Ryusei crouched near the damaged depot soon again through the undergrowth, breath even, eyes steady.
Three of them were left inside, the ones he burned earlier. High-genin, injured, still dangerous.
He had no taijutsu worth trusting right now. The body could not keep up with constant micro-adjustments.
Not many shinobi tools were left either, all thrown out by him earlier to escape, barring a few more kunai left.
Advanced ninjutsu were obviously out too. What he had left were the low tiers that the original owner drilled for years. D and C rank, from fire and lightning, his affinities.
Those were the kind of jutsu that every shinobi at his level needed to have in their arsenal for certain uses and situations.
Plus the academy basics and the garbage E-rank 'optical illusion' jutsu taught there to the cannon fodder.
He formed a plan while the smoke drifted through the yard.
One Shadow Clone. No more. The original owner could throw four or five without blinking.
The current him would rip himself hollow if he tried that.
One was all he could afford, so one had to be perfect.
He pressed his chakra down into a thin thread and shaped the clone.
The copy appeared with no ripple, presence masked to a whisper under his sensory mode suppression.
It moved off low, circling wide through the scrub toward the back of the huts.
That was the piece the old Ryusei never played right.
He had a Shadow Clone, B-rank, jutsu too, but he didn't use it for tactics like this. He was too overconfident and short-sighted.
He had charged this place expecting an easy wipe.
He never thought ROOT would be waiting.
For example, he never thought a hare could carry a blade to his mind, which later catalyzed him losing his own body and having his soul devoured.
Stuff like that would not happen to Ryusei now, who had far more vision.
He shifted forward through the smoke.
Inside the yard, he could make them out now.
One man held his right arm tight to his body, the burn dark and ugly.
Another limped, shin split by heat and debris.
The last coughed behind a crate, eyes raw from the earlier flames.
All three still had their blades. All three still tracked the front.
Ryusei raised two seals and exhaled a thin line of heat.
A needle of fire snapped across the yard and struck the crate. "Ember Shot".
The plank blackened and popped, forcing the coughing one to lurch sideways into open ground. The limping man moved to cover him.
They shouted. They saw only one opponent.
Ryusei lifted his hand and flicked a scatter of sparks into the air. "Scorch Flicker".
Tiny embers burst near eye level, a close-range glare that made the injured arm man flinch.
In the same beat, a ghost of lightning jumped from Ryusei's fingers to the limper's thigh. "Nerve Snap".
A small arc, just enough to seize the muscle and break his step.
They reset their guard, angry now, pressing forward.
He did not meet them straight on. He gave ground by a pace and snapped another seal, sending thin arcs skittering along the ground. "Static Grip".
Lightning crawled up the nearest crate and caught the coughing one across the calf. His stance sagged.
From the back of the yard, a shape rose from the haze. The Shadow Clone.
It had crept in while their eyes stayed on him. No chakra leak, no warning.
It stepped out and pushed a quick stream of heat at the exposed back.
"Ember Shot" again, this time at spine height.
The man jerked forward with a cry, clothes smoking.
The clone closed in, palm sparking, and snapped a short "Nerve Snap" into the same spot.
His legs failed, and he dropped to a knee.
They finally realized there were two.
Ryusei moved the instant their heads turned.
A short Body Flicker carried him to the limper's flank.
His kunai kissed the man's guard and slid off. He did not stay.
He let the clash sell a false angle, then stamped a heel into the crate and used the rebound to slip behind a post.
The man with the burned arm swung late and hit air.
The clone kept the pressure on the one it had dropped.
It flicked another small fire burst low, forcing him to roll, then blurred forward and raked a lightning-coated kunai across the back of his knee.
Not deep, just enough to cut the joint. The man sprawled with a curse.
"Two bodies," one of them barked, voice strained. "The brat split himself."
They came at Ryusei now with short, mean cuts, not overcommitting.
He answered with what the body could still do. Quick pecks.
A feint with the guard hand, a single step in, "Nerve Snap" to the wrist, then out before they could trap him.
He never tried to trade. He never planted his feet. His job was to keep their eyes on him while the clone did quiet work.
The clone vanished behind a stack and came out wearing the limp man's shape. "Transformation Technique".
It staggered, one hand to its thigh, breathing hard like prey.
The burned-arm man bit and rushed it. The moment his blade extended, the clone dropped the disguise and drove a lightning palm into the burn. "Static Grip" crawled over raw skin. He screamed and reeled.
The clone's kunai punched under the ribs. The body slumped and began to smoke into chakra as the clone, cut deep across the forearm, popped with a soft crack and pushed its memory back to Ryusei.
The transfer hit like a quick flash. Angles. Distance. The burned man out. Two left. He took that information and moved again.
The limper tried to cut him off. Ryusei slid a "Scorch Flicker" across the ground and up into his face. The man threw an arm up on instinct. Ryusei flicked a kunai at the exposed thigh and followed it with a short "Ember Shot".
The blade pinned the cloth, and the heat seared the wound open. The limper screamed and went down on both knees.
The last one broke toward Ryusei with a rush, trying to end it in one go.
Ryusei met him with a quick exchange and let the man drive him three steps back, then snapped a Body Replacement Technique with a split log leaning in the smoke.
The enemy's strike split dead wood. Ryusei reappeared at his back and snapped "Nerve Snap" into the shoulder, then another into the forearm.
The man's grip faltered. Ryusei kicked the wrist and sent the blade skittering.
The man threw a wild elbow and caught him in the ribs. Pain lit his side and tried to fold him.
He gave ground, breathing short, and threw a thin line of "Static Grip" across the man's shins.
The legs stuttered. Ryusei stepped in once and slashed the hamstring. The man toppled, cursing, still clawing for a knife at his belt.
"Stay down," Ryusei said, voice flat.
He did not wait for an answer. He leaned and drove his kunai into the soft gap at the base of the neck. The body went quiet.
The limper still tried to crawl. Ryusei walked to him, sent a final "Nerve Snap" into the spine to freeze him, and ended it with one clean thrust.
The first man he and the clone had cut up lay still near the crate, smoke weaving from torn cloth.
Silence flowed back into the yard in slow beats.
Ryusei stood there, chest tight, blood hot in his mouth, the world steadying by degrees.
He let his senses push out. No fresh chakra signatures closing. No second wave. The depot was his now.
He breathed once and let the truth settle. He had beaten three high-genin while being only one at most himself.
Not with power, not with pretty forms, but with small tools used at the right time.
"Remember this," he told himself. "Small wins strung together are still a win."
He looked at the bodies, then at the huts.
The job was not finished. He still had to secure the place and burn it down.
He also marked the lesson the old Ryusei had failed to learn.
Shadow Clone was not just for mirrors and noise.
One silent copy, masked under sensory suppression, had turned a losing fight.
He moved to the first hut and started the work.
The lower-ranked techniques he had used just now weren't the only ones in the original owner's arsenal, but they were the easiest and most practical for him to pull off at this moment.
Thanks to those fifteen minutes of meditation and healing thanks to Kanae, his strength had already climbed back to roughly high-genin level, about the same as theirs.
It wasn't the type of restoration he wanted, but it was enough to stand on even ground again.
The three mercenaries still bore the wounds he'd given them earlier, but theirs were lighter, mostly burns, while his injuries had been far more severe before he'd patched himself up.
So they were pretty 'even' in that regard, too.
So, he was there facing three opponents of roughly equal individual strength to him, in his sensory casual estimation, like usual.
The reason they weren't throwing out many techniques was simple: what real ninjutsu did Kusagakure and Takigakure even have to hand down?
And even if such techniques existed, it was unlikely anyone would waste them on low-level, disposable people like these.
They probably didn't rebel because they were exactly satisfied with what their respective smaller villages offered and gave them at that time.
Buying stolen or leaked jutsu from the black market was another matter entirely; the prices for those were astronomical, well beyond what these men could afford.
Still, what they lacked in techniques, they made up for theoretically in physical ability, so they should've been the ones to defeat the current him on paper.
Yet, the only reason they were at a disadvantage now was because he had caught them off guard and outmaneuvered them with better tactics from beginning to end successfully.
Ryusei thought back to the exchange, replaying each move in his head.
While the clone crept into position, he kept their eyes on him, flaring small bursts of fire to throw smoke into the air, snapping arcs of lightning to keep them on edge.
Nothing too costly, just enough to split their focus and wear on their nerves.
He made himself look like the only threat, luring them into flanking him, step by step, until they drifted right into the blind spot where his clone waited.
Then it struck, quick, sharp, and perfectly timed.
The sudden hit shattered their formation, and from there, he cut them down one by one.
In the end, it wasn't raw power that won; it was patience, deception, and making them dance to his rhythm.
The transmigrator couldn't help thinking he was way sharper and wiser than the body's original owner, objectively, not in a self-boasting way.
Ryusei had always inwardly boasted about his sensory ability and felt proud of it, but when it mattered most, it failed him, or rather, he failed to use it properly.
Deep down, the boy probably never expected anything unusual to happen during a mission.
He certainly never imagined a genjutsu being launched from a harmless-looking animal.
Because of that, he wasted his gift. His sensory field was spread too narrowly, circling only the outpost itself and its immediate surroundings.
He didn't even extend it toward the nearby hill that anyone could see with the naked eye, a perfect position to hide and channel a long-range technique.
Worse, even where his sensing chakra was densest, he hadn't checked everything with real care.
Every rock, every rustle, every small creature should have been accounted for, yet he missed the hare that carried a subtle, unnatural presence.
The current soul inside this body swore he would never repeat those errors.
No complacency, no shortcuts, no laziness. Every micro detail would be scanned, judged, and cleared. That was the only way he could survive in this identity.
Meanwhile, the new 'Ryusei' also didn't just toss fire around to finally finish his mission; he did it with precision, using jutsu to make sure nothing usable would survive.
He began with a controlled Ember Shot to set alight the scroll racks inside the central intel shack.
The paper, already dry and brittle, caught instantly, the black ink curling and vanishing in seconds.
He followed with Scorch Flicker to scatter heat and flame into the map cases and wooden shelves, making the burn spread faster.
Inside the side huts, he found more than just intelligence scrolls, field rations, spare weapon crates, and a few locked chests that likely held coded messages or mission pay for the mercenaries.
He split the locks with a quick Nerve Snap into the hinges, then used another Ember Shot to burn their contents without ever opening them fully, keeping whatever secrets they held from being salvaged.
For the larger crates of supplies and bedding, he stacked them together and sent a steady Static Grip into the pile, letting the sparks smolder in the cloth before it erupted.
Once the blaze was roaring, he kicked over the support beams, letting the structure collapse inward to smother any chance of someone grabbing something intact.
By the time he stepped out into the open again, the depot was a furnace.
The flames swallowed not just the intelligence meant for Iwagakure, but everything else that could have been used to support another cell, food, shelter, and equipment.
Only then did he turn toward the treeline, heading to meet his team formally for the 'first time' with the depot's destruction at his back.