The third Senju didn't reveal himself. He was a shadow among shadows, a predator who had realized that the "rabbit" in the trench had teeth made of cold steel.
I stood in the center of the clearing, the mud chilling my ankles. Taiga was unconscious—the shock of the water wave or the sheer terror had finally shut his brain down. That was fine. He was a variable I no longer had to calculate for.
"I know you're there," I said to the trees. "Your chakra signature is leaking. You're trying to suppress it, but you're breathing too fast. The thermal output of your lungs is visible on the 12-micron band."
A laugh drifted from the trees. It was dry, like dead leaves. "An Uchiha brat who talks like a scholar. Is this the new breed Tajima is raising?"
A man dropped from the branches. He was lean, dressed in dark flak jacket, with a scarred chin and eyes that moved with the same hyper-fixation as mine. He wasn't a grunt. He was a Hunter-Nin.
"I'm Kaito," I said. "And you are currently standing in a thermal trap."
He paused, his foot hovering inches above a patch of dry leaves. He looked down, then smirked. "There are no wires here, boy. No tags. I can see the flow of chakra. You're empty."
"Chakra is a tool," I said, slowly reaching into my pouch. "But physics is a law. Do you know what happens to high-carbon steel when it's subjected to rapid cryogenic cooling followed by a localized thermal spike?"
He didn't wait for the lecture. He moved.
He was a blur. Faster than the others. My Sharingan tracked him, but my body—this seven-year-old, malnourished frame—couldn't keep up. The "Lag" was my greatest enemy. He swung a tantō, the blade aiming for my throat.
I tilted my head. The steel grazed my cheek, drawing a line of fire. I didn't retreat. I lunged forward, slamming a small glass vial against his chest plate.
The vial contained Liquid Nitrogen—or the closest thing this world's alchemy could produce via sealing scrolls.
The liquid hissed as it hit his armor. The metal groaned, frost blooming instantly across his chest. He recoiled, his eyes widening as the extreme cold began to sap the heat from his core.
"What is this—!"
"Phase one," I said.
I bit my thumb and slammed my hand onto the ground. I didn't have the chakra for a Great Fireball, but I had enough for a Spark Induction.
I had spent the last hour, while waiting in the trench, burying a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter—black powder—in a circle around this specific spot.
The spark hit the trail.
BOOM.
It wasn't a massive explosion. It was a Thermic Flare. The temperature in the circle jumped from sub-zero to 1,500 degrees Celsius in a fraction of a second.
The Senju's armor, already brittle from the liquid nitrogen, couldn't handle the thermal expansion. The iron shattered.
Technical Result: Material fatigue. The sudden transition from -196°C to 1,500°C caused a catastrophic structural failure of the carbon-steel lattice.
The armor didn't just break; it shrapneled.
The man screamed as shards of his own chest plate were driven into his lungs by the pressure of the heat. He fell back, his chest a bloody ruin of smoking metal and burnt flesh.
I walked toward him, my feet crunching on the charred earth. My Sharingan was burning, the strain of the Overclock making my vision bleed red at the edges.
He looked up at me, coughing blood that sizzled on his hot armor. "You... you didn't even use... a jutsu..."
"Why waste the energy?" I asked, kneeling beside him. I took his tantō from his limp hand. It was a beautiful blade. Balanced. Sharp. "Jutsu are just shortcuts for people who don't understand how the world actually works. I prefer the long way."
I ended it with a single, technical strike to the brainstem.
The silence returned to the forest. I stood there, a small child surrounded by three dead veterans, the "OP" progression of my new life beginning not with a roar, but with a whisper of logic.
I looked at my hands. They were shaking now. Not from fear, but from the adrenaline crash. I needed food. I needed sleep. But more than that, I needed more data.
System Log: Level 1 Survival Complete. Technical Proficiency increased. Current objective: Locate the Uchiha Main Camp. Secondary objective: Optimize chakra-to-kinetic energy conversion ratios.
I picked up Taiga, slung his arm over my shoulder, and began the long walk home.