CH_99

"1. Gan Kotetsu"

"2. Kamizuki Izumo"

"3. Tatami Iwashi"

"4. Kazamatsuri Tōji"

"5. Izuno Natchi"

"6. Itoi Neru"

"7. Tobitake Tonbō"

"8. Akame Iwao"

"9. Suzume"

"10. Mizuki"

"11. Dokurā"

"12. Nio Shinobu"

"13. Akamon Manabu"

"14. Seishimon"

"15. Tsubaki"

"16. Yanagiroi"

Tōji scanned the list of examinees…

His first concern was whether there were any "named" shinobi among the sixteen that he recognized by name but hadn't identified by sight.

And there were.

At least Tobitake Tonbō and Tsubaki were names he knew.

Tōji looked around—there was indeed a weirdo with his entire head wrapped in bandages, even covering his eyes. If he hadn't seen the name Tobitake Tonbō, Tōji wouldn't have remembered such an oddly dressed character.

There weren't many girls, and only one had purple hair… 『Still rocking a single ponytail. Hasn't Tsubaki changed her hairstyle yet?』

As for the other seven examinees, even after seeing both their names and their faces, Tōji had no idea who they were. 『I guess even if they're "named" characters in the original story, they don't do much anyway.』

After all, in his "memory" from his past life, he'd watched Naruto over and over again—but more often than not, it was just playing in the background.

After looking over the somewhat complicated bracket, Tōji figured out how the matchups worked—

Everyone was assigned numbers 1 through 16 based on the order they submitted their scrolls in the second round.

The first round pairings were:

1 vs 16, 2 vs 13,

3 vs 10, 4 vs 15,

5 vs 12, 6 vs 9,

7 vs 14, 8 vs 11.

No examinee would face a teammate, and each of the three members of a squad would go up against someone from a different squad.

The eight first-round matches would all be completed on the first day.

The second round would take place on the second day.

After that, the organizers wouldn't directly arrange the matchups anymore.

The eight losers from the first round would be ranked by their match duration—the loser with the longest match would get to pick their opponent first.

Those losers would choose their opponents from the eight first-round winners.

But each "winner's bracket" examinee could only be challenged once in the second round.

『Hmm… because they want to promote more people to chūnin, they're having every examinee fight two rounds so they can better assess everyone's abilities.』 Tōji saw the logic behind this arrangement.

『With this few people, a standard elimination tournament really doesn't work anymore.』

"Tōji—your opponent's a girl!" Natchi pulled Tōji out of the crowd and whispered in his ear.

"Natchi—being a girl doesn't mean she's weak. Do you think Neru's any less capable than you?" Though Tōji knew Tsubaki's combat ability in the original story wasn't particularly impressive, he didn't want to reinforce the idea that girls were inherently weaker.

"Oh, right—I still don't know anything about that guy Nio Shinobu. I'm going to do some research and figure out a strategy." With that, Natchi wandered off, muttering to himself.

"Neru's opponent is that long-haired girl with glasses—shouldn't be too much of a problem." Tōji thought the bespectacled girl looked too refined to be a threat—probably about as weak as Tsubaki.

Why were there so many seemingly weak examinees who'd made it through the second round? That was Tōji's question.

『Could it be… that those tokubetsu jōnin proctors in the second round just let anyone through as long as they actively approached them? And only went all out against those they ran into by chance?』

No wonder the squads that passed the second round all seemed to have "intellectual" types.