Although Minato Namikaze had wondered what reward the Hokage would give him, he had never imagined that the prize for first place would be becoming the Hokage's student. It caught everyone completely off guard. Even with his intelligence, he was still young, and he could not help being stunned.
It took quite a while before Minato Namikaze came back to his senses. "D-do you really mean that?"
"What, you don't want to?" Kazemori Masaki asked with a smile.
"No, that's not what I meant. It's just..." Minato Namikaze did not know what to say. The reward was simply too generous for someone of his common background to take in.
Not just anyone could become the Hokage's student. The leading figures among Konoha Ninja Village's current leadership—including the Hokage himself—had all studied under the previous Hokage, Tobirama Senju. That alone showed how much weight the title carried.
Put simply, becoming the Hokage's student meant that, at the very least, one could eventually join the village leadership. One might even become a candidate for Hokage.
Even though Kazemori Masaki intended to judge people by their abilities, successive Hokage could do no more than minimize the influence of other factors and make ability their primary criterion. In this era, ties between masters and students, as well as blood relations, remained impossible to escape. Especially with inherited secret techniques and powerful kekkei genkai, those who possessed such legacies were unlikely to lack ability. What civilian ninja lacked most was precisely that accumulation over time.
Kazemori Masaki had already done everything he could to raise the average caliber of civilian ninja, but the best way for one to grow quickly was still to study under a powerful ninja. With enough talent, a student could inherit everything their master knew, and even surpass them.
"Since you