The following day, inside the Sand Village's dedicated combat assessment facility.
Yuji stood outside the training ground with several senior village figures, watching the two people currently sparring on the floor below.
One was a Sand Village Jonin.
The other was a Fuma clan Jonin.
Naturally, upon joining the Sand Village, the Fuma clan members needed to have their abilities formally reassessed and assigned proper village rank classifications.
The Fuma clan had not objected to this. In their minds, it was actually a fine opportunity to demonstrate their clan's strength openly.
But when the assessments actually began, they quickly discovered they had seriously underestimated how the situation would unfold.
Bang.
In the training ground, a man wielding an oversized scissor-like ninja tool had just driven forward toward the Sand Village Jonin and was immediately swept off his feet and thrown hard to the ground.
The Sand Village Jonin had not used excessive force, but for the Fuma clan, the result carried a distinct flavor of humiliation.
They had come here expecting to prove themselves, and the opponent was simply far stronger than anticipated.
The Fuma clan member scrambled back to his feet with a shout and hurled his ninja tool toward the target again.
But the Sand Village Jonin, whose body crackled with lightning-attribute chakra from the Third Raikage cellular transplant, moved with blinding speed. In the span of a single blink, he had closed the distance, raised his arm, and released a Wind-attribute chakra blade that left several shallow cuts across the Fuma man's body and sent him flying.
"His ability is passable. His fighting approach relies primarily on taijutsu combined with ninja tool technique, and he has some genuine combat experience. But overall, the level is still too low," Baki said, frowning slightly as he stood beside Yuji.
If the entire clan performed at this level, the results were somewhat disappointing.
"It cannot be helped. These are not ninja who went through formal systematic training. Operating under a clan structure, taking missions of relatively low difficulty, they simply have not had the kind of rigorous tempering that produces strong fighters," someone else remarked.
Yuji said nothing.
He had already anticipated the combat results before arriving today. His reason for coming was specifically to see the Fuma clan's secret techniques in action.
He had been researching space-time ninjutsu recently. In particular, the sealing-barrier space-time technique that the Fuma clan called the Mandala. Its form appeared superficially close to the Hidden Stone Village's Dust Release, but its damage mechanism was fundamentally different.
Rather than the raw destructive force of Dust Release, it worked by using spatial compression to attack targets from multiple angles simultaneously. Once a target was caught within the triangular drilling spatial formation, escape was almost impossible.
At its core, this technique was closer in nature to a spatial binding seal than a conventional attack. It was the only ability Yuji had found himself genuinely interested in studying further.
"The ones with the Third Raikage cellular transplants have absorbed the cells reasonably well. The technical recordings connected to those abilities have not produced many obvious demonstrations yet, but with a dedicated period of focused training, they can at minimum develop a working imitation of the relevant techniques. The strength improvement is not small."
Yuji's eyes swept briefly to a Sand Village Jonin who had just driven a fist into his opponent's abdomen and made a quiet observation.
Whether through Sasori's puppet of the Third Raikage or through the Impure World Reincarnation, the Third Raikage's distinctive physical techniques could be demonstrated in some form, allowing the ninja who had received his cellular transplants to observe and study the original movements directly. In terms of chakra integration and physical conditioning, the several individuals showing results today were still far below the original, but by any fair measure, the progress was not bad.
"Pass, Chunin rank."
When the fight concluded, the examiner inside the training ground announced the result.
This caused the Fuma clan members waiting their turn to take the floor to visibly struggle keeping neutral expressions. The man who had just lost was one of the very few individuals within their clan who held Jonin standing in their internal hierarchy. And he had lost that quickly.
It was more than a little embarrassing.
"I will go next."
Another Fuma clan Jonin jumped into the center of the floor.
The next assessment began.
The Sand Village Jonin with lightning-attribute body enhancement was again his opponent.
This time the Fuma clan member was smarter about it. The moment the signal sounded, he immediately created distance and began deploying Earth Release ninjutsu for ranged attacks. He had correctly identified that the Sand Village fighter's taijutsu was too powerful for close-quarters engagement.
Using distance to drain his opponent's energy while probing for weaknesses was the sensible approach. However, the exchange did not stay balanced for long. Because the Sand Village Jonin did not only possess lightning-attribute physical enhancement. He was equally proficient in Wind Release, giving him just as capable a ranged option.
The exchange lasted only a few minutes before the physically unappealing Fuma Jonin was caught cleanly by a Wind Release blade, sent tumbling through the air, and pinned to the floor with a kunai pressed against his throat.
"Fuma Ryota... Chunin."
The examiner was about to announce the result when a colleague appeared at his side and whispered something quietly in his ear.
Then the examiner's tone shifted.
"Fuma Ryota. Revised to Tokubetsu Jonin."
This was naturally Yuji's instruction delivered through the side channel.
Because Fuma Ryota's body carried something unusual. His posture was hunched, and his back appeared to have a large fleshy protrusion growing from it.
This was the result of practicing one of the clan's secret techniques.
Among the Fuma clan's inherited secret techniques, there existed a transformation technique capable of reshaping the user's physical form entirely and unleashing a dramatically amplified level of strength in the process. A transformation similar in concept to a metamorphosis.
But it could only be used once in a lifetime.
This was also the technique referenced in the original story as the Fuma clan's ultimate move.
The level Ryota had demonstrated in the assessment was not his full strength. Based on the existence of this particular finishing technique, Yuji had the grounds to make an exception and promote him to a higher classification than the assessment result alone would normally support.
But across all the Fuma clan members who had taken the floor, only one Tokubetsu Jonin had emerged.
It was obvious the Fuma clan was not pleased with this outcome.
Finally, Kotaro himself stepped out as clan head to take the floor.
Having watched the previous members' exchanges, Kotaro entered his assessment against the Sand Village Jonin with considerably more information than his clanmates had started with. Furthermore, the Sand Village Jonin had been running consecutive matches and his condition had been somewhat depleted.
Even so, Kotaro appeared to be working harder than he had expected. Because a Sand Village Jonin who combined Lightning Release physical enhancement with Wind Release, even with limited chakra remaining, still possessed technique and practical combat experience that were genuinely formidable.
The only advantage Kotaro had over the clan members who had gone before him was that he lasted longer as the fight extended. But there were still no signs he was going to win outright.
The Sand Village Jonin's offensive pressure was simply relentless.
Fortunately, the examiner had not been fully briefed on the Fuma clan's secret techniques beforehand. Kotaro eventually found an opening and deployed the Mandala Sealing Technique, forming a specific sequence of hand seals that created a spatial binding formation at close range, locking the target inside a triangular spatial cage.
The Sand Village Jonin struggled against it. The restraint held.
"The intensity of this spatial binding technique is genuinely not ordinary. Once a target is caught inside it, without interference from outside the formation, escape is nearly impossible in most circumstances."
Yuji had been watching closely since Kotaro took the floor, his eyes observing the chakra movement inside the other man's body while cross-referencing it against the hand seal sequence, methodically analyzing the mechanics of this secret technique.
"However, the weaknesses are also fairly apparent. The wind-up time before deployment is too long for use against truly elite fighters. It is easy to avoid if you see it coming. The precision requirements, in terms of timing, spatial positioning, and target calculation, are extremely high."
"Fuma Kotaro. Jonin rank."
The examiner announced the result when the match concluded.
If the Sand Village Jonin had been fighting at full condition, even deploying this secret technique would not have given Kotaro a high probability of winning. But an assessment had to be judged by its result, and he had won. Therefore the Jonin rank was appropriate.
This was also a special consideration the village was extending to them. Under normal circumstances, becoming a Jonin involved a substantial number of requirements and restrictions, including age requirements and mission record requirements. The latter in particular was entirely absent for every Fuma clan member.
After Kotaro's match, two more members of the Fuma clan achieved Jonin rank, with one of those also reaching Tokubetsu Jonin level.
One of these two was a member skilled in spider-based secret techniques, whose fighting style bore some resemblance to Kidomaru from the original story.
The other person Yuji paid considerably more attention to was Fuma Isamu.
This was the same individual who in the original story would have been shaped by Nagato into the Animal Path body.
What allowed Fuma Isamu to reach Tokubetsu Jonin rank had nothing to do with secret techniques. It was entirely his foundational combat ability passing the bar on its own merits.
Setting aside the question of ninjutsu classification levels, in terms of overall practical capability Isamu was actually stronger than Kotaro, the clan head himself. What stood out most was the combat experience he displayed, combined with a natural talent for summoning techniques and ninja tool application that was difficult to teach.
It was precisely his exceptional ability with ninja tools that earned him the Tokubetsu Jonin classification.
And that summoning talent, perhaps, was also one of the reasons he had caught Nagato's eye in the original story.
Yuji could read it clearly. This Isamu had accumulated genuine battlefield experience and practical combat history over the course of his life. The conditions he had grown up and survived in were simply incomparable to those of the other Fuma clan members who had come from the sheltered environment of the Land of Rice Fields. He had clearly completed a substantial number of difficult missions on his own across the years.
By the end of a full day of assessments, the Fuma clan had produced four members who advanced to Jonin rank, three of whom reached Tokubetsu Jonin level.
In truth, if Kotaro had not been the clan head, Yuji would likely have classified him as Tokubetsu Jonin only rather than full Jonin.
Beyond these four, the remaining Fuma clan members were distributed across Chunin and Genin levels.
This outcome was clearly not what the Fuma clan had been expecting.
They had arrived with the intention of impressing everyone and demonstrating the clan's worth. Instead, reality had delivered them a sharp and humbling lesson.
Their exposure to and understanding of what a major hidden village actually produced in its ninja had simply been insufficient.
This time, at least, they finally understood clearly just how large the gap was between themselves and the ninja who operated on the ninja world's real battlefields.