(June, year 54 AK)
"Daisuke..." The first ninja mumbled in shock as he looked at the chunks of charred flesh that was thrown everywhere, then the look in his eyes gradually turned from the shocked to the enraged one, as he said with hatred, "Whoever did that, you'll pay for this!"
"In the end Daisuke said that he wasn't able to move, what kind of trap was that?" The other ninja said as he calmed down from what happened and started to think rationally, he looked at the first ninja, and seeing that he was still in a state of intense anger, said, "Shigeru, snap out of it and think!"
"Sigh, I know, Takuma, I know..." Shigeru said as he tried to calm down, "It was probably some sort of a Fuinjutsu trap..."
"The Sealing Arts huh..." Takuma said, "Wait a minute, do you remember that strange bird sound before the explosion?"
"The sound!" Shigeru snapped and looked exactly in the direction where Yuta was previously hiding in the tree branches, "It came from somewhere over there!"
The two ninjas looked in the direction where Yuta was previously hiding. Yuta already quietly changed his location since he was expecting those ninjas to check out where that bird's sound came from, although he wasn't able to move too far away from there.
'I probably should train to mimic bird's sounds, that sound that I made previously to cast a genjutsu through it, it was quite off, how didn't I think about that before...' Yuta thought as he was struggling to come up with a new strategy for the fight, his chakra was almost depleted, his body felt heavy and exhausted, his mind still retains clarity thanks to the still active Calm State, but his mind wasn't working as fast as before. The exhaustion started to catch up with Yuta, and his two enemies were fresh, and their chakra reserves were full. Worse than that, Yuta felt that their chakra reserves were somewhere around 2C. That means that putting them under genjutsu would be even harder than with his previous opponents.
'Sigh... My skillset isn't optimal to fight multiple opponents at once, especially when all of them are stronger than me, and without any backup at that...' Yuta mentally complained as he watched his enemies that were looking attentively in the direction where he previously was.
'An anime character in my place would've probably gritted his teeth right about now, resolve and willpower would've intensified in his eyes, and he would've been able to find some strength and get a second wind to continue fighting... Sadly, that wasn't the case for me here, I only have about a fifth of my chakra left and I don't have much fighting left in me.'
'Even if strong emotions and willpower is able to boost one's strength in this world, I don't have anything like that in me now, at least not with the Calm State active, but I can't deactivate it just yet either, with the extreme exhaustion I'm in right now, I won't be able to fight effectively without it. Especially not when I just killed four people in an extremely gruesome way, I just know it...'
"The enemy must be hiding over there." Shigeru said as he raised his guard and slowly walked forward in that direction.
"Is that the kid the others were supposed to fight?" Takuma asked as he followed Shigeru.
"No kid would be able to pull all of that off, I think it's the others from their group that had caught up with us." Shigeru said with resentment in his voice.
"Isn't it too early for that? It was only a couple of minutes since we ambushed this group, the others from their group were tricked to separate and shouldn't be here at least for another half an hour." Takuma replied.
"Doesn't matter, whoever it was, we are going to cut them down!" Shigeru said angerly, and the two of them quickly jumped and landed on the tree branch where Yuta previously was.
"No one here..." Takuma quietly commented, but as he was saying that, both of them heard a quiet sizzling under their feet, they looked down and immediately figured that they had triggered another trap, and this time the paper tags were placed under the branch that both of them are curently standing on.
Both of them are experienced ninjas in the rank of Chunin, so in that situation they both reacted fast and were preparing to jump away from the trap, as they heard another strange whistling bird sound.
As they heard that suspicious sound again from another place nearby, both of them remembered how they lost Daisuke, they briefly glanced at each other to check if either of them were paralyzed and nodded at each other, signaling that they are both fine, only then they jumped away from the trap and it exploded behind their backs.
Since they didn't react immediately, the blast caught them a bit, but only their clothes were a little burned and torn, but they didn't suffer any significant injury from it.
Both of them landed on the ground a few meters from each other, and Shigeru saw Yuta about ten meters in front of them. Yuta's hands were extended in their direction in a throw-motion, and a bunch of shurikens were already flying at Takuma.
Shigeru immediately started performing hand seals to attack the kid with a ninjutsu and be done with it, but then his heart sank as he noticed, that Takuma wasn't reacting to the shurikens flying at him, he didn't pulled a kunai and wasn't prepared to deflect the shurikens, it seems to Shigeru as if Takuma wasn't aware of the incoming attack at all, more so, Takuma seems wasn't even aware that the kid from the Konoha's squad is in front of them.
The first thought of Shigeru was that Takuma was caught up in the same paralyzing jutsu as Daisuke before, but then he saw how Takuma was looking around cautiously, there was no signs of him being restricted or paralyzed like Daisuke, so Shigeru realized that it was something else at play here.
Since Takuma clearly didn't intend to defend himself from the shurikens, Shigeru was forced to interrupt his jutsu and to jump in the way between Takuma and the incoming attack. Shigeru pulled out a kunai and landed in front of Takuma, he moved at the limits of his speed and reflexes and had managed to deflect two shurikens with his kunai, but there wasn't enough time and he was forced to block another two shurikens with his left hand, those two shurikens plunged into his forearm and palm, and some blood spurted out.
Shigeru hissed from the pain, but also, the pain helped him to clear up his mind from all the anger and hatred he felt up until now. Now Shigeru, an experienced Chunin, was finally able to think clearly.
As Shigeru glanced back at Takuma, he saw that Takuma was confused as if he didn't understand what's going on.
"It's a genjutsu! Try to break it, Takuma!" Shigeru shouted as he returned his attention to Yuta.
'Not good...' Yuta thought as he realized, that his attempt at killing another enemy had failed, and he doesn't have much chakra left to try again.
Yuta pulled out the only smoke bomb he had. He had bought it in the village just in case right after he received the payment for the completed C-rank mission, needless to say that it costed Yuta quite a large chunk of his money, those things are expensive for a Genin that has only started his career as a ninja. Yuta immediately thrown the smoke bomb on the ground between him and the enemy ninjas, and it puffed with a large cloud of smoke that immediately covered a large area around them.
Although Yuta really wanted to just run away and hide, he understood that it was not an option here, he has to deal with these two ninjas somehow. If he tried to run and hide, he knew that with his unprofessional skills at concealing his tracks he would be found quickly and his opponents were quite enraged by what he did.
It was still better to try his luck in a fight, especially now that one of his enemies are still under his Shadow Cloak genjutsu, and especially now that Yuta felt that it is highly unlikely that he could squeeze enough chakra for another cast of that jutsu. If he could do that, he could've had put both of his enemies under it and dealt with them already. Yuta recalled how he acted during the fight, trying to figure out if he could've acted differently to conserve more chakra, but no matter how he thought about it, he realized that he already did everything up until now very efficiently, there was no other ways in Yuta's mind how he could've saved up more chakra with those odds at hand.
Yuta, without wasting any moment, immediately after the smoke bomb went off, started running to Takuma, trying to circle around Shigeru in the smoke. There was just one another trump card left in Yuta's arsenal – it was his chakra senses. Since he was a sensory type, he could sense another person's chakra even through the smoke, and as Yuta ran, he was trying his best to move fast and without making a sound, he had memorized the ground and all of its irregularities, twigs, bumps and holes beforehand, he moved swiftly through the smoke.
Shigeru had sensed that something wasn't right. He pulled out a shuriken from his left palm and without paying any attention to the wound and blood, he started to form hand seals in preparation to cast some kind of a ninjutsu.
Takuma at the same time, after he heard what Shigeru said about genjutsu, formed a hand seal and tried to release a genjutsu he was under, but as he did that, at the next moment he immediately saw a kid with a kunai in his hands were already jumping at him from the cover of the smoke. Unfortunately for Takuma, it was already too late to react, he had dispelled the genjutsu only to see how a kunai is plunging right into his heart, Yuta's kunai had plunged deep into Takuma's chest.
Yuta, seeing that his attack was successful, immediately jumped back to gather some distance. He left his kunai inside his enemy since he didn't want to waste even a fraction of a second to pull it out. Yuta felt that he was at his limit.
As Yuta jumped back from Takuma, Takuma's hands had dropped down, the kunai had dropped from his weakened hand, he was just a fraction of a second late to deflect Yuta's attack with his own kunai, but it doesn't matter now. Takuma's eyes quickly dimmed and he dropped on the ground, dead.
The next moment, as Yuta was running away through the smoke that was quickly clearing out, trying to hide behind some trees to catch his breath and to think about his next move, he sensed some movement behind him, but it was already too late to react. The next instant Yuta felt something crushed into him from behind, it knocked the air out of his lungs and thrown him to the ground.
As Yuta flew to the ground, with his last strength he was able to adjust his body at the last second to land on his hands and feet and not on his head, and as he did that, he rolled along the ground a little and quickly stood up again and faced his last remaining enemy. The thing that hit him was some sort of a water ninjutsu, luckily for Yuta, it wasn't powerful enough to outright kill him, but Yuta felt a sharp pain in his back as he stood up.
'Just great...' Yuta thought tiredly as he tried to think of a way to deal with the last guy.
--- AN ---
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