The climb back from the sunken temple was more grueling than the descent. The weight of the Sea Dragon Katana at Renju's hip felt natural, but the Summoning Scroll strapped to his back was a different story. It was heavy, not just with physical mass, but with the spiritual density of the entity dormant within.
As Renju breached the surface of the lake, he didn't feel the usual exhaustion of a deep dive. Instead, his chakra felt "cleaner," as if the ancient air within the temple had purged the lingering toxins of the Second Gate. He stood on the basalt shore, the midnight-blue hilt of the new blade catching the morning light. He reached for the wax seal on the scroll, his fingers tracing the serpent emblem.
The moment his chakra touched the seal, a jolt of ice-cold energy surged through his arm, throwing him back several feet.
The scroll didn't open. Instead, a series of glowing blue kanji appeared momentarily on the leather casing: [NOT YET].
"A worthiness seal," Renju realized, rubbing his numbing hand. "It recognizes my affinity, but not my authority. I'm carrying a god in a tube, and I don't even have the key."
He tightened the straps of the scroll and began the long trek back to the coast. He needed to find Renza. He needed to tell Kaito what he had found. But as he crested the final ridge overlooking the fishing shack, his "Abyss" sensing didn't find the rhythmic breathing of a sleeping partner or the steady movements of an old man.
It found the sharp, jagged spikes of Hidden Mist chakra.
Down on the beach, the peaceful silence of the shack had been shattered. Three Mist shinobi, dressed in the grey-and-white flak jackets of the Suikatsutai (Water-Scout Division), had the shack surrounded.
One of them, a man with shark-like teeth and a heavy spiked club, was holding Umi by the collar of her tunic. Kaito was on his knees in the sand, a kunai pressed to his throat by a second operative.
"I'll ask one last time, old man," the leader of the Mist squad growled. He was a tall, lean jonin with a scar running through his left eye. "We tracked a massive chakra signature to this cove—the signature of a 'Calamity.' Where is the white-haired boy's partner?"
"I'm just a fisherman," Kaito rasped, his voice steady despite the blade at his neck. "I don't know anything about calamities."
Inside the shack, Renju could sense Renza stirring. His partner was awake, but he was still too weak to engage three fresh Mist jonin without the Gates—and using the Gates now would be a suicide mission.
Renju didn't shout. He didn't charge. He focused on his Water Breathing, drawing in the humid sea air until his lungs felt like they were made of iron.
"Water Breathing, Eighth Form: Flowing Shadow Shunshin."
He didn't vibrate the air like the Konoha variation. He turned his own body into a blur of liquid motion, sliding down the cliffside with the silence of a receding tide.
Renju materialized on the sand ten paces behind the leader. The Mist shinobi spun around, his eyes widening as he saw the boy he had been hunting. But his gaze quickly shifted from Renju's face to the weapon at his hip.
"That hilt..." the Mist leader whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of greed and terror. "That's the crest of the Abyssal Sanctum. Where did a Leaf brat find a relic of the First Mizukage's era?"
"It doesn't belong to the Mist anymore," Renju said, his voice dropping into a register that made the water at his feet begin to vibrate. "And it certainly doesn't belong to you."
The Mist leader laughed, though it sounded forced. "Kill the girl. Secure the sword!"
The operative holding Umi raised his spiked club.
Renju's hand blurred. He didn't use a jutsu. He simply drew the Sea Dragon Katana.
The sound was not a metallic ring; it was the roar of a breaking wave. The blue-tinted steel caught the sunlight, and for a split second, the image of a serpentine dragon flickered in the mist behind Renju.
"Water Breathing, First Form: Water Surface Slice... ABYSSAL REACH!"
With his old chokutō, the range of the strike was limited to the length of the steel. But as Renju swung the new blade, the water in the air itself seemed to extend the edge. A crescent of high-pressure liquid, as thin as a hair and as hard as diamond, whistled through the air.
The operative holding Umi didn't even have time to scream. The spiked club was severed in half, followed a millisecond later by the man's armor. He was thrown back twenty feet, the pressure of the strike having knocked the breath from his lungs and the will to fight from his body.
The other two Mist ninjas hesitated. They were specialists in Water Style, but they had never felt chakra this "heavy." It felt as if Renju was standing in the center of a deep-sea trench, and they were being dragged into his orbit.
"Don't just stand there!" the leader roared. "Water Style: Black Rain!"
He launched a volley of hardened water needles.
Renju didn't dodge. He sheathed the blade halfway and then slammed it back into the Silver-Serpent Scabbard.
"Water Breathing, Seventh Form: Grasp of the Abyss!"
With the new katana acting as a conductor, the range of his A-Rank jutsu tripled. The air for fifty yards around Renju turned into a literal "Dead Zone." The water needles didn't just slow down—they fell to the sand like lead weights. The two remaining Mist ninjas collapsed to their knees, their faces turning purple as the atmospheric pressure around them spiked to unbearable levels.
"This... this isn't the power of a Genin," the leader gasped, his nose beginning to bleed. "You're a monster."
"No," Renju said, walking calmly through the pressurized zone. He stopped in front of the leader and rested the tip of the Sea Dragon blade against the man's forehead. "I'm just a boy who learned how to breathe."
He didn't kill them. He didn't need to. He tapped the hilt of the sword, and a pulse of tranquilizing chakra—a property of the "Ocean Steel"—surged into the Mist leader, knocking him unconscious instantly.
The pressure lifted. Umi ran to Kaito, while Renza limped out of the shack, leaning heavily against the doorframe. Renza looked at the fallen Mist ninjas, then at the massive scroll on Renju's back, and finally at the shimmering blue blade in Renju's hand.
"I leave you alone for four hours," Renza said, a weak but genuine grin on his face. "And you go and find a legendary sword and a scroll that smells like a prehistoric swamp."
"It's a long story," Renju said, sheathing the blade with a crisp click.
Kaito stood up, brushing the sand from his kimono. He looked at the scroll on Renju's back and then at the boy. "You found the Sanctum. I didn't think anyone had the lungs for it anymore."
"I can't open the scroll yet," Renju admitted. "The seal rejected me."
"Of course it did," Kaito said. "That scroll doesn't hold a beast, boy. It holds a contract with the sea itself. You'll be able to open it when you stop fighting for the Leaf, and start fighting for the world that the Leaf lives in."
Renju looked at his hands, still vibrating from the power of the blade. "The Mist will send more. Now that they know the Sea Dragon has been found, they'll turn this whole coast into a graveyard to get it back."
"Then we leave," Renza said, his voice gaining strength. "We're Special Jonin. We're Calamities. And it's time we went back to the war to tell them that the ghosts of the Oryu Crossing have come back to haunt them."
Renju nodded. He looked at the ocean one last time, feeling the "Abyss" within him finally settling into a cold, focused calm. He had the sword. He had the scroll. And though the path to being "worthy" was long, he finally knew which direction he was heading.
"Let's go, Gale," Renju said. "The Land of Fire is waiting."