Yeah that's the one he's been scolded about.

Luckily, their team's pretty fast, and has an advantage of knowing where the training ground even is.

It's pretty much impossible to grow up in Konoha and not be warned about Training Ground 44, otherwise known as the Forest of Death. The visitors who hadn't studied the terrain well enough are still smart enough to follow the people who do know where they're going, so everyone gets there pretty much on time.

"Great! You all made it!" Anko says. "Welcome to the Forest of Death. This is where we'll be having the next test. Now, before we begin," she says, waving a stack of forms, "I'm going to pass these around. Everyone needs to sign one of these waivers saying that if you die in there, it's not my fault and you were warned about the dangers."

- If dying in the exam's this strong a possibility why isn't that included in the chuunin exam registration papers. Also setting up the exam so it's likely to be deadly is stupid - both unfair and a waste of good genin. So. Many. Things to fix...

"And those dangers are - ?"

Anko goes through a list as the papers get distributed, seeming to take great joy in the reactions of some of the genin. Carnivorous animals, poisonous animals, poisonous plants, carnivorous plants, lingering area-effect genjutsu, hidden sinkholes, collapsing caves...

Not very helpfully specific, but he pays enough attention to memorize it.

Once the forms have been passed out, Anko explains the rules of the test. Each team will get one of either a scroll bearing the word 'Heaven' or 'Earth' and will be assigned a starting gate and departure slot at random. Over a period of two hours, the team will be released through the forty-four gates in the fence surrounding the Forest of Death. Their objective is to make it to the tower in the center of the training ground with both a Heaven and an Earth scroll, unopened. Opening a scroll will result in immediate disqualification and punishment. Each team needs two scrolls to successfully complete the test, which means at least half of them are guaranteed to fail. Once they're inside the forest, there are no rules or limits on what they can do to obtain the second scroll they need. The time limit is five days. If you don't make it to the tower with the scrolls by then, you fail.

Why are they putting children into a free-for-all death match, this sounds like a terrible idea.

...Also the work he'd been neglecting on the 'locate object' spell would've been really useful here, and he's not sure he'll finish it before the five days are up.

...Hm, he has that spell to hide spellbooks in the ethereal plane, he might be able to rework it very quickly to apply to random scrolls... Okay yeah he thinks he just needs to shift a small handful of things...

To his team as they wait: "Would we rather try to set up near the tower and ambush people, or hunt a group down?"

"We'd probably be good at both?"

"Stronger groups are more likely to make it to the tower. We should attempt to obtain the necessary scroll as early as possible, before the weakest targets are eliminated."

"So... Try to hunt first? Then if we don't get anything, try an ambush?" Hm... "I think going after specific targets possibly isn't that useful, we don't know where like the other rookie teams are and don't have a good way of looking... We'll also have to look out for people coming after us, they may think we're weak 'cause we're rookies." What're some tactics he'd use... "People might try to split us up? Or impersonate one of us... Ambushing us at night, too..."

Sugira, meanwhile, is doing the mental math on just keeping them all under full protective spells the entire time. His time for the ones like mage armor is four hours, he'd need to cast it eighteen times to cover all three of them for a day with no gaps... Similar with protection from arrows, and he has fewer spells available at that level. Forty first level spells a day, thirty second level...

"How likely are we to get less than a minute's warning on pitched combat?" he asks, a bit distracted. "I can keep us under protections the whole time, but that trades off against offense and utility..."

Unfortunately he hasn't gotten himself past being able to memorize ten days' worth with his sharingan yet.

"If we are hunting, we will be able to pick our target. If we are the targets- none of us are sensor-type."

"Early on it might be worth it, the field will be more crowded and more people will be coming after us. I can adjust later."

He readies three each of mage armor and protection from arrows, then, to cast once their gate opens.

"Not being sensors will complicate hunting..."

"It might then be best to bait an attack, while our defenses are strongest."

He nods. "Night might be best for that, people will expect us to be staying in one place."

"Assuming we can find an appropriate location to fortify."

"Easier than finding a specific team, at least."

Chihiro nods.

Their team is called up to turn in their forms and receive their scroll, marked with earth. This is done in a tent out of view of the others.

Unless his team has objections, he'll take the scroll, stick it in a pouch so it won't be quite as obvious what he's doing, and then with a muttered incantation it fades into the Ethereal Plane (what he's doing should be obvious to Naruto and Chihiro, he's hidden or summoned spellbooks this way often enough). ("The thing I am holding" is fortunately a really easy target for spells like this, though working the spell to retrieve only one of the objects he now has stowed will be a pain.)

That is a good precaution.

Their assigned gate is 17, approximately a quarter of the way around the perimeter. They have one of the later time slots.

Gives him more time to run through things, then, and for them to develop plans - he can cast the spells just before the gate's meant to open, then re-memorize ones likely to be useful in combat, and hide his spellbook away (keeping a page out to then memorize a new spell - luckily by now he can prepare the retrieval from memory, so he doesn't have to worry about getting stuck without his spellbook later...)

Though being in a later time-slot does have the drawback that there's a higher chance of someone ambushing them sooner rather than later.

They'll just have to be ready.

Their gate opens and the proctor points them through it.

He's not able to keep the sharingan on constantly, unfortunately, but he'll stay alert, and if anything feels off flare it.

Naruto is also trying to be alert, which mostly looks like randomly switching his hyper-focus between a thousand little things - still, if one of those little things turns out to be a clue to an ambush he has a higher chance of seeing through it.

There are lots of potentially threatening things in the Forest of Death. For example, this bush is twitching in a wind that isn't blowing.