Around a week later, Ryusei's company finally reached its first station.
They had marched for days through forests and mountain trails until the banners of Konoha were planted across a bend of the Hot Water River that cut through the central Land of Hot Water.
This was where their division had been assigned, one portion of Orochimaru's northern front, facing Kumogakure's expanding influence.
The encampment was already alive with activity.
Shinobi cycled in and out constantly, some returning bloodied, others carrying supply crates or scouting reports.
To an outsider, it looked like chaos, but Ryusei knew there was order beneath it.
It was a hierarchy built not on raw strength but on stability and tactical discipline.
He analyzed the roles quickly.
Teams carried out patrols, ambushes, and guard posts.
Squads guarded sectors, responded to breaches, or conducted raids.
Companies secured key locations, chokepoints, or villages, anchoring the line with medics and supply trains.
Divisions spread across regions, valleys, river systems, or border towns, reinforcing one another when called.
And above all of them, Orochimaru directed the entire theater, unseen and untouchable in his hidden command post somewhere deeper behind the front.
"No surprise there," Ryusei thought. "You don't waste a general on the mud. You let the mud die first."
He didn't expect to meet Orochimaru, or anyone from that central outpost.
He wasn't that important. Not yet.
Their own division's mission was straightforward: secure this stretch of the river and surrounding forest, and harass supply routes feeding the enemy's advance.
Ryusei's company, in particular, was given a sector near the river crossing.
Simple orders. But Ryusei knew what that really meant. "We're bait with teeth. If the enemy pushes here, we slow them until reinforcements arrive. If nothing happens, we bleed slowly in patrols until something does."
The camp was divided accordingly.
Supply tents, mess halls, medical stations, weapon caches.
Squads rotated through watches and scouting missions, always keeping some portion resting while the others worked.
It was a war of endurance more than of single battles.
Ryusei stayed with his team.
The days blurred into routine.
Patrol, train, eat, sleep. Patrol again.
They weren't close, but the rhythm of survival kept them together.
And then, one evening, their Squad Captain gathered them.
The Company Commander had assigned something more secluded, a scouting and interdiction task deeper into contested ground.
Okabe relayed it to his team, his voice steady though his eyes betrayed unease.
"This is our next task," Okabe said, laying out the orders.
Ryusei listened quietly, but his senses sharpened.
He knew from the first word: this assignment was different.
More secluded. More dangerous.
Exactly the kind of mission where pawns were moved off the board.
He smiled faintly, the narrow-eyed expression never changing, as he prepared to move out with them once again.
They left immediately, no time wasted.
Orders like these weren't debated, only carried out.
The assignment was framed as a reconnaissance–interdiction patrol.
Their team was to sweep a stretch of forested ridgeline, identify any Kumo infiltration routes, and, if possible, harass or eliminate small enemy detachments.
On paper, simple.
Dangerous, but simple.
Yet the moment they began moving out, Ryusei already knew.
Okabe led from the front, voice clipped when issuing the route, his bandaged frame moving mechanically from branch to branch.
Renjiro followed close, his chakra simmering heavier than usual, darker, disturbed.
Kanae was silent, her aura sharp as a blade, but the sharpness felt wrong.
It wasn't pointed at the mission; it was pointed at him.
They jumped in standard intervals, the rhythm of shinobi on a long-distance move, covering as much ground as possible.
To anyone else, it would look normal.
But Ryusei's senses painted a different picture.
The squad behind them, the one usually overlapping their range, had veered away in another direction.
The squad on their flank, too.
The net was loosening, pulling apart just enough that their own route became a lonely stretch of forest.
Not a mistake.
Not a coincidence.
Ryusei didn't need to guess twice.
He glanced briefly at Okabe's back as the man leapt forward again, bandages shifting against his flak vest. "So you're still willing to play your role. Even half-broken."
His eyes slid to Renjiro, then Kanae.
The aura between them was almost obvious now, the weight of a decision pressed into silence.
Three would become one.
He smirked faintly to himself. "Women really are indecisive. If it were me, I wouldn't waste energy on complicated feelings in a moment like this. I'd cut clean and be done."
Kanae's conflicted coldness told him enough.
He could feel her restraint, her hesitation, even beneath the mask she wore.
Renjiro's chakra pulsed heavily, but there was reluctance there, too.
They were both caught in the current, dragged into a choice neither wanted to make, yet unable to break away.
Ryusei's sensory ability was leagues beyond the body's original owner, sharpened over the past half year.
More importantly, his transmigration left him with an innate grasp of souls, making it far easier to read people's intentions through chakra.
For him, interpreting intent came more naturally than pushing for greater range, which still depended heavily on chakra output and battlefield experience.
Ryusei shook his head inwardly.
Their hesitation wasn't mercy.
It was a weakness.
And weakness was exactly what he intended to exploit.
The forest deepened as they pressed on, branches cracking softly under the weight of their leaps.
Each movement carried them further from the rest of the company, further from overlapping fields of support.
That was when Ryusei stopped wondering.
This was it. The stage had been set.
But instead of fear, a quiet satisfaction flickered in him.
"So this is step one. The first turn of the wheel. The first crack in their perfect design."
He kept his expression the same, narrow-eyed, unreadable.
No tremor in his movements, no shift in his breathing.
Outwardly, he was still the harmless teammate, following along without a care.
Inwardly, he was already mapping out the moment he would reverse everything next.