Chapter 59: The Unseen Blade
The thick, choking dust began to settle, blown away by a stray gust of wind that swept across the ravaged battlefield. Every Konoha, Cloud, and Yugakure ninja watching held their breath, their eyes straining to be the first to see the outcome of that cataclysmic clash. They all wished for the piercing sight of the Byakugan to cut through the obscuring veil.
The Konoha shinobi felt a surge of hope. Kagenori, one of their own, had not only held his own against a village leader but had repeatedly pressed the advantage, even drawing blood. He fought with a terrifying, precise brilliance that made them proud and wary in equal measure.
The Cloud and Yugakure ninja, however, clung to their leader's experience. They had seen him calmly dismantle Kagenori's cleverest traps. They had also seen the boy's diminishing reserves; his chakra, while potent, was not yet at the bottomless level of a true elite jonin. It was, at best, at the level of a tokubetsu jonin. If their leader could survive this final, desperate attack, the boy would be out of chakra—a exhausted fish on the chopping block. Yet, a cold knot of doubt tightened in their stomachs. What if he couldn't?
The wind finally cleared the air.
Kagenori was on one knee, his body trembling violently with each ragged, sucking breath he took. He looked utterly spent.
Not far away, the Leader of Yugakure lay sprawled on the ground, his robes scorched and torn by the sheer, blistering heat of the lightning that had surrounded Kagenori. The sight sent a wave of shock through the allied ninja. Had their leader been defeated?!
But then, confusion followed. The Village Head's body bore no clean slash from a ninjato, no charred marks from a direct lightning strike. Instead, his wounds were lacerations—jagged cuts that looked like they had been inflicted by a storm of invisible blades. It made no sense. The attack had been a torrent of lightning.
Minato Namikaze's blue eyes widened, his sharp mind piecing together the final moments in a flash. He missed. Kagenori's ultimate attack had missed its mark. How? The answer lay in the Village Head's final, desperate move. His last Vacuum Bullet hadn't been aimed at Kagenori. The man had known he couldn't dodge and couldn't block it directly. So, he had fired it at the ground at his own feet.
The resulting explosive gust of wind had acted like a violent, self-inflicted push, hurling his own body out of the path of the lethal slash. It was a brutal, calculated gamble—accepting the shrapnel-like injuries from the disrupted wind jutsu to avoid being bisected. He had bet his life on it, and he had won.
The Village Head struggled to push himself up, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the scorched earth. He looked at Kagenori, who was still kneeling, and his voice was a hoarse, broken thing. "You... can't even stand anymore, can you?"
Kagenori responded with a wracking cough that shook his entire frame. The Village Head was right. Every muscle fiber screamed in protest, feeling as if it had been torn apart from the inside. Mastering the Seventh Form in theory was one thing; forcing a chakra-depleted body to execute it was another. The backlash was brutal.
Kagenori looked at the older man, a flicker of respect in his exhausted eyes. "As expected of a village leader. Your combat experience and decisiveness... to think of using a mutual-destruction technique to save your own life."
The Village Head's lips twitched into a pained, bloody smirk. "Isn't that what a shinobi does? When you're cornered, you gamble. I gambled, and I won." He paused, his brow furrowing in genuine curiosity. "But one thing... when you drew your sword, its reach... it didn't seem enough to behead me. Was it a miscalculation?"
Using his ninjato as a crutch, Kagenori forced himself to stand. His legs shook violently, and his face was pale with pain. "In our plan," he wheezed, "anyone in Yugakure can die. But you... you specifically cannot die."
The Village Head stared, stunned into silence. "I can't die? Why...?" He then let out a long, weary sigh, the fight seeming to drain out of him. "Forget it. I don't want to know anymore. This... this is really the end." He looked at Kagenori with something akin to sorrow. "I don't want to kill you. You are... too exceptional. If you live, you will undoubtedly become a powerhouse of the ninja world."
He drew a single kunai from his pouch, its edge glinting in the hazy light. "But you have killed so many of my ninja. As the leader of Yugakure... I must avenge them."
Kagenori let out a weak, derisive sneer. "Don't spout such hollow words on a battlefield. We are enemies. Speak with your blade, not with platitudes." He tightened his grip on his sword, his knuckles white. "And... who told you that you'd won?"
The Village Head frowned, his eyes narrowing. How could the boy still be talking like this? He was barely standing. Decisive once more, the leader stopped hesitating. He took aim and threw the kunai, a swift, precise throw aimed straight for Kagenori's heart.
From a distance, Minato saw the throw and his body moved on instinct. He had to save him! But then he froze, Daigo's final, explosive death flashing in his mind, followed by Kagenori's cold words: "He died because he was weak. You don't need to grieve for me."
A war raged inside Minato. He didn't want to save Kagenori. The hatred was there, a cold, hard stone in his gut, solidified by the detonator tags and the pragmatic cruelty. But the Hokage he aspired to be, the man who believed in the Will of Fire, screamed that this was wrong. To let a comrade die because of a personal grudge was to betray Konoha itself. It was to become everything he despised.
He burst forward, a yellow flash against the chaos. But he was too far away. He knew it was hopeless.
Then he skidded to a halt, his eyes widening in confusion.
The kunai... it was off-target. It wasn't heading for Kagenori's heart. It was going to land harmlessly beside him.
But in the eyes of the Yugakure Leader, his aim was true. The kunai was flying straight for the boy's forehead. Yet, just as it was about to strike, Kagenori's form seemed to waver, to become insubstantial. The kunai passed straight through the illusory image and thudded into the earth. And in that same instant, the real Kagenori was standing two meters to the left, his ninjato held steady, his Sharingan glowing with a faint, final pulse of crimson light.
The Village Head's face went slack with stunned disbelief, the truth dawning on him with horrifying clarity.
"Genjutsu?!" he whispered, the word a breath of utter defeat. He had been caught in it from the moment the dust cloud rose. He had never truly escaped the Fire Thunder God at all.