Chapter 31: Graduation Exam (1)

Only a week was now left for 4th year's exams. Genki followed the same procedure as last year and asked the students interested in participating in the Graduation Exam to meet him after class. Fujin thought, 'I guess it's time to finally become a ninja. There's not much that I can learn in the academy anymore. At best I could learn another element or a few more Genjutsu. If I don't attempt the exam this year, the teachers and maybe even Hiruzen could grow suspicious. And I definitely won't receive much help from them in the future. As for tanking the exam, I am not confident that I could fake my performance convincingly enough for someone who has decades of experience. Either way, I believe I am ready now.' After the class, Fujin visited Genki and confirmed his participation. Genki smiled and wished him good luck.

With just a week left for the exams, Fujin started to focus on the syllabus for written exams. The syllabus was actually quite surprising. He recalled back when Genki started teaching this in the academy. He was teaching Trigonometry. Fujin's first thoughts when he saw that was, 'Trigo? For fucking 9 year old kids? What's next? Differentiation and Integration?' As annoyed as he was by it, he was extremely surprised when Hana was able to solve them perfectly. He mentally screamed, 'How the fuck can 9 year old kids learn Trigo so easily?' He sighed at how much smarter the kids here were and continued with his studies.

He also wanted to be perfectly prepared while going on missions. He stopped learning new seals, and instead had his clones focus on making a few essential objects for him. He bought 2 ninja waist bags, 2 ninja leg pouches and a couple of metallic wristbands. He then had his clones make storage seals on these items.

The Fuinjutsu scroll in section D of the library expanded a bit on the storage seal. It explained ways to increase or decrease the size of the storage space, as well as manipulating its shape. It wasn't very difficult as it only increased or decreased the number of space symbols involved. So the seal itself was still very basic. However, this was very useful for Fujin.

In the interior of the ninja waist bags, Fujin managed to draw 7 storage seals. For ninja leg pouch, he was able to draw 4 seals. These had a lot less space as compared to the seals he made on scrolls, however, considering that their purpose was to enhance the capacity of the bags and pouches, it was very handy!

For the leg pouch, 2 seals could store 6 kunais each, and other 2 seals could store 24 shurikens each. He then created various triggers to refill the pouch from weapons in the storage seals. This way, his weapon supply would be much larger.

For the waist bag, the seals could store a lot more. But he hadn't yet decided how to fill them all. He did have some ideas like a First-aid kit, ninja ropes, scrolls, seals that stored elements, more weapons, explosion tags, soldier pills, ration bars and so on.

For the wristbands, he made one small seal, on each of them. When he wears the wristbands, these seals will be directly under his palms. The seals created a cuboidal storage seal which was around 15cm*15cm*100cm. Both these seals were made to store swords. This way, he could quickly access his swords whenever he wanted to. Other than this seal, he planned on drawing 3 more seals on each wristband. For the seals on the opposite side to the current one, Fujin planned on buying huge sturdy shields and storing them there. If he ever gets in an awkward position where he can't defend himself with the rock shield, he'll depend on this shield to provide cover to himself. However, since he wasn't sure about the size of shield he'd buy, he didn't draw that seal. Other than these 2, he planned on inscribing 2 more storage seals on the wristband, but for now he didn't have any idea what to store in there. So he left it for the future.

[A/N : Ideas for the above are welcomed]

On the day before the exam, Fujin, under a disguise, bought a lot of weapons. He bought 96 shurikens and 24 kunais to fill both the leg pouches. He also bought 12 explosion tags to attach them to 6 kunais in each of the pouches. In all it cost 65k Ryo. He bargained and got them for 55k Ryo under the false promise of buying again in the future.

Next day, the final exam began. Since he intended to pass, and wanted to be rank 1, he aced the written exam. He was sure that he'd score full. With the absence of Teru, Nobu and Yori, he also did the best in the shuriken throwing competition. In Taijutsu, he still ranked 2 behind Hoka. While in the Ninjutsu exam, he made sure to perform only as good as Hana. There wasn't any chakra control exercise in the exam. But Fujin wasn't very surprised as nearly everyone in his class had very good chakra control and could do both tree climbing and water walking as Genki had held a lot of sessions on it this year. The exam also tested the students on the various basic skills that were taught in the previous year. Fujin again ensured that he'd be ranked near the top in this exam.

After the results were out, Fujin ranked 1st, Hana ranked 2nd and Hoka surprisingly ranked 5th. He had improved his written exam scores a lot to be able to get such a high rank.

A week later, the Graduation Exam was conducted. Fujin noticed that there were students from 3 different batches. His own, his senior batch and the batch one year junior to him. 23 students from his class were participating.

Unknown to Fujin, the exam was held by Nara Kisho. He looked at the list of students participating. There were 68 participants from the 5th year, 35 from the 4th year and 8 from the 3rd year. He sighed thinking 'What a drag' this exam would be and instructed to begin the exam.

The first exam was a written test. Fujin looked at the paper expecting some more theory questions. However he was surprised when he read them. They weren't any theory questions, but instead scenarios were mentioned and the students had to write in what they would do. After reading all the scenarios, Fujin sighed, 'Just basic ninja protocols and confirming that the students are brainwashed. To think that I actually expected something good.' He answered as any, ready to graduate, academy student would answer.

The exam was an hour long. Once the hour was up, the papers were collected and sent to Nara Kisho. He had 6 academy teachers check the answers and decide whether the student is ready to graduate or not. It took half an hour to completely check them and then they provided the results to Kisho. One of the teachers said, "Sir, we've completed checking. Out of 111 students, 79 have provided satisfactory answers. Rest aren't ready yet." Kisho nodded and said, "Dismiss them."

Those 32 students were asked to go back home, and prepare well for the next year. Fujin was surprised by this, 'Wow, they just asked the kids to leave? Won't that be demotivating? Or are they just trying to reduce the number of participants for the next exam?'

Fujin wasn't alone with those thoughts. One of the teachers, who taught a normal class, asked Kisho, "Kisho senpai, won't this demotivate the students? The ones who participated in the exam are among the brightest students in the academy." Kisho looked at the teacher. He was 2 years junior to Kisho in the academy, but he wasn't very talented and had barely become a chuunin during the war.

Kisho shook his head and said, "If they get demotivated by such a small failure, then there's no hope for them. They would be better off in the Genin reserve force and we'll save the resources needed to raise someone more worthy to chuunin rank." The teacher wasn't very convinced with the answer, but didn't say anything as this wasn't the first time Kisho had supervised the graduation exam.

After the written exams, the students were tested on various parameters like shurikens, stealth, camping, chakra control, etc. It was similar to the tests conducted for Fujin's class a week back. Since the tests for elite classes were already conducted, they weren't tested again and their scores from a week back were carried forward.

The academy teachers observed everyone's performance, and failed another 15 students over these exams. On getting the reports, Kisho thought, 'Wow! That's so convenient. Now the Taijutsu tournament will be so much simpler to conduct.'

Right before the Taijutsu tournament began, Hokage arrived to watch the exam. He was followed by a character that Fujin recognized very easily, Hatake Kakashi. Fujin was very surprised to see him. He thought, 'Why is Kakashi here? Hiruzen wouldn't force him to start training kids right now, would he? I really hope not. Canon timeline will be fucked up if Hiruzen assigns my squad to him! I am not sure how strong I'd be in another 6-7 years, so for now I really hope something doesn't change due to me.'

Next was a Taijutsu tournament between the 64 remaining students. Kisho arranged for a knockout tournament. So one student could fight for a maximum of 6 times. Fujin breezed through to the semifinals. In the semifinals, he had to fight with a Hyuga who was a year older than him. Fujin fought very hard against him, but was still at a lot of disadvantage. While he did get a few critical hits in with one strong punch on his right rib, another on his nose and a strong kick under his left rib, in the end, he still lost the fight.

Fujin was initially a bit irritated at the loss, 'Damn, how exactly do these guys train? I lost despite the amount of progress I made over the past couple of months!'

He then calmed himself and analyzed the fight better, 'On other hand, it's probably reasonable. I'm guessing the elders from the Hyuga clan regularly spar with them. I, on the other hand, could only spar with my clone. Also, the Hyuga fighting style is entirely Taijutsu. I, on the other hand, was a lot more dependent on Wind Propelling jutsu, Body Flicker jutsu and Earth Military Movement jutsu during my spars. Removing them does reduce my fighting ability considerably. Perhaps if Ninjutsu and Kenjutsu were allowed, I'd have won this fight. Not to mention, I didn't even use chakra to enhance my punches and kicks in the fight.'

He then watched the finals between Hoka and that guy. Due to the injuries he suffered against Fujin, he lost after struggling for a bit. However, having fought both of them, Fujin knew that even without those injuries, Hoka would have still won the match. Hoka ranked first, however Fujin wasn't worried much, 'My points in the normal exam were much higher that Hoka's. So this difference won't affect much, I should still rank first in my class.'

Fujin noticed that no one was eliminated in the Taijutsu tournament.