CH_92

"Are we really going to rob that proctor—the one you mentioned, Namiashi Raidō?" Neru asked quietly.

They weren't far from the central tower now—it was almost noon on the final day of the Forest of Death exam.

"I recognize a few of those nine tokubetsu jōnin." Tōji began explaining. "Leaving aside the ones I don't know—at least we lack an information advantage on them."

"Right—once the enemy knows your information, you're already at a disadvantage." Neru agreed.

"Among the ones I do know, only Namiashi Raidō specializes in swords. The others have different skills—our team composition isn't well-suited to handling them." Tōji elaborated.

"So what if he's a swordsman? He's still a tokubetsu jōnin—his swordsmanship must be impressive." Natchi raised a valid point.

"His swordsmanship is definitely good. But I know that for this proctoring assignment, he'll be somewhat weaker than usual." Tōji smiled.

"What do you mean?" Neru asked.

"Look at his sword. It's not the one he usually uses. His signature weapon is a poisoned black tachi." Tōji squinted, staring at Raidō's blade from a distance.

"Are you sure?" Natchi, who had the best eyesight of the three, could see clearly that Raidō's sword wasn't the black one Tōji had described.

"Ninety percent sure." Tōji wasn't absolutely certain, but close enough.

"Then I'll trust you." Neru said.

"So our first tactic is to target the swordsman proctor?" Natchi pressed.

"Not just him. See the bushy-eyebrowed bowl-cut guy over there? That's Might Guy. He's a taijutsu specialist—we could target him with our first tactic too." Tōji pointed toward Guy, who was a good distance away from Raidō.

"Which other proctors do you have info on?" That was what Neru really cared about.

"The one in sunglasses—that's Ebisu. And the one with the senbon in his mouth—that's Shiranui Genma. They were both on Guy's squad during the war. After years of war, all of them survived." Tōji introduced two more named supporting characters from the original story.

"Ebisu knows a lot of jutsu, and Genma is an agility-type who specializes in mid-to-long-range attacks with senbon—both would be tough matchups for a squad like ours." Tōji explained.

"How do you know so much?" Neru was puzzled.

Even among fellow Konoha shinobi, you couldn't easily get that kind of intel on others—especially when they were already tokubetsu jōnin and Tōji was still just a genin.

"It's because—not long ago, the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist were about to take out Guy's squad when Guy's father single-handedly took them down, killing some and wounding the rest." Tōji made up a cover story to explain his source. "So I looked into Guy, and that led me to learn about his teammates."

"Also—I've heard that Namiashi Raidō and Shiranui Genma are especially favored by the Hokage, so I paid a bit more attention to them." Tōji knew—

That not long from now, those two, along with a recent Academy graduate named Tatami Iwashi, would become the Hokage's bodyguards.

Originally, Minato's top picks for the Flying Thunder Formation were Raidō, Genma, and Yamashiro Aoba. But Aoba couldn't even learn the 【Flying Thunder Formation Technique】, which was a big disappointment.

Minato searched Konoha for a replacement, and the final spot went to Tatami Iwashi—fresh out of the Academy.

Tōji was working so hard precisely because he wanted to snatch that opportunity that Aoba couldn't seize.

Sure, becoming part of the Flying Thunder Formation team would mean taking on more dangerous missions—but the boost to his survival odds was enormous. And those kinds of elite bodyguards rarely got sent to die as cannon fodder.

Thinking about how the Flying Thunder Formation trio survived all the way to the end in the original story, Tōji figured it was worth it.