NOVEL NEXT Chapter 6: 4. Tournament of Survival: Round One: Fools
No.13 could be seen making some hidden traps as he walked, however, his stoic face hid the internal tumultuous thoughts of his encounter with that weird girl.
During his first hour in the exam, he could already see the literal freaks, He was quite the humble guy however, this exam reminded him that this event itself was not cannon and this type of curriculum or exams is a testament to the fact that quality shinobis are gonna be produced by the end of this endeavour.
He might have underestimated the quality of the shinobi produced by this program. He has seen the desperation of the bottom-level students during the last 2 years.
According to his cannon knowledge, he is quite sure that each one of those will reach a chunin level of 12 at the minimum if they survive till then, but it seems that Danzo has other plans, It was quite weird to see Danzo training over ten thousand students, but it seems that time to thin that amount has arrived if this exam didn't pointed that already.
Even Haku a person who mostly travelled during the time with Zabuza was able to reach Jounin level at 12 already, people with much more drive than him and reasons with the right competitive environment like this one could reach his level around 10 or lower if they had same Bloodline advantage as him.
'I am not gonna remove the plaques that I will plunder now from my storage seal'
No.13 released the chakra from his feet and became a blur. He also releases chakras from his entire body to form a sheet of blue chakra to counter the air resistance.
This was a seal-less imitation of Body Flicker.
Now, one able to use jutsu seal-lessly has two ways: either one can practice one jutsu many times to reduce the hand seals such that after a certain time, it becomes seal-less or one can have high internal chakra control which could help to imitate the use of some hand-seals, removing other hand seals will still take practice.
Non-elemental jutsus or simple jutsus take less time to learn seal-lessly than their counterparts.
Plus, the technique the guy was using is less chakra expensive than Shunshin as it involves mastery of advanced chakra control and enhancement which could be seen in Combat-Medic Nins.
Anyway, finding the first target was not that hard when there were 100 people scattered in a relatively not-so-big area.
A blonde girl could be seen looting the corpse of another human. He closed on the distance by sneaking, but just as he was gonna knock her out, she made her body arch back such that her head which was priorly looking in the front was now able to see No.13 albeit upside down, but just as she saw him, she spat a fireball.
Now, No.13 was prepared for the other party to retaliate even if they spat a fireball at point-blank range, He already had tied a chakra string to a tree and his modified substitution was even faster this time such that he only got a few minor burns, despite him not getting in contact of the fireball which signified that the other party is already learning change in fire transformation.
Now, one merit of this program was that anybody could learn anything and instructors told them to try everything to find where their talent lay to utilize it properly, so seeing somebody specializing in a certain field was not that surprising if the other party looked 9 or 10 year old as they had a 2-year advantage on people of the age of No.13.
The norm in the program was different than the academy, kids here were giving up their childhood and not for war, so it would have been quite weird if this scenario was not the case.
Seeing that his approach didn't work, he quickly threw a few shurikens at her as no matter how hot the fire was, it was not enough to melt the shurikens. Expectedly, the opponent body-flickered substituted, but with just one seal.
'Is my luck bad or is that my class is just below average or trashiest class' No.13 internally cursed.
No.13 tilted his head and a beam of fire could be seen passing very close to him, The interesting thing was that this was not that hot compared to the fireball previously.
He recognized the jutsu, 'C rank: FireBeam jutsu: Counterpart of Great Fireball which focuses more on the temperature of flames and is slow, this jutsu sacrifices that part for the speed, however, this could still make one suffer depending on its usage'
'This was also done seal-lessly, is it really that easy to do?... anyway, I didn't even see that jutsu until it already passed, No wonder that corpse was put with its face on the ground, it probably died the same way.
"It seems that you have some skill," She said while disappearing in another body flicker in the opposite direction.
No.13 chased after her in body flicker but he was cautious as he had only seen C rank jutsus, One can even buy a B rank jutsu if they are top of the class and saving points... however, A rank jutsus are not available for purchase.
Suddenly a Fireball came at him at a relatively faster speed but side manoeuvring it was not that hard, however, a Fire Storm could be seen heading towards him at a very fast pace, 'Fuck!, that's a combination jutsu of Wind and Fire'. He quickly went into the earth deep enough not to get heated.
A Green Glow could be seen in his hand which he used to take care of the previous burns.
'Well, time to retreat, I already have acquired what I wanted, no need to waste chakra or time' He thought while moving in a completely different direction.
The girl at the top remained cautious as her view was blocked by the Fire-storm, so she didn't know that he was an earth user which was completely intentional on her opponent's part as he didn't actually reveal much information which is crucial in ninja world where assassination and ambushes were a common occurrence.
However, after being cautious for 10 minutes and rapidly changing her position multiple times, she relaxed a bit, the fun part was that she realized that all her plaques were stolen after she defeated another opponent which was 2 hours later. Her scream was reminiscent of a certain black-haired boy.
No.13 who had human body parts, decided on his next target.
He had already collected over 10 plaques and now was going for another bunch, a bald boy could be seen lazily sitting on a branch and eating grapes, the same guy who murdered another kid in a second, this guy had around 10 plaques as well and his combat power is estimated to be around that previous fire girl.
However, this time, he has already collected information about his opponent at least whatever his previous victims allowed him to show.
So, just as another grape that was in the air got into the older boy's mouth, a bunch of Kunai could be seen shot from all directions towards the boy, Just as they came in 25 meters from him, He said "Repel" in a low voice and all Kunai stopped and got repelled.
This was an application of B rank 'Lightning style: Electromagnetic tussle' which dealt with metallic objects like this by making oneself similar to an Electromagnet.
A series of explosions could be seen from those Kunai.
"So, you are the culprit behind that explosion at the beginning of the exam, you must have killed the poor guy who was against you, well, you tried to kill me, so it is right for me to kill you right?" He said while disappearing in sparks of electricity. It was C Rank Lightning Flicker.
He appeared close to where he saw a guy standing on a branch who smirked at him, "You already lost the moment I released those explosives"
He ignored the other guy's yapping and used 'B rank Lightning Style: Discharge' and in a flash, a beam of electricity hit the guy who was yapping.
However, He realized that he just burned a log, so he very quickly used Lightning Flicker to change his position but seeing that he was still standing in the same position, he realized that his feet were stuck in a swamp and so was he going down.
'How did I not realise that I lost my footing and went into this swamp, also why can't I remember that guy's face' Was the last thought before he blacked out.
"Lol, that was easy," He said while putting the sack of plaques in his arm guards, but just as he was going to, his body stopped completely.
"Yup, it was easy indeed," a Black haired guy said while forming a seal, a shadow could be seen stretched from his shadow to No.13's shadow.