's eyes shone brightly, full of little stars.

In just those few seconds, Sasuke had actually come up with this way of fighting.

And this was even the first time the two of them had teamed up. "Mm."

Sasuke nodded. "There's no need to waste too much strength."

"The ninja world isn't peaceful right now. In the future, we'll only run into more enemies."

"If we don't start treating every battle like a life-and-death fight now, we'll only be more passive in the future."

His tone carried seriousness.

In the original work, when Team 7 ran into enemies, they were always at a loss.

Whether it was fighting Gaara's team, or running into Orochimaru...

Every time, they were panicked and flustered, not knowing what to do. "Mm."

"I'll remember it."

Hinata nodded hard. "Everything's settled with your family, right? About the food?"

"Mm, I already told them."

"Then that's fine. Train hard. I hope I can keep fighting alongside you in the future."

"Mm..."

"Hinata, why is your face so red?"

"I..."

"Can you two say something I can understand?!"

Just as Hinata was at a loss, Naruto finally could not hold it in anymore.

He understood every word of what they had just said when taken separately, but once put together, he was completely lost. "Just now, Sasuke had me confirm the locations of those three opponents' special acupoints, then used extreme speed and the least amount of strength to take care of them."

"Although the two of us didn't attack directly, this is essentially also a kind of teamwork."

"I only needed to provide intelligence, Sasuke only needed to hit people, and you only needed to—not get in the way."

"That's about it."

Hinata spoke with complete seriousness.

At this time, she did not have any special bond with Naruto yet.

On the contrary, toward Sasuke, a few different feelings had already appeared in her heart.

So when she spoke, she gave Naruto no face at all. "Uh..."

"Uh..."

Sasuke and Naruto both looked awkward at the same time.

Who could have imagined that such a soft and cute girl could speak so directly?

Even Sasuke was stunned for a moment. "All right, prepare for the second team battle."

"Uchiha Sasuke, Naruto Uzumaki, Hyuga Hinata."

[Versus]

"Shimura Yasuda..."

The second match followed right after.

As for Itachi, who stood to the side, the surprise on his face still had not faded.

Sasuke's movements just now had simply been unbelievably beautiful.

Itachi weighed it in his heart—if he had been in the same situation, he simply could not have designed such a perfect plan.

Though winning would definitely still have been no problem...

"Lord Hokage is calling you over."

At that moment, an Anbu suddenly appeared behind Itachi.

His tone carried a little coldness.

That was normal too.

The Uchiha clan had never been particularly liked in the village to begin with.

Even though Itachi had already joined the Anbu, aside from missions, the others usually ignored him.

Although he still wanted to keep watching Sasuke fight, Itachi turned and left.

Inside the principal's office.

Hiruzen Sarutobi was frowning tightly as he stared at an exam paper on the desk. "Lord Hokage."

Itachi pushed the door open and entered, lowering his head slightly toward the Third Hokage before him. "Itachi, come and take a look at this exam paper."

Hiruzen Sarutobi pushed an exam paper with no name written on it in front of Itachi. "The paper is one hundred percent correct. There are several battle situation analyses inside whose level has already touched the threshold of a chunin."

"And this part... the Will of Fire..."

"Lord Hokage, is this the standard answer sheet?"

Itachi lowered his head and swept his gaze over the contents of the paper, his brow lifting.

Why would the Third show him this for no reason?

Could it be that he just wanted him to see how the standard answers praised this ideology?

Even Itachi himself did not realize that his attitude toward the so-called Will of Fire had already quietly changed. "This is Uchiha Sasuke's paper."

"Look at this paper. How many points would you give it?"

Hiruzen Sarutobi took a deep puff from his pipe and slowly exhaled. "Sasuke!?"

Itachi's pupils suddenly shrank. His Sharingan opened on the spot, and his entire body froze in place as if he had been struck by lightning.

After several seconds, he realized he had lost composure and hurriedly steadied his voice. "Lord Hokage, if this really is Sasuke's paper, I would give it full marks."

"Oh? Because it's Sasuke, you would give it full marks?"

A playful smile hung on Hiruzen Sarutobi's face. "First, Sasuke is only five years old. For him to write the paper like this, his fundamentals are already quite solid."

"Second, his understanding of the Will of Fire is, in my opinion, already no worse than mine."

"Third, precisely because he is my younger brother, I should give him full marks all the more."

"This score contains no personal feelings whatsoever."

When Itachi said this, his expression was extremely serious. Even his body was trembling slightly—that was excitement he could not suppress. "I also think he should receive full marks."

"And his practical combat ability and techniques were also very eye-catching."

"Itachi, I hope you can spare more time to properly guide Sasuke."

"Let him become a talent the village truly needs in the future!"

"Konoha's strongest wall will still have to be built brick by brick by these young people."

Hiruzen Sarutobi went with the flow and began his PUA.

And Itachi happened to buy into this.

The meaning revealed in those words was very clear—the Third had not only given him a legitimate mission to accompany his younger brother, but had also publicly acknowledged Sasuke's talent.

For a brother complex, this was simply a surprise dropped from the heavens.

After the proper business was explained, Itachi bowed, and in the next instant, his figure vanished from the spot. "Uchiha Fugaku, I'm afraid you would never dream that your two sons' faith in the Will of Fire would be this thorough."

"In this contest, you had already lost from the very beginning..."

Amid the curling smoke, the corner of Hiruzen Sarutobi's mouth lifted, his face full of smug satisfaction.

By the time Itachi rushed back to the edge of the training field, Sasuke had already stepped on Shimura Yasuda and steadily secured victory in this match. "This kid..."

"I'll head back first and tell Father about this."

"Perhaps..."

Before Itachi finished speaking, his figure flashed, and he left directly with a Body Flicker.

And on the training ground, the battle had also reached the final match.

Shikamaru Squad VS Sasuke Squad. "Teacher, we forfeit."

Iruka had just raised his hand and was about to announce the start when Shikamaru directly lifted his hand and called out his surrender. "Why are you forfeiting?"

"Shikamaru, you..."

"We can't win."

"Up to now, Sasuke's the only one who's made a move."

"Hyuga Hinata and Naruto Uzumaki haven't even moved."

"Even if it was just our squad taking Sasuke on by himself, we still might not win for sure, let alone when he's got two teammates crouching behind him."

"I don't want to get beaten up, so we forfeit."

Shikamaru spread his hands, his expression perfectly calm.

When he knew full well charging up there was just suicide, there was no way he would do something that stupid. "All right, the winners of the team battle are Uchiha Sasuke, Hyuga Hinata, and Naruto Uzumaki's group."

"The prize is a batch of rare medicinal herbs. Take them back, boil them into a medicinal bath, and soak in it. It's pretty good for strengthening your physique."

"In addition, there is also cash:

yen."

Iruka handed the medicinal herbs and money to the three children. "Sasuke, I'm not dreaming, am I?"

"Ow, ow... That hurts... Haha, it really isn't a dream!"

Naruto kept hopping around.

yen!

To Naruto, this was practically a huge sum he could never have dreamed of.

As for that pile of herbs, he did not care about it at all.

In his head, he had already started calculating how many bowls of Ichiraku Ramen this money could buy.

--

Because of the assessment, school was dismissed as soon as the test ended today.

Naruto clamored about dragging Sasuke to Ichiraku Ramen to celebrate, but Sasuke still had matters at home.

Itachi was waiting for him at home.

If he wanted to pull Itachi back onto the right track as quickly as possible, he had to make his presence felt as much as possible while Itachi was home.

So Sasuke let Naruto go by himself.

Hinata also had to go home to train, so she left too. "Why did everyone run off?"

"Am I the only one left to go eat ramen again?"

"Sigh..."

"Naruto?"

"You haven't gone home yet?"

"Want to come with me for a training session that burns with youth?"

Naruto was feeling depressed when Rock Lee suddenly bounced out.

Then the two single-track-minded guys directly began a special training session called "youth."

--

Sasuke returned home.

Sure enough, Uchiha Itachi was already there.

But the atmosphere in the living room was a little off.

Uchiha Fugaku sat in the main seat with a dark expression, while Itachi lowered his head, his face full of helplessness.

Mikoto sat quietly off to the side. "Dad, Mom, Brother."

"You... What's going on?"

Sasuke put down his bag and curiously sized up the three of them.

This was the first time he had seen such a strange scene.

After all, in the original plot, even on the night of the massacre, Fugaku and Mikoto had never blamed Itachi. "Mikoto, go see if the dinner prepared for Sasuke is ready."

Fugaku spoke.

"Okay."

Mikoto looked at Sasuke, then at Itachi, smiled, and got up to walk toward the kitchen. "Sasuke, your brother said you got full marks in today's academic class and also ranked first in the practical assessment."