"Want my eyes?"
"Then pay with your life."
Eiya's voice dropped low as blinding lightning burst across his skin.
Boom.
An instant later, his figure vanished.
The scarred jōnin's pupils shrank. His short blade snapped up on instinct across his chest.
Clang.
Sparks spat from steel on steel, the screech of metal ringing through the forest.
Eiya's lips tilted. Three black tomoe turned slowly.
"Too slow."
A wet slice.
His kunai slipped the guard; a gash to the bone opened along the scarred man's forearm.
Blood sprayed. With a grunt, the man leapt back.
"Damn it—this brat really has the Lightning Release chakra mode!"
At that instant the other three from Kumogakure reacted in unison, converging from every direction.
Eiya gave a cold snort and blurred again in a crackle of light.
Shff.
The Cloud-nin on the left locked up—his throat opened in a single stroke, blood fountaining.
"The first."
Eiya stated it flatly, then flashed toward the second on the right.
Whizz, whizz, whizz.
Three shuriken screamed in—yet under the three-tomoe Sharingan they might as well have been in slow motion.
Eiya brushed them aside with casual taps, sparks flaring, then flicked his wrist—
Thunk.
His kunai drilled cleanly through the man's heart.
"The second."
He turned slowly.
The third Cloud-nin still held a half-formed seal.
Staring at his two comrades crumpling soft to the ground, his hands shook uncontrollably.
Scarlet eyes filled his world.
"Genjutsu? Too weak."
"What—" the Cloud-nin gasped.
Before he could move, the light went out of him and he crumpled bonelessly.
"H-how is this possible…"
A hundred meters away atop a trunk, the scarred jōnin went chalk white.
The fight had barely lasted two seconds.
A sure-thing hunt had flipped a full one-eighty.
He could only watch as his men were butchered in an eye-blink.
Eiya turned, lightning wreathing his frame, three tomoe revolving with a near-joyful cruelty.
"Now it's just you."
…
Ten minutes later.
Screams tore through the woods.
The scarred man was pinned to a thick trunk, limbs spiked through with kunai, blood crawling down the bark.
"He read… all my moves?" Each word coughed up a bubble of red. "As expected… of the Sharingan."
Eiya wasn't much better off.
His chakra was nearly spent; his breathing had gone rough.
He stooped for a fallen short blade and paced up, its tip coming to rest at the man's throat.
"Tell me everything you know."
The scarred man's mouth crooked in scorn.
"Torture me? Save your effort."
"Don't waste time—just kill—"
Eiya said nothing. He lifted a kunai and rammed it into the man's scapula.
A grunt burst out; his body bowed taut, cords standing in his neck.
Soon he threw his head back in a wolfish grin.
"That it? We needed five minutes to shatter that poor woman's mind."
"You're green, brat."
Eiya's face didn't change. The edge traced a slow line across the man's chest.
"I'm no expert at interrogation. We can take our time."
"Too bad," the scarred man sneered. "You don't have any."
"Besides the four of us, two more squads are in on this op."
"When they get here, you're dead."
"Or are you pinning your hopes on that deserter?"
"Counting on him to fetch a border patrol to save you?"
Eiya listened in silence, then turned without a word to the unconscious Cloud-nin.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique."
A rush of heat erupted, swallowing the man whole.
He jerked awake in the blaze, thrashing and clawing across the ground.
A heartbeat later, his hands were nailed to the earth with kunai.
His ragged screams filled the forest.
Eiya shut them out and watched the scarred man's expression slide from disdain to a twisted, furious contortion.
The smell of scorching flesh thickened in the air.
The Cloud-nin turned firebrand twitched, then stilled, collapsing to charcoal.
[Ding! Indulgence successful.]
[Detected: interrogation by unconventional means, acted on impulse and vendetta at will. Indulgence level: C.]
[Issuing reward…]
[Obtained: chakra capacity +10%.]
[Obtained: D-rank Genjutsu: Hell Viewing Technique.]
As the genjutsu's knowledge poured into his mind, Eiya narrowed his eyes.
It wasn't high-level, but in the right hands it could be devastating.
Cast it, and the target sees the thing they fear most.
The greater the fear, the stronger the shock.
Kakashi and Orochimaru had both used this technique.
Feeling the fresh power stir, Eiya stepped up, set his left hand on the scarred man's head, the three tomoe whipping around, and drew the short blade with his right, shaving flesh a sliver at a time.
Between fleshly torment and genjutsu, the man broke in ten minutes.
He spilled everything.
Mission details, infiltration routes, Cloud secrets—
And where Yukino was held.
Eiya wiped the bloody kunai and slipped the storage scroll into his pouch.
He looked over the wrecked clearing, at the four fallen Cloud-nin, and for a moment felt oddly blank.
A wind stirred. Leaves hissed.
It carried away the stench of the field—
And seemed to lift the unease that had clung to him for half a year.
For the future, he felt the faintest spark of anticipation.
…
Two kilometers away, a cave.
Eiya rolled the boulder aside. The damp dark reeked faintly of blood.
Yukino hung from chains on the rock wall.
Her flak vest was gone, inner shirt torn to shreds, pale skin marred by bruises and cuts.
At the scrape of his steps, she curled in on herself and stared, instinctively terrified.
The bright black eyes she'd once had were vacant now.
Drool traced her lip. A hoarse, senseless rasp leaked out.
A slight, hidden sadness flickered in Eiya's eyes.
After a breath of silence, his gaze cooled. He raised the kunai.
Yukino seemed to understand. Tears slid silent lines down her cheeks.
As a cold gleam passed, a soft smile touched her mouth.
"Thank you, Eiya-kun."
[Ding! Indulgence successful.]
[Teammate broken and dying; host rightly delivers release through death. Indulgence level: A.]
[Issuing reward…]
[Obtained: chakra capacity +30%.]
[Obtained: Fire Release: Majestic Destroyer Flame (B-rank).]
"Majestic Destroyer Flame. Not bad."
He weighed the reward calmly.
From the interrogation he'd learned that two more Cloud squads operated along the Land of Fire border.
Once they realized contact had been cut, they'd be wary—and track the trail back.
He was alone, and after a pitched fight his stamina and chakra were nearly gone.
Even with the system's boosts, at best he could handle a single jōnin.
Harsh as it was, reality was plain—
For Yukino, living was suffering. Death was the only release.
"The ninja world really is a place where the weak are meat for the strong. Next life—don't be a shinobi."
Fire roared in the cave.
At the mouth, Eiya stood watching toward Konoha, a hard light in his eyes.
Right then, a mad idea spread through his mind.