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After the mission was confirmed, Tiange addressed the three kids directly.
“Yes!” x3
Tiange and the three kids quickly left to prepare.
That left only Tazuna and the Third staring at each other across the mission desk.
“Go get ready!”
“This squad is absolutely elite by Konoha’s standards!”
“Don’t let the team leader’s youth fool you, that man is one of Konoha’s elite jonin!”
“Protecting you will be no problem at all!”
“Of course!”
“But let me give you one piece of advice: do not cross him.”
“Watch yourself.”
The Third spoke those words with genuine weight.
And honestly, regarding Team 7’s mission this time, at first the Third had been quite pleased about it.
Now it felt very hard to manage.
That squad was strange and unpredictable, and the Third was genuinely afraid that if Tazuna somehow provoked Tiange, Tiange would just cut the man down on the spot.
Oh wait.
No need for Tiange to act.
The three members of Team 7 would cut Tazuna down first.
The Third felt bitter inside.
Was Konoha really about to have its first-ever mission end with the client getting killed?
The Third wasn’t the only one suffering, Tazuna was having a rough time too.
Those parting words had made Tazuna deeply aware that the young-looking teacher was not someone to trifle with.
And thinking about it, what kind of decent person could raise three kids like that?
The problem was, from the very start, it seemed Tazuna had already made a bad first impression on the man.
Tazuna’s heart was uneasy as he racked his brain for a plan.
With no interest in lingering in Konoha, Tazuna headed straight for the gate.
An hour passed quickly.
The four-person squad assembled at Konoha’s main gate, found Tazuna waiting right where they had left him, and the mission officially began.
Because of Tazuna’s pace, this turned out to be the most relaxed mission Naruto and the others had gone on in the entire past month.
Every previous mission had them traveling at full speed.
Now they were taking it one slow, easy step at a time, and all three of them felt loose and at ease for once.
“Sensei,” Naruto said, “why do you always walk away right after you make your move?
And it’s always just one move!”
After a month together, Naruto was no longer afraid of Tiange during normal times.
When Tiange wasn’t angry, he dared to ask the kinds of questions he normally kept to himself.
“Because a real man never looks back at the explosion,” Tiange said.
“I know that one move will kill them.”
“But what if they don’t die?
Wouldn’t turning your back on them be dangerous?”
“Didn’t die?
Then I do another move.”
“As for your second question — you’re a genuine idiot.”
Tiange said that and stopped paying attention to him.
Talking to Naruto was exhausting.
The kid had a hundred thousand whys every single day.
“Hah?”
“Why are you calling me names again?”
Naruto was unhappy.
Over this past month, he had been called out by Tiange far more than Sakura and Sasuke, those two almost never got it.
“Sensei is right,” Sasuke said.
“You are a genuine idiot.”
This simple-minded guy was always asking the most basic common-sense questions.
“Naruto,” Sakura said, “have you forgotten which clan our sensei belongs to?”
“The Hyūga.
So what?”
Sakura pressed a hand to her forehead.
She had practically spelled it out, and this idiot still didn’t get it?
“The Hyūga clan, the Byakugan.
The Byakugan has a full 360-degree field of vision with zero blind spots.
Do you honestly think anyone could sneak up on Sensei from behind?”
“Oh — I see!”
“You people are all completely insane!”
“Sasuke has the Sharingan, Sensei has the Byakugan!
It’s just me and Sakura with nothing!”
“Though Sakura, you do pick things up incredibly fast.”
“Ugh, the pressure on me is just too much.”
Sakura and Sasuke paid his words no mind.
Tiange, on the other hand, had a very strong urge to run Naruto through with a sword.
Just stab him dead.
You’re obviously the one carrying the biggest cheat ability of the three, and you’re out here complaining you have nothing?
The three kids walked and talked, perfectly at ease.
Then,
All three of them narrowed their eyes at the same instant, each signaling the others to something wrong on the ground.
The conversation kept going, but their hands slipped quietly behind their backs as they began gathering chakra.
The moment they stepped past the puddle,
Water erupted with a loud splash, iron chains clanging along with it.
“First —”
“Chidori!”
“Rasengan!”
BOOM!
The Demon Brothers came leaping out of the puddle and were killed instantly.
They didn’t even get to finish what they were saying.
Sakura watched them fall, stepped past Tazuna, and crouched to examine the bodies.
“Rogue ninja from the Hidden Mist Village,” she said.
“And they’re actually both chunin?”
“What?” Naruto stared.
“They’re this weak and they’re chunin?”
Those two had been total trash, and their thinking hadn’t exactly been sharp either, and they still made chunin?
Naruto’s honest feeling: if that’s the bar, even I could do it.
The three of them had been consumed by missions all month and had almost no contact with other people their age.
They’d barely crossed paths with anyone.
It had quietly given them a skewed sense of where they actually stood, and they still thought of themselves as nothing more than fresh Academy graduates barely a month out.
Hearing that two chunin had just been wiped out by them in seconds left all three genuinely struggling to believe it.
“Stop being surprised,” Tiange said.
“They were chunin, yes, the absolute worst kind.
Nothing to be proud of.
You three still have a long way to go.”
“Yes!” x3
The rest of the road was uneventful.
Two more days of travel, and the Land of Waves was nearly in sight.
They had just disembarked and were walking when a massive blade came spinning out of nowhere, slicing straight toward the group.
The three kids sidestepped in the same breath, threw themselves in front of Tazuna, and hauled him clear.
THUD!
The blade buried itself into a large tree, lodged deep in the trunk.
“Would you mind handing that old man over to me?”
A bandaged figure appeared atop the embedded blade, eyes sweeping over the kids as a wave of killing intent rolled down over them.
“Hey, dead bandage man, what are you trying to pull?” Naruto pointed at the figure and sneered.
“That level of killing intent is nothing in front of our sensei.
Don’t even bother letting it out, you’ll just embarrass yourself.”
A month under Tiange’s killing intent had made them very familiar with that kind of pressure.
“Oh!”
“Your sensei?
And where would that be?”
“Were you looking for me, Zabuza?”
Zabuza’s entire body locked up.
That voice,
The Byakugan Demon.
There was no way to ever forget it.
This is bad.
How had he ended up running into this monster?
Zabuza turned stiffly.
The instant Tiange’s face came into focus, trembling took over completely.
It, it really was him.
That nightmare existence from the underworld.
Zabuza dropped from the blade to the ground and bowed toward Tiange, deeply respectful.
Because the Byakugan Demon did not like having anyone loom over him.
“My lord!
My sincerest apologies, I had no idea you were here.
I’ll take my leave immediately.
I’m abandoning this mission.”
“Mm.
Go ahead.”
“Take the hidden one along with you.
You know the rules.”
“I do.
I know them all.”
“Mm.
No need to leave my cut this time.
I’m just taking my students on a little outing, I have no interest in seeing blood.”
“Understood.
Thank you, my lord.”
Zabuza bowed again, holding the posture until now, and only then straightened up.
Zabuza retrieved the Kubikiribōchō, called to Haku from the shadows, and left as though running for their lives.
Only after putting serious distance between them did Zabuza let out a long, slow breath.
“Lord Zabuza, what are the rules?”
The rules, huh…
Zabuza sank into memory.
➤ Next: He, Above All Rules
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