Chapter 315: Sasuke Goes Berserk
Iruka refused to let Sasuke's petulant antics delay an assessment personally arranged by Hokage-sama.
"First item, the Three Body Technique test!" Iruka announced, his voice carrying over the training ground. He deliberately ignored the brooding Uchiha, turning his full attention to Naruto and the remaining three candidates. "Naruto, you're up first!"
Naruto tore his complicated gaze away from Sasuke, his jaw tightening as he offered a heavy nod. Stepping into the center of the dirt clearing, his hands blurred through a familiar sequence of seals.
"Shadow Clone Technique!"
With a sharp puff of white smoke, a perfect replica of the blonde boy materialized at his side. Without pausing for breath, Naruto shifted his chakra.
"Transformation Jutsu!"
The smoke billowed again, parting to reveal a flawless copy of Iruka standing in Naruto's place.
"Substitution Technique!"
The false Iruka flickered out of existence. A split second later, a scarred wooden log dropped into the dirt, a single kunai embedded deep in its bark.
"Very good. Pass," Iruka said, jotting a mark on his clipboard.
Hinata stepped forward next, her movements fluid and precise as she executed the three fundamental jutsu without a single wasted motion. Then came Gaara. The red-haired boy barely lifted a finger; coarse yellow sand simply slithered from his gourd, molding itself into a gritty, lifeless clone that made Iruka's right eye twitch uncontrollably. Finally, Temari took the field, breezing through the fundamental assessment with the casual grace of a seasoned veteran.
Off to the side, Sasuke stood rooted to the earth. His dark eyes were chips of ice, tracking every hand seal, every puff of smoke. His fingernails dug into his palms.
'I can do all of that,'he thought, a bitter taste rising in the back of his throat.'I can do it faster. I can do it better.'
"Second item: ninja tool throwing!" Iruka pointed toward a row of wooden targets situated at the far edge of the clearing. "Ten shuriken and ten kunai each. Begin!"
Naruto moved first. The metallic scrape of steel leaving his holsters rang out sharply. His wrists snapped in a crisp, clean motion. Ten shuriken tore through the air, whistling sharply before sinking deep into the painted red bullseye with a satisfying thud. The kunai followed a second later, their heavy blades burying themselves in a tight cluster right in the center. Flawless.
The remaining three candidates stepped up in turn, casually dispatching their weapons with lethal accuracy, turning the wooden targets into splintered pincushions.
"The final item..." Iruka lowered his clipboard, his tone dropping its instructor's warmth to adopt a grim, professional edge. "Combat practice."
The moment the words left his mouth, the rustle of leaves signaled an arrival. A fully geared, active-duty Konoha Jonin dropped from the canopy, landing silently in the center of the field.
"The four of you will form a squad and attack him together," Iruka instructed, his voice carrying the weight of a battlefield commander. "There is no time limit for this assessment. I am looking for only one standard: I want to see your teamwork as a cohesive unit."
"Understood!" Naruto grinned, licking his dry lips. A fierce, eager light ignited in his blue eyes.
"Assessment... begin!"
The Jonin blurred out of existence the exact millisecond the command fell.
"Over there!" Hinata's sharp cry cut through the silence. Veins bulged around her temples, her Byakugan fully activated. Her pale eyes tracked a faint distortion in the air, locking onto the Jonin's high-speed trajectory.
"Wind Release: Great Sickle Weasel!"
Temari did not hesitate. She unslung the massive iron fan from her back, slamming it open to reveal three purple moons. She swung the heavy weapon with brutal force. A howling tempest erupted from the fan, condensing into countless invisible, razor-sharp wind blades. The gale tore into the tree line where the Jonin had attempted to flank them. Thick trunks were sheared in half, leaves and branches shredded into a chaotic storm of flying wood chips and green confetti.
Yet, there was no spray of blood. No sound of a body hitting the dirt.
"Careful, above!" Hinata warned, her head snapping upward.
The squad looked up. The Jonin hung suspended in the mid-air canopy, his fingers already a blur of complex hand seals.
"Fire Release: Phoenix Sage Fire Technique!"
He inhaled sharply and spat. Dozens of blistering fireballs, each the size of a human head, erupted from his mouth. They rained down like a miniature meteor shower, the intense heat warping the air as they blanketed every possible avenue of escape for the Genin below.
"Sand Shield."
Gaara did not even flinch. He stood perfectly still as a torrent of dense, chakra-infused sand erupted from the gourd on his back. The grains swirled upward, weaving together in a fraction of a second to form a massive, impenetrable dome over the four of them.
Deafening explosions rocked the training ground. Scorching flames and black smoke washed over the exterior of the dome, kicking up a choking cloud of dust, but the sand held firm, not yielding a single inch to the inferno.
"Nice work, Gaara!" Naruto cheered, his blood pumping with adrenaline. He slammed his fingers into a cross-shaped seal. "Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
A barrage of heavy pops echoed across the clearing. Thick white smoke flooded the area, and when it cleared, over a dozen identical Narutos stood grinning in the dirt. As the Jonin's boots touched the ground, the clones surged forward like a tidal wave, boxing the older ninja in from all sides.
"Oh? A human wave tactic?" The Jonin scoffed, his eyes narrowing beneath his hitai-ate. "In the face of absolute power, numbers are meaningless!"
His hands moved again, this time so fast they left trailing afterimages in the air.
"Fire Release: Great Dragon Fire Technique!"
He expelled a massive breath. The flames condensed, twisting and roaring into the shape of a colossal fire dragon. The beast's ferocious head illuminated the entire clearing in a blinding orange glare, its jaws unhinging to devour the thickest cluster of approaching clones.
Yet, facing the devastating heat of the dragon, the clones did not retreat a single step. Instead, they scattered. Like a school of fish evading a predator, the Narutos broke formation, diving and rolling beneath the searing heat, only to rebound and charge the Jonin from a dozen different blind spots.
It was a brazen, open strategy. Naruto was using the sheer volume of his clones to forcibly compress the Jonin's evasion space, pinning him down to create an opening for the true strike.
The Jonin's brows furrowed. He had not expected a group of fresh Genin to coordinate with such aggressive fluidity. Just as his attention was split by the overwhelming swarm of orange jumpsuits, a delicate yet fiercely resilient figure materialized behind him like a phantom.
It was Hinata.
Using the chaotic vanguard of Shadow Clones as her cover, she had slipped entirely unnoticed through his line of defense.
"Gentle Fist Art: Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Palms!"
Hinata's pale eyes were locked in absolute focus. Faint blue chakra flared around her slender fingertips. She struck out, her hands a blur of calculated violence, aiming directly for the critical tenketsu pressure points along the Jonin's spine with terrifying precision.
The Jonin's heart skipped a beat. The Hyuga clan's Gentle Fist. If even one of those strikes landed, his internal chakra network would be severely disrupted, leaving him paralyzed and entirely at their mercy.
Pushing his physical limits, the Jonin executed a desperate Body Flicker Technique. He vanished in a blur of motion, the tips of Hinata's chakra-coated fingers grazing the empty air where his spine had been a fraction of a second prior.
He reappeared a few paces away, but before he could even plant his feet to launch a counterattack, the earth beneath him shifted.
The dirt ruptured. A gigantic, hardened arm of yellow sand shot up from the ground, clamping around the Jonin's ankle like an iron vice. His momentum was violently halted.
Flawless teamwork.
From Naruto's overwhelming feint, to Hinata's lethal ambush, and finally to Gaara's absolute crowd control—the entire sequence flowed like water, executed in a single, suffocating breath.
"Rasengan!"
The true killing blow arrived.
The original Naruto plummeted from the sky above the trapped Jonin. In the palm of his right hand, a sphere of violently rotating blue chakra shrieked like a buzzsaw. The sheer density of the compressed energy sent terrifying, thrilling fluctuations through the air as Naruto thrust it downward.
'It's over.' The Jonin's pupils shrank to pinpricks. Bound to the earth by Gaara's sand, he had absolutely no use to dodge.
Just at that critical moment, a dark figure erupted from the sidelines, tearing onto the battlefield.
"Sasuke, no!" Iruka's horrified roar tore through the training ground.
Sasuke had finally snapped. The toxic cocktail of jealousy and frenzy boiling in his chest could no longer be contained. Watching Naruto and the others execute perfect teamwork, watching them effortlessly corner a seasoned Jonin while he was forced to stand on the sidelines like a useless spectator—it was an insult to his pride.
He was Uchiha Sasuke. He refused to accept it.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
Sasuke's hands flew through the tiger seal mid-leap. He inhaled deeply, his chest expanding before he unleashed a massive, roaring sphere of flames from his mouth. But his target was not the trapped Jonin.
The blistering fireball was aimed directly at Naruto.
He was going to prove, in his own twisted way, that he was superior to the blonde failure.
"Sasuke! Are you insane?!" Naruto yelled, shock and raw fury flashing across his face. He had never expected a lethal attack from his own teammate.
With a fraction of a second to react, Naruto was forced to abandon his strike on the Jonin. Twisting his body violently in mid-air, he thrust the shrieking Rasengan directly into the path of the howling fireball.
Two devastating forces collided, erupting in a blinding flash and a deafening roar that shook the very foundations of the training ground.
[Inorin's Note:
Enjoying the story? Dropping a quick review, comment, or Power Stone means the world to me and keeps these daily updates flowing!
Want to read 50 chapters ahead or just want to help keep a shameless translator alive? (My livelihood actually depends on this, haha 😭). You can support me directly here:
(P.S. Just remove the brackets and replace the [.] with a regular dot . to use the links!)
✨ Patreon (50 Advanced Chapters): patreon[.]com/InorinTL
☕ Ko-fi (Support / Sponsor): ko-fi[.]com/InorinTL
Thank you so much for reading and keeping this project alive!]