Cold. Swaying.
When Kosuke opened his eyes, he found himself hanging from the ceiling.
He didn't thrash. In the space of a few breaths, he stilled his pulse and scanned the room.
A basement cell lined with instruments of torture; the wet, rusty red clinging to them said they'd seen use recently.
"No one nearby. Safe—for the moment." Once he'd filed that away, Kosuke worked on the restraints.
He wore heavy cuffs on wrists and ankles and was trussed to a ceiling hook, but there wasn't a flicker of panic on his face. A proper shinobi learns more than ninjutsu, genjutsu, and taijutsu. There are basics you never forget—like escape artistry.
"…Honestly. An old man like me, sent to bully rookies?" He rubbed his temple, remembering the Third's instruction. " 'Let the outsiders see how strong Konoha's genin are,' he says. As if they're idiots who'd believe that."
"Perennial genin" never meant "useless." Kosuke could have tested for jonin ages ago. What kept him in a flak vest with a single stripe was… psychological, not skill.
Click.
He slipped the shackles with almost insulting ease—without so much as a whisper of metal.
Light as a cat, he dropped, rolled his wrists, and frowned. "What happened? How did I end up here?"
He dragged at memory. A mist lay over everything after the exam… someone had tampered with his recollection.
"Memory interference." His eyes cooled. "Find allies first. Then figure the rest out."
He padded to the door, rose on his toes, and listened. Then he slid a fine wire from his pouch and teased the lock.
K-chk.
Even held to the barest murmur, the sound carried in the hush. Kosuke didn't open the door. He crouched, slid his hand under the gap, and felt, patient as water.
A hair-fine thread brushed his fingertips.
"As expected—tripline." He pinched it. "The corridor's alarmed."
A rookie would've blundered straight into it.
Kosuke eased the trigger loose, slipped out, and melted into the first blind corner he could find. New layout: a honeycomb of rooms, each connected by multiple passages. Smears of dried brown-black tracked across the floor. Enough chunks of meat to say the quiet part aloud: many had died here.
He mapped corridors and choke points with his eyes, brows knitting tighter. A spider's nest—too many ways to get lost, too many places to die.
"Aaaah—!"
A scream ripped down the north hall.
A man in a green jumpsuit came barreling around the bend at absurd speed.
"Duy?"
Kosuke blinked—of all places to run into Might Duy.
"Run—run—run!"
Duy's shout snapped as he sprinted past. A heartbeat later Kosuke saw why.
Something thundered out of the tunnel behind him: a giant in a filthy leather apron, a rust-notched butcher's cleaver dragging sparks from the stone, a blood-red mask for a face. He was broad enough his shoulders brushed the ceiling.
Whoom—
The cleaver scythed sideways. If that landed, Duy would be halved at the waist.
"So that's our culprit." Kosuke's gaze sharpened. Judgement, action—no gap.
He flicked a shuriken and blurred through seals. "Duck! — Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique!"
The single star split into a storm. Steel howled like a machine gun, hammering the giant backward. Duy, warned, slid under the sheet of steel and the cleaver's sweep both.
Thud-thud-thud—
Each hit landed like a small cannon. Flesh burst in a dozen places. The masked brute staggered.
"One down," Kosuke said, confidence cool in his eyes. The Third Hokage had taught him this technique himself.
"Don't just stand there—run!" Duy was already hauling him by the sleeve.
"Wait, I already—" Kosuke turned—and froze.
The Butcher was getting up.
As if nothing had happened.
He lifted the cleaver and came on.
"That's impossible." Kosuke's pupils pinched.
"Forget 'impossible'!" Duy snapped, near tears. "You can't kill him. I tried a dozen ways. I twisted his head off once—he just grew another! Don't waste your breath—move!"
"…?"
Kosuke's face went full-black-question-mark. Twist the head off and it regrew? What is this thing?
He wanted to test it himself—but the dead weight of that cleaver coming closer talked him out of the idea. He ran with Duy.
One small blessing: the monster wasn't especially fast, and the maze was on the shinobi's side. They shook him for now.
"Finally…" Duy clutched his chest, still rattled. "If I hadn't sprinted, I'd be like that Iwa-nin—mince on the floor."
"Iwa?" Kosuke's tone dropped. "Duy, who else got pulled in?"
"Dunno exactly." Duy scratched his head. "I met two Iwa-nin. Killed one. The other ran."
"So we're not alone," Kosuke summed. "There are more prisoners."
"Uh… and then?"
"We find them." He drew rough lines in dust with a finger. "Map as we move. Link up. Then we—break out."
"Looks like he's found the thread," said Yamanaka Inoichi, eyes opening behind a wired headset, hands in a seal. "At this rate, he'll clear the exam soon."
"Not surprising." Uchiha Sogetsu smiled. "Kosuke's only a genin on paper. Experience like his won't be boxed in by this."
Inoichi glanced at him. "I do wonder, though—why add an unkillable enemy? Raising difficulty is one thing, but… isn't that too much?"
"Mr. Inoichi—do you know the three pillars of horror?" Sogetsu asked instead.
Inoichi shook his head.
"One: the monster doesn't converse like a person. Two: the monster's origin is unknown. Three: if the monster isn't unkillable, it isn't horror."
Sogetsu's lenses flashed. He smiled, warm as a hearth. "Survive, evade, resist, escape. That, to me, is what a competent chunin must train for. Our rubric matches it."
"Survive, evade, resist, escape…" Inoichi mouthed the words; light sparked in his eyes. "You're right. That's exactly what matters."
A shinobi lives in crisis—twenty-four hours a day. Sogetsu's four verbs drew the map cleanly: the baseline qualities you had to own.
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