The atmosphere outside versus inside the test room felt like two completely different worlds.
Although very few people were in the hallway, Teams 7 and 8 found it quite warm and comforting, rather like a cozy refuge in winter.
Inside, by contrast, the exam hall was crowded and clamorous.
But the instant Naruto and Sakura stepped inside, they felt a biting chill, as though countless needles of killing intent were pricking at their skin.
Almost at once, the room began to go quiet, and the stares of numerous strangers fell on Naruto (who'd never encountered Zabuza or Haku in the Land of Wave Arc) and Sakura, making them tense up involuntarily.
"W‑what's with the trembling, dead last?" Sasuke's voice came from behind them.
Hearing his taunting, Naruto somehow snapped out of his dread. "Who's trembling! I'm just fired up, believe it!"
Izayoi wasn't paying much attention to Team 7. He simply turned to Hinata and Shino.
"Let's go find our seats."
"Mm," they both agreed.
They scanned the posted seat assignments. Coincidentally, Izayoi and Hinata were assigned the same desk in the central third row.
Yes, that was originally Naruto's seat in the manga. But in this timeline, Naruto's seat was next to Hinata's, and Izayoi had swapped places with him. Naruto didn't mind such a small request at all.
Interestingly, Izayoi's seat ended up next to Sasuke's, so by switching, Sasuke and Naruto now became desk partners. Who knew if Sasuke would help Naruto cheat, or if the stirring events from the original story would unfold differently? The butterfly effect was already in play.
For instance, the classic moment where the Nine Rookie Genin chatted in front of the lectern... never happened, nor did Yakushi Kabuto show up to play his "friendly senior" card or do that little scuffle with the Oto‐nin.
Taking their seats, Izayoi and Hinata settled in and, as usual, started whispering to each other—though with so many strangers around, they kept the topics safe.
"So about Hanabi—she's started training the Eight Trigrams: Thirty‐Two Palms already?" Izayoi asked in surprise.
"Mm‑hm." Hinata nodded, eyes shining with a sister's pride. "Father and some of our clan elders said her taijutsu talent is even higher than mine. When I was her age, I was only learning the basics of Jūken, and my chakra was definitely weaker than hers."
Izayoi said nothing, just gave a little smile. Hanabi's talent was indeed high, but to him, it still couldn't compare to Hinata's true potential.
If only he'd unlocked Uzumaki Bloodline (Purple) and awakened Healing Bites for Hinata at age five, then after two whole years of absorbing his chakra, she would be even more astounding now than Hanabi was.
Still, it was remarkable how "red‐tier" Otsutsuki Bloodline plus the healing factor from the Uzumaki clan had turned his chakra into a "booster" for them.
While Izayoi and Hinata chatted away, more and more participants flooded in, until at some point:
Poof, poof, poof—
A chain of small blasts, like balloons popping, drew everyone's attention from their test papers.
At the front, several clouds of white smoke appeared out of nowhere. As the haze vanished, there stood Morino Ibiki, proctor for the first exam, flanked by several exam supervisors.
"Silence," Ibiki said with quiet authority. Instantly, the exam room grew so hushed you could hear a pin drop. Ninja who'd looked formidable in the corridor moments before were now holding their breath under Ibiki's ice‐cold gaze—he bore that interrogation‐specialist aura, with deep scars and eyes like a prison warden, radiating a sense of threat at all times.
Without bothering for intimidation stunts, Ibiki gave a simple rundown of the rules of the written exam—namely how only squads of three who each still had points at the end could remain, and how you'd lose two points for each cheating infraction.
Once your points dropped to zero, the entire squad would be expelled. After explaining that the notorious "tenth question" would come last, Ibiki declared the start of the first exam.
"Awww, Sasukee, he‑help meee," Naruto moaned as soon as he saw it was written test time—the same sort of nightmare he'd had all through the Academy. He looked white as a sheet, whispering frantically to Sasuke.
Sasuke smirked a bit at Naruto's distress... until he glanced at his own test paper.
...what the heck is this?!
He had no clue about any of it. Was he not actually the academic whiz he'd thought? He almost panicked, then found his eyes drawn toward Izayoi's row.
Izayoi and Hinata had already started scribbling answers onto their papers. At that, Sasuke once again felt that gulf between them opening wide. But being seated in a rear row, he soon took comfort that he could cheat by copying. A cocky grin curled onto his face as his pupils shifted color: the two‐tomoe Sharingan.
Keeping his gaze pinned on Izayoi's movements, Sasuke's own pen scratched out the same answers onto blank spaces—even though the pen strokes obviously weren't his normal handwriting.
All around the exam hall, others who couldn't answer the problems were attempting various forms of subterfuge, using hidden nin‐tools, clan‐based secret techniques, or dojustu. It was cheat or fail, plain and simple.
Morino Ibiki and his monitors watched in silence, marking down any blatant, incompetent attempts—minus two points for each detection. If a participant hit zero, that entire team was booted.
Sure enough, within five minutes, some hapless candidate lost all their points and was tossed out along with their teammates.
Those who caught that sight felt the pressure mount. They realized that if they tried cheating in a clumsy way and got caught, their whole squad would hate them forever for blowing the exam. Meanwhile, those with special jutsu or dojustu quietly kept using them, hoping they wouldn't be discovered.
Forty minutes passed. Empty seats now dotted the classroom, with many squads presumably having been expelled already.
Izayoi and Hinata had finished writing ages ago, idly tapping out coded signals beneath the desk, making even the veteran proctors twitch in disbelief.
They looked suspicious—but not suspicious enough to be penalized, apparently. Another five minutes went by, at which point Ibiki glanced at his watch.
"All right, pens down!" Ibiki barked. "Now... here comes the tenth question."
~~~
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