Ryusei's teeth clenched as his instincts screamed.
In the instant that strange, beam-like blast came streaking toward him, he flared the First Gate open.
His body snapped into motion, muscles surging as he blurred sideways, dodging the attack by the width of a hair.
The energy wasn't ordinary chakra; it felt heavier, stranger, threaded with something that reeked of both chakra and soul.
He landed, skidding across the dirt, but his senses jolted again.
Enemies who had just been locked in combat with Root operatives suddenly shifted.
Their movements grew hollow, vacant.
And then, as if on command, both they and the Root shinobi turned on him together, springing to box him in.
A second beam shot through the air, faster than the first.
Ryusei tensed every muscle, drew lightning into his legs, and burst forward, twisting as both fists lashed out with Coiling Serpent strikes, disrupting the enemies trying to pin him as he barely slipped past the beam again.
The incomplete Lightning Flow in his muscles gave him just enough of a burst to keep ahead.
But it didn't stop.
His eyes flicked toward the source, and he saw him.
One of the Root operatives, previously masked and unassuming, the type you wouldn't look at twice.
Except now he was holding something that looked like a chakra-forged crossbow, glowing with those same eerie beams.
The moment a shot missed, the energy recoiled back into the weapon like a tether, then fired again instantly. The pace was merciless.
Ryusei's jaw tightened. "So it's you."
And worse, some of the Kusagakure shinobi nearby were attacking him in the same hollow, absent-minded way.
Their chakra signatures felt distorted, tugged at by some outside will. Controlled.
That sealed it. Staying here, inside the melee, was suicide.
If this masked Root operative could seize more bodies at once, Ryusei would be overwhelmed before he even had the chance to strike back.
He didn't waste a second considering whether to fight the source first. Not yet.
The priority was clear: escape the kill box, pull the fight away, and live.
Ryusei leapt back, but the ground ahead of him suddenly shimmered with danger, traps primed with that same strange energy, previously disguised as rocks, waiting to detonate.
His senses screamed a warning just in time. He aborted his escape, forced to halt mid-step.
The delay was enough.
Multiple arrow-like beams this time, torso length, glowing with that eerie fusion of chakra and soul, rained down on him.
Enemy shinobi surged in, tightening the circle.
And at the center of it all stood that Root operative. One hand formed the crossbow, conjuring and firing those beams, while the other hand directed the motion like a conductor orchestrating his puppets.
Ryusei pushed his body to the limit, his sensing and speed letting him slip past one volley after another.
But even with the First Gate open, he couldn't dodge them all.
One beam clipped him.
Instantly, his mind reeled. Thousands of foreign thoughts slammed into his head, like a tornado tearing through his consciousness. His vision fractured, his awareness blurring.
But his spiritual power—refined, sharpened, hardened by his very transmigration—held.
He staggered, breath ragged, narrowly deflecting a pair of kunai strikes, forcing his body to move through sheer will.
Then two more beams struck.
This time, he nearly collapsed.
His chest heaved as a corrosive, invasive sensation spread deeper.
It wasn't just his body under attack—his soul itself was being gnawed at, detonated piece by piece. His mind screamed in alarm.
He understood in a flash: parts of the enemy's chakra and soul had already forced themselves into his brain, festering there like foreign shards. It was life and death.
Around him, a dozen shinobi closed in, blades ready to finish him.
Ryusei's consciousness dangled by a thread.
"I made a mistake," he thought bitterly. Sweat streamed down his face. "Too careless. I thought I was untouchable to genjutsu—but what the hell is this?"
He prided himself on precision, on perfection, on never letting holes slip through. Yet here, he'd missed warning after warning, allowed himself to be cornered.
But mistakes were inevitable. He knew that better than anyone. The difference between dying and living was whether you learned fast enough to adapt before the final blow.
His teeth ground together. His body shuddered. Then, in the crucible of survival, two things happened at once.
First, he got a sudden brilliant insight and forced Yin Release chakra, which he had dabbled in a little before, into his brain's tenketsu, flooding his spiritual pathways.
The crude release he had awakend and only toyed with before, a few months ago, now crystallized into an improvised defense, once there was no other option left.
The foreign fragments within him were expelled, his consciousness shielded by his own will.
Second, his legs sparked. Lightning chakra flared, chaotic yet orderly, fusing into the flow of his body completely.
In that instant, the technique he had only been circling around finally clicked into place.
His Lightning Body Flicker. Complete.
Together, the two breakthroughs slammed into reality.
His mind snapped into clarity. The haze lifted. The soul-corrosion receded.
And his body, his legs, were now so fast that the next volley of beams couldn't catch him.
He blurred, vanishing from the kill box in a crackle of light, reappearing battered but alive, kunai buried in his side, blood dripping down his arm.
But alive.
In that desperate heartbeat, he had created both a new defensive technique against invasive genjutsu and completed his Lightning Body Flicker.
Achievements that most shinobi might call the work of a lifetime, wrested into being by sheer survival instinct.
Ryusei wasted no time. Two B-rank techniques, one fire, one lightning, erupted from his hands in quick succession, crashing into the clustered shinobi and forcing them back, breaking their encirclement.
The sudden burst of flame and crackling current tore space open around him, scattering enemies and buying him breathing room.
At the same moment, he recalled several of his shadow clones that had been spread across the melee, drawing them back into formation.
More smoke burst as he resummoned fresh ones, and they surged forward like a tide, pressing the enemy and masking his movement.
Ryusei himself didn't retreat.
He sprinted straight through the gap he'd carved, eyes locked on the masked Root operative who had nearly killed him.