Making our way to the main building inside the Forest of Death, we get to the entrance.
"There's a riddle here, Shimura-sama," I hear Kabuto say to my left. It seems that we have to open each scroll separately in a specific order.
After rereading the riddle we ended up opening the Earth scroll and then right after the Heaven scroll.
Quite simple.
'This is basically like canon, how did Kabuto get away with so many failed attempts?' I thought to myself as Hizashi appeared in front of us.
"Great job, you guys should go on ahead and rest. That might be a new record." He says keeping is a monotone expression. But his looks said otherwise, while pale he looked a bit shaken up.
A bit weird.
Getting the go-ahead sign, we enter the building and rest.
"How long did it take us to arrive?" I ask Tsubaki.
"It took 57 minutes Shimura-sama." She responds immediately.
'Damn that's like a full 30 minutes faster than Gaara, not sure what his time was but it was like an hour and a half.' I think to myself with a bit of pride. I mean Gaara was a demon vessel and could fly, I had to go navigate my team to find a river and follow upstream for the first 11 minutes.
Well, they kind of just followed me, but the same thing...
Gaara is debatably the strongest shinobi in the whole Naruto series if the two main characters didn't exist. The man can seal an Otsutsuki a fucking god for hours on end and can practically destroy armies by himself effortlessly seen in the fourth Shinobi war.
His kit was near perfect on top of him practising taijutsu to a high degree in Boruto.
I mean the guy had everything you would want besides the traumatic past and social issues.
"You guys can rest, I'm going to get a room." I tell my two teammates as I head off to a counter. I'm going to stay here for five days so I will atleast be productive while I'm here.
"Hello Shimura-sama, you need a room?" I hear the Chunin ask me.
"Yeah," I responded.
A few seconds after this I got a key and a general direction on where the room is.
He told me that the room was pretty nice with a bathroom, bed, desk and a chair. But you can't believe everything though.
'Room 106.' I said my myself as I walked through the spiral stairs. After a few minutes of searching I found the room and started to relax a bit.
The room wasn't too bad with all the contents the man said. It's not something I'm paying for so I can't complain really.
I should start to write down my future plans before Nagato feels like sneezing Konoha out of existence.
So much money is wasted if I don't move my assets beforehand.
Either way, my capital should be somewhere else, maybe the city where the fire daimyo lives?
Because when Nagato uses his revival shit after he gets exposed to the strongest jutsu in Naruto by Naruto, it doesn't bring back the resources and the belongings of the people there.
I'm not sure if I remember it correctly but they had to make the village by scratch again, and they had Yamato make the buildings.
Sending some chakra to my left hand's index finger, it unseals a dairy and three pens.
Opening my book to see my previous notes I go to a blank page and start to write some of my thinking down. Sitting down on the desk in the corner of the room, I started to think to myself a bit.
I should make a home base that can be made into a city in the future.
The options I had were Kusa, Land of Tea, Land of Waves, Land of Snow and Uzushiogakure.
All of these places have a decent start already with a functional society besides Uzushio, but only two options stand out to me here. The Land of Tea and the Land of Waves.
Both places connected to Konoha in one way or another with The land of tea sharing borders while in the future there will be a bridge for the Land of waves.
The real deal breaker is how would I control the citizens though. The land of tea already has an established hierarchy while the land of waves doesn't.
More political manoeuvring is annoying.
As much as using genjutsu on the leader would be easy, controlling one doesn't mean all.
That's a different case if it's a Kage such as in The Hidden Mist though.
So I would need to force my way through everyone before controlling the "big guys". But for the land of waves, just feed all the people there and treat them well and they will be infinitely loyal to me.
It's very simplified but the easiest method.
So in hindsight, it was the obvious answer but I had to consider the other places.
Kusa is in between two of the five major villages while being completely surrounded by two other small nations. The land of snow is too isolated making it hard to get certain stuff so we would have to fork for too much resources from outside sources.
Uzushiogakure would just be asking for it to be attacked if the land is picked due to the danger of Uzumakis. Even if we didn't have one the other nations would assume we had their methods.
Originally I wanted the bridge to be built first, but then all the citizens would leave before I could influence them.
If I do get rid of Gato and take over first then I would be missing out on one of the legendary swords of the mist and a Yuki user I could use for breeding purposes.
Haku wasn't meant to be a breeding guy originally but if he refused to live at the Land of Waves then I'll need to roughen him up a bit. And he doesn't act out of line then I'll let him become a vassal for my Clan.
Honestly not too bad.
He gets free food and money and just has to have kids with multiple women.
I'll also be able to take advantage of the fourth great Shinobi war and get a lot of people who will get scared of war and remember the past wars will escape their respective lands.
My little area can be where everyone migrates to.
So I'll need to develop the place a little before being able to house more people though. Gato's shipping business should be enough to fund my endeavours anyways.
'Maybe a casino made for rich people would make me some extra bank.' I thought to myself with a grin plastered on my face. The more money I get the more I can spend.
I'm not unsure of what to go for now but I'll make a decision before canon as I still got a goal to complete before hand.
After writing down all of my thoughts down that didn't include Zetsu and the three tailed beast, I started to get ready to sleep as I had 4 days of boredom ahead of me.
I wonder if Zetsu is currently spying on me right now.
If Zetsu found out about my plans then that would actually be useful as he could get the Akatsuki to reach out to me if I needed some help that could be solved with money.
...
"It's finally time!" I excitedly say.
Getting out of bed, I start to do my daily routine I've been doing since I had arrived here.
Everyday was just me waking up and doing chakra exercises and a few warmups. It was quite a bore.
At least I didn't have to wake up to the smell of dried blood like I did the first day though.
That shit was nasty.
"It's soo boring here." I groan out as I prepare myself. After my Shower and putting my clothes on I exit my room and make my room to the cafeteria.
Entering the Cafeteria you could see multiple tables with groups of three and two with the exception of one table where a guy is eating by himself.
'The solo passed eh.' I thought to myself. Less than half of the groups passed with only six out of the twenty three remained.
I'm guessing some of my opponents were scroll-hunting for no reason other than removing the stronger competition.
Of course, strength isn't the only factor that matters in the Shinobi world unless you are so strong you can brute force everything.
As a wise one has said.
Violence isn't the answer. Violence is a question, and the answer is "yes".
A quote that applies to people like Madara the most.
14 people have passed to the finals which isn't too bad for a Chunin exams from what I've been told. There's even been a case where only one team passed and they had to fight each other.
Looking around the room I made my way to where Kabuto and Tsubaki were sitting as there was already a tray of food next to them for me.
Sitting down on the open seat I asked Kabuto if he got the information I wanted with Anbu hand signs.
"Here Shimura-sama," Kabuto says while handing me some cards. Looking down at the little information cards I start to grin.
()()()
Name: Rakuta Tari
Age: 15
Village: Kusakagure
Missions completed:
D-rank: 73
C-rank: 17
B-rank: 1
A-rank: 0
S-rank: 0
Specialties: Uses a Bo Staff as his weapon, height is 5"8 with a buff build and his hits generate a decent amount of power.
Weaknesses: Easy to taunt, slow because of his build, can't do much against you if you keep your distance, and has a slow reaction time.
()()()
'He seems to have been a rather experienced Genin.' I thought to myself.
Looking at some of the information cards that Kabuto has, has helped me out a lot.
I'm not actually worried much about being in combat with them.
I want to know their general weaknesses and advantages so I can flex my skills in the main tournament. I mean killing my opponent in front of everyone doesn't look that impressive, so beating a guy way bulkier and larger than me would impress a lot of merchants and higher-ups of the village.
Plus I'm an heir.
Other clan heads, higher-ups of the village and important merchants will be watching me. Due to my early graduation in peaceful times and lack of public showing.
…
"Because there are too many of you right now, we will hold a preliminary stage where all of you have to battle each other. This will be a one-on-one situation where the only person helping you is yourself." Instructor man tells us as all of the participants including me make our way toward the battle arena.
The arena is quite huge with two stories of spectating areas, one for the Genin's and the other are for the Jounin sensei's if the team has one.
Not every team has a Jounin sensei because of the war a few years before my birth. So a team without a Sensei is pretty common.
The Hokage never came to tell us about the real purpose of this exam so I'm assuming he came because there were multiple clan heirs in canon.
Quite disappointing.
After a few minutes of waiting, we got notified of who our opponents were.
"Kabuto are you gonna lose on purpose." I ask curiously. Kabuto hearing my question nods without explaining further.
'I guess his "job" I can infer at this point is to scout for talents for Danzo/Orochimaru/Sasori and to see who would be a dangerous person in the future to look out for.' I say to myself while humming. It took me a little bit to find out his job but I figured it out in the end.
It's as Danzo says. It's better to cut the root of the problem before it grows.
After a few battles with Kabuto and Tsubaki both "losing" their battles, it was finally my turn.
"Dota Furumi and Raiden Shimura come down to the battlefield." An instructor calls out.
Jumping down from my position I land smoothly on the ground.
Looking straight ahead I see a girl with a small build that is probably used for her agile and flexible attacks.
'Her specialty is Senbon and Genjutsu, nothing too difficult.' I think to myself remembering her information card. I've broken out of Genjutsu made by Kakashi so I dont think it should be too difficult for me.
"Start!" I hear the instructed shout.
Letting her the first move, she proceeds to throw three senbon directly at me.
*Swish*
Dodging the three of them by ducking down, I start to do some hand seals.
A second later I put my hands on the ground using the jutsu [Earth Style: Earth Wall]. An earth wall ten feet tall comes in between the two of us as I unseal three shuriken from my gloves.
*Tap tap tap*
My opponent's footsteps could be heard as she ran towards the left side of my wall.
Using the [Body Flicker] while making a [Clone] in my place I get right behind her.
While she was distracted by the clone I threw three shurikens on her back causing her some pain.
"Fuck." She groans out. Not letting her recover, I blitz forward to get next to her and punch the solar plexus.
*Cough*
Getting the air in her lungs punched out, she proceeds to faint right after.
"Winner Raiden Shimura." The instructor announces as he starts to clean up the battle field as it was the final battle.
Walking back towards the stands I see multiple lines of metal threads on the ground.
'I guess this was her Genjutsu trap, she was trying to bait me to her by engaging in combat I assume.' I thought while making my way back.
I didn't want to finish her off as quick as I could as I waited five days for this battle.
It wasn't too bad, she just got unlucky with versing me as I couldn't really lose to her unless I let her stab me.