บท 23: Chapter 23
I don't own solo leveling or Naruto
"You did a good job."
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"Hn, now then..."
Itachi murmured to himself once Kirito and the rest had scurried off. Using his Susanoo's arm he pushed the monster's arm away and then socked it in the face with another arm that he conjured.
'It's quite durable...' he complimented the Hobgoblin's tankiness at being able to survive a blow from his susano. Right now he had the strength to take out S-rank monsters.
It roared with fury and retaliated by digging its hand into the ground and launching chunks of the concrete floor at him, but the manoeuvre was circumvented by his susanoo ribcage protecting him with zero problems.
"Is that it?" Itachi questioned with a raised brow and almost as if the magic beast could hear him, it roared more furiously than ever before charging at the Uchiha with impressive speed for its size. Forming indents on the ground as it closed the distance.
However, it was nothing he couldn't handle, for all intents and purposes the beast might as well have been moving in slow motion. His Mangekyou Sharingan simply being too much of an increase to his visual prowess to make this a fair battle between them from the beginning.
He easily sidestepped the goblins' strike and then rushed up the length of its arm to land a bone crushing axe kick right on its cranium before manifesting his Susanoo arms once again and smashing its head in.
He landed on the ground with cat-like grace and then prepped to conclude the one-sided skirmish.
[Yasaka Magatama!]
He launched three magatama bound together by a single, circular thread that were created by the hand of his fiery Susanoo arm, which he then propelled toward the target as a single combined projectile ripping it to shreds with zero difficulty.
"And that's that."
His spinning kaleidoscope eyes shifted to his normal onyx ones, all the power and bloodlust vanishing with the eyes as if they were never there to begin with.
'Mangekyou still takes a significant portion of energy and using it in tandem with my Susanoo doesn't help. But my sight hasn't deteriorated… Could it be?' Itachi pondered to himself. He shook his head, those were thoughts for later, scanning the area around him. Dead bodies of humans and monsters alike were sprawled on every crack and crevice of this decrepit throne room with their blood painting the walls.
Itachi looked on almost indifferently at the carnage before him. It was unfortunate that he wasn't here to prevent all this death, but such was his luck, his curse.
Wherever he went chaos and bad luck followed.
"They left this bag in a hurry. I guess I can't really blame them. That thing was giving them a hard time," Itachi murmured whilst eyeing the two grey bags, just beyond the boss-grade corpse, filled to the brim with glowing magic crystals. And he was about to add, probably, the biggest one after he dug into the Hobgoblin for its crystal.
"I'm sorry you won't get proper burials, but rest easy knowing that some of your comrades survived," He bowed his head before leaving the boss room and making his way out the dungeon with 4 million yen worth of magic crystals, more or less, in tow.
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"Do you think Hunter Uchiha is going to make it?" Kenji wondered. He was getting patched up by Kumo Anzu, the blue haired woman was surprisingly skilled at using healing magic despite being an E-rank hunter, the soothing green energy was definitely enough to put the tank at ease. E-rank level healers were very rare so it was a testiment to her skills in art of mana manipulation that she was able to heal people.
"I have no doubt. He's far stronger than anyone I've ever seen."
Sakurai cut in with an uncharacteristically serious expression on his face. After saying such words they were rendered nearly speechless when Itachi walked out of the electric blue portal not looking any worse for wear. His eyes immediately caught theirs and his body seemed to become less tense.
"I'm glad to see you're getting medical attention. Thank you, Kumo Anzu."
The blue haired female just nodded, blushing at the gratitude and went back to healing Kenji. Itachi dropped the two huge bags he'd been carrying in front of Kirito as a few crystals spilled out. Kirito eyed the bag for a moment before looking up at the Uchiha once again.
"You saved our asses. I think going 50/50 on these crystals is fine," Kirito concluded very easily before Itachi could even make any demands, not that he planned to.
The others didn't seem to have any complaints on the matter judging by their wordless agreement, or maybe they respected Kirito enough to not bother.
"Hn," Itachi just grunted and offered a hand to the raid captain which was gladly accepted. "I suppose you have to report this disaster back to the Association. Good luck with that," Kirito laughed.
"You don't have to tell me..." Itachi grumbled in slight annoyance. He was not looking forward to the detailed report he would have to provide for Onikawa, but at least all the paperwork would be left to Shin with a little bit of his input. He wasn't an agent of the Hunter Association so paperwork wasn't really his problem.
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— The next day —
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"So that's what happened, huh?" Onikawa murmured under his breath after hearing Itachi's report on the rehabilitation mission.
They were in his office on the top floor of the Tokyo Branch of the Hunters Association. It was a three story office building with mostly huge glass windows and a statue of the Association logo on the, well-maintained, front lawn of the building.
"Yeah... It seems that Daku was more unstable than his reports let on. His goals were lofty, aiming to kill me off first and then destroying everyone else in the dungeon before escaping with its profits and then disappearing off the grid with the money he would have obtained," Itachi explained Daku's possible motivation for going off the rails and attempting to snatch at the first sign of freedom he had.
However, Itachi knew the true reason why he went on his killing spree but omitted that from his report because he couldn't trust Onikawa with the information of possible mutiny within his ranks. Maybe it was a member from a different branch, but all Itachi knew was that only someone of high standing within the Association could pull the strings to perform such an assassination attempt. So someone either close to Onikawa, close in rank to him or an outright superior.
'All things considered it's not ideal for me to reveal that information right now.'
(Your life is a small price to pay for freedom.)
It definitely wouldn't surprise him if Daku had made some kind of deal with this mysterious figure that would allow him to walk free. Regardless, he now needed to watch his back when it came to dealings with the Hunter's Association.
"You split the two groups up, correct?" Onikawa questioned, his gaze piercing but it didn't shake the teens blank expression at all but he could feel tension in the air.
"Yes, splitting our numbers was the fastest and most efficient way to clear the dungeon."
"However, that left you alone with the prisoners and no other witnesses from the other team."
"They all provided the same account. I saved them from certain death. So, are you implying something else?" Itachi questioned.
The tension between them that could be cut with a dagger as the entered a staredown, neither side being privy to the others thoughts and feelings.
The branch head sighed, "Regardless, this definitely sets our plans of replenishing the hunter forces through prisoner rehabilitation by at least a 6 months," Onikawa intoned clearly frustrated at the results that the Uchiha presented him with. He sighed, rubbing his forehead together with his fingers," You're dismissed. Thank you for your services, Uchiha."
Onikawa has a feeling that Itachi was withholding something from him, something important. 'Daku's psychological reports dictated that he was stable enough to be around other hunters.' Something fishy was brewing at the seams that he needed to look into.
Onikawa directed him out of his office and offered a bow of respect that Itachi returned all the same.
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After Itachi left the building he was left to his own devices roaming the bustling streets of Tokyo. It definitely wasn't lost on the Uchiha that this was the second time in just a few months that nearly his entire raid team had been massacred. That was nearly unheard of within the highly advanced hunter society of Japan, that's something that the Association would be looking into if they thought of recruiting him again.
'Whatever...' Itachi let out a sigh.
He turned into an alleyway away from the street of onlookers and started to scale up the walls with practised ease and swiftness. On the rooftop he sat down on a water tank watch the beautiful sunset. It wasn't the same during his time as a shinobi because of all the loud noises of traffic and people in the city, but with the wind blowing through his long hair it was enough to make him remince.
'Without my sick body using the Mangekyou definitely has less strain on me.' he thought. The adrenaline from that fight had worn off so he was able to accurately assess the damage to his eyes. It was minimal, damn near non-existent if he was being honest.
To be able to achieve the eternal light of the sharingan that Madara Uchiha once did one would need to transplant the Mangekyou Sharingan of a close relative—ideally a brother or sister —to oneself. Itachi knew that Izumi didn't have any children other than 'him'. He didn't have this body's memories at all only its instincts as a guide which is why he's able to grasp unfamiliar concepts such as a smartphone, and other morden technologies that it was exposed to.
'After recovering from two years of sleeping I can tell that this body is much stronger than my original one. With a stronger body using the Mangekyou shouldn't deteriorate my sight so much.' he concluded, in his head the maths should check out if he didn't overuse his eyes.
He bounded off the water tank and moved from rooftop to rooftop all the way to the hunter auction house he visited recently. He needed to replenish his stock of kunai knives and shuriken and after the profits from the recent raid he'd be able to spend without any trouble of being low on money.
The welder that supplied the hunter auction with items already imbued with mana so he wouldn't have to waste energy on doing that himself unlike some kunai and shuriken he'd bought at different smith shops around Tokyo. He appreciated Shin suggestion at the time but Hunter Auction was too expensive for him until now.
He knew Kakazu's mouth would water if he would be able to sell items in this world at such lucrative prices. It honestly still baffled him how much some guilds are willing to pay for the services of a single hunter of high-ranking, even other foreign government contracts that a hunter receives to clear a gate in another country. Mouth watering amounts of money.
He reached the building in no time and made his way inside. "Ah, young man! It's good to see you!" The old clerk greeted him warmly as soon as he heard the bell ring on the door. Itachi nodded and bowed respectfully, "What do you plan to buy this time?" he asked.
"The same as last time." The Uchiha said simply. He watched the clerk nod and make his way to the backrooms. Itachi waited patiently and perused the glass cases upfront. He hummed looking at all the good quality weapons but he knew that he wouldn't be able to afford any of them right now. It was better to restock on an effective weapon for now.
"Here we are!" the old man announced slamming the hefty wooden box on the counter. "This is grade-B magic infused metal better than last batch's" Itachi grunted inspecting the pointy edges of the kunai and shuriken. With his A-rank durability the shinobi weapons were not nearly durable enough to pierce his skin, but he could feel something for sure.
"How much?" he asked.
"For the whole box? About 1.5 million, but I could make it a combo deal if you get a second box. Let's say… 2.4 million?" the old man haggled with the young teenager. Itachi debated internally whether it would be a worthwhile investment to surplus on essentially perishable items. He ultimately decided it was not the most optimal choice.
He shook his head, "Do you have any explosives?"
"Oh?" the clerk intoned curiously.
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I couldn't ignore the support this story was receiving. I literally have no other excuse other than I lost motivation to continue this story, but… ImI'm willing to come back to it.
I'm still busy with projects so updates will still be consistently inconsistent, regardless I hope you enjoyed this chapter…
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