[ HINATA HYUGA ]
I watched from the edge of the dusty training dojo, the smell of the scented candles usually kept my anxiety away, but not today, my hands clasped tightly against my chest as the sharp, rhythmic sounds of striking flesh echoed through the courtyard. My father, Hiashi Hyuga, stood with a severe, unyielding posture, directing his cold, calculating gaze down at my younger sister, Hanabi, who was panting heavily but resetting her Gentle Fist stance. The weight of the clan's expectations hung suffocatingly low over the compound, and my heart hammered against my ribs as I realized I had to disrupt this sacred routine to deliver the news from the Academy.
Closing my eyes for a brief second to gather whatever scrap of courage I had left, I stepped out into the open courtyard, my soft voice trembling as I broke the silence.
"F-Father... I apologize for interrupting the training session," I murmured, bowing deeply to show my respect. Father slowly turned his head, his stark white Byakugan eyes tracking my movement with a quiet, intimidating intensity that almost made me want to shrink back into the shadows.
"What is it, Hinata? You know better than to break your sister's concentration during her lessons," he replied, his tone flat and demanding.
Taking a shallow breath, I forced myself to look him in the eye, the vivid memory of the morning's sparring match flashing behind my eyelids.
"It is about the practical exams today... a classmate named Jinichi Wataru won his match using an incredibly strange taijutsu technique," I explained, my fingers twisting together nervously.
"He was able to spin his entire body at an extreme velocity, creating an erratic vortex of chakra and kinetic force that completely deflected his opponent's strikes. Father... it looked exactly like the fundamental theory behind our clan's Kaiten."
The atmosphere in the courtyard shattered instantly, plunging into a freezing, suffocating stillness. Father froze mid-motion, his eyes widening slightly as the profound implications of my words registered in his mind. Replicating the absolute defensive philosophy of the Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven without a Byakugan or formal clan training was an impossibility—or a catastrophic security breach.
"The training session is concluded for the evening," Father commanded sharply, his voice dropping into a dangerous, icy tone as he looked between me and my startled younger sister.
"Both of you, return to your quarters immediately. Do not speak a word of this to anyone else."
I bowed quickly, grabbing Hanabi's small hand and pulling her toward the residential wing of the estate, my mind spinning with anxiety over my father's intense reaction. As we hurried down the dimly lit wooden corridors, I caught a brief flash of long, dark hair out of the corner of my eye. Big brother Neji was standing silently in the shadow of a heavy pillar, his arms crossed over his chest, his pale eyes tracking our retreat with an unreadable, intense focus. He had clearly overheard my entire conversation with Father, but before I could say anything, he silently turned and vanished into the darkness of the compound, keeping the revelation locked tightly away in his own mind.
[ HIASHI HYUGA ]
Left alone in the center of the training dojo, my hands to clench into tight, white-knuckled fists as a profound sense of alarm coursed through my veins. A mere civilian boy at the Academy utilizing a rotational defensive taijutsu with similarities to Kaiten was a threat that could not be ignored; either the boy was an unprecedented prodigy, or there was a traitor within our own walls who is actively leaking the sacred, closely guarded secrets of the Main House. Walking briskly into the clan's private strategy hall, I slammed my hands onto the low table and channelled a pulse of chakra, silently signalling my most trusted elite operatives to assemble.
Within minutes, a dozen shrouded Hyuga clansmen dropped from the rafters, me kneeling before me in absolute silence.
"I am splitting you into two groups." I ordered, my voice cutting through the candlelit room like a blade.
"The first group will immediately research Jinichi Wataru's lineage from the ground up, monitoring him from the shadows to observe his techniques from afar. The second group will launch a silent, merciless audit of our own branch members—look for any sign of a traitor, any hidden ledger, or any unsanctioned interaction that could explain how our clan's ultimate defense was exposed to an outsider."
'And should his lineage reveal any relation to a hyuga clansmen, then he will be absorbed into the clan and branded with the curse mark(the bird cage).'
"That is all, go now!"
they vanished, immediately going to carry out my orders.
[ JINICHI WATARU ]
Back in the quiet, sterile confines of the academy clinic, I lay staring blankly at the ceiling, my entire body throbbing with a dull, persistent ache. The sheer physical toll of Aoi's relentless attacks, combined with the raw, unrefined friction of forcing my body into the Spinjutsu rotation, had left my muscles feeling like torn paper.
'Damn it, my current level and experience are just way too low to sustain a technique like that'
I thought bitterly to myself, slowly turning my bandaged wrists over in the dim light. I had scraped by with a win through pure bluffing and adaptation, but the lack of polish in my taijutsu style was a mistake I needed to fix immediately.
By the time the next morning arrived, the nurse's medicine had done enough work to allow me to hobble out of the infirmary. Walking down the bustling hallway, I slid the classroom door open, and the entire room instantly fell into a dead, staring silence as every single one of my classmates locked their eyes onto me. Up at the chalkboard, Iruka-sensei paused his writing, his scarred face softening with a look of genuine concern as he stepped toward his desk.
"Jinichi, you're back out of bed already? How is your recovery coming along?" he asked gently. I simply shrugged my shoulders lightly, offering a tired but steady look.
"I'll manage, sensei," I responded quietly, slipping past the gazes of my classmates to take my usual seat in the back.
The rest of the afternoon lectures blurred together in a haze of history and chakra theory, my mind drifting as I mentally planned my future training regimen. When the final bell finally echoed through the halls, signalling the end of the school day, Iruka-sensei clapped his hands together to draw everyone's focus back to the front.
" All of you, listen to me carefully, everyone. Tomorrow is your official Promotion Exam," he announced, his voice carrying a heavy, paternal weight as he looked across the rows of future shinobi.
"This is the culmination of everything you have worked for. Go home, rest your bodies, and do your absolute best tomorrow."
Some class mates tried to talk to me, others too prideful to approach, I apologized and told them I had a serious problem to attend to
' I lied; I just don't want to talk to them.'
I gathered my belongings, stepping out into the cool evening air and walking home alone, the looming weight of tomorrow's milestone settling heavily over my shoulders.
The next morning, the early light of dawn had barely broken through my apartment window when a sharp, high-pitched ping echoed directly inside my skull. I bolted upright in bed, my eyes instantly narrowing as a glowing, purple system HUD materialized in the air right before my face, pulsing with an ominous light.
******************************************************************
[ QUEST BOARD ]
[ MISSION QUESTS ]
■ [ WEEKLY QUEST ]
[ QUEST ISSUED: THE THRESHOLD OF MEDIOCRITY]
[Objective] - Pass the Academy Graduation Exam. Condition: Calibrate your final graduation score to land strictly between 50% and 80%.
[Reward] -Tiered based on performance. Higher percentages yield superior stat points and rare skill scrolls.
50% to 60% - +10 stat points, 200k exp, Shinobi Uniform. 60% to 70% - + 20 stat points, 400k exp, Shinobi uniform. 70% to 80% - + 40 stat points, 800k exp, Weapon.
WARNING: Achieving a score approaching or exceeding 80% will drastically escalate the level of scrutiny you receive from Konoha's high command (Sandaime Hokage, Iruka, the the Great clans, and Danzo Shimura). A sudden, massive spike in your academic metrics will result in immediate, hostile interrogation regarding your anomalous growth.
[Penalty] — failure of final exam.
■ [ DAILY QUEST ]
[Quest: Path to Evolution]
Player must finish all the workouts listed below before the end of the day.
Push-ups [ 0/ 100 ] Sit-ups [ 0/ 100 ] Squats [ 0/ 100 ]
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[Rewards] — + 500,000 Exp, 5 stat points, recovery pill.
[Penalty] — -5 stats reduction on a random stat.
*********************************************************
'Are you kidding me? Danzo??'
I thought, a cold sweat breaking out across the back of my neck as I stared at the blinking warning text. The system wasn't exaggerating; if I went all out and tried to look like a flawless prodigy right after revealing a prototype Kaiten clone, the elders of the village would lock me in a dark room and essentially assault my brain. Or worse, try to marry me off into hyuga clan.
'Now that I think about it, the news of the jutsu has probably reached the Hokage by now and considering the hyuga clan heir is in our class I wouldn't be surprised if her father was aware too, Shitttttttt…..' I thought with a strained expression on my face.
'I needed to aim for a safe, unremarkable sweet spot—around 68% seemed perfectly engineered to pass comfortably while staying entirely off the radar of the village's shadows.'
Shaking off the lingering anxiety, I dropped to the floor, executing my grueling morning training drills to collect my daily allocation of stat points and experience, feeling my muscles knit closer together with each completed rep.
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[ LEVEL UP! ]
[ LEVEL UP! ]
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[STATUS]
[Name] — Jinichi Wataru
[Level] — 15
[Exp Bar] — 90,400 / 819,200
[STATS]
Strength — 17 [Mid Genin]
Constitution — 22 [Mid Genin]
Speed — 22 [Mid Genin]
Dexterity — 16 [Mid Genin]
Intelligence — 20 [Mid Genin]
Chakra Capacity — 15 [Mid Genin]
[Stat Points] — 25
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[Skills]
Transformation jutsu [ Lv 10 ] Clone jutsu [ Lv 10 ] Spinjitzu [ Lv 6 ] Image Training [Lvl 12] Metal [ Lv 16 ] Chakra Augmentation [Lvl 8] Scan [ Lv 4 ]
● Substiution jutsu [ Lv 12 ]
● Shurikenjutsu [ Lv 20 ]●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●
[ ONE HOUR LATER ]
An hour later, I arrived at the Academy grounds, where the courtyard was already packed with a dense, crowd of nervous children and overbearing clan parents whispering final instructions to their heirs.
The promotion exam kicked off almost immediately with the shuriken throwing test, and when my name was called, I stepped up to the line with a perfectly detached expression. I threw my weapons with practiced, fluid movements, intentionally throwing of my aim a bit just enough to hit the outer rings of the targets rather than splitting the bullseye.
Next came the written portion of the exam, the heavy silence of the hall broken only by the frantic scratching of pencils against paper. I skimmed through the complex tactical questions, easily calculating the answers, but deliberately left a handful of the high-level theory questions blank to keep an average score.
Finally, the remaining students were called into the private testing room one by one to demonstrate the fundamental Academy Three jutsu. Stepping into the room, I found myself facing the dual gaze of Iruka-sensei and a smoothly smiling Mizuki. With a sharp, controlled burst of my chakra, I flawlessly executed the Clone, Transformation and Substitution techniques, generating clean, standard results without an ounce of unnecessary flair.
When the final tallies were calculated on Iruka's clipboard, my official score was logged at exactly 68%—a perfectly average, unremarkable passing grade. Iruka-sensei looked up from the parchment, a soft, incredibly relieved smile breaking across his features as he gave me a firm nod of approval. 'I knew it,' Iruka thought to himself.
'I guess all that sleeping in class wasn't laziness; the boy must have been staying up until midnight, exhausting himself just to cram for this exact day.'
"Congratulations, Jinichi. You pass," Iruka announced proudly, handing me a pristine, dark blue forehead protector. I tied the metal plate securely around my head, stepping out of the room to join the passing students while the heavy door slid open for the final test of the day.
"Next student... Naruto Uzumaki, step forward!" Iruka called out, the entire energy of the corridor shifting into an anxious, uncomfortable tension as the blond boy nervously swallowed hard, before steeling himself as he walked inside. I leaned against the back wall, watching with a somber look as the scene unfolded exactly like canon; within minutes, a chaotic spike of unstable chakra erupted from behind the closed doors, followed by the miserable, deflated groan of Naruto failing the Clone Technique completely.