It's just that Mizuki didn't know it.
Naruto, who had just walked away, had paused for a moment, his head slightly turned. The corners of his mouth curled upward in a subtle smirk—faint sarcasm glinting in his eyes—because, in Naruto's mind, Mizuki was nothing more than a hopeless fool.
Stealing the Scroll of Seals?
What kind of idiot comes up with a plan like that?
There was no consideration for feasibility, no calculation of success rates.
Just a man drowning in his own delusions. If that wasn't stupidity, what was?
"Well then, let me make good use of you, Mr. Mizuki. I hope you won't disappoint me."
Naruto walked out of the examination room.
He didn't even flinch at the odd stares from the students around him.
Naruto knew perfectly well why his classmates looked at him like that. It wasn't anything too complicated—they simply didn't see him as a legitimate ninja. The soundproofing in the assessment classroom wasn't perfect either. Many of them had caught bits and pieces of Iruka-sensei's evaluation.
It was a far cry from the "dead last" result Naruto had received in his previous life.
Because in this life, Naruto was among the top students in the class. His overall grades had consistently placed him near the top—especially in theory, where he frequently ranked in the top three, and occasionally even took first place. His combat ability was similarly outstanding. In the entire class, the only one capable of suppressing him was the Uchiha prodigy—Sasuke.
Of course, none of them knew Naruto had been holding back.
If not for that, Sasuke—who hadn't even awakened his Sharingan yet—would have been utterly defeated. (Naruto had unlocked his own Sharingan the night of the massacre, under the pressure of witnessing his older brother's cruelty—though that power now lay dormant.)
Even so, from the perspective of Naruto's classmates—
Shouldn't someone like him pass the graduation exam with ease?
True, Naruto had struggled with the Clone Technique in the past, but with his intelligence and effort, it was hard to believe he hadn't mastered it by now.
That was the shared sentiment of almost everyone present.
And yet, the final result shattered those expectations.
Six years of training.
Naruto Uzumaki, one of the class's top five students, failed to graduate. So when he walked out, it wasn't surprising that almost every gaze he met was full of shock. Among them, there was only one person who looked at him not with confusion, but with concern.
That was the heiress of the Hyuga clan—Hinata Hyuga.
Her gaze, unlike the others, carried quiet worry.
At that moment—
Watching Naruto's retreating figure—
Hinata's pale eyes shimmered with unease, and her hands nervously fidgeted in front of her chest.
"N-Naruto-kun…"
Naruto, already striding quickly away, of course didn't care what the others thought.
Instead of leaving the academy altogether, he headed for the roof of the Ninja Academy. Finding a quiet spot, he lay down at ease.
"The next part is waiting for that second-rate clown Mizuki to come find me. If memory serves, that should be sometime around the end of the assessment, close to dusk... Yeah, I've got time to nap a little."
With his hands behind his head, Naruto stared up at the sky—blue and cloud-scattered—and squinted into the light, feeling the warmth on his face.
This was an opportunity he couldn't afford to miss.
Once gone, such a chance wouldn't return.
This time...
Could he pull off something better than his counterpart in the original timeline?
In that enormous Scroll of Seals, the "original" Naruto had only learned the Shadow Clone Technique—one of Konoha's most sacred and forbidden jutsu scrolls, containing nearly every known A-rank and above jutsu.
There were two techniques, in particular, Naruto knew he had to secure:
The Reaper Death Seal and Flying Thunder God Technique.
The former intrigued him purely out of curiosity. After all, if the death god and evil gods mentioned in the original existed in this world, he wanted to know for certain.
And the latter—well, the Flying Thunder God was vital.
Originally created by the Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju, and later perfected by Naruto's own father—the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze—it was a space-time ninjutsu of immense strategic value. For Naruto's future, mastering that technique was critical.
Beyond those two...
Any other advanced jutsu, forbidden techniques, and secret arts?
If the opportunity allowed, Naruto planned to learn as many as possible. Not necessarily to master them immediately—but to understand their principles and how they were structured. Once the core of a technique and its hand seals were known, the rest could be learned gradually.
"This is the first major step…"
Naruto thought to himself.
And just as he was mentally laying out the next steps in his grand plan—
He suddenly opened his eyes, sat upright, his face turning serious.
"Wait a second! What if Mizuki doesn't follow the script?"
The thought hit him like a punch to the gut.
When he first came into this world—whether through soul transmigration or simple reincarnation—it was clear the original story could only serve as a reference.
If he treated the plot like a fixed path, he'd be walking straight into disaster.
Would Mizuki still seek him out like in the original timeline?
Probably.
But still, the events of the Uchiha clan massacre had diverged slightly from what Naruto remembered, and that deviation alone was enough to plant doubt. If the Scroll of Seals incident also changed…
Sure, Naruto hadn't done anything major to alter the storyline yet.
But just his presence—his rebirth, his changed attitude and performance—was already affecting the world around him. Unlike the original Naruto, this version wasn't loud and obnoxious, nor was he a dead-last prankster.
He had already changed some things.
So it wasn't unreasonable to think the story might veer off again.
And if it did—what then?
There was no guaranteed answer.
"If Mizuki really doesn't follow the same plan, I'm screwed…"
Naruto muttered to himself, a bitter smile tugging at his lips.
Because he realized—
He was completely passive in this situation.
Without Mizuki's manipulation, Naruto lacked a legitimate reason to "fool" the system and steal the Scroll of Seals.
And without that, he also wouldn't have a shortcut to graduation.
The former? Manageable. Missing one opportunity for rapid growth wasn't the end of the world. He could find other paths later.
But the latter?
If he couldn't graduate this year…
That opened a whole new set of problems.