Chapter 16: The Killing Field
"The Will of Fire! The Will of Fire!"
The roar from a thousand throats hit me like a physical force. Sarutobi knew how to work a crowd, I'll give him that. For a second, even my own cynical heart beat a little faster, caught in the raw, screaming energy of the moment.
"The first battle is the only battle that matters! Forward!" Hiruzen's arm swept down, and he was gone in a flicker of movement. The dam broke. A flood of Konoha blue and green surged after him, and I let myself be swept along in the current, just another leaf on the raging river.
Five kilometers vanished under our feet in a blur of chakra-enhanced speed and crunching snow. Then we saw them. A dark stain spreading on the white horizon, resolving into the grim, armored shapes of Kumo shinobi. There was no ceremony. No shouted challenges. The two forces simply crashed together and the world dissolved into noise and blood.
This wasn't some neat line battle from a history scroll. This was a butcher's yard. You fought the man in front of you, and if another one came at your side, you prayed the guy next to you saw him. The air thickened with the shing of steel, the wet thud of impacts, and the deafening BOOM of exploding tags. Each blast left a new red crater in the snow, and in it, things that used to be people.
I'd barely found my footing when they found me. Three genin, wide-eyed and trying to look tough, and five chunin with more confidence. They fanned out, a pack circling what they thought was a stray lamb.
"Eight on one?" I muttered, my fingers finding the familiar grip of my kunai. "Guess I'm popular."
Then the voice, cold and clear as ice, spoke in my head.
[New Mission: One Hundred Kills.]
[Reward: 30 Points per head. Any head.]
[Failure: Death.]
"Let's make this quick." I tossed the kunai aside. The familiar, solid weight of my Tang Hengdao settled into my palm. My Sharingan spun to life, the world sharpening, slowing. I moved.
It was over before the first body hit the snow. Five precise, economic motions. Five lives ended. The remaining three stared, their brains lagging behind the brutal reality. They never caught up.
Yesterday's power-up wasn't just for show. They were insects. I moved through them, my blade a grey flicker. A parry, a twist, a thrust. They fell, one after another, their confidence turning to shock, then to nothing.
Enough playing. Time to work.
I didn't summon the full, gut-wrenching power of the Kamui. Just the passive part, the instinct. Phasing.
I took a deep breath and walked straight into the heart of the Kumo formation.
A sword swung at my neck. It passed through me like I was mist. A volley of shuriken became a brief, metallic rain on the other side of my body. I was a ghost, untouchable, but my blade was deathly real. I didn't run. I didn't dodge. I just walked, and with every step, my sword licked out, and a Kumo shinobi died. They fell around me, a bloody trail left in the wake of a phantom.
Twenty. Twenty-five. The count ticked up in my head.
Finally, I'd made enough noise. Two of them appeared in front of me, their flak jackets marked with the scars of a dozen campaigns. Elite jonin. Their hands were already moving, weaving death.
No words. No posturing.
"Fire Release: Great Flame Bullet!"
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
The fireball swelled, fed by the wind, until it was a miniature sun roaring across the battlefield, melting the snow to steam in a wide trench ahead of it.
I stood my ground. Let it come. At the last possible second, a pinprick of distorted space, a tiny ripple in the world, opened in front of my face. The colossal fireball was sucked into it, vanishing without a sound, like a stone dropped into a bottomless well.
The two jonin stared. One of them actually shook his head, as if to clear it.
"His jutsu... it's just gone," one stammered.
"An Uchiha trick!" the other snarled, but the fear was there in his eyes.
"You come at me with fire?" I called out, my voice flat. "Let me show you fire."
I took a breath, deep and full, and my hands carved a sequence I'd only dreamed of. The chakra burned in my lungs. "Fire Release: Majestic Destroyer Flame!"
I didn't breathe a fireball. I breathed an ocean. A tidal wave of flame so vast it seemed to swallow the sky, roaring out to scorch the earth clean.
On the other side of the battlefield, Hiruzen, his staff a blur, caught the inferno in his peripheral vision. "Tenchi... what the hell are you doing?" he muttered, before a Lightning Release user demanded his full attention.
The two Kumo jonin were scrambling, their professionalism shattered by the scale of the annihilation coming their way.
"Form up! Now! Water Style, on my mark!"
They slapped their hands onto the ground. "Water Release: Water Formation Wall!"
Twin geysers of water erupted, forming a massive, sloshing barrier. The fire hit it with the sound of a mountain falling. The world turned to white—a scalding, blinding steam that blanketed half the fight.
Perfect.
In the mist, I was a god. My Sharingan cut through the blindness. They were silhouettes, stumbling, coughing. I moved among them. A quick slash to open a throat. A hard thrust to pierce a lung. Efficient. Merciless. The system's counter in my mind was a steady, satisfying tick.
Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine.
The screams were muffled by the fog. "He's in here!" "I can't see!"
"Find him! Wind Style, now!" a jonin's voice bellowed.
A powerful gust ripped the veil of steam away, revealing the carnage. A dozen of their men lay dead around me.
The lead jonin's face was a mask of pure rage. "You little shit! All of you, on me! He dies now!"
Four more jonin landed beside them. Eight sets of elite eyes, all locked on me.
Oh, for the love of— My profit margin just vanished. Killing one of these guys was now a chore that paid pennies. Getting killed by them, however, was still very, very final.
I turned on my heel and ran. Not away from the fight, but into its thickest, messiest parts. I ducked under a swinging axe, sidestepped a flurry of senbon, and as a Kumo chunin turned to face the new threat, my sword was already in his ribs. Forty.
"Stand and fight, you coward!" one of the jonin roared, hurling a lightning-fast spear of water that I phased through without breaking stride.
"You brought six friends!" I yelled back, vaulting over a clashing pair of samurai. "You don't get to call me a coward!"
I was a fox in a henhouse, with five very angry hounds on my tail. I led them on a merry chase, weaving through the chaos, and every time one of their lower-ranked comrades got in my way, I collected my thirty points. It was the most frustrating, efficient, and frankly enjoyable strategy I'd employed all day.
Then the horns blew. Two sharp, blaring notes from the Kumo lines, answered by our own. Retreat.
The jonin on my tail skidded to a halt, their faces twisted in fury. They spat curses at me but turned and fell back with their units. Reluctantly, I did the same, the adrenaline slowly fading, leaving me cold and tired.
Back in the command tent, the air was thick enough to choke on. Tobirama Senju slammed his fist onto the map table, sending wooden troop markers clattering to the floor.
"They're tougher than we reckoned! We're trading one for one! We cannot keep this up! Damn them to hell!"
The other clan heads—Mitokado Homura, Akimichi Torifu—stayed quiet, looking anywhere but at the fuming Hokage.
Of course, it was Danzo who broke the silence. He stood there, cold and sharp as a shard of glass, utterly unfazed by his teacher's temper.
"Lord Hokage," Danzo said, his voice cutting through the gloom. "Bashing our heads against their wall is getting our men killed for nothing. We need a sharper plan."