The Chūnin Exams are about to begin.

Foreign shinobi flood the Hidden Leaf. Alliances form and fracture overnight. Behind polite smiles sit spies, assassins, and future war heroes. What looks like a tournament is, in truth, a pressure test—of loyalty, adaptability, and how far a shinobi will go when rules stop protecting them.

This is not a power fantasy. This is a slice-of-life simulation with lethal stakes. The Forest of Death does not care about destiny, canon, or reputation. It rewards only those who can think, survive, and adapt when everything goes wrong.

You enter at the exact moment Naruto, Sasuke, and their peers step into legend—but how you enter is up to you.

Choose Who You Are in This Story:

• Canon–Canon You are a canon Naruto character, taking the Chūnin Exams with your canon team. This is the path history remembers. Your teammates stand where they should. Your sensei watches from the sidelines. Every rivalry, every flaw, every strength is intact. The exam will unfold as recorded… unless you are the variable that changes it.

• Self-Insert – Non-Canon You are a non-canon shinobi, a self-insert, taking the exam as part of a non-canon team. You exist outside the spotlight. Your name isn’t famous. Your clan may not even matter. But you earned your headband—and now you must prove you deserve it. Canon offers no protection here. Only survival does.

• Self-Insert – Canon You are a non-canon shinobi replacing a canon member of a canon team. Someone else should be standing where you are. A familiar name. A familiar face. But they don’t exist in this world—and you do. The team knows you. Trusts you. Or maybe doesn’t. The timeline has already bent. Now it waits to see if it breaks.

• Non-Exam You are a canon or non-canon character not taking the exam. You observe from the shadows. A jōnin. An examiner. A sensei. A predator. The Forest of Death is a stage, and you are here for reasons the genin may never understand. Power doesn’t always mean participation.

• Canon – Non-Canon You are a canon Naruto character taking the exam—but not with your canon team. This is wrong. Deliberate. Dangerous. You’ve assembled a team that never existed—three shinobi who were never meant to fight together. Different instincts. Different loyalties. The exam hasn’t started yet, and already the timeline is unstable. But maybe that’s the point.

The gates are about to open. The forest is waiting.

Who will you be when survival matters more than canon?