Ren put three miles between himself and the battlefield before his legs finally gave out.
He collapsed beneath a dense thicket of fern bushes, his chest burning and his forearms throbbing with a dull, feverish heat.
The soldier pill he had taken earlier was wearing off, leaving his ten-year-old body feeling like it was made of wet lead.
Pushing Wind chakra through unrefined coils had left micro-tears in his muscle tissue.
I’m not invincible, Ren reminded himself, swallowing a gulp of stale water from his leather flask.
I got lucky against an arrogant scout who didn’t take a kid seriously.
One real Jonin, one coordinated squad, and this ends.
He unrolled the stolen map onto the wet mud.
The Kazeshira clan’s second batch had headed northwest toward the coastal border of the Land of Fire—a region known as the Mist-Veil Valleys.
It was neutral ground, choked with rocky ridges and thick fog, far away from the primary battle lines of the Uchiha and Senju.
To get there, he had to trek forty miles on foot through lawless territory.
For three days, Ren pushed north.
He avoided the main dirt roads, sticking strictly to high ridgelines and dense treelines.
He didn’t waste chakra.
He ate wild berries, chewed bitter medicinal roots to keep his fever down, and used his Kazeshira skin sparingly—only pulsing tiny threads of air-sense every few minutes to check his immediate radius.
Two atmospheric disruptions.
Low speed, wide, sloppy footwork.
Ren dropped low behind a mossy boulder, peering down at the narrow dirt trail below.
Two men in tattered leather armor were standing over an overturned civilian cart.
They weren’t shinobi—they were rogue bandits, armed with dull iron hatchets and rusty spears, searching through empty rice sacks.
“Nothing here either!” one bandit spat, kicking a wooden wheel.
“Damn farmers ran off with everything!”
Ren’s mind calculated the situation instantly.
No chakra signatures, no refined stance, terrible reaction times.
He didn’t need complex vector calculations or Wind-infused blades for this.
He stepped out from behind the boulder, holding a basic steel kunai in his right hand.
“Hey!
A kid!” the second bandit gritted his teeth, grinning as he raised his hatchet.
“Look at his pouch—he’s got gear!”
The bandit lunged forward, swinging the heavy hatchet in a wild, telegraphed overhead chop.
Ren didn’t even use chakra.
He simply stepped inside the arc of the swing, letting the heavy blade bury itself uselessly into the mud beside him.
Driving his elbow straight into the bandit’s exposed solar plexus sent the man gasping to his knees, before Ren drove his kunai clean through the side of his neck.
“A…
a ninja?!”
He turned to run, dropping his spear.
Ren picked up a heavy, jagged rock from the trail, channeled a tiny, conservative wisp of chakra into his shoulder, and hurled it with full force.
CRACK!
The stone caught the fleeing bandit square in the back of the skull.
The man slumped forward into the mud, lifeless.
Ren stood over the trail, chest heaving slightly, his hands steady.
He didn’t celebrate.
He quickly searched their pockets, finding seven copper coins and a small piece of dried salted meat.
He chewed the tough meat slowly, feeling a small fraction of his stamina return.
Simple.
Efficient, Ren thought, looking up into the thick fog clinging to the northern hills.
No wasted chakra.
He was nearing the edge of the valley.