Chapitre 205: CH_6.34 (205)
Want to read ahead of schedule? Head over to Patreón @
[ https://www.patreón.com/fictiononlyreader ]
The link is also in the synopsis
———
.
While Takuma was lugging himself across the battlefield, trying to get himself to an iryo-nin to get himself healed, in another part of the battlefield, two opposing jonin faced each other.
"I didn't think I would meet you here, 'rainy cloud' Ogata." Toridasu smiled at the bear-bellied man while he fanned himself gently with his folding fan. "I didn't know the Hidden Cloud was involved in this war. I must say, I'm unpleasantly surprised to see someone like you."
Ogata of the Hidden Cloud was a large and hairy man with a wide frame, big, meaty arms and legs, and a broad torso. He had been a resident of the top-level Bingo Books issued by villages other than the Hidden Cloud. There was a large bounty on the accomplished jonin's head and no one wanted him alive.
Ogata scratched his scruffy beard. "Color me surprised to see your bald head here. This isn't a place for old bones like yours; go home and have your nanny tuck you in. I don't want to be accused of abusing the elderly."
Toridasu laughed behind his elaborate folding fan with metal tips. "But I'm not here, Ogata. None of us are," he said. "And you are going to be nowhere after today."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Ogata sighed as though finding the conversation utterly dull. He had a heavy gauntlet around his left hand, and he put on another on his right hand as he exchanged words with Toridasu. "You made a mistake coming here, old man. All of your men will perish here because of that. Worry not, I will give all of you a proper burial. Unlike you Hidden Leaf folk, we are honorable people."
The two jonin stood facing each other with bloody chaos around them. Dozens of shinobi from each side fought around them, but no one dared to approach the two men, leaving a wide berth for their own sakes.
"Really? Kidnapping a toddler from her home to steal her bloodline is honorable?" Toridasu shot back.
"I have no idea what you're talking about. All I know is that you people killed one of ours on the day we visited your filthy village to sign a peace treaty conference," Ogata said in counter.
The infamous incident, now known as the Hyuga Affair, was an episode between the Hidden Leaf and Hidden Cloud, who were in conflict with each other. However, because of the prolonged fighting, the two villages sought to end it and came to a mutual decision to cease fire and sign a peace treaty. Both villages sent an envoy each to the other village.
However, the treaty was soon revealed to be nothing more than a cover when the Hidden Cloud envoy in the Hidden Leaf village kidnapped Hyuga Hinata, the eldest daughter of the Hyuga clan head, Hyuga Hiashi, on her third birthday. The envoy was killed during the attempt by Hiashi before he could leave the village with the little girl.
However, the Hidden Cloud denied all accusations of the kidnapping, and demanded the body of Hiashi as compensation for the death of their envoy as per the stipulations of the signed peace treaty.
Ultimately, the Hidden Leaf conceded as they didn't want to break the peace treaty. The Hidden Leaf had suffered from the Nine Tail incident a few years prior and desperately needed time to recover. The continuance of the war with the Hidden Cloud would only drain the village's already dwindling resources, and the Daimyo had tightened his purses.
The Hidden Leaf village sent the body of Hyuga Hiashi to the Hidden Cloud, but everyone involved knew that the Hidden Leaf had sent Hyuga Hizashi, Hiashi's identical twin brother, instead. The Hidden Cloud didn't say anything—rather, they couldn't. They too wanted peace, and it didn't matter whose body they got; they weren't getting anything of use because the Hyuga's cursed seal rid the body of all the Byakugan secrets—and anything else would be removed surgically before the body was sent out.
Toridasu snapped his fan shut, and the landscape changed drastically. The wet, muddy ground cracked, and bubbling lava flowed from between the gaps below. A series of cracks appeared around Ogata, and harsh lava in the shape of large monster claws snapped towards him. They grasped at the empty air with Ogata nowhere to be seen. The large man was much faster than his heavy frame suggested and shot forward Toridasu like a whistling arrow.
The cracks in the earth deepened and more lava burst to the surface. A dozen more claws burst forth, grabbing for Ogata, who evaded with agility and precision beyond what his frame suggested. More than his physical prowess, his mind was more impressive as he calculated the locations of a dozen moving lines on the fly.
He finished his hand seals and stomped his foot on the ground that cracked under his force. Cobalt sparks crackled around his leg before the stomp forced the concentrated lightning into the ground. There was a split second of silence before the earth groaned. Chunks of earth were sent hurtling in every direction and the cracks widened, and the ground shook as though struck by a mid magnitude earthquake. The lands shifted, displacing in every direction, making the cracks bigger. The lava surged, engulfing the claws in wide pillars that roared angrily.
They were on the same plane at the start of the fight, but Ogata's stomp had altered the landscape through pure force that resembled natural calamities. He looked down at Toridasu from a height and weaved hand seals with his metal-gloved fingers. His gauntlet-covered fingers sparked but just as he was about to leap toward Toridasu, the fiery claws burst out of the pillars—dripping and brighter than before— to surround him from all directions, jumping at him akin to starving wild wolves.
Ogata changed direction in the blink of an eye and leaped up high in the air to avoid certain death and looked down at Toridasu's smiling face.
"Aye, you tricky old bastard," Ogata scoffed.
The false world around him, constructed by genjutsu, shattered, and in the next moment, he was standing in front of Toridasu, taking a step forward. Toridasu looked surprised before taking a step back and standing upright.
"So there is a tiny bit of brain behind all that brawn," he said.
"I think it's good to have that tiny amount; it means there's less for your kind to play around with," said Ogata.
The two jonin smiled at each other and simultaneously flew through hand seals. Ogata finished first, a second earlier than Toridasu. A spark of lightning rose up into the air before the arcs and currents grew until a humongous lion made up of lightning stood behind Ogata. When Toridasu finished, he moved his hands apart for a growing ball of fire to mold itself into a bird akin to a phoenix.
As the lion roared and thrashed, jumping towards Toridasu, the tiny phoenix flew into the lightning lion and ballooned from within it. The two ninjutsu melded together, creating a dangerous flux of high volumes of chakra and a kaleidoscope of flashing light and color before resulting in an explosion that disrupted more than half the battlefield.
When the dust settled, the two jonin, who were deep in the blast's territory, hadn't moved an inch from their spaces. Toridasu was covered in a deep shroud of gentle winds while Ogata had erected a dome of chained lightning that snapped angrily.
Ogata dropped his defensive jutsu first and immediately went on the offensive. He appeared before Toridasu and punched the wind envelope. A crackle of lightning sparked around the wind before lighting lit up the surface. Within a moment, the wind defense broke down, already weakened thanks to the explosion the two had caused.
"Get hit by my honorable fist, old timer," Ogata roared in laughter.
Ogata smashed Toridasu with a lightning-charged gauntlet but it passed through Toridasu as though he were an illusion. A cold chill shuddered down Ogata's back, and he turned to see Toridasu hurling gouts of sweeping fire in his direction—but in the exact moment before they collided against him, Ogata flexed his chakra and the fires vanished, but the danger wasn't over. Toridasu vanished in the distance and appeared beside him with a different, fully metal, folding fan in his hand. Ogata sensed chakra flowing through that metal.
At the last moment, Ogata brought his other arm up to block the sharp edges of the folding fan with his gauntlet. The two metal weapons screeched and scratched against each other as both jonin channeled their strength through the instruments, putting their best behind them.
"Your little tricks are annoying, old geezer," Ogata spat. "Why not face me like a man?"
Toridasu beamed, taking Ogata's words as praise. "Treating genjutsu as tricks in this day and age? What an old-fashioned belief. I worry about the Hidden Cloud's future if they let someone like you crawl up to jonin."
Ogata snarled the beginnings of a response but was cut off by an ear-shattering explosion in another part of the battlefield. He and Toridasu briefly turned part of their attention to see a cluster of fire—large enough to see from where they were—crashing into the side of the pit, causing a wide-spread landslides.
"Worried about your friend?" Ogata asked.
Toridasu shook his head. "My colleague is a proud jonin from my village. He will never be in danger against mere Hidden Frost jonin. These little Hidden Villages have no standards—they allow anyone to become jonin, as I'm sure you're aware."
The snide-mockery against the Hidden Cloud was not hidden in his tone or voice.
While Toridasu and Ogata were fighting each other, Shirakumo was fighting two Hidden Frost jonin alone.
"He can take care of himself," Toridasu continued. "You worry about yourself… You're bleeding, you know."
Ogata looked down at his body and saw that he was bleeding from his lower abdomen above his thigh.
"This is a genjutsu," he scoffed and disrupted his chakra to lift the genjutsu.
Ogata felt the genjutsu shatter. However, his eyes widened when the wound didn't appear, and instead, two more injuries—shoulder and calf—made themselves known to him.
'D-Did he place a genjutsu on me so that I would not notice my injuries, so I would continue fighting?' Ogata thought.
"Are you thinking that I hid your injuries with genjutsu?" Toridasu's words snapped Ogata out of his thoughts. The smile on Toridasu's face grew as he said, "Or maybe these injuries are genjutsu to deceive you into thinking that you're injured."
Ogata once again disrupted his chakra.
Toridasu laughed, full of amusement. "Are you trying to break the genjutsu? Maybe it's not genjutsu, and this is reality. Or maybe every time you try to lift the genjutsu, it's not you, but me tricking you into thinking that you disrupted your chakra? Try it again; perhaps it will work this time," he chuckled.
Ogata felt a distinct fear settle into his heart as he disrupted his chakra. Once again, he felt the genjutsu shatter, but nothing changed. The wounds on his body remained and Toridasu still stood in front of him laughing.
"And so… are you in a genjutsu, or are you not? What is real and what is not?" Toridasu asked. His lips then flattened, and his voice dropped a few notes into a menacing laughter that echoed in Ogata's ears, "This thing you call a trick will kill you today, my thick-skulled foe."
.
———
Chat with me and the rest of the community on our DISCORD server.
The link is in the synopsis!
Chapitre 206: CH_6.35 (206)
Want to read ahead of schedule? Head over to Patreón @
[ https://www.patreón.com/fictiononlyreader ]
The link is also in the synopsis
———
.
It had been around an hour since those in the Evacuation Unit capable of chakra masking had descended into the pit to evacuate the dormitories. His training sessions were always longer than an hour—but he hadn't felt more exhausted than he was at the current moment. Even the assassination attempt on his life was more overwhelming than exhausting.
Takuma felt his concentration was slipping and all his brain wanted to do was listlessly stare at the ground and stop processing the excessive input his senses took in from the chaos around him. He wanted to stop moving and just drop flat, but that wasn't an option.
The cave-in that had eliminated the enemy's iryo-nin had only happened around ten minutes ago and while it didn't end the battle it pushed Camp Banana up to a clear advantage. Ten minutes was a significant time in a shinobi battle where people dropped faster than flies.
He had to return to the battle at the bottom of the pit after bombing the mine. The feeling of frustration that the enemy didn't opt to cut their losses and retreat gnawed at his mind. He wanted it to end and the lack of enemy, even if it meant through them escaping, was the end condition. But simultaneously, as he looked around the pit, he could understand why they couldn't. Their escape route was blocked by the ongoing battle between the jonin duking it out against each other. Anko had told him that Jonin Shirakumo was fighting two jonin in that part of the pit—and that he had successfully killed one of them, making escape an unattractive choice.
Takuma felt a strange relief as he stared at the battlefield.
Through the lingering smoke and bright fires, he could see more Hidden Steam gear than he did Hidden Frost. So long as Toridasu and Shirakumo didn't die, Camp Banana had won the battle over the Gojiro Gold Mines. They had the win in their grasp, and they needed to do was stand their proverbial flag and declare their victory.
So many corpses littered the ground that he had to look out for them not to trip and inadvertently get killed by an enemy. In that sense, the dead were still fighting in the battle. The thought mae him want to vomit. Takuma didn't have the mental capacity to contemplate the sheer loss of life from the battle—he was sure it would linger in his thoughts and disturb his nights when he had the chance to rest.
A group of Camp Banana shinobi surrounded two enemy shinobi, poised and ready to kill the pair. Takuma lifted his heavy feet to join them, weapons drawn; they didn't have any orders to accept surrender.
A horn blared across the battlefield and brought a short burst of energy to the Hidden Leaf troops and despair to the last few remaining enemy forces across the pit. It was the signal that they had won and successfully occupied the Gojiro Gold Mines. Evidently the enemy was still alive, but the horn meant that the jonin had defeated their counterparts—which for all intents and purposes was victory.
Takuma let his shoulders relax as he approached the group. cornering the two enemies glued to each other's backs for protection.
"Surrender," Takuma straightened himself as he spoke. Everyone— ally or enemy— turned towards him as he continued to talk. "You either die here where you've already lost, or live another day to potentially be traded back to your nation in exchange for our own imprisoned in yours. If you cooperate, your stay will be as comfortable as possible given the situation.
"Choose or I will choose for you," he said authoritatively.
The Camp Banana shared confused looks but held their tongues. Takuma kept his eyes on the two enemies, who didn't bother to hide their suspicion, which was to be expected. The gathered ground could kill them, but they were suddenly asking for surrender—but Takuma knew they were exhausted enough not to notice the confusion around them.
Takuma sighed. He turned to the kunoichi beside him. "Will you lend me your dagger? I misplaced mine in the battle."
The kunoichi was surprised but unsheathed the dagger strapped to her lower back and handed it to Takuma.
"Alright, let's get this over with," said Takuma as he stepped towards the two.
"Wait!" shouted one of the two enemies. "We will surrender!"
The second one wasn't as thrilled. "What are you doing!?" he hissed.
"Shut up!" The first one turned to Takuma. "We surrender. Please, spare us. We will surrender. W-We will, so…" he licked his cracked lips and looked at Takuma with damp hope and desperation in his eyes.
Takuma silently played with the dagger in his hand as he stared at the two shinobi. With each silent second, the desperation and despair grew thicker in his eyes.
"Drop your weapons and lay down on your stomach with your hands on your head. We will apply chakra seals and then take you in," said Takuma, dropping his hand with the dagger limp down by his side.
The second, unwilling shinobi looked suspicious but was quickly persuaded to surrender when his comrade did as instructed. He followed and threw his weapons and pouches away before lying on the ground with his hands clasped behind his head.
Takuma pointed at the weapons and weapon pouches and a couple people collected them before he alone approached the two and crouched down beside them to whisper: "You made the right choice."
He first approached the unwilling enemy and planted a knee in the center of his back. Takuma pulled the man's hands down from his head, raised his head by the hair, and quickly slit his throat. He gurgled wetly, alerting his more willing comrade. Takuma knew he didn't have time, so he skipped to the next. Before the panicking enemy could rise, Takuma booted him across the face and mounted him.
"W-What. Y-You said—!"He thrashed desperately beneath him. "No, please! I b-beg…"
Takuma grabbed the man's arm with his free hand and plunged the bloody dagger deep into the man's heart and twisted it violently. The man flailed for a moment a few moments before the resistance faded. Takuma gazed into the dying man's betrayed brown eyes until the light faded completely—never breaking eye contact. Takuma kept the man company in his last moments before wiping the blood on the dagger from the dead man's pants and returning the dagger to its owner.
"Thank you," Takuma said to her before tiredly walking away.
The kunoichi reclaimed her weapon and kept it at arm's length, glancing furtively between it, Takuma, and two men he'd killed in cold blood.
Everyone in the small group looked at him with a mix of shock, admiration, and a strong dose of fear. They turned to look at him as he walked away. None of his previous sharpness was present as he swayed from side to side.
———
.
After the battle ended, everyone was called to gather in the middle of the pit. Takuma slowly wandered around the crowd, looking for his team. Camp Banana had come with fourteen teams—two jonin, fourteen chunin, and seventy genin—but the group was thinner now after the battle. While they had wiped out the enemy, they had paid a steep price in lives.
Takuma stopped in his tracks when he saw three of the four people who he called his teammates. His heart beat faster as he approached the group.
"Where… Where is Iori?" he asked.
Kameko, Rikku, and Daiki turned to face Takuma and gave him a fierce one-armed hug. Takuma patted the big guy on his back.
"I'm glad you're safe," said Daiki.
"Iori?" Takuma asked again.
"She's with the iryo-nin," said Daiki, his expression unpleasant.
Takuma felt flustered. "How bad is it? Will she make it?"
Daiki was taken aback and for a moment looked like he didn't know how to answer the question. "Her life is not in danger" — Takuma breathed a sigh of relief — "but she lost two fingers from her writing hand. …They're trying to reattach them right now but the iryo-nin aren't sure if it will work."
Takuma gasped with wide eyes. As a fuin-nin, Iori's hands were extremely important to her. Accurate calligraphy was an essential part of fuinjutsu and losing her fingers would put a huge handicap on her progress—if not outright destroy her future prospects as a fuinjutsu expert. It was imperative that they fixed her hand.
"…She could switch to her other hand, but that doesn't sound good, does it," Daiki said.
Takuma nodded, but knew that was the last thing Iori would want to hear. He didn't know how much time and effort switching to the other hand would take—let alone returning to her previous level of skill.
He gave the other three a look over. Kameko looked ragged but mostly uninjured. Rikku had a bandage around her head and right leg, and her left arm in a sling. Daiki had a limp that he tried to hide, and had only hugged Takuma with one arm—it seemed there was something wrong with his shoulder. But seeing them alive put Takuma's heart at ease which brought more fatigue. He legs were begging him to amputate them so they could be put out of the misery.
"Anko is upfront with the jonin," said Kameko.
Takuma nodded. "Does anyone have some water?".
Rikku threw her canteen to him with a small gulp of water that Takuma downed.
"Thank you."
He looked around the pit and at the bodies of those who had died fighting for both sides. Takuma opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but nothing emerged. He couldn't think of anything that would suit the current situation.
"It's always numbered, isn't it?" They looked at him. "The dead. When I was in the Hidden Leaf, they only ever mentioned the number of casualties. 'Fourteen perished, three found dead, ten killed in action, one missing.' They rarely mention names—not unless it's a jonin or someone important. Newspapers don't have enough space, radios not enough time.
"Even if they do mention names, do we remember them? I don't. And with these numbers, the names won't show up except the official documents and reports." He turned towards his teammates. "That's why we should make sure they get the most honorable shinobi funeral for them in the hopes that when—if this happens to us… we'll be fortunate enough to get the same treatment."
The three of them nodded somberly.
Anko met with them a few minutes later after her brief discussion with the jonin. She looked better than all of them and seemed completely uninjured—but there was a burden that weighed down her usual carefree expression.
Considering the overwhelming presence of death around them, and their proximity to it, Takuma didn't blame her.
"One of the enemy jonin, the one Toridasu was fighting, decided to escape. The two Shirakumo fought are both confirmed dead," she informed them of the larger picture of the battle. "There might be enemies hiding in the mines, so be careful—but with most of them dead, they aren't a priority problem. Everyone who can still move around will work on the funeral preparation—after which we'll proceed to the bombing of this hellhole."
""Yes, ma'am""
"All of you did good." Anko looked at Kameko and Takuma. "Especially you two. The jonin will want to talk to you after we return to camp, I'm sure." Her eyes lingered on Takuma as she gave out the praise. "Now, let's go meet Iori together."
""Yes, ma'am""
———
.
Takuma gazed at the dozens of burning funeral pyres burning before him. The deceased shinobi were recorded thrice to ensure everyone was included, and their belongings, if available, were carefully packaged to be returned to their families. They were cleaned and prepared for their funeral and then respectfully placed on the funeral pyres provided by the nearby forestry.
The Hidden Leaf shinobi went first. The enemy were also given funerals, but they weren't treated the same. They weren't cleaned and were pushed into larger group pyres, while the Hidden Leaf shinobi were all given their own individual pyres.
"Were you close to anyone?" Takuma asked Iori, standing beside him.
Her hand was heavily bandaged. While the iryo-nin had successfully attached her fingers back, the results would only show as they properly healed and if they worked for Iori when she completed physical rehabilitation.
"I could recognize all of them. I knew a few of them," Iori answered, fire reflecting in her eyes. "I… I haven't seen anything like this. T-This is too many…"
She was the most social member of their team, and was even well-liked despite being on Anko's team.
Takuma gave her a side hug to offer her some comfort. She'd been too occupied by her own uncertain future to truly process it all, and it was for the first time in the last few hours that she'd pulled herself together, only to have the reality of the deaths of her friends and peers shoved in her face.
As he comforted her, Takuma stared at the funeral pyres. He didn't feel much in the face of so much death. He had only attended a shinobi funeral once, and he was the only attendee and looking back on it, Takuma recognized the shift in his reaction to it all, even when the scale of the two events was on different levels.
He wondered what might have caused such a drastic shift. He thought that he wouldn't get an answer out of himself, but it came surprisingly easily when he personally set fires to the larger group pyres in the distance.
Takuma was sure he would've hurt like Iori and the others around him in grief if he was close to the deceased. He was confident that he had that at least that much humanity still burning alive within him but was terrified of losing what made and kept him human, what kept as himself. He knew that he would be perfectly fine being that person—that version of him that stabbed the surrendered enemy in the back after promising them sanctuary—he was afraid if that part of him would bleed into every aspect of life—it utterly terrified him.
The cause of his current indifference was relatively recent. This wasn't the biggest concentration of death he had seen—the largest was the massacre of the innocent civilians who had been killed by the small group of shinobi. He was there, right in the middle of it; he heard the piercing screams and cries for help. That was much worse than what had happened in the pit.
The shinobi could at least fight back and would kill him in a heartbeat. That was why he didn't feel much.
He was sure that if any of the shinobi—deceased or alive; enemy or ally—were asked to kill him,, they would do it… and he knew that because so would he. It didn't matter if they liked it or not, or if they were just following orders, he was sure all of them would do it.
It was a norm in the shinobi world—killing. Some hated it and only killed when necessary; others learned to enjoy it but every single shinobi killed—it was a fact of life as true as the sky being blue..
Those "strangers" who could do that didn't deserve his empathy and compassion. He could kill hundreds or thousands of them and he wouldn't feel anything for them. They were in a profession where those ready to kill should be prepared to be killed. It didn't matter if it was his own compatriots or a foreign enemy—every single one of them was the same.
The same went for himself. Takuma knew that if one day he was killed, he absolutely deserved it.
In his pursuit of survival, he had made himself a man okay to kill in his own eyes. He blinked, the image of the begging enemy shinobi flitting across his vision for a moment. But it wasn't the time to contemplate on the implications of that. Right now, he had to provide comfort to his teammates and friends.
Takuma took a deep breath and gave Iori's arm a comforting rub. He said, "I know this doesn't change anything, but your memories of them will at least keep them alive in your thoughts. They will live in your heart so take some solace in that."
Iori leaned against him. "You're a good one, Takuma," she said.
That wasn't true and he knew it. Unlike him, she shed tears. Takuma thanked Iori in his heart for it anyway because at least someone liked him—because he didn't like himself very much right now.
.
———
Chat with me and the rest of the community on our DISCORD server.
The link is in the synopsis!
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
200+ Classement
Power Stone 
109 Power
stone Vous aimerez peut-être aussi
![With Mangekyo, I Escaped Konoha To Other Worlds [Naruto/AttackOnTitan]](https://noah-image.webnovel.com/noah/img/c72400dd98494ddd8ae42069efbd6eb0.png)
Commentaire de paragraphe