It was the day when the final stage of the Chunin exam is taking place, the arena was crowded with all sorts of people, there is a line of benches for viewers and almost all is occupied, there are some private balconies occupied by reach-clothed people, a participant’s balcony and a Kage’s balcony.

All the participants were called to the arena, and then Hiruzen made a long speech about the greatness of Konoha, importance of the joint efforts that all the participant villages contributed for the Chunin exam, importance of maintaining peace and about the will of fire.

After that all the participants were asked to go back to the participants balcony and shortly after that the first pair was announced, it was a young Konoha shinobi against a Genin from Suna.

The fight went in the favor of the Konoha Genin, Yuta was thinking while observing it, ‘It’s sixteen participants, so it will be three fights for me, as I won’t be making it to the finals. If what I expect from Konoha for the matches arrangement is true, then I won’t fight either Itachi or Hikari until the semi-finals, where I will be facing one of them. I had a feeling that I can’t win against Itachi even if I go all-out, and I won’t be going against Hikari all-out either, it will be just too troublesome and I don’t really have to.’

After the Konoha Genin won the first match it was time for Yuta to fight against an another Konoha Genin. Yuta saw how the sixteen years looking guy in the Konoha shinobi attire jumped straight to the arena from the balcony directly. Yuta didn’t want to make people wait while he was making his way through the stairs and corridors, so he used body flicker jutsu to flicker to the arena and stand in front of his opponent.

While waiting for the referee to start the match Yuta expected the fight to be at the approximately same level as his fight at the preliminaries against Ame Genin, but his expectations wasn’t met.

The referee gave a signal and fight started by Yuta’s opponent starts to waving a hand seals and Yuta half-way realized that it was a fire release jutsu, most likely a D-rank Fireball jutsu, so Yuta waved one hand seal for his water ball jutsu and pored a little less chakra in it compared to his senses of how much his opponent used, then Yuta hold the seal for a little while waiting for his opponent to finally release a jutsu.

Shortly after that both of them fired a jutsu at the same time, fireball and water ball collided in the center of the arena and despite the fireball being bigger, the jutsus canceled each other creating a cloud of steam in the process.

Yuta’s opponent jumped back a little and thrown a bunch of shurikens in the center of the steam, as he lost the vision of Yuta, but before he decided what to do next, he felt a cold edge of a kunai being pressed against his throat.

When steam was created and Yuta’s opponent was focused on it, Yuta instantly flickered to a far distance to the side and appeared far away in his opponent’s blind spot, then he made another flicker a dozen meters behind his opponent’s back and approached him silently with his kunai to end the fight.

Yuta’s opponent was surprised and angry at this outcome and Yuta looked like a kid compared to him. Yuta didn’t care about his opponent’s attitude, and he didn’t even remember his name either, after referee announced his victory, Yuta went back to observe other matches.

After a few boring matches there was Hikari’s turn and she won fast, and her opponent didn’t have a chance. A little after that the same happens in Itachi’s fight.

After that it was time for Yuta’s second match, he fought against a Suna Genin that used a wind jutsu that Yuta dodged with body flicker and ended the fight fast, pretty much in the same manner as the previous one.

While Yuta was walking back to his balcony, he thinks, ‘My Chunin exam ends here, as in the next fight it will be Itachi or Hikari, as I won’t go all-out there and without that I won’t have a chance against either of them.’

After a little time and a few uneventful fights Yuta was called to fight against Hikari. When Yuta glanced at Hikari standing beside him, she looked back with a glee, seeing that Yuta sighed tiredly and both of them flickered directly to the arena.

Hikari looking at Yuta with a smirk said while rub her fists, “Ready to get beaten?”

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Yuta sighed tiredly once again while mumbling, “Troublesome…”, he thought while waiting for the referee to start the fight, ‘It looks like she is not intended to use her sword. If she does, the fight will be over quickly, but if she doesn’t then she is just insulting me, as I won’t go down that easily! I wanted to end this fight fast without making much effort, but Hikari doesn’t leave me that choice now, damned...’

Yuta’s expression changed from a tired one to a serious one as he thought, ‘Well, you want a fight, you will get it!’. Seeing Yuta’s expression Hikari’s smile is just widened.

‘She is definitely up to no good…’ Yuta thought while referee is giving a signal for the fight to start.

‘Well then, I used a few jutsu in the previous matches and while my real chakra reserve is quite big now and on the low-Jonin level, I’m using a chakra concealment seal to mask it to appear as a mid-Chunin level reserve, so I have a limit of how much more jutsus I can show here.’

With the signal Hikari started running in Yuta’s direction with a relatively high speed. Yuta thrown a bunch of shurikens at her while thinking, ‘If I just shot fire bullets of water bullets at her, she would just dodge them, I can try doing that only at a close range where it will be hard for her to dodge. Also, I can use a Great Fireball jutsu and overcharge it to make it big, but I can bet my time control ability against a ten ryo that it wouldn’t hit… I have to do something tricky here if I want to make her to draw her sword, I can’t give her this win without that much or she will mock me with it for the rest of her life…

Something tricky huh, that might work…’ Yuta thought while throwing a small smoke screen bomb at the ground beside him.

Covered by smoke screen Yuta quickly created a shadow clone and thrown another bunch of shurikens in Hikari’s direction and use his substitution-transformation combo from the academy days by substitute himself with the one of the shurikens and transforming himself into it.

Yuta’s shadow clone grabbed a substituted shuriken that appeared beside him and flickered away to create a distance between him and the approaching Hikari.

Hikari easily dodged two waves of shurikens while running forward. She run straight through the dissipating smoke and noticed Yuta, who created a more distance between them.

As Yuta anticipated, Hikari’s tactic was to close the distance and beat him in taijutsu, and knowing Hikari’s skills Yuta was sure that the moment Hikari catches up to him it will be all over, and it doesn’t matter if it will be him or his shadow clone, so he concealed himself creating a shadow clone with smoke and hidden himself among the thrown shurikens to wait for the opportunity to strike.

What came next was a couple minutes of a game of tag on a high speed, where Hikari is chasing Yuta’s shadow clone while dodging everything it throws at her and a clone that is constantly throwing shurikens, kunais with explosive tags attached, and smoke screen bombs to cover for his following body flicker jutsu to create a distance.

After creating a distraction for some time to lower Hikari’s guard, Yuta’s shadow clone finally brought the fight close to his original body to make a final attack on Hikari. As Yuta and his shadow clone have the same thought process, both of them thought on the same idea for this after a few minutes since fight started and neither of them have to communicate to understand the plan.

Hikari passed the shuriken, that is Yuta’s transformed body, on her way to Yuta’s shadow clone, the clone was a twenty meters away from her when he thrown a bunch of kunais on Hikari’s left and right side, with explosive tags attached, to block her escape routes, right after that when the distance was only a couple meters clone unsealed a few dozen of explosive tags and detonate them.

Hikari seeing this instantly jumped back in retreat but on her way was Yuta already making a hand seal and exhaling a massive fireball in her direction.

‘She should have prepared a body flicker jutsu right when she saw my clone throwing a kunais with explosive tags around, but she didn’t, it will be hard for her to escape unharmed now.’

A few explosions happened around Hikari, a big explosion on her back from the shadow clone’s position and a huge fireball coming right at her from the direction she chose to retreat.

‘That’s it, I can’t show any more jutsu here or it will be suspicious for me to have chakra for them left.’ Yuta thought while maintaining the Great Fireball jutsu and stopping after two seconds and jumping back to create some distance as the explosions blown a lot of dirt around and blocked his vision.

As Yuta jumped back, he glanced at the referee and saw that he didn’t move at all.

‘I can’t sense Hikari as there are a lot of chakra fluctuations in the place. If referee didn’t move that means that Hikari should be fine…’ Yuta thought while acting and breathing tired. But the moment he glanced at the referee he felt a cold and sharp blade pressing on his neck.

The referee came to the arena and announced that Hikari won. Hikari sheathed her sword and said gleefully, “How is it feel to lose to your own tactic?”

Yuta glanced at her calmly, her clothes were a little dusty but that’s it.

‘Seems that she managed to escape the explosion completely and flickered to my blind spot when the vision was obstructed, well, doesn’t matter, when she escaped the explosion, I was already lost no matter what.’

“Congratulations” Yuta said with a slight smile and turned around to leave the arena.

“Wait a minute!” Hikari exclaimed extremely annoyed, “What do you mean by ‘Congratulations’?! You won’t even argue back or be angry or something?!” Hikari yelled while quickly following Yuta, “You won’t even say something like ‘I will beat you next time’?!”

‘What is she even want from me…’ Yuta thought with a tired sigh.