Slash!
Another strike.
A wound that didn't look fatal opened on the Rain ninja's leg.
Yubi's sudden attack should have been easy to dodge—yet at the critical moment, the man's body stiffened, his movements turning sluggish.
"This kid's blade…"
The Rain ninja narrowed his eyes.
The scalpel in the boy's hand was thin—easy to conceal, yet unnervingly sharp.
Being injured again by a mere genin was humiliating. Rage twisted the Rain ninja's expression.
But Yubi didn't press the advantage.
Instead, he spun and leapt toward the injured teammate lying on the ground. In a flash, he scooped him up.
"Hm?"
Only then did the Rain ninja realize something was wrong.
That stiff, numb sensation in his body was getting worse by the second.
"Poison…"
His pupils contracted.
If there was one village in the shinobi world most infamous for poison, it was Sunagakure.
True, Amegakure had Hanzo of the Salamander—an expert with toxins, especially when combined with his black salamander. Even the Legendary Sannin of Konoha couldn't withstand those methods, and his name echoed across the shinobi world.
But that was one man.
Sunagakure, on the other hand, was known for puppet masters—shinobi who constantly researched mechanisms and toxins to refine their techniques.
So when it came to poison, they couldn't be underestimated.
It wasn't that Sunagakure's poison was necessarily the strongest—rather, they were the most practiced at using it.
"Still… this level of poison isn't a real problem."
The Rain ninja's eyes turned cold.
While he still had some sensation, he immediately widened the distance between himself and Yubi, trying to stall for time.
They were the kind of operatives Hanzo trained personally. Unless it was a particularly vicious toxin, they had resistance.
"Stop wasting your time… you're already dead."
To his surprise, the boy's indifferent gaze swept over him, and Yubi said it calmly—as if stating a fact.
Then, without lingering, Yubi retreated with his wounded teammate, moving fast.
"Arrogant bastard!"
The Rain ninja ground his teeth.
But a sudden wave of dizziness hit him.
Weakness washed through his limbs.
Not poison.
He glanced down—and his expression changed.
The cut on his leg looked shallow, nothing more than a thin slice… yet it had caused heavy bleeding in a very short time. The blood loss had been so fast he hadn't even noticed.
Thud.
I… lost to some snot-nosed genin?
That thought flickered—
And his body collapsed. Consciousness slipped away.
Whoosh.
Carrying his teammate, Yubi bounded along the rock walls, then landed on a high platform carved into the cliff.
From here, he could overlook the battlefield at a safe distance.
He checked his teammate: the explosion had mangled the boy's face—one eye was clearly beyond saving. His limbs were also badly damaged.
"I'm sorry, Yubi… I dragged you down. Don't worry about me. You're a medical ninja—go. Get the intel out." The boy's remaining eye rolled toward Yubi as Yubi treated him with cool efficiency, and he spoke weakly.
"It's fine," Yubi said with a faint smile. "They don't have many people. Endo-senpai has them tied down for now."
But from the corner of his eye, Yubi had already seen the state of the battlefield below.
It was bad.
The Rain ninja assault team still had three people.
On their side… it was basically just Endo left.
The other genin and the injured chunin were already dead.
From the moment they were attacked until now, less than five minutes had passed—everything had ended frighteningly fast.
Small-scale shinobi clashes weren't like large battlefields where stalemates dragged on. Life and death were decided in moments.
By the book, as a medical ninja, Yubi should prioritize his own safety.
But the situation was special. No one could protect him anymore.
"Rest for a bit."
After giving the injured boy basic treatment, Yubi turned back toward the battlefield.
From the intensity of his earlier exchange with that Rain ninja, Yubi judged that if he and Endo fought together, they had a chance to win—even if he was only a genin.
With that decision made, he raced back.
"Hm?"
The three Rain ninja in the field all reacted when they realized one of the Sand brats was still alive.
"That bastard Aoki is dead?"
"He couldn't handle a genin? What trash."
The Rain ninja spat curses.
"Run!"
Endo shouted when he saw Yubi charging back as if he had a death wish.
"I've observed enough. The data's sufficient."
Yubi ignored Endo completely.
There wasn't the slightest fear on his face as he rushed the three enemies. His eyes darted rapidly, finally locking onto one of them.
As a transmigrator, Yubi knew this world well—its jutsu, villages, combat styles, and the capabilities of different shinobi types.
His mind was a database.
Not perfect. Not exhaustive.
But still an advantage.
Yet his true trump card wasn't that—it was the knowledge he'd obtained through the system: Black Jack's medical legacy.
It gave him an intimate understanding of the human body.
And he'd deliberately perfected that edge. Even before he entered the Academy, he'd been refining his physique—using his own body as the first "test subject," pushing and reshaping it.
With his medical skill, he could run brutal training to complete exhaustion, recover quickly, and train again—maintaining a kind of constant, limit-breaking regimen.
Beyond that, he had a doctor's advantage: by observing an opponent's movements, he could estimate their mobility range, predict likely lines of attack and defense… even detect subtle weaknesses or hidden issues in the body.
Using that, combined with a stronger body than his peers, plus the "data" in his head—Yubi had fused everything into an offensive template best suited to him.
He called it:
"Data Taijutsu."
At his current stage, it was more than enough.
Even the poison he used was something he'd mixed himself.
Just as Yubi was about to plunge into the fight—
Several puppets dropped from above.
Without warning, they appeared beside the three Rain ninja.
The puppet on the left spat out a sharp spike mid-motion, driving it straight into a target's brain.
The puppet on the right spun a high-speed blade in its hand and cut another Rain ninja clean in half at the waist.
Both were humanoid puppets.
The third puppet was shaped like a crawling lizard.
When it closed in, the plates along its back snapped open, spraying a storm of poisoned senbon.
The remaining Rain ninja was riddled into a sieve.
Yubi's charge halted instantly.
Their desperate struggle… ended just like that.
A figure landed in the distance.
A youthful face. Calm footsteps. Chakra threads swaying from his fingers as he approached.
Sasori.
"Now that is the kind of genius you call a monster."
Yubi slipped his scalpel back into his pouch, not looking surprised.
Sure, those Rain ninja weren't anything special. Rank was only a label—it didn't truly measure strength. In the scope of major villages and real battlefields, they were disposable.
But for them, they were still difficult to handle.
Eight years old sounded young—yet in this world, many people had already revealed terrifying talent at that age.
And once they did, they were unstoppable.
In front of such prodigies… a lifetime of effort was nothing more than someone else's starting line.
Sasori walked over, retrieved his puppets, and stopped at a distance from Yubi.
"I thought… with you here, nothing would happen."
He ignored Endo entirely and spoke to Yubi in a flat tone.
"You're giving me too much credit," Yubi sighed.
Sasori stared at him without speaking—
As if trying to see straight through him.