Even though he already knew the storyline, seeing it in person still made Aoba marvel at how precocious people were in the ninja world.
Obito’s situation wasn’t unique; in fact, it was quite common, and the Academy didn’t forbid it either.
After all, the ninja world had endured prolonged eras of warfare.
No one knew whether they would return from the battlefield next time.
Even when a powerhouse like the Hidden Leaf Village sent shinobi on missions, there was never a hundred-percent guarantee of safety.
Early marriage and childbearing were the norm here.
Outstanding individuals, in particular, found it far easier to win the favor of the opposite sex and protect their offspring as they grew.
It wasn’t at all rare to find grandfathers in their thirties.
“Morning, Aoba!” Raido Namiashi greeted him with a smile.
“Good morning.”
Aoba returned the greeting.
He had a fairly positive impression of this future teammate of his.
“Did something happen?
You look pretty excited.”
“Huh?
You don’t know?”
“Know what?
I just got here,” Aoba replied lazily, slumping across his desk.
“Heh, word is we’re having combat sparring today!”
“Combat?”
That finally caught Aoba’s attention.
Raido wouldn’t have sounded like this if it were just throwing wooden kunai at each other again.
“Yeah!
Actual fighting, like real ninja!
*Whoosh whoosh whoosh!*”
Raido made energetic chopping motions with his hands and feet, his excitement plain on his face.
Just then, the bell rang.
Kurenai Yuhi said goodbye to her friends and returned to her seat, immediately shooting a deadpan look at her flailing desk-mate.
“What?
Another one gone mad?”
“Oh, sounds like you heard too.
But why ‘another’?
Who else?”
“Who else?
That Asuma Sarutobi guy.
He came over earlier spouting a bunch of bizarre nonsense about letting me see his ‘true strength’ and saying he’d beat you.
What a joke—he can’t even beat me.”
Kurenai briefly recounted what had happened, not missing the chance to mock Asuma at the end.
Aoba didn’t reply, offering only a faint smile.
He quietly observed Kurenai’s attitude.
Seeing that she still maintained her aversion to Asuma, he breathed a sigh of relief.
He couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer inertia of the original canon.
Even after guarding against it to this extent—going so far as to engineer a conflict and have them come to blows—it still hadn’t made Asuma dislike Kurenai.
In fact, Asuma was clinging to her even more shamelessly.
*Did I accidentally unlock some weird fetish in him?*
Afternoon arrived soon enough.
When the taijutsu instructor announced that they would be holding combat sparring matches today, the entire class erupted in excitement.
After reiterating the safety rules, the instructor announced the first matchup.
Match One: Kakashi versus Obito Uchiha.
First place against the dead last.
Everyone had expected an instructional stomp where Kakashi swept the floor with Obito.
Much to their surprise, Obito actually went toe-to-toe with Kakashi.
Exchanging blow for blow, the two matched each other evenly in pure taijutsu offense and defense.
The spectating students were dumbfounded.
Was this really that silly, dead-last Obito who showed up late every single day?
His taijutsu was this formidable?!
Even Might Guy couldn’t hold back his burning passion, cheering enthusiastically for both of them.
‘I can see it!
He’s way slower than that bastard Tekka!’
*Swish, swish, swish!*
Kakashi launched several shuriken.
*Clang, clang, clang!*
‘Shoot!’
Seeing the incoming shuriken, Obito hurriedly drew a kunai from his holster to deflect them.
Just as he tried to counterattack, he suddenly saw multiple Kakashi clones charging right at him.
‘Damn it!
If only I had awakened my Sharingan, I’d see right through this kind of ninjutsu in an instant!’
With clones rushing him from different directions, Obito had no way to distinguish the real body from the duplicates and could only dodge frantically.
‘Alright, that’s game.’
Aoba quietly shut down his auxiliary chip.
Though it had cost a bit of chakra, he had gathered some interesting data.
A split second later, one of the silhouettes swept Obito’s legs out from under him.
Before he could scramble back to his feet, a cold kunai was already pressed against his throat.
“Match over!
Kakashi Hatake wins!”
As the instructor announced the end of the bout, Kakashi sheathed his kunai.
“Alright, form the Seal of Reconciliation.”
“Damn it!”
Even though he knew Kakashi was strong, losing so easily left a bitter taste in Obito’s mouth.
Little did he know, Obito’s skill had genuinely surprised Kakashi as well.
He hadn’t expected someone as goofy and unreliable as Obito to possess such sharp taijutsu.
“Next match: Aoba Yamashiro versus Asuma Sarutobi.”
Hearing that his opponent was Asuma, Aoba was slightly taken aback.
By normal pairing logic, his opponent should have been Might Guy, who had placed second-to-last.
Instead, it was Asuma Sarutobi.
Though Asuma was rebellious and regularly clashed with the teachers, he was still the son of the Hokage.
Blessed with abundant resources and private tutoring after school, he was no slouch.
As shown during his altercation with Kurenai, he had held back and hadn’t fought at full throttle.
‘Now this is interesting.’
Aoba immediately recalled what Kurenai had said that morning.
Asuma had clearly known in advance that they would be facing off.
Was he trying to stake an early claim on a child bride?
Or was someone using this chance to test Aoba’s capabilities?
Or perhaps a bit of both?
‘System, initiate chakra radar scan.’
With a subtle tap of his finger, a special frequency of chakra ripples radiated outward with Aoba at the epicenter.
[Chakra Sensing]
It was a sensory trick Aoba had picked up from observing the Anbu, heavily modified by merging it with his chip’s radar functions.
Because it was an improvised, stolen technique, its range was only two to three hundred meters, but that was barely enough for now.
The system quickly detected an anomalous chakra signature: a reaction seventy-three meters to the southwest, midair.
[Telescope Technique]
There was no need to guess—it had to be that shameless old codger, the Third Hokage, peeping on them.
‘In that case, don’t mind if I don’t hold back!’
The corners of Aoba’s lips curled into a smirk as he walked toward the center of the grounds under Asuma’s provocative gaze.
‘Damn you, Aoba, you coward!
Today I’ll make Kurenai see what kind of guy you really are.’
Looking back at his past life, conspiracy theories about Hiruzen Sarutobi had flooded the internet endlessly, but Aoba himself held no real grudge against the Third Hokage.
Though called a village, Konoha was actually slightly larger than a small town from his previous life.
In a village founded only forty years ago, two leaders had already perished, and the third had been appointed in a crisis.
How much political wisdom or administrative prowess could one realistically expect?
The various systems currently in place in Konoha were, in Aoba’s eyes, downright laughably weak.
The Council of Elders system was riddled with glaring flaws.
Elders held the power to check the Hokage, while Root operatives answered solely to Danzo.
It was an utter farce.
Even so, being able to withstand the joint assaults of the surrounding four Great Shinobi Villages during the Second Shinobi World War and the impending Third War under such circumstances meant Hiruzen Sarutobi genuinely had some real competence.
As for the conspiracy theories, they were merely judgments made by netizens armed with a god’s-eye perspective.
More than anything, people from his home country projected their own sophisticated political understanding onto Hiruzen Sarutobi’s shoes, giving rise to all those wild theories about the Naruto world.
The Third wasn’t too bad—at least, that was what Aoba believed.
After all, the simple fact that war pensions were paid out in full put Konoha leagues ahead of the other ninja villages.
The other villages were in far worse shape.
Those born into ninja clans might fare decently, but commoners had almost zero chance of rising through the ranks.
The Mist went so far as to purge its own clans, and its academy was a ruthless slaughterhouse where the more talented you were, the faster you died.