No one understood shurikenjutsu better than the Uchiha.
Sasuke held five shuriken in his hands, then suddenly swept both arms outward from the center.
In an instant, all five shuriken shot through the air at once.
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
Five shuriken.
Five targets.
Every single one struck dead center.
“Wow! Sasuke-kun is so cool!”
“Sasuke-kun, I love you!”
All the girls immediately had hearts in their eyes.
Sasuke stood there proudly, displaying the pride of the Uchiha Clan to the fullest.
Naturally, Naruto was not like his counterpart in the original story, desperately trying to stand out just to attract attention while growing jealous of anyone who drew more attention than him.
Naruto preferred keeping a low profile.
So he simply followed Iruka’s instructions and threw his shuriken one by one in an ordinary, unremarkable manner.
Most of them hit the targets.
At the same time, Naruto grasped the essential principles behind shuriken throwing.
As long as he wanted to, his accuracy could improve very quickly.
That was one of the benefits of cultivating the mental state of constant absorption.
He learned quickly, grasped key points quickly, and could rapidly sense how the surrounding environment affected a shuriken’s trajectory while finely adjusting the force in his hand.
Although Naruto’s five throws had merely struck the targets without much precision, he had already finished processing all the data from those attempts.
If he wanted to, his very next throw could hit the bullseye.
But Naruto was someone who preferred keeping a low profile.
Even after mastering the throwing method, he would quietly conceal his ability.
He was walking a completely different path from the Naruto of the original story.
Because of that, Iruka’s relationship with Naruto had never become particularly close.
To Iruka, Naruto was merely an ordinary student.
Sometimes, Iruka could not even prevent traces of hatred from surfacing in his expression.
After all, in his mind, Naruto was the incarnation of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox.
And the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox was the enemy that had killed both his parents.
Transferring that resentment onto Naruto was only natural.
Iruka was no saint, after all.
In the original story, it had been Naruto’s grievances and questioning that shook Iruka’s heart.
But clearly, the current Naruto would never complain about his suffering to him.
And even if Naruto did feel wronged now, his way of expressing it would not be crying, questioning people, or declaring that he would become Hokage so everyone would acknowledge him.
The current Naruto’s way of dealing with someone who wronged him was simple—
He would slap them hard enough to make them feel wronged instead.
That was merely something he said to fool the Third Hokage, a way of retaliating against the old man’s attempts to brainwash him.
If you looked at me coldly, then naturally I would look at you coldly in return.
If resentment were repaid with virtue, then how should virtue itself be repaid?
Repay virtue with virtue.
Repay resentment with justice.
Naruto intended to live by those words.
“Good!”
Seeing Naruto’s ordinary performance and that all his shuriken had at least struck the targets, Iruka marked him as passing on the evaluation sheet.
The same was true of the basic taijutsu, survival exercises, combat training, concealment, and trap-setting lessons that followed.
Naruto always gave an utterly average performance.
Well, combat training was a little different.
Aside from Sasuke, Shikamaru, and several other children from the main branches of shinobi clans, almost no one in Class A wanted to spar with Naruto after being repeatedly warned by their parents.
Whenever Iruka paired someone with Naruto, they would immediately protest and demand a different opponent.
They absolutely refused to fight him.
And because Naruto was deliberately hiding his strength, whenever he faced Kiba, Sasuke, or the others, he barely put in any effort and allowed himself to be defeated with ease.
Combined with the fact that he continued taking written tests using the old multiple-choice rule—
Three long and one short, choose the short one.
Three short and one long, choose the long one.
Naruto unquestionably became a bottom-ranked student whose reputation did not reflect his true ability at all.
Naturally, Naruto did not care.
His week of rest had ended long ago.
He had already devoted all his energy to training the Wind Style: Rasenshuriken.
It had to be said—
Having enormous chakra reserves really did allow one to do whatever they wanted.
It was like a laboratory with an absurd research budget.
You could experiment as much as you pleased.
With enough attempts, it became difficult not to produce results.
As Naruto’s cultivation of constant absorption deepened, both his mental energy and cellular energy had grown tremendously.
Naturally, both the quantity and quality of his chakra had also increased enormously.
Forget the Wind Style: Rasenshuriken for a moment.
Even the amount of chakra consumed by a single Rasengan was already beyond what the children around Naruto could endure.
Even the current Sasuke could not manage it.
After all, during the Chūnin Exams, Sasuke could only use Chidori twice.
Naruto, meanwhile, could train through entire nights without stopping.
The same was now true of his Wind Style: Rasenshuriken training.
Of course, the Wind Style: Rasenshuriken consumed far more chakra than the Rasengan.
So unsurprisingly, Naruto had very little energy left during the day.
Whether it was outdoor training or classroom lessons, Naruto would lie down and fall asleep the moment he had the chance.
Naruto still did not care.
He needed the daytime to recover his strength so he could continue training the Wind Style: Rasenshuriken at night.
The Wind Style: Rasenshuriken truly deserved its reputation as an S-rank technique in terms of training difficulty.
Even though Naruto had already mastered both prerequisites—the Rasengan and Wind Release chakra nature transformation—completing the Wind Style: Rasenshuriken was still extraordinarily difficult.
After all, Naruto did not know the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique yet.
He could only grind through the training himself.
Unlike Naruto, who deliberately kept a low profile, Sasuke’s popularity continued growing exponentially even though Sasuke himself was not particularly flamboyant.
Even older female students had been captivated by him.
Wherever he went, countless hearts followed.
The reputation of Sasuke Uchiha, the genius, became increasingly widespread.
At this point, theoretical studies, intelligence analysis, and genjutsu analysis had not yet become major parts of the curriculum.
So Sasuke ranked first in every subject.
Even Sakura, the study fanatic, could not stop him.
And since Sasuke was canonically handsome to begin with, it was only natural that he was immensely popular.
Yet under those circumstances—
Sasuke, who had never once missed class, was absent.
“Iruka-sensei, Sasuke-kun didn’t come to class today. Is he sick?”
Seeing that Sasuke was absent, Sakura immediately asked with concern.
“That’s right, Iruka-sensei! If Sasuke-kun is sick, then as his classmates, we should go visit him!”
The other girls chimed in one after another.
“Sasuke isn’t sick…”
Iruka forced a smile onto his face.
“He went away for special training. After all, he’s the genius of the Uchiha Clan.”
“So there’s no need to worry. Once Sasuke finishes his training, he’ll naturally return.”
The conflict between the village and the Uchiha had not been allowed to spread into the Ninja Academy.
But Naruto, Shikamaru, and the heirs of the other shinobi clans already knew.
The Uchiha Clan had been exterminated.
However, an event as enormous as the destruction of the Uchiha Clan could never remain hidden forever.
Before long, rumors began spreading throughout the Ninja Academy.
“Did you hear? The Uchiha are gone!”
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
“Gone means gone. Have you seen any Uchiha from the Konoha Military Police Force lately?”
“Now that you mention it… I really haven’t.”
“My house is near the Uchiha compound, so I pass by there all the time. Usually, you can always see Uchiha standing guard at their posts, looking down on everyone else.”
“But lately, whenever I pass by, there’s nobody there.”
“The gates to the Uchiha compound are open too, but I haven’t seen a single person anywhere on the streets inside.”
“W-What exactly happened?”
“I don’t know. I asked my parents, but they said Lord Hokage issued a prohibition forbidding anyone from talking about it.”