"Die!"
"Lightning Release: Thunder Lion's Roar!"
In the forest, the bald man in Kumo's blue-white flak jacket thrust his hands forward—bright arcs of blue lightning bursting between his fingers.
His twin short blades spun through the air.
As they flew, lightning gathered along the blades, forming arcs that linked together—shaping a beast that vaguely resembled a lion… but looked much more like a wild dog with invisible wings.
Kaito shifted half a step to the side, expression still blank.
The attack flew past him harmlessly.
"…That's it?"
His tone dripped with contempt.
Beside the bald man, the black-haired youth, Wei, burst into a proud laugh.
"As expected of Captain! He's the strongest!"
Kaito froze.
Oh…
Right.
He might have made a mistake.
He hadn't looked back yet, but from the bald man's right hand—still raised in a sword-point gesture—he immediately understood.
This "lion" could be redirected.
And sure enough—
The blue lightning beast tore through branches, climbed into the air, then twisted sharply—its movement guided by a faint thread of lightning linking it to Ayei's fingertip.
"This is the real finishing move—Lightning Release: Lion Flash!"
Ayei slammed his right hand onto the ground. He and Wei instantly leapt away.
A thin arc raced across the soil like a compass needle, connecting the ground to the airborne beast.
"Tch. Knew it."
Swoosh!
This time the lightning moved ten times faster—like a falling thunderbolt, slamming into the spot where Ayei had pointed moments ago.
A deep blue streak carved through the forest floor, blasting a crater several meters wide.
The Kumo duo watched closely.
They clearly saw Kaito fail to react in time—
The lightning pierced straight through his body—
BOOM!!
The ground erupted.
Ayei, satisfied, admired the destruction of his A-rank nin-tai hybrid technique.
The technique was ridiculously complex—something Kaito mentally ranked as S-class difficulty simply from how convoluted it was.
But the actual power?
Eh.
Maybe A-rank at best. B-rank if you weren't generous.
Jonin fights ended decisively—no wasted motion.
Had Kaito been anything but a genin…
Had the intel not said he was terrible at ninjutsu—barely able to use even the clone-substitution-transformation basics—Ayei might have checked the corpse, stayed alert, scanned his surroundings.
Instead—
He was admiring his own handiwork.
Totally unaware that Kaito had already used Substitution, Earth Release, and slipped underground.
"It's time to capture the Uchiha," Ayei said smugly, finally raising his gaze toward the tree where Kaito had been—
"Wait—!"
Wei looked up.
The "Kaito" on the branch had turned into a charred log—complete with a smoking hole in the middle.
Ayei stiffened.
From below, a cold voice drifted upward.
"Creating such a complicated, sight-disrupting, noise-disrupting, garbage homing technique… what was going through your head?"
Kaito rose from the ground behind them, upper body emerging first.
From his right hand, a transparent pale-blue sphere expanded outward—
A ROOM.
Half-dome, 180 degrees, shimmering.
"What kind of ninjutsu is that?! Is it a kekkei genkai?!"
Ayei roared, trying to leap away.
Too late.
Kaito fully emerged, blade in hand, and flicked his wrist.
"ROOM — Slaughterhouse."
Distance meant nothing inside ROOM.
Both men were sliced clean in half in an instant.
Their bodies fell apart even as they triggered Substitution—
But nothing happened.
Substitution required legs.
And they had none.
Within ROOM, Kaito sensed everything inside the dome.
He silently observed as their "escape" failed.
"W-Why—why can't we move?!" Ayei shouted, half a body wobbling.
Kaito's voice whispered behind them, cold and almost gentle.
"Don't worry… it doesn't hurt. The doctor will perform a free operation for you."
"You—what did you do to us?!" Ayei screamed.
"Captain! We'll kill him!!"
Wei twisted violently, trying to move—
But his legs didn't respond.
"W-Wei?"
Ayei's face drained of color.
"What?" Wei turned his head—
Just in time to see his right arm attached to Ayei's left leg.
"You—you—you—you—!!"
"Alright."
Kaito quietly moved his blade again, the motion barely visible.
"Losing your lower halves isn't so bad. You still have a future."
Both men's arms fell off simultaneously with a dull thump.
Wei stared at his own dismembered body and broke.
"Impossible! IMPOSSIBLE! You're no genin! We walked into a trap!!"
Even Ayei—who considered himself experienced—had never seen such a horrifying kekkei genkai.
"M-My comrades… they'll avenge me…"
He tried forming seals for a Summoning Technique—
But he had no hands.
No legs.
And no meaningful chance of survival.
"We'll see."
Kaito smiled—dark, demonic.
"No one will ever know what happened here."
The ROOM tightened, clinging to the forest floor.
"In here, time, space, matter… even your lives belong to me."
"Even… your voices."
The sky wasn't even dark—just cloudy.
But the wind cut cold across their faces as they trembled, begging silently.
"Relax. You won't die until I'm done experimenting."
What followed were motions and "procedures" more terrifying than any torture.
Kumo ninja—reduced to disconnected, rearranged limbs—could only suffer like condemned prisoners from ancient stories.
"I already gave that back to you," Kaito muttered irritably.
"Why can't you move it?"
Wei stared at his own right hand—attached to Ayei's left foot—and fainted.
Even Ayei, hardened jonin, cracked quickly.
He ended up whispering, "Kill me… kill me…"
"Boring."
Kaito finally separated his "artwork," dissolved the ROOM, and drove his blade into each man's heart.
"With mental strength like that, don't be a shinobi next life."
He crushed their skulls afterward—just in case someone from an intel division investigated.
If he hadn't had teammates nearby, he might have "played" longer.
Meanwhile
Ritsu had tried several sneak attacks, but every attempt had been spotted instantly by Mikoto's Sharingan.
"Damn it! Why wasn't I told she had a Sharingan? What are our spies even doing?!"
He gritted his teeth.
He needed a hostage. If he couldn't break Mikoto directly, he needed leverage.
Mikoto stayed outwardly calm, but in truth—
Her chakra was nearly empty.
She'd cast two C-rank Fire Releases, enhanced herself repeatedly, thrown weapons, fought taijutsu exchanges earlier, and missed with a Phoenix Sage Fire jutsu that only burned some trap wires.
She was exhausted.
Might Duy, after a few exchanges with the blond Kumo ninja, was also completely spent.
Yakushi Nonō had only half her chakra left.
"Damn… this guy really knows how to hide," Mikoto muttered.
"Stay alert," Nonō whispered.
"Don't let him catch you off guard."
As the two girls stood back-to-back, maintaining a 180-degree defense around the carriage—
A loud rustle erupted from the bushes.
Everyone jumped.
Mikoto.
Nonō.
Duy.
The merchant.
Even the guards.
More rustling.
Nonō tightened her grip on her kunai.
Mikoto didn't turn—she kept her eyes fixed straight ahead.
Then—
"These guys are so broke! Six thousand ryō total? You dare roam the world with that kind of pocket change?!"
Thud.
Both girls dropped anime-style onto their knees.
"This idiot…"
"Teacher… you're such a mob character…"
With danger gone and the horses still spooked, the team could only walk the rest of the way.
But they still reached Tieling Fortress—the port city—before nightfall.
Later that night
Thick clouds blocked the moonlight.
A narrow beam slipped through, casting a pale glow over a silent forest.
"Three Kumo shinobi—all at least chūnin level.
Heads gone.
Two bodies mutilated.
One killed instantly…"
"The carriage tracks head toward Tieling Fortress. That team must have passed through."
"…But something's strange."
A masked man with green eyes crouched over the battlefield, examining the scene.
Kaito had claimed he was exhausted.
He'd said the enemies were all chūnin.
He'd pretended to barely win with taijutsu—
But Nonō had noticed something important:
Kaito didn't have a single injury.
Reason?
He didn't want his sword getting dirty.
The masked man—Kakuzu—followed the trail only minutes later, intending to collect the 30,000-ryō black market bounty on Kaito's team.
"Thirty thousand…" he whispered.
"Thirty thousand to kill a jonin-level squad?"
"Heh… hehehe…"
He straightened up and walked away without looking back.
Along the way, he had gathered intel:
That merchant had supposedly hired a team of four genin to escort him.
Now?
He knew the truth.
A "pure genin squad"?
No such thing existed.
This was definitely a Konoha trap.
To read advanced Chapters, head over to p@treon:
patreon.com/nani_kaito