Ryusei's grin stretched despite the sparks licking past his skin.
"So not some makeshift band, then. A proper squad."
He ducked beneath another flaming arc, already recalculating.
This wasn't going to be a simple brawl. If he made one slip in tempo, they would carve him apart.
The entire time they moved, Ryusei noted just how fast the three of them were now.
All of them could use Lightning Body Flicker, the staple speed technique of Kumo jōnin.
But he also knew the gulf between that and the Lightning Chakra Mode of the Raikages was enormous.
Flicker was localized, only reinforcing the legs, and could only be sustained in bursts, once every few steps at most.
It also didn't enhance reflexes by accelerating the peripheral nerves.
All that level of mastery was unique to the Raikage.
That was why the Raikages were feared as some of the fastest shinobi alive, if not the fastest ones directly.
Their speed came not from these flickering bursts, but from a constant, full-body state that combined raw movement speed with instantaneous reaction time.
Compared to that, Lightning Body Flicker was nothing more than a crude stepping stone.
Meanwhile, Ryusei had only been testing the waters up until now.
But at last, he decided on his approach.
He opened the first two gates in an instant, his muscles roaring with sudden power, and shot forward at full speed toward one of the mid-jōnin.
The enemy commander's expression tightened. "Not good."
Immediately, the man formed a longer chain of hand seals, spewing from his mouth a set of fast, narrow serpents, water first to shape and conduct, then lightning layered through it, creating a barrage of snapping fusion projectiles. A difficult and dangerous combination.
The mid-jōnin Ryusei had targeted, responded just as fast. With only one hand seal, his free hand crackled with lightning.
"Lightning Release: Half-Thunderbolt!" he barked, thrusting his arm out and firing a concentrated lightning sphere in Ryusei's path.
The efficiency of one-handed seals made Ryusei narrow his eyes. Skilled, at least.
At the same time, the flame-sword specialist suddenly sheathed his blade, his entire body glowing in a dangerous pulse. "Illusion Flash of Lightning Pillar!"
A violent burst of light tore across the battlefield, a nin-genjutsu meant to blind and implant false images in the mind, giving allies an opening.
Ryusei recognized it instantly from his memories of the original world.
"So they even have this one… interesting," he thought with dry amusement. But against him, genjutsu was useless.
Instead of flinching, he answered with his own flames. "Fire Release: Flame Whirlwind!"
A massive spiral of fire erupted around him, coiling upward before he launched it forward.
The inferno not only blew apart the incoming Half-Thunderbolt but also forced the Moon-Style kenjutsu user to break formation, staggering his advance.
But fire was still weak to water, and the commander's fusion serpents surged toward him, crackling with lightning inside the torrents. He couldn't burn them away.
So he adapted. Shadow clones burst into existence around him with a thought.
They leapt straight into the streams, fists, and taijutsu slamming into the serpents of water-lightning, bodies frying and bursting into smoke one by one.
Their sacrifice was enough; the barrage was disrupted, the path cleared.
Ryusei now closed the distance toward his Moon-Style opponent.
The panicked jōnin lashed out wildly, one hand unleashing those exotic crescent slashes, the other firing another jutsu, "Lightning Rat Violent Quake!"
Discs of spinning electricity ripped through the air, homing in with vicious speed.
But Ryusei slipped between them effortlessly, his movements sharper with the opened gates.
He already had his answer prepared. His hands formed quick seals, breath gathering deep in his chest.
"Fire Release: Fire Dragon Flame Bullet!"
From his mouth roared a blazing dragon, flames splitting mid-flight into three heads, left, right, and frontal assault.
The enemy's wild defenses shattered as the fire-dragon devoured him from all sides, consuming his body in an instant, leaving only ash.
One down.
At the same time, Ryusei was tearing through jōnin, and Renjiro and Kanae were swallowed by the tide of eight Kumo chūnin.
They weren't pushovers.
The Cloud had long invested in standardized nintaijutsu, and it showed.
Two of them came at Renjiro first, palms crackling with lightning chakra. "Shock Fist!" Their finger jabs shot toward his joints, every strike aiming to paralyze and lock him down.
Renjiro's sword clashed against their palms, sparks hissing as lightning coated metal.
He barely twisted his body in time as another tried to jam two fingers into his shoulder.
His blade cut shallowly across the man's arm, but the counter-jolt of lightning made his own hand twitch.
"Tch. Annoying tricks…"
He was forced back as more joined, three others hurling shuriken that suddenly flared mid-flight with arcs of lightning connecting them into a net.
Renjiro's eyes widened; miss or not, the chakra current flowed through the ground itself, trying to trap his movement.
He snarled, lightning sparking along his blade as he cut downward, severing the chakra threads before they locked him in place.
Kanae, meanwhile, although already under the effects of her self-administered 'Vital Surge', was pressed just as hard.
Flames burst around her as two of the Kumo used "Flare Fist," their hands and feet glowing red-hot with fire chakra.
Every strike cracked like an explosion, each missed kick leaving a scorch mark in the dirt.
She ducked one punch, feeling the heat singe her cheek, then spun on her heel, Gentle Fist clashing directly with a burning palm.
The impact rattled her bones, but her Byakugan's precision saved her; her strike shut down the chakra flow in his wrist, the flames sputtering out.
"Too close," she thought, sweat slick on her palms.
Another enemy dashed in with a flaming roundhouse, kicking a fireball straight from his leg.
Kanae twisted, her Gentle Fist brushing against the sphere, dispersing it just enough to avoid being blown apart.
The man's grin faltered as she followed with her new Yang Release-enhanced strike; his arm swelled grotesquely at the point of contact, tumorous growth blooming where her chakra had burrowed in. He screamed, collapsing out of the fight.
Renjiro caught her movement out of the corner of his eye, and for a heartbeat, felt both awe and a bite of rivalry. But he had his own answers.
"Hatake Style… Lightning Sever!"
Guided by Kanae's Byakugan advice from their training, his blade slashed not for flesh, but straight across the lines of chakra in a chūnin's body.
The man froze mid-step, eyes wide as his nerves and chakra coils shorted out together, dropping him like a puppet with its strings cut.
Still, numbers pressed. Every time they felled one, more surged in, combining Flare Fist strikes with Shock Fist jabs, fireballs flying alongside lightning-charged kunai that made the ground itself dangerous to stand on.
Both Kanae and Renjiro were forced to weave, dodge, and counterstrike carefully, bleeding stamina for every inch of ground they took.
And yet, slowly, steadily, their rhythm began to settle.
Kanae's Byakugan guided her through the webs of lightning traps, eyes catching subtle twitches that revealed the next Flare Fist strike.
Renjiro's blade cut through nerves and coils with precision, no longer hacking wildly but dissecting their style with cold efficiency.
They weren't Ryusei, carving down jōnin in a blaze of fire and lightning. But together, they were grinding through the Kumo's chūnin one by one.
Meanwhile, the high jōnin's face twisted in anger, but beneath it flickered a trace of unease.
He spat a short command, molding chakra deep in his gut, and unleashed his strongest fusion.
Water spewed in torrents from his mouth, shaped into narrow streams that crackled as lightning coursed through them, turning into serpentine whips of electrified water.
They hissed across the battlefield like living storms, shredding trees and gouging the ground wherever they struck.
Ryusei paused for half a breath, eyes narrowing.
"No earth wall strong enough. And even if I had one, it would shatter under lightning anyway."
Instead, he split off three clones in a flash, sending them darting toward the mid-jōnin.
The real Ryusei leapt wide, zigzagging between the water-lightning torrents, every step a blur, angling closer and closer to the high jōnin.
One clone managed to slip through, slipping past the crackling streams until he appeared right before the flame-wielding kenjutsu user.
The Kumo shinobi grit his teeth, desperation flashing in his eyes. His sword ignited, flames concentrated into a single, searing edge.
"Die here!"
The clone didn't flinch. He brought his fist up, chakra already condensed.
"Lightning Release: Bullet — Powerful Breath!"
The punch exploded forward, releasing a blinding bolt of lightning.
The kenjutsu user cursed, forced to release his flames to parry, swinging his blade in a wide arc.
Fire and lightning collided, the shockwave scattering sparks across the field.
The clone didn't let up.
Every time the enemy cut through one bolt, another fist thrust forward, another burst of lightning, forcing him to keep adjusting.
The rhythm shifted—close in, fire, step back, fire again, then lunge forward, trying to slip past his guard.
The Kumo shinobi's breathing grew ragged.
His sword arm trembled under the repeated bursts, heat dispersing unevenly across the blade as he was forced to juggle attack and defense.
The high jōnin's smirk widened as he spat another torrent, this one compressed into a massive, spear-like projectile of water surging with lightning.
It tore through the air, sizzling, threatening to swallow Ryusei whole at point-blank.
Ryusei didn't back away. He grinned.
"You're a long-range specialist. No matter how polished your technique is, it's built for distance." His narrow eyes sharpened. "And once I closed in, you lost."
He stepped in. Chakra flared violently, his right hand bursting into searing flames.
"Kaseiken — Flame Fist."
The punch landed against the torrent, the sheer heat detonating on contact. The explosion tore the projectile apart from the inside, steam and sparks bursting outward, even fracturing the stone ground beneath their feet. Shockwaves rattled the forest.
The backlash cracked through his arm, pain shooting into his bones, but Ryusei didn't even flinch. His other hand was already moving, lightning pooling so dense it screeched as it condensed.
"Let me show you what close range really means."
His palm clamped against the jōnin's chest.
"Thunder Serpent"
For a split second, a massive serpent of lightning coiled around Ryusei's arm, its head rearing back with a hiss.
Then the discharge roared forward.
Thousands of volts tore into the man's body, nerves shredding, muscles convulsing.
The jōnin's smirk twisted into a silent scream as his knees buckled.
The shock built and built until his frame could no longer hold together.
Skin blackened, flesh cracked, and in an instant, his body crumbled to ash, scattering into the air.
Ryusei let out a long exhale, steam rising from his clenched fists, the faintest grin still lingering.
Ryusei then saw his clone also finish off the other mid-jōnin and finally let out a quiet sigh.
In this short clash, nearly eighty percent of his chakra was already gone.
The truth was simple: both of the A-rank techniques he had just unleashed were one-hit kill types, and each of them devoured almost a quarter of his reserves.
This time, he had chosen brute force on purpose.
One reason was the battlefield itself.
They were deep in enemy territory with no margin for dragging things out, and he needed to end it quickly before reinforcements sniffed them out.
The second reason was more personal.
He had finally gotten a chance to test his newly created ninjutsu in real combat, and he wasn't about to let that slip.
The lightning and fire arts he used earlier had all been B-rank—area denial, mid-range tools, good for pressure.
But the last two, the ones that truly decided the fight, were both A-rank and deliberately designed for close range.
That was no coincidence.
Creating techniques outside of your natural strengths was far harder and mostly pointless.
Ryusei was, at his core, a close-range specialist.
His arsenal already had enough B-rank coverage for distance control.
What he needed as his trump cards were life-and-death techniques, raw and decisive, the kind that took advantage of his abnormal body and his ability to survive explosions of power that would cripple most others.
The fact that he could fire them off with minimal seals, even with one hand, as if it was resembling taijuts, wasn't just talent—it came from how he thought.
Where others clung to tradition, Ryusei had spent months breaking down chakra theory to its first principles.
Hand seals were nothing more than simplified derivatives of jutsu-shiki formulas.
If you understood the underlying program well enough, you could weave the technique in any way your body allowed.
That was the difference—others followed patterns, he rewrote them.
He had recently finally broken through to the Elite Jōnin level, and this new ninjutsu arsenal was the proof.
Yes, he had plenty of wind, earth, and water releases as well, but those were all only C-rank.
Useful against groups of weaker opponents, or as situational counters, but not reliable mainstays against elites like the ones in front of him.
That was why he hadn't bothered drawing on them here.
The enemy was trickier than most.
His specialty was combination jutsu, laying down water techniques first, then layering lightning on top.
That synergy killed most of the textbook counters.
Ryusei couldn't simply throw earth at the water, since lightning naturally overrode it through the mineral conduction.
Wind would have been a slightly better choice, but a C-rank gust wasn't going to crack an A-rank fusion torrent.
In short, his secondary arsenal wasn't enough against this kind of opponent.
Ryusei had been grinding those techniques for the past month and a half, taking advantage of the greater freedom he'd carved out for himself.
Live missions were the best training grounds, and he used every dangerous encounter to refine his arsenal.
Growth was inevitable under that pressure. He had even managed to push open the Second Gate during one of those tougher assignments.
By all logic, Ryusei should have been stumbling by now.
Nearly eighty percent of his chakra burned through, his body rattled by direct lightning hits only half-suppressed with Yang Palm, and two Gates already forced open for a few minutes.
Any ordinary shinobi would be coughing blood or half-dead on their feet.
But there was none of that.
What carried him wasn't just his Senju vitality, though that alone was monstrous.
It was his inhuman willpower, his absurd tolerance for pain, the stubbornness that refused to let his body register weakness.
So instead of faltering, he just grinned, eyes sweeping over the smoking corpses sprawled in the clearing.
Calmly, he sealed away their heads for proof, as if nothing had happened, before moving to rejoin Kanae and Renjiro.
Both of them had also finished cutting down their opponents, though the way they were breathing showed the difference.
Kanae was leaning slightly against a tree, her pale fists still faintly trembling.
She'd pushed her new 'Vital Surge' and 'Gentle Fist: Parasitic Growth' ability too far, forcing chakra into every strike until the last of the chunin fell twitching and deformed at her feet.
Her breathing was steady but shallow, like she was forcing herself to appear calm.
Renjiro wasn't much better. His arms were nicked and bleeding from the constant parries, and the lightning-enhanced blades of the enemy had nearly fried his nerves more than once.
He tried to stand tall, his sword still in hand, but his shoulders carried the weight of exhaustion.
Ryusei, on the other hand, walked up grinning as though the whole battle had been a warm-up. He tossed the sealed heads of the jōnin onto the ground with a dull thud.
"Don't tell me you're both winded already," he said lightly. "Those were just standard Kumo squads. I thought you wanted to be ANBU."
Renjiro gave him a flat look, sword lowering. "Standard, my ass. That was one high jōnin and two mids. You should've been half-dead by now, Ryusei. But here you are, looking like you just took a stroll."
Kanae's violet eyes flicked toward him, sharp despite her mask of cold indifference. "It isn't normal," she said simply. Her fists unclenched, but she kept them by her side as if bracing herself.
Ryusei chuckled, tilting his head. "Normal is for civilians. If you're planning to survive this war, you'd better start learning to act abnormal. Or you'll both be corpses before the year is over."
Renjiro's jaw tightened, half in irritation, half in reluctant agreement. "…Tch. I hate how much sense you make when you say it like that."
Kanae exhaled slowly, forcing the tremor out of her hands. "You're reckless. One day it will catch up to you."
Ryusei flashed his narrow-eyed smile, the one that always carried that faint mockery.
"Maybe. But not today. And if it does… well, I'd prefer it's the kind of day where I get to drag you both down with me. Keeps things more interesting."
Kanae flinched at that, her lips parting for a retort she swallowed down. Renjiro just let out a humorless snort.
"Idiot," Renjiro muttered, sheathing his sword. "Try not to make me regret fighting alongside you."
"Regret's unavoidable," Ryusei said dryly, already turning toward the direction of their squad's rally point. "But at least if you stick with me, you'll live long enough to have some."
And with that, he started moving, leaving them both to trade brief, uneasy glances before following.