“That’s a very reasonable arrangement.”
Deep in the forest, Isamu watched the others’ movements through a telescope.
From the way they had divided their forces, he could roughly guess what they had planned.
Unfortunately for them, this was all part of my plan.
During the past two hours, Isamu had paid a truly enormous price quite literally in blood.
He had left Blood Clones throughout various parts of the forest, and they had only one purpose:
To “deal with” as many of the people searching for him as possible.
The five teams followed the routes everyone had spent a long time discussing and settling on the previous day.
Each team maintained a distance of fifty meters from the others.
Once one team discovered traces of Isamu, they would use a signal flare to notify the other teams.
As long as they could hold Isamu off until the second team arrived, they would have a good chance of trapping him.
But what none of them had expected was that they had barely advanced a hundred meters when Hyūga Hizashi discovered traces of Isamu.
Two of them, in fact.
Another clone?
After notifying the other teams with a signal, everyone began moving toward one of the figures.
The team on the outermost flank was the first to make contact with Isamu.
In Hizashi’s field of vision, the figure representing Isamu’s chakra disappeared only a few seconds after making contact with the team.
Obviously, it had already been dealt with.
Hizashi immediately ordered everyone to change direction and attack the other figure.
But he knew perfectly well that this one was also a clone.
Sure enough, after coming into contact with the outermost team, that figure disappeared a few seconds later as well.
When everyone finally arrived, all they saw were their companions sprawled on the ground, along with several people comforting them.
No one was actually injured.
They had probably just been frightened by the sudden attack.
Their forehead protectors were still there.
But
A conspicuous horizontal slash now ran across the metal plate of each forehead protector.
In the shinobi world, drawing a horizontal slash across one’s forehead protector signified that the wearer had defected from their village.
Obviously, they hadn’t done this themselves.
There was only one possibility
Isamu!
“What does this mean?
Is he trying to humiliate us?”
“No” Nara Shikaku noticed the sinister implication behind it.
The rules of the examination were simple.
Isamu had to take their forehead protectors, while the students had to protect them.
If this were treated as an actual mission, then for the Konoha students, their forehead protectors were the supplies they had been tasked with protecting.
Isamu’s original objective had been to seize those supplies.
But now
Isamu had changed his approach.
He wasn’t taking the supplies anymore.
He was damaging their integrity.
And the forehead protector happened to have a very special meaning.
No one wanted to graduate while wearing a forehead protector marked like that.
Even if they became shinobi, they’d be laughed at for the rest of their lives.
Compared with someone like Isamu, whose Taijutsu was exceptionally strong, damaging a forehead protector was obviously much easier than actually taking it off someone’s head.
The moment Isamu realized this, his entire line of thinking opened up.
Just then, the team that had encountered Isamu’s other clone earlier also arrived.
The three companions with slashed forehead protectors were particularly conspicuous.
So Isamu’s plan was actually to use his clones as expendable units, sacrificing them in order to damage the integrity of their forehead protectors.
And yet the rules of the examination specifically prevented the students from simply removing their own forehead protectors.
“Something’s wrong!
Go back!”
Shikaku suddenly thought of the weaker students remaining at the camp and immediately ordered his teammates to return.
Unfortunately, they encountered several more of Isamu’s clones along the way, paying the price of fifteen more slashed forehead protectors.
“Shikaku, Isamu’s clones are unusual.
They seem to be constructed around blood as their core.”
As one of the only two dōjutsu users in the team, Hizashi had noticed the abnormality of Isamu’s clones.
Every one of the clones left behind more or less blood after disappearing.
He told Shikaku his theory.
“Constructed around blood”
Shikaku hadn’t even had time to think it through when he was stunned by the peaceful scene awaiting them at the camp.
It wasn’t a diversion?
“He’s here!”
At that moment, Hizashi shouted a warning.
From the forest at the farthest point from them, a figure suddenly emerged and charged toward the people fishing in the river at incredible speed.
The students responsible for guarding them hurried forward to intercept him.
But Isamu charged in with complete disregard for his own safety, drawing a slash across the forehead protectors of three people before the others arrived and overwhelmed him.
Shikaku did the math.
On average, one of Isamu’s clones could trade itself for 2.8 forehead protectors
By this point, nearly twenty forehead protectors had already been slashed.
“Everyone, gather together.”
Some of the people who still hadn’t realized the seriousness of the situation simply followed the order and gathered.
It wasn’t until some students noticed the horizontal slashes across the forehead protectors of others that they realized what had happened.
Having their forehead protectors taken away would mean returning to the Academy and repeating the examination.
But what they found even harder to accept was becoming Genin while wearing a forehead protector marked with the symbol of a missing-nin.
At that moment, however, the more than one hundred people fell into a state of panic.
Everyone understood that, in terms of individual strength, they were absolutely no match for Isamu.
They would need a team of at least ten people to have any chance of threatening Isamu’s main body.
But the problem was that, aside from the close-combat specialist Hyūga Hizashi, Uchiha Toki, Nara Shikaku with his clan’s control-based Secret Technique, and Akimichi Chōza, who was essentially a super-heavy defensive tank, the others weren’t even confident they could defeat one of Isamu’s clones.
And they couldn’t split up to search for Isamu either.
Because the moment they scattered, it would mean allowing Isamu to pick them off one by one.
The one hundred and thirty-three of them had been surrounded by a single person.
Isamu.
Outside the examination area, Hiruzen Sarutobi watched the scene.
He was somewhat exasperated, but at the same time, Isamu’s meticulous thinking was enough to send a chill down his spine.
What irritated him was that the boy had actually dared to damage the forehead protectors.
Yet he also had to acknowledge that Isamu’s way of thinking was indeed different from ordinary people.
The mission Hiruzen had given Isamu was to eliminate eighty percent of the participants.
Compared with taking away their forehead protectors, damaging them was obviously easier.
And it didn’t actually violate the rules.
Once the examination ended, Hiruzen was certain that none of these students would be willing to graduate while wearing a forehead protector bearing the mark of a missing-nin.
So Isamu had still accomplished his objective.
“If I were Shikaku, how would I respond to this move?”
Before he knew it, Hiruzen had even begun putting himself in Shikaku’s position and thinking about how he would break out of this situation.
“If I were Isamu, what would I do next?”
Inside the Forest of Death, Shikaku looked at the more than one hundred people gathered in the middle of the area and suddenly felt the weight on his shoulders.
Now that everyone had gathered in one place, Isamu’s clones couldn’t possibly sneak up and slash another forehead protector unless his main body came personally.
It seemed as though the problem of Isamu’s surprise attacks had been solved.
But Shikaku didn’t believe Isamu would simply give up.
Instead, he began thinking from Isamu’s perspective.
If I were Isamu, what would I do next?
“If I were Shikaku, I would soon discover a very cruel fact.”
Somewhere in the forest, Isamu silently watched everything happening beside the river.
“That is I can only choose one of two things: defend against surprise attacks, or increase the efficiency of gathering food.”
Gathering everyone together could indeed prevent his Blood Clones from launching surprise attacks.
But their food supplies were running low.
Previously, when they didn’t need to worry about surprise attacks, they could spread the people fishing across several sections of the river and improve their efficiency at gathering food.
But now, they didn’t dare stretch their formation out too far.
So
What will you choose?