“Now, you can leave… your lives behind!” The Iwagakure jonin’s voice was not loud, yet it carried the harsh scrape of metal grinding against metal.
Each word drilled straight into the ear, leaving the eardrums throbbing.
Before the echo had even faded, killing intent—so dense it nearly took physical form—crashed down upon them.
It was more than mere pressure.
It carried the unmistakable stench of the battlefield: the raw scent of churned earth, the metallic tang of dried blood, and the acrid residue of spent explosives.
It pressed down on their shoulders like an invisible mountain, as if trying to crush bone and sinew inch by inch.
The surrounding air instantly stagnated.
Breathing was no longer instinctive—it became a luxury.
Every breath felt as though scorching grains of sand were being forced down the throat, searing the trachea and lungs.
Uchiha Nain felt everything she had built over the past dozen years shatter beneath that aura born purely for slaughter.
The pride of the Uchiha Clan?
The glory of graduating second in her class?
Laughable.
Before the absolute reality of death, such things were no sturdier than a sheet of paper.
Her body betrayed her completely.
Her mind screamed, Move!
Move now!—yet the command never reached her limbs.
Blood seemed to freeze into shards of ice within her veins.
Her hands and feet grew heavy and rigid, unable to twitch even a finger.
“Ugh… g—” She tried to cry out, to warn the others, but her throat was locked tight.
All that escaped were a few broken, pitiful sounds, the last remnants of terror forced out between clenched teeth.
Hyuga Chihori fared even worse.
Fear pushed her straight past her limit.
Her body’s stress response kicked in violently, and her Byakugan activated on its own, chakra surging uncontrollably through her eyes.
Then— A thunderous shout exploded like a lightning strike through the suffocating stillness, tearing apart the frozen space of death!
“Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall!” Sarutobi Sanaru did not waste a single word.
In that instant, a sharpness utterly at odds with his usual gentleness erupted from him.
The chakra of a Konoha elite jonin burst forth without restraint, like a drawn warblade surging upstream, slamming head-on into that crushing pressure!
Boom—!
The ground cracked violently.
A thick, solid wall of earth and stone surged up in front of the three genin, shielding them completely and severing the killing intent that had been close to crushing their spirits.
Sarutobi Sanaru stood with his back to them, facing the enemy alone.
His voice was hoarse from exertion, yet it carried an unshakable resolve—like a lion driven into a corner, roaring its final defiance.
“You three!
Use every method you have to hold off those three chūnin!
Then, no matter the cost, find a chance to retreat!
This is… your captain’s final order!” As fear gripped Nain and Chihori so tightly that their thoughts stalled, Kazama Ryū’s eyes shed all emotion in a single instant.
Fear.
Panic.
Anger.
Hesitation.
All of it—useless in a life-and-death moment—was cut away cleanly, as if a switch had been flipped with a cold click.
His mind began to race.
Enemy: one jonin, three chūnin.
Experienced, disciplined—likely an elite unit or assassination squad from Iwagakure.
Our side: one jonin, three genin.
Actual combat experience: effectively zero.
Against the enemy jonin, Sarutobi-sensei’s odds in a direct fight were under fifty percent.
The enemy’s intent was obvious.
Use the elite jonin as a hammer to lock down Konoha’s strongest combatant.
Use the three chūnin as blades to eliminate the three genin as quickly as possible.
Then converge—four against one.
At that point, Sarutobi-sensei would die.
Their escape routes were already sealed.
The terrain offered no cover.
A forced breakout would mean turning their backs—suicide in its purest form.
Ryū’s gaze, calm as an ancient well, swept over Nain, pale as a corpse, then Chihori, whose legs trembled so badly she could barely stand.
A single, merciless conclusion formed in his mind.
The only hope left was this: Within the time Sarutobi-sensei could buy… the three of them would have to kill the three enemy chūnin first.
An absurd notion.
Three rookies fresh out of the Academy—who had barely tasted real blood—hunting three veteran war machines forged in mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
Yet Ryū knew this was their only chance.
Die here, worthless, waiting passively to be butchered— Or stake everything and become a madman who willingly steps into hell.
Boom—!
There was no pause, no room to hesitate.
The battle had already erupted.
The clash between Sarutobi Sanaru and the Iwagakure jonin was a raw, brutal collision of power against power.
Earth Release tore the ground apart, sand and stone exploding skyward, while the roar of detonating clay thundered again and again.
Each impact made the earth groan, the terrain itself being reshaped under the violent exchange.
Gravel and clods of soil rained down, while thick smoke and dust rolled outward, forming a deadly secondary battlefield below—visibility crippled, terrain shifting, lethal intent hidden everywhere.
The three Iwagakure chūnin showed not the slightest hint of carelessness simply because their opponents were genin.
Their movements embodied textbook-perfect coordination.
No shouted commands.
No wasted gestures.
A single exchanged glance was enough.
They spread out smoothly into a flawless triangular formation.
They did not rush to attack.
Instead, they advanced with synchronized, suffocating precision—like three jackals circling wounded prey—using veteran positioning to steadily compress and divide Ryū’s group’s space.
Their objective was so clear it barely needed thought.
Eliminate the team’s eyes first.
The Byakugan user.
The Hyuga girl—already shaken, already faltering, and clearly the easiest to break.
Three strands of killing intent surged in from three directions, like invisible nooses tightening around Hyuga Chihori’s slender neck.
Inch by merciless inch.