Before any of them could fully react, the battlefield changed in an instant.
A streak of yellow light flashed across the clearing and appeared beside Rin Nohara.
The shinobi who had been lunging toward her barely had time to widen his eyes before a crushing force slammed into his chest. His body was blasted backward like a rag doll, tearing through the air before smashing into a thick tree trunk with a sickening thud. The bark cracked on impact. When he slid down to the roots below, his chest had already caved in, and his head lolled lifelessly to one side.
Minato Namikaze had moved.
As the man who would one day cut off one of the Eight-Tails' tails with nothing more than a kunai, Minato's taijutsu was never to be underestimated. He might not have possessed the monstrous brute force of the Third Raikage, the Fourth Raikage, or Sarutobi Hiruzen in his youth, but against an ordinary jonin-level opponent, his speed and precision were more than enough to decide life and death in a single exchange.
And that single exchange had ended.
At nearly the same moment, the tall, thin enemy ninja caught a blur of movement at the edge of his vision.
His instincts screamed.
Without hesitation, he twisted his wrist and thrust his kunai forward in defense.
Clang!
A sharp metallic crash exploded through the forest.
The attacker standing before him was no longer the boy who had seemed unconscious a moment ago.
It was Ren.
The short sword in Ren's hand struck like lightning, colliding head-on with the enemy's kunai. The force behind the blow was fierce enough to numb both of their arms instantly. Sparks burst between blade and steel. The tall man staggered half a step, his face draining of color.
He had been pretending?
That brat had been faking unconsciousness?
And that speed just now… was that the Body Flicker Technique?
How could a mere genin be this fast?
The confusion lasted less than a heartbeat.
Then it was buried beneath rage.
"A little genin brat dares to play tricks on me?" the man snarled. "You're courting death!"
His wrist flicked with the fluid, vicious motion of a striking viper. The kunai slid along the edge of Ren's sword and shot toward Ren's ribs from an impossible angle.
Ren bent backward at the waist, narrowly avoiding the stab. The blade missed him by inches.
The tall man pressed forward immediately, not giving him the slightest chance to recover. His kunai became a cold stream of flashing steel as he launched one thrust after another, each aimed at a vital point—throat, heart, underarm, abdomen, thigh. Every attack was clean, experienced, and merciless.
Ren met the storm head-on.
His short sword rose again and again, deflecting, redirecting, and blocking the incoming strikes. The rapid clang of metal on metal rang out in a relentless rhythm, like heavy rain hammering against leaves in a summer storm.
Dang! Dang! Dang! Dang!
The two figures blurred as they exchanged blows. Dirt sprayed from beneath their feet. Fallen leaves spiraled into the air. Tree trunks around them gained fresh cuts from missed strikes, and fine splinters drifted across the battlefield.
This enemy was not weak.
Even without seeing the man use ninjutsu yet, Ren could already judge his level. His close-combat skill was at least that of an elite chunin, perhaps even brushing the lower threshold of jonin. More importantly, the man was older, stronger, and more mature physically than Ren. In a direct contest of raw strength, Ren was at a disadvantage.
But only slightly.
Not enough to crush him.
Not enough to make this impossible.
In fact…
This was perfect.
An opponent at exactly this level was the ideal target to test that move.
And with Minato nearby to cover the battlefield, Ren didn't need to worry about dying if he made a mistake.
That thought steadied his breathing.
He exhaled slowly, then used the momentum of a parried strike to retreat. With a sharp burst of chakra, his body vanished.
A moment later, he reappeared more than twenty meters away, sliding backward across the earth. He slammed his short sword into the ground to halt himself, his free hand already moving.
His thumbs locked tightly against his index and middle fingers, forming an unusual seal.
Then he lowered his voice and spoke like he was opening the gate to something dreadful.
"Instant Hell Shadow Kill Formation—Activate!"
A low hum spread through the air.
Buzz—
An invisible wave burst outward from Ren's body as the center, sweeping across the battlefield in an expanding circle. Within a radius of nearly eighty meters, the atmosphere shifted.
The air rippled.
The light warped.
It was as though the entire clearing had become the surface of disturbed water.
The tall man froze.
For a brief second, the world around him seemed to sway unnaturally, as though he had been dragged onto a stage built from illusions and shadows.
"Genjutsu?" he muttered, face tightening.
He immediately formed the seal to release illusion techniques.
Nothing changed.
The forest remained the same.
The trees. The dirt. The rocks. The blood on the ground.
And Ren.
No—
Not Ren.
Ren's figure split apart before his eyes.
One became two.
Two became four.
Four became eight.
Then more.
More.
More.
In the span of only a few breaths, Ren had multiplied into a chaotic ring of more than twenty identical figures. Some were Water Clones. Some were Shadow Clones. Some were false afterimages woven together with timing, movement, and the distortion of the battlefield. Every single one looked real. Every single one moved with killing intent.
The tall man's pupils shrank.
He couldn't tell which was the original.
He couldn't even tell if the original was standing still.
Ren's voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"Hatake Sword Style: Gale Slash."
Then the attack began.
All of the Ren figures charged at once.
Some rushed straight in from the front. Others circled to the flanks. Two moved low. Three leapt high. Several remained behind, preparing shuriken. The real Ren activated Partial Expansion on his muscles, increasing the explosiveness in his limbs, and entered the formation with the rest of his clones like a hidden fang among shadows.
Sword light erupted from every angle.
The tall man's scalp went numb.
Unable to identify the original, he could only trust his instincts and attack the Ren in front of him whose killing intent felt the sharpest. His kunai swung upward with all his might.
Clang!
He blocked the incoming slash.
Relief had not even reached his chest when the Ren before him turned hazy and insubstantial, dissolving like mist.
A fake.
At the same time, a shadow on his rear left abruptly solidified.
Ren appeared from that angle like a blade being drawn from darkness itself.
Slash!
The short sword cut across the enemy's waist, opening a line of blood.
The man roared and spun, stabbing backward.
But that Ren also dissolved in an instant.
Another substitution.
Another fake.
Before his kunai completed the turn, a third Ren shot in from the side, blade flashing toward his calf.
He barely managed to twist away, but not fully.
Blood sprayed.
Ren's movement became a nightmare.
Substitution Jutsu. Clone coordination. Feints layered over real attacks.
Every second felt like three or four killing blows.
The true Ren kept shifting positions around the tall man with terrifying frequency, appearing in one place only to vanish and reappear in another. One moment he attacked from the front with a straightforward slash. The next, he struck from the blind spot at the back of the knee. Then from above. Then from below.
Meanwhile, the Water Clones that had stayed at range began hurling kunai and shuriken in relentless succession, forcing the enemy to divide his attention even further. Several rushed in recklessly, not caring whether they survived, trying to force explosive tags onto his body at point-blank range.
The tall man fought desperately.
His kunai became a silver wall of defensive arcs, so fast and so dense that an ordinary opponent would never have breached it.
But Ren was not attacking like an ordinary opponent.
This was not a duel anymore.
This was a coordinated execution.
The moment the man focused on blocking one blade, another came from his rear. The moment he shattered two Water Clones with a burst of force, the real Ren accelerated even faster, as if the removal of those distractions had made his killing path even cleaner.
To the enemy, the battlefield had become hell itself.
Sword light was everywhere.
Shadows were everywhere.
Every movement carried death.
He felt like an insect trapped in a spider's web, struggling harder only to become more entangled. No matter how he moved, there was always another Ren waiting for him. No matter how fiercely he counterattacked, his blade found only water, smoke, or emptiness.
And worst of all—
He couldn't even touch the hem of Ren's clothing.
Less than twenty seconds passed.
That was all.
By then, the ninja flak jacket on the tall man's body had been shredded to rags. Cuts lined his waist, back, thighs, and calves. Blood ran down his body in streams, soaking his clothes, splattering the dirt underfoot. His steps became heavier, slower, less stable.
Pain was starting to disrupt his movements.
But pain was not the only problem.
A strange numbness crept through the edges of his wounds.
An itch, then a dull loss of sensation.
His breathing hitched.
Poison?
His face twisted.
He didn't know that what coated Ren's blade was not lethal poison, but a powerful anesthetic taken from Konoha Hospital's surgical stock. Ren had gotten it while helping there, and now it was proving brutally effective. It wouldn't kill quickly, but it would rob the enemy of control over his body piece by piece.
The tall man realized the danger immediately.
If this continued, he was finished.
With a sudden roar, he abandoned defense and exploded forward with reckless force. Ignoring the fresh wounds opening across his side, he slashed in a straight line and dispersed every Ren figure standing before him.
Smoke burst.
Water splashed.
Openings appeared.
At the same time, he yanked out a handful of kunai and shuriken from his pouch and hurled them wildly in all directions to buy a single breath of space.
Then his hands flew through seals.
"Earth Release: Earth Wall!"
The ground trembled.
With a heavy rumble, thick walls of earth burst upward in a circular ring around him, sealing him inside a crude defensive fortress. Soil and stone rose like prison bars from the earth. Several of the Ren figures that had been too close were forced through the wall and vanished into smoke as their clone bodies dispersed.
Inside the ring, the tall man gasped for breath.
At last, a moment.
Just one moment.
His expression turned savage again as he prepared his next technique. If he could use Earth Release once more—something like Rock Pillar Spears—he could tear through the entire area, wipe out the clones, and force the original body into the open.
He drew in a breath to gather chakra.
And then—
The temperature changed.
A hot wind swept over the earthen wall.
Whoosh—
The air crackled.
The tall man's body stiffened.
He looked up.
What he saw made his blood run cold.
Above him, Ren had somehow vaulted high into the air. Framed against the sky, his figure looked terrifyingly calm. His chest expanded. Chakra surged to his throat. Then he exhaled.
A mass of blazing white fire descended.
It was enormous.
Nearly ten meters across.
Like a miniature sun falling from the heavens.
The flames roared as they came down, bright enough to sting the eyes. The surrounding air twisted from the heat. Nearby leaves shriveled in an instant. Grass blackened. The bark of surrounding trees cracked and curled under the sheer temperature.
The circular earth wall that had seemed like salvation became something else in that instant.
A coffin.
A giant earthen coffin trapping the tall man inside.
His face turned pale with absolute horror.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu!"
Boom!
The world erupted in flame.
The fireball slammed into the enclosed space with catastrophic force. The earthen walls glowed red in an instant, then fractured under the pressure. Fire surged upward like an exploding volcano, and the blast wave tore through the forest clearing, sending dust, sparks, and burning fragments of earth flying in every direction.
The heat rolled outward in scorching waves.
For one brief moment, the entire battlefield was drowned in white fire.
And in the center of it—
The trap Ren had prepared from the very beginning finally closed.
Instant Hell Shadow Kill Formation had truly activated.
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