章節 23: Heads Will Roll

Akata decided that except a straight up suicide attack, the highest probability of success they had was enabling Fuzen's ability to do a quick surgical strike within their midst.

And to increase his odds, Akata and her team would orchestrate a fake blitz attack to draw the enemy's attention and hopefully bait the other side into deploying parts of the force used to guard the Mountains Daimyo and their representatives.

The underlying component of Akata's strategy was based upon appearing as a severe threat and the only way to accomplish this was to launch an actual strike deep within their enemy's defence perimeter. The deeper in they managed to get, the better a distraction they'd serve for Fuzen.

About to pierce the enemy's outer perimeter, Akata performed her final instructions.

"When the moment comes, the job of eliminating the Land Of Mountains Daimyo and its representatives falls on you Gaijin. When you've completed the mission fire this green flare into the air, and each of us will fall back to meet in the cave." She handed him the flare.

"I got it, don't worry," Fuzen reassured her. "Now, let's get this concert going shall we..."

Activating 'Void Fist' in both hands, he dissolved in between steps and arrived a hundred feet further away next to a shocked enemy behind a tree. Without time to respond, Fuzen's hand passed through the Suna shinobi's neck-area separating the head from his shoulders. The head hadn't even fallen to the ground, and he was on the next unwilling victim.

"This is it, team! Don't let this young brat outperform you," Akata encouraged them and increased her speed to follow.

With Fuzen spearheading the attack, teleporting between shinobi's hidden in various locations and leaving beheaded corpses of enemy genin's and chunin's in his wake, their team was approaching the convoy much faster than Akata had expected. She'd sorely underestimated the killing potential Fuzen commanded despite having been warned by the Hokage.

With this attack being focused on speed, Fuzen avoided all confrontation with those he deemed to have more than a chunin level of chakra.

Half a mile within the enemies perimeter an alarm finally sounded and hostile shinobi's started streaming in from every direction to hinder their approach.

It was becoming an arduous task, and besides Fuzen, who could practically teleport at will and move at speeds rivalling that of most jonins, the others were at serious risk of getting swamped by the sheer number enemies alone.

On the battlefield, Fuzen moved like an intangible phantom. Each time they attempted to encircle him, he would appear somewhere unexpected and attempt to decapitate another helpless genin or chunin. However, even that was becoming harder as more jonin was joining the fray. True to their rank, they had quickly seen through the most consistent way to track and hinder Fuzen's indiscriminate killing was by following the eerie pulsating bass emitted from the dark coating of his hands. There'd already been a few calls to close for comfort. He was still bleeding from a 'Vacuum Wave' attack, where a Sunagakure jonin attempted to sever both Fuzen and the ally he was targeting into two separate halves.

Progress was slow, and it had gotten to a point where beside him, the others were mostly just dodging incoming attacks. If Akata weren't careful and continually remained vigilant in how she constantly changed the movement pattern of her team, the enemy would have them encircled and killed in seconds.

"Akata, if we go any further there's no coming back out!" A wounded Sato fell in beside her and yelled above the noise of several incoming 'Vacuum Wave' attacks. One of them one aimed right at the distracted Sato.

"Dodge, you fool!" Akata pushed him to the side in an attempt to save him, but one of the wind blades strafed him and cut straight through his left thigh muscle.

Sato plummeted to the ground clutching the gaping wound on his thigh. Akata spared a quick glance back and saw him perform a small salute in her direction before charging into the nearest cluster of enemies pursuing them.

A second later, they all felt a large explosion go off behind them.

Members of Anbu were taught to never get captured alive as they often contained too much valuable intel that could be extracted even after death. Each and everyone on the team knew that equally well. Situations such as these didn't allow for any sort of sentimental feelings, and it was one of the primary reasons so few were qualified for the Anbu. A certain degree of darkness and detachment was needed. The mission would always have to come first.

And Sato had died knowing, their job was to gather the enemy's attention and lessen the amount protecting the Daimyo and representatives. Judging by the number of people following them now, it was time for the next phase to begin.

Akata didn't know the exact location of Fuzen, but she could hear the characteristic sounds left in his wake in front of her somewhere.

"Go now! We'll fall back and wait for your signal. Good luck and don't fail." She waited to hear a response.

"I don't intend to! Later..." Fuzen called back and disappeared to his realm of darkness.

Shadows surrounding the convoy revealed there were five small carts and each had a significantly fewer people guarding it compared to earlier, which was excellent news. Altogether there were perhaps a hundred people left guarding them. Only the middle cart had one passenger and he assumed it belonged to the Mountain Daimyo. It also had the heaviest protection around it, so it made sense. The remaining four carts had two passengers in each and about an equal amount of protection spread between them.

Since the Daimyo was the most well-protected out of them all, it made sense to take him out first. Materializing inside his personal cart, the eyes of the Mountains Daimyo widened in fright, yet before he could alarm any of his guards, Fuzen had sliced clean through his throat using a kunai. There was no surviving that.

Right as he was about to move onward to the next cart filled with representatives, Fuzen felt an immediate presence of danger and instinctually bolted out the cart in open view of the entire contingent of Suna and Kagero shinobi.

Attempting to stop his momentum from exiting the cart at full speed, Fuzen dug in his feet which caused gravel to fly about wildly. And no sooner had he gotten himself out and a gigantic cylinder-like steel construct smashed the cart into pieces. The amount of force involved in the attack caused a major crater to form.

"Holy shit, that was close..." Fuzen said, relieved by having made it out alive. Blood and unrecognizable pieces of flesh clung to the surface of the Third Kazekages steel construct.

That sneaky son of a bitch had hidden his chakra level and remained hidden among the plebs this entire time. Fuzen couldn't help a burning desire to improve his sensor abilities, cause this was stupid. Getting caught off-guard to this degree was an amateur mistake and one he wouldn't repeat again.

However, he still had a job to do.