Root's testing began.
The testing was far shabbier than Amamiya Maki had imagined.
Perhaps Root hadn't really expected to find any talent, either.
Three long tables borrowed from the cafeteria stood in the orphanage's open yard.
Three Root ninja wearing animal masks stood before them.
The leader wore a Monkey mask, with Wildcat on his left and Snake on his right.
All three radiated the same aura: cold.
"The chakra test will now begin."
Monkey's voice had no inflection whatsoever.
Even his way of speaking seemed designed to save time.
"We distributed chakra extraction manuals in advance."
"Now come forward in order and demonstrate your results."
Amamiya Maki stood among the crowd, too. He leisurely flipped through a couple of pages, then closed the manual.
The manuals had been handed out a month ago.
He'd browsed his for about five seconds before tossing it aside.
The knowledge the system had poured straight into his brain surpassed anything that lousy manual could teach by more than an order of magnitude.
The system's products were far better than this stuff.
The testing soon began.
The first to step forward was a tall, skinny boy.
He shut his eyes and strained for ages.
Only then did he manage to gather a barely visible ball of chakra on his fingertip.
It was as thin as a breath of warm air on a winter morning.
Monkey made a couple of strokes on the paper.
Grade D, middle tier.
The second child, a girl, couldn't even muster that breath of warm air.
She held up a trembling finger for ages, but nothing happened.
Wildcat turned to glance at Snake, who gave a slight shrug.
The third child managed a faint glow.
The fourth burst into tears before producing any chakra.
Snake let out a soft sigh.
Getting a Root ninja to sigh was probably a talent in its own right.
Amamiya Maki stood quietly in the middle of the line, waiting.
Most of the orphans around him performed about the same.
Those who could gather even a little chakra were already top students, while quite a few scored a flat zero.
One or two hadn't even figured out what chakra was from beginning to end.
On the other hand, this was also early preparation for the samurai path.
Monkey's pen kept scratching across the paper.
His strokes grew increasingly irritated.
Still, there was nothing surprising about that.
Testing orphans for talent had been a project Shimura Danzō dreamed up on a whim in the first place.
He'd spent the money and raised the orphans. Getting nothing out of it felt like a waste.
Might as well pick a few talented ones, send them into Root for a thorough brainwashing, and make use of the rejects.
As for the possibility of spies slipping in...
Danzo probably figured that once they entered Root, even spies could be brainwashed into his own people.
After all, people in this world didn't have the internet's enormous flood of information like in his previous life.
After a round of testing, most of the children proved utterly mediocre.
The Root ninja hadn't changed their stance from start to finish.
Clearly, they'd had very accurate expectations of these orphans' average abilities.
Then Monkey raised his head, his gaze passing over the children in front and locking precisely onto Amamiya Maki.
"You. Come forward."
Amamiya Maki blinked.
He noticed another Root ninja standing nearby, one who had just returned from outside.
Owl was leaning close to Wildcat's ear, whispering something.
Most likely, he'd brought back the tale of the "orphanage brat who scared off troublemakers with Fire Release."
Tch.
Amamiya Maki stepped forward and stood obediently before the table.
All three Root ninja turned their eyes toward him at once.
Being watched by three pairs of eyes hidden behind masks was a little creepy.
"Begin," Monkey said.
Amamiya Maki took a deep breath and held out his right hand.
Then he began gathering chakra in his palm.
He controlled it very carefully.
The system had given him "one-thousandth of a Kakashi" worth, but he released only a tiny fraction of that now.
Chakra gathered in his palm, so faint its outline was almost impossible to make out.
Still, his performance was slightly better than those of the previous children.
Monkey fell silent for one second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
"That's enough."
There was no need to spend more time looking at this level of ability.
It wasn't even enough to scrape by in Konoha as useful manpower.
Amamiya Maki obediently withdrew his hand and stepped aside.
Not getting recruited into Root was a good thing.
Wildcat wrote a few strokes on the paper.
Then he turned toward Owl, who had just returned.
His eyes seemed to say, "This is the talent you were talking about?"
Owl looked away without betraying any emotion.
"Looks like you misjudged him, too."
Snake's voice rang out.
There was a hint of gleeful mockery in his tone.
"When you said someone was making fireballs at six, I thought we'd found a genius to take back and fulfill our assignment."
Owl didn't respond.
Snake didn't mind. He turned to glance at Amamiya Maki.
With that little chakra, how had the boy spat out that fireball?
Was there another expert involved?
The amount of chakra he'd just displayed was indeed absurdly low.
But Maki didn't see anything wrong with that.
Before the test, Amamiya Maki had deliberately emptied his chakra reserves.
All because he was afraid of looking talented in front of Root.
In the original story, Yakushi Nonō and Kabuto Yakushi had been targeted precisely because they were too gifted.
He knew better than anyone how they'd ended up.
The testing soon concluded.
Monkey gathered the assessment sheets and approached Matron Yuki.
"Send those in this batch who can extract chakra to the Ninja Academy for further observation. Eliminate the rest."
"Understood." Yuki nodded without asking another question.
Everyone present knew perfectly well what elimination meant.
The eliminated orphans would never get a second chance.
One day, they would be shoved into some corner of Konoha.
They would become screws in this enormous machine, without even a serial number.
The three Root ninja turned and left.
Only after that oppressive aura had completely dissipated did Amamiya Maki quietly release a long breath.
Earlier, he'd deliberately hidden at the very back of the crowd.
He'd quietly kept everyone safely in front of him.
"Children who managed to extract chakra." Matron Yuki's voice rang out across the now-quiet yard.
"Come with me to enroll at the Ninja Academy tomorrow."
The orphans responded in scattered voices.
Amamiya Maki took in all their faces.
Most of them didn't yet know that becoming a ninja didn't mean changing their fate. It only meant finding a new place to get beaten up.
They would go from being bullied by brats with parents to being bullied by young masters and ladies with clans.
Everyone could find their own battlefield in Konoha, attacking and putting pressure on one another.
Strangers hurled venomous words at each other.
It really warmed the heart to hear.
But that was someone else's problem.
Two days later.
The Ninja Academy.
The bustle at the school gates stood in stark contrast to Root's testing at the orphanage.
Parents bringing their children to enroll packed the entrance so tightly that no one could get through.
Amamiya Maki followed Matron Yuki through the crowd.
His gaze swept rapidly across one unfamiliar face after another.
He was looking for someone.
Even now, after transmigrating, he still hadn't determined exactly what era he'd arrived in.
So he was searching for one person.
Someone whose mere appearance would let him pin down the timeline.
The spiky-haired blond! Naruto Uzumaki.
The original story had spelled out just how miserable that guy's time at the Ninja Academy had been.
All alone, treated coldly by the entire village and ostracized by his peers.
Parents even treated him as something cursed and told their children to stay away.
If a few casually hurtful remarks didn't send the pressure points pouring in for someone living in that environment, his name wasn't Amamiya.
Amamiya Maki weaved through the crowd, craning his neck until it nearly snapped.
Finally, at the long table where enrollment details were being registered.
He spotted a familiar flash of gold.
Spiky hair. Blond.
The boy wasn't tall and was standing on tiptoe to sign his name on the registration form.
Found him.
Amamiya Maki took a deep breath, a smile curling his lips.
He squeezed through the crowd toward the blond figure, already rapidly arranging what he would say next in his head.
"Where'd this spiky-haired blond come from? Don't tell me you're some kind of monster!"
"Everyone else came with their parents. Where are yours? Don't tell me you're an orphan! Hahaha!"
He deliberately made his final burst of laughter extra loud.
He made sure the other boy wouldn't miss a single word.
This was one of the required courses for Konoha's troublemakers.
No matter how quietly they gossiped, they always made sure their target could hear.
After speaking, he stood there and waited for the system to display that familiar notification.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
The [Pressure applied successfully] notification stubbornly refused to appear.
Amamiya Maki's smile froze on his face.
Wait a second.
Something wasn't right?
How could Naruto not fall for that?
With how pitiful he was in the original story, and the way the villagers tormented him every day...
He'd have done well not to secretly shed a few tears all alone at night.
Sure, my three-hit combo wasn't exactly a high-level play.
But against someone in Naruto's league, shouldn't it have been a total stomp?
Impossible!
The great Naruto Uzumaki was actually this good at handling pressure?
"Uh... how did you know that?"
The voice interrupted Amamiya Maki's train of thought.
He looked down and saw that the blond with the spiky hair had turned around.
There was even a sincere smile on his face.
Amamiya Maki had seen that smile countless times in the original story.
Amamiya Maki swallowed.
That blond's face, his hair color, his smile...
"Minato Namikaze?"
Even he could barely believe it as the name left his mouth.
The blond blinked, his smile growing even brighter. "You know me?"
Amamiya Maki stared at the sunny smile on his face, so perfect it was almost unreal.
He understood now. This wasn't Naruto.
It was Naruto's dad.
The Yellow Flash, a one-man army during the Third Shinobi World War.
The future Fourth Hokage.
And the man who, on the Night of the Nine-Tails, had left his son even worse off than his wife had been back in the day.
Amamiya Maki's mind went blank.
His body reacted first, his lips pulling into an incredibly stiff smile.
"Haha, wrong person. I'll stop bothering you and get going."
He turned and left.
Amamiya Maki figured there was no point wasting any more breath on someone who wouldn't buckle under pressure.
[Detected that the host has inflicted mental pressure on "himself"] [Pressure points +3]
Amamiya Maki: ...
Stop with the pop-ups.
How embarrassing!
Before you continue