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The wind over the battlefield was unnaturally quiet. The forest beyond Konoha's eastern border stood heavy, like it knew blood was about to soak its roots. Shinobi didn't speak here. They moved in silence, waiting for a spark to set the tinder of war ablaze.
Ryuzen walked at the center of the column, cloak brushing against his sandals. His Sharingan wasn't active, but his mind spun faster than any tomoe. Minato walked ahead, calm and precise, already commanding respect with a few clipped orders that organized squads into seamless formations.
It should have been reassuring. It wasn't.
Something was off.
That's when the world itself fractured.
---
[System Alert]
Mandatory Task Generated.
Objective: Ensure Might Duy survives.
Reward: 7th Gate Access (Resonance Unlocked).
Failure Penalty: Permanent Chakra Deviation (irreversible).
Time Limit: Until engagement ends.
---
The message was colorless, clinical. Cold digits etched themselves across his mind. No explanation. No mercy.
Ryuzen's jaw clenched. Duy? The Eternal Genin? The man everyone mocked for his outdated ideals? He glanced two squads down and caught sight of Duy's broad frame, standing slightly behind his son, Gai. His smile was genuine, almost out of place in the gathering tension.
A man who had nothing to lose—except his life.
The System didn't choose tasks lightly. If it wanted him alive, it meant Duy was about to face the kind of death no ordinary shinobi could walk away from.
And that meant the battlefield was about to collapse.
---
The Iwa forces struck first. Paper bombs rained from the treeline, kunai flashing like falling stars. Earth walls erupted to pen in Konoha's squads, trying to separate them before the fighting even began.
"Scatter and regroup!" Minato's voice cut through chaos like lightning. His hands blurred—three seals, one mark—and then he vanished, reappearing amidst the enemy ranks, carving through them before they even knew where he stood.
Every shinobi followed his tempo. He was a commander born.
But Ryuzen… he didn't move yet.
He tracked lines, saw the cracks. His Sharingan flared and the battlefield unfolded—not in chaos, but in inevitability. He saw where the walls would fall, where the ambushes would land, where screams hadn't yet been made.
And in every thread of fate, Might Duy's name glowed with death.
---
"Ryuzen!" Kushina's voice cut through the din, sealing chains already flying from her back. "Don't just stand there—!"
He moved. Not forward. Not to the left. He cut across the battlefield with surgical precision, slashing through an earth clone, breaking a barrier seal, twisting the fight's geometry until he was between Duy and the inevitable.
Duy turned to him, confused. "Eh? Youngster, what are you—"
"Move," Ryuzen said, voice sharper than steel.
---
The ground quaked. Three Iwa jōnin surged out at once, chakra swelling, their killing intent directed at the "weak link" of Konoha's squad: Might Duy.
They were wrong.
They didn't see the Sharingan flicker, or how Ryuzen shifted the battlefield's flow an inch at a time. They didn't notice until their kunai missed his throat by less than a hair.
But Ryuzen did. He had already seen the next ten moves.
And none ended with Duy's corpse.
---
[System Notice]
Task Progress: 34%
---
Minato shone like the sun—brilliant, inspiring, impossible to ignore. Ryuzen shone differently. His was the shadow between breaths, the cut no one saw until it was already bleeding. He wasn't rallying men; he was manipulating inevitability.
A clone took the brunt of a blow meant for Duy's spine. A genjutsu flickered for less than a second, enough to tilt an enemy's kunai away from his chest. Ryuzen wasn't fighting for himself—he was fighting to preserve a single man whose worth no one else could yet see.
Why? He didn't know. But the System demanded it.
And for the first time, he felt the strain of what it meant to fight for something colder than Konoha.
---
The climax came fast. One of the Iwa jōnin pulled chakra into a technique that could have erased half the squad. Ryuzen's eyes widened—not because he couldn't stop it, but because Duy moved first.
Duy's chakra surged, body glowing with raw life energy. His smile didn't falter, even as his muscles tore.
"Not on my comrades' watch!"
Gates.
He had opened them. Not all. But enough that the strain would kill him if he went further.
Ryuzen's Sharingan caught it all: the burning, the brilliance, the unbearable weight of a man who chose to die so others lived.
And that's when the System's voice cut through the madness.
---
[System Alert]
Intervention Required.
Unlock Condition: Synchronize with Might Duy's Gate Resonance.
Proceed? Y/N
---
He didn't hesitate. Yes.
The world blurred. Pain lanced through his own muscles, burning as if his body had been set on fire from the inside out. He staggered but didn't fall. His chakra coils screamed, yet something inside him broke—then reformed sharper.
The Seventh Gate. Not his by training, not his by willpower, but bound to him by the System's cold demand.
Ryuzen's hands clenched. His blood felt like molten iron, his vision sharp enough to cut reality itself. For a second, he saw the battlefield the way the gods might: every move, every counter, every path.
And in that clarity, he saved Duy. Not by shielding him, but by turning inevitability against itself—redirecting blows, breaking jutsu mid-formation, forcing enemies into each other's traps.
Duy fell to one knee, breath ragged, alive. Alive only because the System had demanded it.
---
When the dust cleared, Minato stood at the front, victorious, golden. Every shinobi looked at him like salvation incarnate.
Ryuzen stood in the shadow behind, his body trembling from the borrowed weight of the Gates, his Sharingan still smoldering.
No one cheered for him.
No one even realized the war had almost swallowed Duy whole.
Except the System.
---
[System Notice]
Mandatory Task Complete.
Reward Issued: Seventh Gate Access (Resonance).
*Warning: Body not fully adapted. Overuse may result in permanent damage.
---
Ryuzen exhaled slowly, the battlefield smoke stinging his lungs. Minato's light would guide Konoha's morale. That was how it should be.
But in the silence between heartbeats, Ryuzen realized something darker:
His role wasn't to shine. It was to carry the weight no one else dared to see.
And the System would never let him forget it.
---
Author's Note (1% Style)
This chapter marks the beginning of the war's true descent into blood and shadow. You saw Minato claim the battlefield as Konoha's future… and Ryuzen forced into a task no shinobi would ever choose. The System has finally revealed its fangs.
Now, the question is: how many lives can Ryuzen manipulate into survival before the cost breaks him?
💬 Comment your thoughts below—tell me if you felt the weight of Duy's survival.
📚 Add this to your library to follow Ryuzen's descent into the war.
⚡ And don't forget to drop a power stone—your support pushes me to dive even deeper into these hidden layers.
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