*Author Note*
My Pat-reons can now read three chapters ahead: https://www.pat-reon.com/Maerry (remove the “-“)
*End of Author Note*
Without any more delays, new teams were randomly drawn. Well, considering that Yuna was manipulating the drawing process, so the few people she thought to be the strongest had weak teammates, it wasn’t exactly random.
A few jonin noticed that something appeared to be a little off, but considering that Yuna didn’t move a finger while the lots were drawn, most of them dismissed it as a weird coincidence.
All in all, the matches weren’t that interesting to watch. Although Yuna did her best to balance the teams somewhat, she had better things to do than sort through massive amounts of genin and puzzle together teams that were about equal in strength. Luckily, the training ground was sizeable enough to hold multiple matches at once; otherwise, the whole ordeal would have taken a lot of time.
After just one hour, the first set of matches was over, reducing the total amount of teams from 21 to 11.
Yuna nodded in satisfaction when she noticed that the nine people she thought of as the strongest had enough awareness to allow their teammates to have a proper fight before finishing their matches. There seriously would be no point in this if some people instantly get one-shot by people like Neji, after all. On a side note, the nine people she assumed to be the strongest were Kurenai and Guy’s, teams and, obviously, her own as well.
Choji had to fight against Neji in the next set of matches, which didn’t end well for him. Although Choji cooperated significantly better with his team than Neji did, in the end, that didn’t make much of a difference.
The next match between people Yuna deemed strong was Tenten vs Sai. Both of them had rather unique fighting styles. Tenten summoned all kinds of weapons and threw them at her opponent while Sai drew animals, animated them with chakra, and controlled them to attack his enemy.
Although it was a good match, in the end, Sai took the win simply due to having more combat experience. His time in Root certainly wasn’t spent idling around.
The next interesting match was Lee vs Hisoka, and Yuna could only facepalm at the outcome. Hisoka’s combat style certainly was advantageous against people like Lee, who only used Taijutsu, but there was normally no way Hisoka could land a single hit on Lee. The problem? As always, Lee insisted on not taking off his weights, resulting in his loss. Yuna decided that she would need to have a serious conversation with Lee and Guy after this small tournament was over.
And the last interesting fight of this round was Karin vs Kiba. Or at least it was supposed to be interesting, but Kiba was very obviously intimidated by Karin’s…fervor. So far, Karin has managed to keep herself under control and allow her two teammates to fight as well, but Yuna was pretty sure that it was just a matter of time before she forgot all about that.
Anyway, the next round ended, and only six teams were left.
The first match was drawn, and it turned out to be Karin’s team vs the only remaining team that didn’t have one of Yuna’s favorites. The moment Karin’s bloodshot, predator-like eyes landed on them, they unanimously gave up without a moment of hesitation.
The next match was Hisoka vs Shino, which was honestly rather bad luck for her. She didn’t have anything that could take out Shino’s bug swarms, nor had she any powerful jutsu that she could use to bombard Shino with from a distance. Although she had started learning Ninjutsu from Yuna, her focus was still on close combat, so she, unfortunately, lost the fight.
The last fight in this bracket was Sai vs Neji. Although Sai had the advantage that he didn’t need to get too close to Neji due to his drawing, Neji had the advantage that he could dispatch his drawings rather swiftly with his Gentle Fist Style. Recently, Sai managed to create drawings that he could detonate remotely, but unfortunately, Neji could easily spot traps like that with his Byakugan. Although the battle was long and drawn out, in the end, Neji was the victor.
Hinata might have folded him together like a newspaper, but that didn’t mean that Neji was weak. He was actually rather powerful for a genin. He could easily contest against chunin, but the problem was that Hinata was significantly stronger than him and knew all his weak points on top of that.
And so, it was finally time for the final round. A three-team battle between Karin, Neji, and Shino’s teams.
The moments the battle started, the six people that were accompanying the trio forfeited instantly. They were under no illusion that they could contribute anything to this match, and they were even reconsidering whether they really should partake in the chunin exams.
If Yuna could hear their thoughts, she would nod in approval. That was part of the reason why she even bothered holding this event after all. She saw no reason why Konoha would even bother to send in people that could barely use the academy jutsu. Neither could she understand why people like that would dare to participate in an event where they could genuinely die if they were too weak.
For a brief moment, the image of a young girl with pink hair flashed through Yuna’s mind, but she quickly shook her head to get rid of it.
Moments later, two crimson-red chains burst out of Karin’s back and started menacingly swaying behind her, while insects began to burst out of Shino’s sleeves and Neji got into the typical Gentle Fist Style stance.
The few members of the Uzumaki clan that were present gaped when they saw Karin use the Uzumaki Clan’s Adamantine Chains. They always thought that Yuna kept the perverted Karin around her because she had…that kind of preference, but they didn’t know that Karin was actually one of the very few Uzumaki that could use the Adamantine Chains.
They immediately saw Karin in a new light when they realized that she actually had that kind of ability, but…
“Haa~…Haa~ Yuna-sama’s punishme…I mean reward…I need it…Haa~”
…that new light was smashed to pieces when they heard Karin murmuring to herself. All of the Uzumaki clan members present thought the same thing at the same time.
‘She may have some abilities, but she is still a pervert, you know.’
Moments later, the battle started, and Neji was the first to move. He was the only one who was reliant on close combat, so he had to close the gap between him and the other two as fast as possible. His first target was Shino, who he deemed as more troublesome than Karin.
He had never seen Karin’s chakra chains before, and he assumed they were just that: chains that were created out of chakra. Unfortunately, his Byakugan could only see chakra, so it couldn’t detect the life force imbued into Karin’s chains.
Just before Neji could reach Shino, one of Karin’s chains appeared in front of him far faster than he expected. Luckily, he had his Byakugan, which barely allowed him to dodge Karin’s attack in time, resulting in Karin’s chain hitting the ground and smashing a big crater into it.
Neji could feel his eyebrows twitch at that destructive power and decided to focus on Karin instead, while Shino did the same.
What followed was a rather unusual but balanced battle. Neji and Shino both realized that blocking Karin’s chains was not a good option. If it were a two vs one fight, then the duo probably would have had a pretty good chance at winning, but unfortunately for them, that was not the case, so they had to constantly be on guard against each other while fending off Karin’s attacks.
Neji had a huge disadvantage due to only being proficient in close combat, while Shino and Karin used long-range attacks. On the other hand, he had the advantage of being the fastest in the group, so he had the easiest time evading attacks.
Shino had the opposite problems. He was the slowest between those three, so it was especially hard for him to dodge Karin’s chains, but on the other hand, he had by far the longest range and could keep the other two at a distance.
Karin’s most significant advantage was the power of her chains, but she made the mistake of aiming for an instant knockout against Neji and failing, which resulted in Neji and Shino paying more attention to her.
What tipped the scale over was when Neji finally managed to get in close combat range of Karin. Karin wasn’t bad at close combat from what he has seen so far, but she certainly wasn’t at his level.
Although that assumption was correct, he forgot something rather important. Uzumaki are, almost always, very proficient in seals. How could Yuna, who towered over every other Uzumaki in that regard, not teach Karin seals?
So, the moment Neji was about to attack Karin with his Gentle Fist Style, the ground under him lit up, and Neji lost control over his body just long enough for a third chain to pop out of Karin’s back and knock him out.
When Shino saw that Neji was knocked out, he gave up as well. He saw no point in losing any more of his insects in a fight he couldn’t win.
Karin sighed in relief when she heard Shino giving up. She already broke through her limit just now and achieved a third chain. She felt that she could barely control it and that it would collapse at any moment, and if it did, she would recieve some backlash from it.
Although she could have pushed herself some more and probably could have defeated Shino while on her last breath, she would rather just slowly retract her chains without receiving any damage.
The moment all three of her chains disappeared, she staggered a little, but to her surprise, someone caught her before she could fall.
“Haha, not bad, Karin. Although you shouldn’t have exposed your chains so quickly, you easily made up for it with that hidden seal. Very impressive.”
Although it took Karin a while to realize that Yuna was the one who was holding her steady, the inevitable happened when she did. Blood shot out of her nose like a fountain while she fainted with a blissful smile on her face.
After seeing that, the surrounding Uzumaki, who had, yet again, built up Karin’s good image due to her valiantly fighting and winning against two powerful opponents, had their image shattered yet again.
‘Very capable, but still a pervert.’
