Capital of the Land of Fire.
Uchiha Keizumi slid his dulled, blood-worn blade back into its sheath. His expression remained cold and unreadable as he said, "Give me your sword."
Anko glanced left and right before realizing he was speaking to her. She hurriedly drew her blade and handed it over to him.
Sword in hand, Keizumi stepped forward.
He loomed over a noble of the Land of Fire who had collapsed to the ground in terror.
And anyone who looked further ahead would see them clearly—corpse after corpse littering the floor!
"No… don't kill me! I can give you money—more money than you could spend in ten lifetimes! I can also give you women, as many as you want! Women with breasts far bigger than the one standing behind you—there are plenty of those!"
The obese noble shrank back in terror, his head retreating so far that his chins folded into countless layers of flesh.
His voice trembled as he stammered, "I–if you don't want money or women, then I can take you as my adopted son… no! No! I can acknowledge you as my sworn brother! From this day forth… you too can be a noble of the Land of Fire!"
"Please… I don't want to die! I beg you…"
"I… uh—"
His pitiful pleas earned not the slightest trace of sympathy from Uchiha Keizumi.
Hovering above the man's head, those glaring crimson words continued to flash in Keizumi's sight, every moment stabbing at his nerves.
With each passing second, his gaze grew sharper, colder.
To Keizumi, exchanging even one more word with a villain whose crimes were already innumerable was no different than stepping in filth.
Mitarashi Anko watched, wide-eyed, as the man's bloated head rolled slowly to a stop at her feet.
'That should be… the eighty-eighth one…'
Unable to stop Uchiha Keizumi, all she could do was silently keep count of how many he had already killed in the capital.
That terrifying number left her inwardly aghast.
And Keizumi showed no sign of stopping.
She didn't dare imagine how many more would die before the day was over.
It was then—
Anko noticed the ninja cat, Tachibana Jirō, who had disappeared earlier, return with a sheet of paper clamped in his jaws.
He dropped it casually, stepping around the corpses as if they weren't even there, and spoke in human tongue: "Keizumi-sama, that Daimyō bastard has already put you on the wanted list. The bounty's a staggering fifty million ryō. Meow, looks like he's panicking!"
"Meow, the notice doesn't give much detail, but for some scavengers no better than hyenas, it's plenty. Keizumi-sama, you may have trouble coming your way soon."
At those words, Anko glanced down.
Indeed, the sheet was a wanted poster.
"Fifty million ryō…"
She stood dumbfounded.
As a special jōnin, Anko herself carried a bounty in the black market—she remembered it was nine hundred thousand ryō.
While still reeling from shock, she noticed both Keizumi and Tachibana Jirō suddenly turn their gazes to the left.
When confusion made her follow their eyes—
A voice rang out: "Ha! Lucky break—found you!"
Anko stiffened. As her sight shifted leftward, the sharp hiss of weapons cutting the air followed.
In her vision—dozens of shuriken streaked toward them, mixed with two kunai bound with explosive tags, all hurtling fast! Behind them charged a shinobi with no forehead protector.
This bastard had even counted her as a target!
"Watch out!"
Anko cried a warning as she leapt back—but her shock deepened when she saw Uchiha Keizumi not even try to dodge!
Her eyes widened further, because she watched those kunai and shuriken pierce straight through Keizumi's body!
"Explode!!!"
The attacker grinned viciously, hands clapping together, just as the two kunai bearing explosive tags embedded themselves in Keizumi's torso.
[BOOM!!!]
[BOOM!!!]
Two thunderous explosions rang out, so deafening that Anko's ears buzzed, forcing her to stumble several steps back.
When she looked up in horror, she saw that Uchiha Keizumi's upper body had been blown clean off!
Only the lower half of his body remained, still standing motionless in place.
"Wh–what… what's going on…"
Anko was stunned!
Almost instinctively, her eyes darted to the talking ninja cat—but Tachibana Jirō's expression seemed completely unfazed, as if his master being blasted down to half a body was nothing of consequence.
The forehead-protector-less shinobi strolled forward with a vicious grin, twirling a kunai in his hand as he mocked, "So this is all a rogue ninja with a fifty-million-ryō bounty amounts to? Tch, blew half his body apart just like that. The Daimyō won't refuse to pay just because there's no face left, will he?"
"Guess I was a little too careless. Never thought he'd be this weak… those two kunai with explosive tags were only meant as a greeting, yet they turned into the killing blow."
"For someone this pathetic to dare challenge the nob—"
The words stuck in his throat as his eyes slowly widened.
The sneer froze on his lips, his face twisting into disbelief.
Because—
The upper body of Uchiha Keizumi, supposedly obliterated by the blasts, was visibly reforming before their eyes. Shattered scraps of flesh were pulling back together, piece by piece, reassembling into a whole. Within those fragments, faint orange-red light flickered, flowing like molten energy.
In less than three seconds—
There he stood again: Uchiha Keizumi, completely unscathed, not even a speck of dust on his robes!
Leaving both the sneering shinobi and Mitarashi Anko wearing the same expression of shock!
"…What kind of monster is this!?!" the rogue ninja cried out in disbelief, stumbling backward in panic, desperate to get away from Keizumi.
Too late.
The man's pupils already reflected the searing glow of molten magma. Before he could react, it streaked past his head, consuming half his skull in an instant.
…
Daimyō's residence.
"Daimyō-sama!" A retainer rushed in, reporting in haste: "Word from Konoha—if their guess is correct, then the 'rogue shinobi' slaughtering people in the capital is very likely from their village!"
"What?!"
The Daimyō jolted to his feet in shock, his eldest son beside him rising as well.
Clenching his teeth, the Daimyō's heir said, "A Konoha shinobi! Just what kind of discipline does the Third Hokage keep over his village? First Uchiha Keizumi kills my brother, and now another Konoha shinobi comes to the capital to butcher our nobility?"
"Father, when this storm passes, we must gather our strength and strip that Third Hokage of his position! So long as he governs Konoha, the Land of Fire will remain in turmoil."
"The duty of shinobi is to protect the homeland—or to serve as the nation's killing machine, the loyal weapon of the Land of Fire. Not to turn into a double-edged blade that cuts back against the very country they should serve."
The Daimyō of the Land of Fire furrowed his brow. "There is no clear hierarchy between the Hokage and the Daimyō. Forcing a Hokage of Konoha out of power… it's not that simple."
"If handled poorly, it could strain relations between Konoha and the Land of Fire—and that would be disastrous."
Even saying this much made it clear: the Daimyō was already deeply dissatisfied with Hiruzen Sarutobi.
At that moment—
The Daimyō suddenly turned to a retainer. "Did they confirm the name of the rogue shinobi wreaking havoc in the capital?"
The retainer quickly replied, "He seems to be called Uchiha Keizumi."
The Daimyō: "!!"
The Daimyō's eldest son: "!!"
"Impossible!" The Daimyō's face twisted in shock, and he barked, "Did you mishear the name? How could it possibly be Uchiha Keizumi?!"
Looking aggrieved, the retainer said, "Daimyō-sama… I confirmed it with Konoha multiple times. There shouldn't be any mistake."
"Father…" The Daimyō's heir was also pale with horror. "By rights… wasn't that man supposed to have already died at the hands of the Twelve Guardian Ninja?"
The Daimyō fell silent for a long moment.
At this point, if he still couldn't guess why the Twelve Guardian Ninja had yet to return, then he was unworthy of being Daimyō.
Now—
There were only two possibilities. Either the Twelve Guardian Ninja had ultimately refused to side with him, the Daimyō of the Land of Fire, choosing instead to lean toward Konoha and abandon his cause for revenge.
Or—the Twelve Guardian Ninja had all been wiped out! That alone would explain why Uchiha Keizumi now stood in the capital: he had come to assassinate the Daimyō himself!
"Hiss…"
The Daimyō drew in a sharp breath. A chill like crawling insects ran down his back, raising gooseflesh across his body.
It explained, too, why the rogue shinobi dared to butcher nobles.
If Keizumi had dared to kill the Daimyō's own second son—
Then what were a few dozen nobles in comparison?!
Cold sweat soaked down his back; he could no longer count how many times unease had gripped him today. The fifty-million-ryō bounty he had issued not long ago gave him no sense of safety at all.
"H-he…"
The Daimyō's voice faltered as he asked his eldest son, almost dazed, "He wouldn't dare target the Daimyō, would he? He must understand how vital a Daimyō is to the stability of a nation, right? He must know what kind of disaster killing me would bring down, right? That it would make the entire shinobi world rise against him?"
It was the first time the Daimyō's heir had ever seen his father so bereft of security.
In the depths of his father's eyes, he even caught a flicker of fear.
Such a thing had been unthinkable, until now.
Just as the heir opened his mouth to speak—
Another retainer came rushing in, panic written on his face.
"Daimyō-sama! Terrible news! The Fujiwara Clan, the Taira Clan, the Hōjō Clan, the Nakamura Clan… all of their estates have been attacked by the rogue shinobi! Among them… only the Nakamura Clan, which enjoys a good reputation, lost just three members. The other noble families have nearly been exterminated! The corpses alone number in the hundreds!"
"And also…"
"Besides those noble families, many so-called 'innocent bystanders' have fallen to that rogue shinobi's hand as well! He's like a madman—he kills indiscriminately! He even stormed into a government building in the northeastern corner of the capital, and it's said he left it a field of corpses!"
The tremor in the retainer's voice made it clear: even just hearing the reports had terrified him to the core.
And those words nearly made the Daimyō faint on the spot.
In all these years, the Land of Fire had never faced such chaos.
At most, it was Konoha that suffered from disasters or battles.
The nobility, the Daimyō himself, had always lived untouched.
But who could have imagined…
That one day, the butcher's blade of the shinobi world would fall upon their very necks!
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