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The years slipped by like quiet shadows. By the time Kirito had reached his sixteenth year, the boy who once hid behind the anonymity of temporary teams was no longer a mere academy graduate. His path had diverged sharply from the others. Where his peers laughed and bonded over missions, squabbling like children and dreaming of promotions, Kirito's eyes always held a stillness—an ocean calm on the surface, hiding the violent currents of storms beneath.
His days were painted with two masks, and he wore each with the discipline of a craftsman.
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The Konoha Mask
In the eyes of the village, Kirito was nothing special. He was dutiful, punctual, and efficient—a shinobi who took missions seriously yet never stood out. At first, he was shuffled from one temporary team to another, always assigned to C-rank missions. Escorting merchants, clearing bandits, delivering supplies—tasks that tested endurance rather than skill. He made no complaints, never argued with captains, and never attempted to overshadow teammates.
When it was his turn to strike, his blades hit true, but never more than what a competent genin should manage. When asked to demonstrate jutsu, he used academy-level techniques with convincing imperfection. No teacher or commander saw brilliance in him, only reliability. And in a village swollen with egos and ambition, that alone was a cloak more effective than invisibility.
Behind that dull façade lay a ruthless calculation. Kirito had long since mastered the delicate art of suppression. His chakra was condensed into the core he had forged within himself, sealed and stabilized with runes of his own design. The structure allowed him to bleed out only fragments at will, making his reserves appear no more impressive than those of an ordinary genin.
For a year he kept at it, every mission a performance. His teammates rotated, jōnin captains noted his composure, and slowly whispers grew—"Reliable, quiet, disciplined… maybe promotion material." It was not brilliance but consistency that earned recognition.
At seventeen, after countless missions without complaint, the Hokage's office finally summoned him.
The day was clear when he stood in the chamber, flanked by other hopefuls. Hiruzen Sarutobi, his lined face softened by a grandfatherly smile, announced their promotions. Kirito bowed deeply as the new chūnin vest was handed to him. His expression remained neutral, but deep within, a corner of his heart twisted in amusement.
Chūnin, at last. A mask made thicker, a leash made longer.
He returned to his modest apartment, hung the vest carefully by the wall, and never wore it outside of duty.
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The Hunter's Shadow
Promotion was not the end—it was the perfect beginning. With the village's trust, Kirito now had greater freedom. Chūnin were permitted to take missions solo, a privilege he exploited fully. Officially, he signed up for C-rank assignments—tracking lost livestock, patrolling borders, courier runs. In reality, those tasks were often delegated to clones.
While they carried out errands, the true Kirito slipped beyond Konoha's borders, cloaked in concealment seals and layered transformation jutsu. Out there, in the forests and forgotten roads where shinobi preyed on the weak, the "Shadow Hunter" hunted his first kills.
At sixteen, he targeted only small game: rogue genin with pitiful bounties, deserters who thought the world had forgotten their names. They fell quickly, blades across throats or precise bursts of elemental jutsu. He tested his hand at sealing techniques too, using binding arrays to paralyze enemies long enough to silence them.
But his intent was never the bounty—it was experience. The world beyond Konoha's walls demanded adaptability. Genin-level prey offered him familiarity with unpredictability, the clumsy desperation of men who knew they were hunted.
By seventeen, with his chūnin vest tucked away in Konoha, his alter ego grew bold. Chūnin-level bounties became his prey. These were harder—they fought in coordinated patterns, wielded sharper instincts, and carried scrolls of jutsu they had stolen or perfected. Kirito relished the challenge.
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Fuinjutsu in the Hunt
With each hunt, he experimented more with seals. A careless hunter leaves trails, and Kirito could not afford suspicion. After his third bounty, he perfected a suppression seal inscribed upon his gloves: once activated, it absorbed and dissipated the bloodstains of his victims.
He crafted silencing tags, affixed discreetly to kunai, that deadened the sound of impact. He made false trail seals—arrays that released chakra signatures mimicking other villages' shinobi, misleading investigators.
Most critical was the disguise seal he embedded upon his skin itself, interwoven with the chakra core inside him. Unlike simple transformation jutsu, which faltered under scrutiny, this seal layered multiple identities upon him: different chakra colors, altered pulse rhythms, even false scars across his flesh.
Thus the Shadow Hunter was born—untraceable, unknowable. A phantom without face or clan.
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Whispers in the Underworld
It was during this period that whispers spread. At first, bounty station masters thought little of him: another masked opportunist with enough skill to dispatch strays. But the consistency of his work drew attention. Targets disappeared with unnerving precision, their corpses often left bound with sealing marks unfamiliar to any known village.
A grizzled broker in River Country spoke of him first: "He comes alone, takes no payment advance, always delivers the body. He doesn't talk, doesn't drink, doesn't linger."
Others began to add: "He's faceless, his chakra feels wrong—like compressed lightning."
And finally, a title slipped into the rumor mill: Shadow Hunter.
Kirito paid the whispers no mind, though in secret he nurtured them. Fear was a useful veil.
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Life in Two Worlds
Within Konoha, he continued to nurture his cover. As a chūnin, he took regular missions, trained alongside peers, and offered nothing remarkable. He even made a point to fail at certain tasks—dropping a kunai in sparring, miscalculating a throw—to appear convincingly mediocre.
But every night he returned to his hidden lab in the Forest of Death, his clones already recording results of sealing experiments or dissecting cadavers. Sharingan eyes floated in jars, preserved with runes of stasis. Fuinjutsu scrolls littered the tables, filled with sketches of barrier arrays, chakra-binding circles, and theories to stabilize his growing core.
And when the pull of the hunt grew strong, when the mask of mediocrity weighed heavy, he left the village once more to kill.
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A Dual Path
Two years stretched on, each day weaving the threads tighter. By eighteen, Kirito was a chūnin of Konoha—dependable, unremarkable, a shinobi whose name rarely left the mission reports.
But beyond the borders, he was the Shadow Hunter, his blade feared in hushed tones, his seal-marked corpses warnings to other outlaws. His hunts escalated to jōnin targets—missing-nin who wielded elemental jutsu with deadly efficiency. Each fight pushed him further, testing the boundaries of his elemental mastery, refining his taijutsu with every exchanged blow.
Yet he always left a margin—never revealing his full hand. The Shadow Hunter was deadly, yes, but not invincible. Kirito designed the legend carefully, so that if ever the two lives intersected, suspicion would never fall upon the quiet chūnin of Konoha.
Still, he knew this balance would not last forever. The deeper he delved into bounty hunting, the more dangerous prey awaited. And soon, one such prey would test him to his very limits.
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