After Uchiha Feiyu arrived in the area around Hegu Town, the small-scale conflict there tilted sharply in Konoha's favor.
Within just three days, the two-man team cut down seven Sunagakure squads in succession. Suna's losses were so heavy they had no choice but to pull out of the Hegu region entirely.
Yamanaka Seiichi located targets. Feiyu did the killing.
The whole process was almost absurdly easy—like reaching into an open bag and helping yourself.
Some of the Konoha shinobi stationed near Hegu Town, after seeing Feiyu's speed and sword work with their own eyes, couldn't help but wonder if the White Fang of the Leaf had somehow returned to life. They started treating Feiyu with something close to worship, which finally gave him a clear sense of just how fearsome Hatake Sakumo's reputation had once been.
On a low hillside near Hegu Town, Feiyu turned to his teammate.
"How is it, Seiichi? Any chakra signatures left nearby?"
Yamanaka Seiichi shook his head.
"Other than chakra from our own Konoha forces, there's no unfamiliar chakra in the vicinity. Sunagakure's ninja should've completely withdrawn."
"Figures… looks like we've hunted this place clean."
Feiyu let out a light sigh, his expression faintly disappointed, as if the fun had ended too soon. Yamanaka Seiichi's face twitched.
(And Lord Orochimaru said this Uchiha was naturally afraid of death…
This is clearly a born executioner, isn't it?!)
Feiyu wasn't some "born harbinger of slaughter," of course. His enthusiasm for killing had two very practical reasons:
harvesting souls, and
collecting the black miasma he could offer up as sacrifices.
He'd never had much sense of belonging to this world to begin with. Now that he'd discovered a "kill mobs → drop loot" golden finger, he simply saw enemy shinobi as walking experience points. Mercy didn't even enter into it.
"Since that's the case, let's head back to camp for a bit," Feiyu said calmly. "We'll rest up, then go right back out on missions."
As he spoke, his gaze grew distant. Around him drifted faint soul-orbs only he could see—remnants of the Suna ninja he'd cut down.
Unlike Hatake Sakumo, these Sand shinobi had no intention of "inheriting their techniques" to Feiyu. But that didn't matter; Feiyu could simply use their souls to replay their jutsu and fighting styles, then reverse-engineer the principles from those demonstrations.
It was a bit harder than being personally coached via possession, but still vastly more efficient than learning from scratch.
Of course, roaming around slaughtering people for "drops" also had a downside: it cut into his time for chakra cultivation. The more he ran around killing, the less time he had to devour and refine souls from the Ryūchi Cave snakes.
Hearing Feiyu's decision, Yamanaka Seiichi quietly let out a breath.
In these three days, Feiyu had shredded Sand's presence around Hegu, but Seiichi himself had been working just as hard in the shadows. Without Feiyu's overwhelming combat power, this kind of deep-field hunting was the sort of pressure that could crush a normal sensor.
The chance to head back and rest was more than welcome.
In the Konoha frontline command tent, Orochimaru was staring at a pile of blood-stained Sand forehead protectors, a rare smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"I knew Feiyu-kun was strong," he murmured, "but I didn't expect this level of performance. This really is quite a surprise…"
"The aura of the White Fang of the Leaf… you can see about seventy or eighty percent of it on Feiyu-kun already."
Anyone who was out here conducting independent small-unit operations during a war was elite among elite shinobi. Of the twenty-plus Sand ninja Feiyu had killed, at least half had been Chunin.
After Yamanaka Seiichi rummaged through their minds, Orochimaru confirmed that among them were three tokubetsu jōnin.
Losing that many specialists in just a few days was enough to make even Sunagakure wince.
And the key point: this was only three days' work.
If Feiyu kept up this pace—one ambush after another—for two or three months, Sunagakure's entire command structure would be forced to rethink their position on the war.
"Come on, Orochimaru-senpai," Feiyu said, cutting straight across the praise. "Don't just compliment me. I finished the job. Where's my reward?"
Orochimaru's mouth twitched.
This brat… calling him thick-skinned would be putting it mildly. This was the face of someone who'd evolved beyond shame.
"Of course there's a reward," Orochimaru replied dryly. "First of all, congratulations, Feiyu—you're now a tokubetsu jōnin. As theater commander, that's as far as my authority goes. To be promoted to a full jōnin, you'd need the Hokage's personal approval."
"Second, based on your confirmed kills, you're awarded two A-rank technique slots. You're cleared to learn two A-rank jutsu. I don't have the Book of Seals on hand, but I do have a local jutsu catalogue for this front. You can look through that first."
"If nothing catches your interest here, you can always go back to Konoha later and pick techniques from the Book of Seals. The options there are… considerably broader."
"And finally, for killing more than twenty enemy ninja, your mission bounty totals two million ryō. That's your monetary reward."
"Tokubetsu jōnin." The title sounded fancy enough, but as Feiyu already knew, it didn't come with the same authority as a full jōnin. In terms of power, a tokubetsu jōnin was somewhere between elite Chunin and regular jōnin; in terms of politics, they were basically glorified specialists—no council vote, no real say.
Two A-rank jutsu sounded nice too, but Feiyu was painfully aware of his shallow current base. Aside from White Fang's kenjutsu set and the associated techniques, he only had a smattering of standard C-rank ninjutsu. For now, he didn't feel much urgency to rush into learning completely new A-ranks. He mentally filed those two slots away as credit to cash in later.
The two million ryō, on the other hand—that caught his eye.
Converted, it was roughly one million yen, a sum Feiyu had never had his hands on in this world.
But when he thought about it more carefully, he realized that amount was probably just a fraction—maybe a tenth or less—of what Sarutobi Asuma could casually get his hands on as the Hokage's son. With that in mind, his excitement cooled down again.
Once the rewards were officially logged, Feiyu peeled off a portion of the mission pay and handed it to Yamanaka Seiichi as a cut, then promptly buried himself in the training grounds.
He'd killed a lot of people recently and harvested plenty of souls. Now it was time to squeeze every last drop of value out of them and push his core strength up another notch.
Most Sand ninja, shaped by their desert homeland, specialized in Wind Release, Earth Release, or Fire Release, with a sizable minority pursuing puppet techniques. Puppet jutsu demanded exquisite chakra control and had deep ties to Yin Release as well.
After a month of rest and intense training, Feiyu's Wind Release nature transformation had already caught up to his Lightning Release. With combat experience from more than twenty Sand ninja to draw on, his progress was absurdly fast, and the gaps in the wind-aspect portion of Sakumo's White Fang style were now completely filled in.
On top of that, he picked up several of Suna's signature tricks:
Wind Cutter and Wind Blade, two Wind Release jutsu worth fully mastering.
A handful of B- and C-rank genjutsu.
And a specialized puppet-style technique that spreads chakra threads like a spiderweb, functioning as a powerful close-range sensory net.
His harvest this time wasn't just heads and bounty—it was an entire layer of combat refinement.
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