After a quick round of greetings, the morning run squad swelled in size all at once.
By the time they finished running and wrapped up, it was already nine. "Sasuke, lately... I feel like I've kind of hit a wall in training."
"The Lightning Release insights you gave me before aren't working as fiercely as they used to, either."
"You should still have some new moves lined up for us next, right?"
A few of them sat together, and Neji got straight to the point.
As the Hyuga Clan's acknowledged genius, he had always kept a clear tally in his heart of how he should train.
Every time he finished training, he would summarize it and figure out exactly where he stood.
Neji could clearly feel that the pace of his improvement had slowed.
Once summer break ended and he was no longer training alongside Sasuke, he had obviously noticed that his growth had lost quite a bit of momentum. It just so happened that yesterday Sasuke had brought up graduating early together, and his heart had tightened at once. "Switch to a different training method?"
"I do have one."
"It's just a little..."
"What method?"
Before he could finish, several people came rushing out from the side.
Shikamaru, Choji, Ino, Tenten, Sakura, Kiba, Shino—those seven had been squatting off to the side for who knew how long. The moment Sasuke started talking, they all popped out. "Uh..." Sweat beaded on Sasuke's forehead. "**, when did you sneak over here?" Rock Lee was startled. "Sakura, you're training with us too?" Naruto leaned in, his face full of simple-minded delight.
Hinata and Neji, on the other hand, were quite calm, without much surprise showing. "Getting beaten up."
Sasuke raised one finger and slowly spat out two words. "Getting beaten up?"
"What