"Kakashi, Feiyu, you're finally out!"
As they stepped out of the ANBU headquarters, Uchiha Feiyu blinked in surprise when he saw Uchiha Obito and Might Guy waiting at the entrance.
"What are you two doing here?" Feiyu asked. "It's not like anything happened to us. ANBU only locked us up for two days."
"Feiyu, did you seriously forget?!" Obito yelled. "Today is our graduation exam!"
Before Feiyu could react, Guy had already grabbed him by the arm and started sprinting toward the Academy.
"We're gonna be late! Hurry! If the teacher marks us as unqualified, we're doomed!"
Feiyu's eyes lit up.
"What happens if we're unqualified? Do we get sent back to the Academy to repeat a year?"
"You'll get assigned under some random, average Chunin," Kakashi said, walking beside them, his tone flat and faintly ominous. "If a war breaks out… those guys are the first batch of cannon fodder."
…The hell kind of terrorist organization mindset is this?!
Feiyu rolled his eyes, then kicked up his speed in an instant, overtaking both Guy and Obito like it was nothing.
Normally, he wouldn't care that much. With Hatake Sakumo's soul in his hands, even without a good teacher, Feiyu could just grind slowly over time and still end up with at least early-Kakashi-level strength.
But right now, a war was about to start.
Getting stuck with some random Chunin squad leader?
That was just asking to die.
Don't be fooled by the fact that Konoha "won" the Third Great Ninja War. In reality, the village's regular shinobi—its true cannon fodder—were almost completely wiped out.
Just think of that mission where Kakashi and Obito went out with their team: by the time the Yellow Flash used Flying Thunder God to reinforce the main front, the Konoha forces at the frontline were practically all dead, with only a handful left standing.
If even in a crucial battle like that the village was scraping the bottom of the barrel for manpower, you could imagine how brutal the overall war was.
Driven by a very strong desire not to be sacrificed on the front lines, Feiyu dragged Obito and Guy along and rushed back to the Academy, arriving just in time for the graduation test.
The exam format was simple:
One-on-one sparring.
The stronger you performed, the higher your ranking. High ranking meant better jonin sensei and more resources.
If you performed poorly? You'd just be shoved into a squad under an average Chunin and sent to die as cannon fodder.
What's that, you ask—what happens if you fail the exam?
There is no failing.
It's war time. They need bodies.
Even if you skip the exam entirely, the Academy will just mark you as "passed," force a genin forehead protector into your hands, and stuff you into the mission roster.
"You made it, Uchiha Feiyu! Don't think you can keep taking advantage just because you're older. This time, I'm definitely going to beat you!"
Feiyu had barely stepped into the Academy's training ground when someone immediately barked at him.
He blinked and turned his head, only to see Sarutobi Asuma staring at him, battle spirit burning in his eyes.
Because he was five years older than everyone, Feiyu had spent his school years "beating up children," yet was never called a prodigy. Combined with his lazy attitude, he was looked down on more often than not.
But no matter how much people underestimated him, everyone knew one thing:
Getting punched by him hurt.
Most students didn't even dare talk trash in front of him. Only Sarutobi Asuma had the guts to do it.
That wasn't because his father was the Hokage.
Even if Feiyu beat Asuma until his nose was broken and his head was bleeding, as long as he didn't cripple or kill him, Hiruzen wouldn't step in. The Third Hokage still had that much tolerance.
The real reason was that Asuma's strength actually wasn't bad.
Even with the five-year age gap, he could at least put up some resistance against Feiyu in a match.
That gave Asuma the impression that he wasn't much weaker than Feiyu, and that his potential far exceeded his. Naturally, he was itching every day to knock down this "old man deadweight."
"Oh, it's you, Asuma," Feiyu said, waving lazily. "Well, good luck then."
He honestly didn't care.
Right now, he had a two-tomoe Sharingan, had mastered White Fang's sword style, and was walking around with combat power on par with a tokubetsu jōnin. If he let Sakumo possess him and go all out, he could even tangle with Kage-levels for a bit.
At this level, even Asuma at his Shippuden peak probably wouldn't beat him, let alone this eight-year-old version.
Ever since getting Sakumo's soul, the gap between Feiyu and "normal ninja" had blown wide open. Looking across Konoha's entire history, he would absolutely qualify as a "genius" now.
Well… ignoring those Uchiha freaks who awakened Mangekyō as kids, anyway.
For normal people, the ceiling was someone like Kakashi. At Feiyu's current age, Kakashi had only just become a jōnin.
"What do you mean, I should just 'work hard'?!" Asuma's eyes widened, and he practically growled. "Are you brushing me off again!?"
Feiyu just waved him away again.
His own exam had already been called. He hopped up onto the field, leaving Asuma to fume.
There wasn't much to say about what happened next.
Even before all this, Feiyu had been unmatched among his peers. Now, with White Fang's sword style added on top, his strength had skyrocketed.
He didn't even bother activating his Sharingan. He didn't draw a blade.
He just walked onto the field and beat down his opponents bare-handed, one after another.
He plowed through the early rounds like chopping vegetables, and soon enough, he made it into the final four.
His opponent at that stage was a little loli version of Yūhi Kurenai.
On the other side of the bracket, Asuma had already smashed Genma Shiranui and now faced Might Guy, who had just knocked Obito out of the tournament.
For all that people called Obito and Guy "deadlasts," neither of them was actually weak.
Even without Eight Gates or a Sharingan, both of them were in the upper tier of the class when it came to actual combat.
Guy's problem was his all-brain-no-jutsu "youth" mindset and lack of ninjutsu talent.
Obito looked like he was missing a few screws and was always late to everything.
That's why they got the "deadlast" label.
But in a real fight? They were both solid.
In the end, Asuma performed steadily and managed to eliminate Guy—who couldn't open the Eight Gates yet.
Feiyu, meanwhile, dispatched Kurenai without breaking a sweat.
Kurenai's talent lay in genjutsu. against a Uchiha with an awakened Sharingan—and a Soul Marshal technique that had massively boosted his mental power—her illusions like Demonic Illusion: Tree Binding Death, Bringer-of-Darkness-style tricks, and so on were completely useless.
They might as well have been light shows.
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