Graduating Early

The night passed quickly. Looking up at the faintly brightening sky, Hana set down the metal plate, patted Yuun on the shoulder, and pointed at herself.

Yuun, who had kept his Byakugan activated all night, was exhausted as well. When he saw Hana put down the metal plate, he stopped too and helped the equally yawning Hana and Hayate undo the seals on their acupoints.

"Finally, I can talk... Ah..." Hana stretched and let out a huge yawn. "Yuun, let's go back. I'm so sleepy."

Yuun nodded, too lazy to say much. He took the half-asleep Hayate with them and headed back.

Over the course of the night, Yuun led Hana and Hayate all over the forest, constantly making noise. Whenever they spotted someone, Yuun brought the two of them over and scraped the metal plate. The grating screech echoed through the night without end, enough to drive anyone mad. Several Chunin assigned to monitor them had fled because of the noise.

Whenever someone ran after hearing the sound, Yuun chased after them while continuing to scrape the plate. If they tried to pursue him instead, Yuun, with the Byakugan watching their every move, retreated. If there were only a few of them, Hana stepped in and dealt with them. After enough rounds of this, Yuun went from warding off all evil to leaving every hero helpless. Even when they heard him scraping the metal plate, no one dared run. Trying to outrun the Hyuga Clan in a dark forest was practically suicide; who knew when they might crash into a tree?

If they stayed put obediently, Yuun did not deliberately approach them. But while the scraping of the metal plate did not carry especially far, the forest was so quiet at night that it could easily travel one or two kilometers. The forest was not large to begin with, so even if Yuun did not intentionally come near them, they still heard that piercing noise without end.

There were always a few unbelievably foolish idiots who tried to fight noise with noise. Unfortunately, once Yuun approached, most of the students could only clamp their hands over their ears and do their best to block out the ear-piercing demonic sound. But if covering their ears had worked, Itachi would not have been driven away by Yuun in such a panic. Chunin or Jonin with good chakra control could directly use chakra to block their ear canals or shut off their hearing, but everyone in this forest was a student, aside from a handful of Chunin who clearly did not excel at chakra control. In the end, they could only flee.

After failing several times to escape Yuun's noise assault, more and more people chose to give up the training and flee overnight. It could not be helped. Yuun's ability to court death was simply too formidable. They were still at the beginner stage and could not withstand it at all.

Yuun and the others slept until noon before slowly waking up and calmly enjoying lunch. Even Itachi had broken down under last night's noise attack. Aside from the Chunin watching them, only the three of them remained in the entire forest, so there was no chance of anyone launching a sneak attack.

That afternoon, Yuun and the others gathered up the belongings left behind by the students who had forfeited and fled. Their haul was plentiful. Aside from cookware and lunch boxes whose making tools had been dismantled by the little brats Yuun had driven crazy, the students had left behind quite a bit of food. Yuun had no idea how they had smuggled in things as blatantly against the rules as cup noodles.

"Yuun, are we really going to wait here for all seven days?" Hana's mouth was stuffed full of meat, making her words slurred. Fortunately, Yuun had spent more than a year with her and could still understand what she meant.

"I'm not really sure, but probably. The school should not end it early, though there isn't much point in continuing." Yuun shrugged. The school probably had not expected an oddball like him. In just two nights, he had forced everyone else to withdraw. That so-called treasure hunt had not even shown so much as a shadow. The people who planned this training were probably coughing up blood by now.

Unfortunately, the people in charge of planning were not coughing up blood. The several Chunin responsible for setting up the grounds and the school teachers were. They had spent so much time and effort arranging everything, only for none of it to be used. The treasure hunt had become a joke. Only three people could participate, and they were all from the same team. How was that supposed to work?

The teachers were even more furious. They had worked hard to persuade so many parents to allow the school to conduct this training, only for all the students to return home after less than two days with frayed nerves. When the parents asked what they had trained in, every answer was the same: they had been beaten up, then forced to listen to noise for one or two nights. What family would not lose their temper after seeing their children put through that? Fortunately, the shadow of war had not yet passed, and the parents were fairly understanding. They knew the school would not deliberately torment the children, so a few scoldings were the end of it. If this had happened more than a decade later, they would have torn the school apart.

To Yuun's surprise, the school sent someone the very next day to inform him that the training was over. This training had originally been aimed mainly at students with weaker foundations, in the hope that they could overturn the likes of Yuun and Itachi, the top students. Numerical superiority existed everywhere. Unfortunately, Yuun's combat strength was far too overwhelming, and Hana, whose fighting ability ranked either second or third in the entire grade, had barely gotten a chance to show what she could do. The students who had failed the training, along with many people following it, were left pondering a question: could a small number of elites truly be this much stronger than the ordinary majority?

After ending this training, the school never held another simulation exercise on such a large scale. The facts had proven that an unorganized majority had no ability to resist an elite team. There was no need to organize such exercises again. Rather than hope they could organize themselves, it was better to hope for one or two more elite leaders to emerge.

Moreover, as the scale of the war between Konoha and Hidden Cloud gradually shrank, both the attackers and defenders had grown weary of a prolonged fight that produced no results. With the Raikage having returned to his village, even the Cloud Shinobi began to slack off without a powerful leader to take charge. Since the attacking Cloud Shinobi were dragging their feet, Konoha was naturally happy to play along. The two sides fought and fought until the war nearly turned into a battle of insults.

Spring passed into autumn, and time flew by. Konoha no longer felt much pressure from the war. Even the front lines had become lazy and listless, so how could the rear remain tense? No matter how repeatedly the hawks warned them, it was useless. Even ordinary villagers had relaxed, and the school naturally stopped acting as though everyone would be heading to the battlefield tomorrow. Yuun and the others spent a year in this relaxed atmosphere.

"You want to apply for early graduation?" Yuun frowned as he looked at Itachi, whose expression had barely changed. It would have been a lie to say that they had not formed a bond after more than a year together. Itachi suddenly saying that he wanted to leave early was hard for Yuun to understand. "Is there really such a rush? We only have a year and a half left before graduation."

"There's no time." Itachi's face was a little pale. "I have to submit the application tomorrow. Sorry..."

"Is this what they want?" Yuun pointed in the direction of the Uchiha clan. With the Uchiha clan currently being suppressed by Konoha's higher-ups, they could not possibly assign people to monitor Itachi.

"..." Itachi nodded heavily, then shook his head.

"I understand." Yuun smiled. "I'll apply for early graduation with you tomorrow. I'm getting sick of staying at school anyway."

"I'm coming too." Hana, who was fighting with a strip of beef jerky nearby, cut in. Ever since learning that Hana liked beef jerky, Yuun had brought her some from time to time. Her clan supplied her food, clothing, and lodging, and the relief money paid to Yuun each month rarely had a chance to be spent. Even when he went out to buy snacks, he kept himself in check and never bought too much. After several years of saving, along with the money his parents had left behind, Yuun had become fairly well-off.

Hana, on the other hand, was not from a poor family either. As a member of the Inuzuka Clan, she naturally did not suffer hardship. But at only seven years old, she could not receive much spending money. Buying a little now and then was fine, but she could not afford to keep buying it over the long term. Since Yuun gave it to her, she accepted it. The two of them were close, after all.

"Hana..." Yuun thought it over. The school truly had nothing left to teach them now. Itachi and Yuun went without saying, and while Hana's grades in the other subjects were poor, they were nowhere near as absurdly bad as Naruto Uzumaki's. At the very least, her practical combat ability ranked among the best in the entire school. Applying for early graduation would not be a problem. "All right. Then you're coming too, Hana. The three of us will apply for early graduation together. Hayate, don't rush to apply yet. Your foundation is still lacking a little. The three of us have studied for over two years, but you've only just completed one year. Graduating early won't do you any good." That was what Yuun said when he saw Hayate about to speak.