The One Left Standing

As soon as the final four matchups were announced, an even greater uproar erupted from the sidelines.

First match: Inuzuka Kiba versus Ino Yamanaka.

Second match: Uchiha Ling versus Sasuke Uchiha.

No one doubted that the arrangement was intentional anymore.

The Ninja Academy clearly wanted to see what would happen if the two strongest children at this stage met before the final showdown.

Kiba's face fell when he saw the slip. "Why aren't you two fighting first?"

Ino raised an eyebrow. "Afraid you'll lose to me?"

"Who's afraid of you?!"

But no matter how tough he talked, Kiba knew that after this round, the person left standing in the end might have nothing to do with him.

His match with Ino began first.

Before the match started, Ino tied her long hair back. The playful glint usually lingering in her eyes had almost completely faded. Ling stood at the edge of the field and watched her tighten her grip on the wooden kunai, then lightly roll her wrist, as though reminding herself that she absolutely could not lose her head this time.

"Begin!"

Kiba lunged forward at once.

Just as in the previous rounds, he wanted to rely on the close-range bursts he excelled at to shatter Ino's rhythm head-on. But Ino had come prepared. From the very start, she never let herself remain on a straight line for more than a breath. Her footwork was light and her changes of direction quick. She constantly used her wooden kunai and feints to pull at Kiba's balance, forcing an extra fraction of wasted movement into every one of his advances.

Several times in the first half, Kiba nearly got within reach of her, leaving the spectators with their hearts in their throats.

Especially during the third change of direction, Kiba's fist nearly grazed Ino's shoulder, drawing an involuntary cry from the stands. But Ino shifted her footing and slipped through the narrowest gap, then slashed back with a wooden kunai, forcing Kiba to raise his arm to block.

"She's really steady today," Shikamaru said quietly.

"If she weren't, Kiba would've sent her flying already," Kiba's deskmate added from beside him.

In the field, Kiba's momentum was gradually being worn down into disorder.

What he did best was crushing opponents in one relentless rush, but Ino refused to clash with him head-on. Every time, she gave him the feeling that he was just a little short of catching her. Then, once he truly picked up the pace, he realized that she had already led him by the nose.

In the latter half, Ino finally seized her chance.

One of Kiba's lunges missed, and his step carried slightly too far forward. His right arm was also left more exposed than before. Ino's eyes lit up. Her wooden kunai struck his wrist precisely, and using that instant of hesitation, she cut to the outside. With a reverse pull and shove, she actually forced Kiba out over the boundary.

"Stop. Ino Yamanaka wins."

The sidelines fell silent for a moment before a wave of surprised murmurs broke out.

Even as Ino left the field, her eyes still shone with the brightness of victory. Her shoulder had been grazed, and her breathing was noticeably quick, yet she still looked toward Ling first.

Ling walked over and handed her the clean towel he had at hand. "You fought well."

Ino caught the towel. She had originally wanted to put on a casual front and reply, "Of course I did," but when she saw that Ling's eyes were more serious than usual, warmth inexplicably rose in her chest.

"Complimenting me at a time like this? I'll give you credit for having good taste." She gave a huff, though the corners of her mouth had already curled upward.

Kiba stood outside the boundary with a dark expression. After holding it in for a long while, he finally snorted. "You got lucky today."

Wiping away her sweat, Ino proudly lifted her chin. "Then I was lucky enough to seize that luck."

But even as she said that, more than half her attention had already turned elsewhere.

Because the next match was finally the pairing everyone had wanted to see most.

The moment Sasuke and Ling stepped into the field, the surrounding noise seemed to die down on its own.

The wind swept across the training ground, lightly stirring the fine sand along the white boundary lines.

They stood several steps apart. Neither spoke first. Yet even the spectators could clearly feel the intense tension between them, compressed to the point of explosion.

Izumo glanced at the two and, unusually, added a reminder. "This is a match, not a fight to the death. Stop when you hear the call."

Neither responded.

It was not that they had not heard him. It was simply that, at this moment, both of them understood better than anyone that this battle would likely directly determine the outcome of all the comparisons people had made between them lately.

Ino stood by the railing, her fingers unconsciously tightening. She had still been relaxed from her recent victory, but when her gaze truly settled on the two figures in the field, her heart sank instead.

Hinata stood behind the crowd. She was not particularly close, yet she watched more intently than anyone. She knew she could not help with anything, so she could only watch quietly.

"Begin!"

Sasuke charged forward almost the instant the word fell.

Still as sharp as ever.

But unlike before, he held nothing back in the opening exchanges. His first step closed the distance, his second changed direction, and his third cut directly toward Ling's frontal centerline. His rhythm was so fast that it seemed he had already broken down the opening countless times.

Ling did not retreat.

Within the first breath, he too entered his most stable combat state, pushing his body, breathing, and chakra circulation to their limits. Faced with Sasuke's razor-sharp advance, he did not choose to evade. He chose to dismantle it head-on.

Their first collision made many people at the sidelines hold their breath instinctively.

Smack!

The impact of their arms colliding was crisp and heavy.

Sasuke's attacks came like repeated slashes of a blade, wave after wave; Ling's defense, however, was not passive blocking, but more like a constant search for openings, waiting for the edge of Sasuke's assault to expose a gap on its own.

In the first three exchanges, neither gained a true advantage.

Kiba watched with his arms crossed, his expression darkening. Ino had nearly forgotten that she had just won her own match, staring only at the two figures in the field as they moved faster and faster. Hinata's fingertips clenched white, and she did not even dare breathe too heavily.

"They're on a different level from before," Shikamaru said softly.

They truly were.

Both Sasuke and Ling had pushed themselves another step forward during this period of special training. And now, they were revealing every bit of that progress before each other.

At the twelfth second, Sasuke suddenly raised his hands and formed seals.

A wave of startled murmurs immediately rose from the sidelines.

This was the first time in the preliminaries that someone had directly followed close-quarters combat with an elemental attack.

Ling's gaze darkened. Chakra compressed and erupted beneath his feet in an instant, and he shot sideways to evade. Flames spewed from Sasuke's mouth and swept past the edge of his clothes, the heat distorting the air.

But the truly frightening part was not the fire.

It was that while Sasuke used the flames to force Ling's position, he had already cut in along the line of fire himself.

"So fast!" Kiba could not help exclaiming.

Ling did not turn to look at the flames. The instant he stabilized after his sidestep, he flicked two wooden kunai backward, forcing Sasuke to interrupt his advance. The two of them opened up half a body's distance again, their breathing both heavier than at the start.

Ino's heart tightened with them.

Only now did she truly realize that what she had just lost was merely a match, while what these two were fighting in front of her was already something on an entirely different level.

And precisely because of that, she wanted even more to see who would ultimately stand in the brightest place.

This battle was still far from over.