A ninja wearing an Iwagakure headband and standard Jonin flak jacket carefully surveyed his surroundings. Detecting nothing out of the ordinary, he signaled a coded whistle.
In response, three other Iwa-nin emerged from their hiding spots. They rallied around the scout, shifting into a diamond formation before breaking into a steady run through the forest.
As the four ninjas leaped through the canopy, the tree trunk directly beneath the feet of the trailing member suddenly erupted. In the blink of an eye, the three lead ninjas vanished, diving into cover.
As the roar of the explosion faded, a plume of white smoke drifted upward. The blasted ninja tumbled to the forest floor. Simultaneously, the trees seemed to "awaken" as a dense, buzzing cloud of insects took to the sky.
A few seconds later, the smoke cleared. The insects began to settle, crawling back onto branches and leaves with a methodical, eerie stillness.
The wounded Iwa-nin on the ground trembled violently. His low moans soon sharpened into high-pitched, agonizing screams—a sound completely unbefitting a professional shinobi.
The Iwa captain felt his heart sink. He had heard of this before.
Ambush... explosions... white smoke... and unendurable screaming. Where have I seen this intel? What was the key takeaway?
At that moment, a palm-sized beetle landed on the trunk directly in front of the captain's face. It folded its wings and twitched its antennae. Then, with a sudden, incredible burst of speed, it lunged.
The beetle moved so fast it was effectively a projectile. It slammed into the captain's nose with the force of a heavy punch. Blood sprayed as his eyes bulged; his head snapped back ninety degrees, nearly snapping his neck.
"Insects!!" the captain roared as he regained his balance, finally connecting the dots. "It's the insects!" He stumbled backward, unable to control his momentum.
"Captain!"
Seeing their leader struck down, the two younger Iwa-nin panicked. One drew a kunai, while the other's hands blurred through a sequence of seals.
Earth Style: Fissure Strike!
The ninja slammed his palms into the dirt. The ground buckled and groaned, and the surrounding trees began to tilt precariously.
In a situation where the enemy's exact location is unknown, using a large-scale displacement technique to flush them out is a textbook tactical choice. However, tactics are about victory, not logic; textbook knowledge is only useful if it accounts for who the enemy is.
"Idiots! Get back!"
The Iwa captain rolled to his feet and dropped into a low crouch, one hand clutching his bleeding nose, the other drawing a tanto. He knew exactly who was ambushing them now.
High above, the bark of the tilted trees suddenly "popped" open, revealing hundreds of hidden hollows.
Thump-thump-crack-shush!
Three distinct sounds echoed through the clearing as Flight-Locusts, Tiger-Striped Wasps, and Blood-Spirit Mites erupted from the hollows.
There were at least four hundred holes surrounding the trio. In under two seconds, each hole spat out five or six insects. Two thousand summoned bugs took flight, banking in lethal arcs as they zeroed in on their targets.
The swarm was too dense to dodge, and the insects possessed an uncanny ability to self-correct their flight paths. The captain knew they were trapped.
Among the three types, the slow-moving Blood-Spirit Mites were the most terrifying. A single hit meant the end of the fight; their venom was designed to liquefy muscle tissue. It wasn't meant to kill—the toxin didn't even enter the bloodstream—but it dissolved cell walls upon contact. No antidote could stop it. The only "cure" was to carve out the rotting flesh with a knife.
The captain performed a Body Flicker, kicking his two subordinates toward the first wounded team member before flickering there himself. His hands were a blur.
Earth Style: Earth Dome Prison!
The soil heaved upward from both sides, snapping shut to form a reinforced, airtight dome that encased the four Iwa-nin.
Outside, two thousand insects slammed into the rock shell. The sound of the impact was like a hailstorm on a tin roof, a relentless drumming that lasted for ten agonizing seconds. The captain pressed his palms against the interior wall, funneling chakra to maintain the structure's integrity.
When the drumming finally stopped, the three young ninjas let out a breath of relief. The captain, however, only grew more tense.
"Quick! You two, help me!"
Obedience, cooperation, and resilience were the hallmarks of the Hidden Stone. The two uninjured ninjas immediately stood back-to-back with their captain, pressing their hands against the dome and flooding it with chakra.
Seconds later, the sound of scratching began. It grew from a faint rustle to a deafening vibration.
The ninjas could feel it—thousands of mandibles were gnawing at the exterior of the dome. The thick stone walls were thinning at a visible rate.
The Iwa-nin pushed back, pouring everything they had into regenerating the stone. It became a war of attrition. They held the line until the first wounded ninja recovered enough to add his chakra to the pool. Sensing that the rate of regeneration had finally outpaced their hunger, the swarm suddenly withdrew like a receding tide.
"You can stop. Prepare yourselves," the captain whispered. "I'm releasing the jutsu."
After one final sweep of his senses, the captain dropped the dome.
The four Iwa-nin stood exposed, arranged in a defensive pinwheel formation, hands hovering over their weapons. The forest was eerily silent.
It was too quiet, and the clearing was far too crowded. On the ground and the fallen trunks, thousands of Poison-Needle Beetles were arranged in perfect, symmetrical rows. The sheer order of the swarm was a display of absolute power.
The beetles' metallic-black wing covers began to click open—a wave of chitinous movement that flowed from left to right across the clearing. The extreme precision possessed a terrifying, industrial beauty.
Humanity has a natural fascination with order, and for a split second, the four ninjas found their eyes tracking the shifting patterns of the insect formation. In that moment of distraction, four centipedes successfully reached their feet.
When the captain had dropped the dome, he hadn't noticed the Camouflage Butterflies clinging to the exterior. These insects possessed six legs and four specialized appendages used to grip leaves, twigs, and dirt. As the dome collapsed, they had fallen with the rubble, creating a layer of "natural" debris across the floor.
They had used the debris to shield themselves and each other, constructing a network of hidden tunnels through which the centipedes had moved.
The centipedes lunged. Within a heartbeat, three Iwa-nin were restrained. Only the captain reacted in time, drawing his tanto and shearing his centipede in two.
He performed a Body Replacement, leaping out of the swarm's enclosure before weaving a new set of seals.
Earth Style: Rising Stone Pillar!
A massive pillar of rock erupted from the earth, hoisting the captain high above the swarm. He gasped for air, his chakra reserves nearly dry.
Below, his three subordinates lay on the ground, teeth clenched in agony as their muscles began to spasm uncontrollably.
The captain noticed the centipedes had coiled around his subordinates' limbs, digging their mandibles deep into the skin.
"Punishment Bugs... is the Swarm Demon telling me he doesn't want to kill us?"
He knew these creatures. The "Punishment Bugs" of the Swarm Demon injected a toxin that caused violent muscle cramps and excruciating pain.
As the captain hesitated, he noticed movement in the canopy. Thirty massive, iridescent moths took flight, hovering in the upwind position.
With thirty Poison Moths in play, the battle was over. The scale of the toxic dust they could release was too vast. The dust wasn't lethal, but it would incapacitate them instantly. Even he could only survive by abandoning his men and fleeing immediately.
The captain was confident he could escape, but his team would be dead. And one of these boys could not die here; the political fallout for the captain would be worse than death itself.
"Dammit."
Reluctantly, the captain reached into his pouch and produced a scroll, holding it high above his head.
From behind the moths, a massive Dragonfly emerged. It glided down silently, snatched the scroll from his hand, and banked away.
The moths settled back into the trees and vanished. The three centipedes released their captives. The tide of beetles and ants withdrew into the shadows, and within seconds, the thousands of insects had vanished from sight.
All that remained were a few scattered insect carcasses.
Minutes later, the Iwa team trudged out of the forest, their expressions a mix of shame for their failure and relief for their survival.
The captain was equally conflicted. To run into the Swarm Demon was the height of bad luck, but to encounter him while he was on a non-lethal mission was a miracle.
Against any other Leaf ninja of comparable power, his team would likely be a collection of corpses by now, and his clan would be preparing for a funeral.
Once they cleared the treeline, the team relaxed slightly. The three young prodigies looked utterly dejected.
"Captain Kurumajinin, you should have left us. You should have broken through with the intel."
"He's right, Captain. It's our fault for being too weak."
"I'm sorry... we ruined the mission."
Kurumajinin listened to their apologies and shook his head. "It wouldn't have mattered. Once the Swarm Demon sets an ambush, even I have almost zero chance of breaking out."
The three young ninjas fell silent. The shadow of the ambush loomed large over them. They had been suppressed from start to finish; even their elite Jonin captain had been helpless.
The battle—from the first explosion to the surrender—had lasted exactly two minutes. Most of that time had been spent hiding inside a stone dome.
These three were considered geniuses in Iwagakure. They had been assigned to a specialized squad under the village's youngest Jonin right after graduation. They had a string of high-level successes and were on track for a field promotion to Chunin within two months. They were arrogant, and they had every right to be.
Until five minutes ago.
"Mahiru, Kakko, Taishi... don't lose heart," Kurumajinin said firmly. "This was the 'Maiming Swarm Demon' of the Leaf. Do you have any idea how many ninjas from Iwa, Suna, and Ame have died in his swarms? The number of men who have been forced to retire after he tore their limbs off is uncountable. We are lucky to walk away in one piece."
Taishi looked up. "I've heard the name, but I didn't think he was this strong. Captain, what else do we know about him?"
Kurumajinin gritted his teeth. "I know enough. After all, Captain Ikeda died by his hand."
"The Swarm Demon became famous about two years ago, primarily in the Rain Country theater. He fights using massive numbers of summoned insects. Wherever he goes, a 'Sea of Swarms' follows."
"He never fights without a horizon-spanning cloud of bugs. Some say his reach extends over ten kilometers. It's... it's beyond logic."
"His style is pathologically cautious. He will let an enemy escape rather than reveal his true location. To this day, no one from the Stone, Sand, or Rain has actually seen his face. We don't even know if he's one man or a specialized tactical unit. For one person to command that many insects across that much territory... it's just too much."
"The only certainty is that he is an Aburame, as small numbers of Kikaichu have been spotted in his swarms. Beyond that, we only have data on the thirty-nine distinct species of insects he's deployed."
"And even that intel is unreliable, because he's constantly cycling in new breeds."
"For the past year, he's rarely killed. He seems to go out of his way to main his targets. Out of his thirty-nine known species, twenty-four are venomous, yet almost none of them use lethal toxins. They use paralytic or necrotic biological agents designed to disable and disfigure."
"Those centipedes that were on your arms? Those are his 'Punishment Bugs.' If we had kept fighting, they would have self-detonated. The blast is calibrated perfectly to sever a human limb. The fluids they release afterward are corrosive; they eat through the wound, making it impossible for medical ninjas to reattach the limb."
"I don't know the status of the Sand or Rain, but this year alone, four Iwa Jonin have been forced into retirement because of lost limbs. At least thirty Chunin and two hundred Genin have suffered the same fate."
"That many..." The three young ninjas were stunned.
In truth, the Swarm Demon's record against Iwa was actually quite tame compared to history.
Looking back, there was Uchiha Madara, who once trampled Iwagakure single-handedly, forcing the First Tsuchikage to bow his head.
In the present, there was the Third Raikage, who was currently pinning down an army of ten thousand Iwa-nin for three days and nights.
And in the future, there would be a certain blonde-haired brat currently in the Leaf Academy who would one-shot fifty Iwa ninjas in a single second. In that future battle, he would kill a tenth of Iwa's total Jonin force, single-handedly breaking the village's line of succession and leaving Onoki with no heir.
"With a record like that, why hasn't the Tsuchikage ordered an assassination?" Mahiru asked.
"He has. More than once."
"The Land of Rain is only six or seven hundred kilometers wide. The Swarm Demon can control one percent of the entire theater by himself. No one can accept that."
"Our most recent attempt was led by Jonin Ikeda. He was my captain when I was a Genin—a seasoned veteran."
"They used a supply depot as bait. Captain Ikeda, three other Jonin, two Ame Jonin, and eighteen elite Chunin set the trap."
"The ambush turned into a slaughter. Out of the six Jonin, one died and five were crippled. Every single Chunin was maimed. All they had to show for it were sixty thousand insect carcasses. They never even saw the caster."
"Captain Ikeda was the only one who died. Perhaps he was simply too strong; he caught the Demon's tail, and he paid for it with his life."
"In short: he is a monster. You are not ready to face him."
"But don't give up. You are geniuses. Soon, you will surpass me. One day, you will find the strength to kill the Demon. The debt of Captain Ikeda and all those crippled seniors falls to you now."
"We understand, Captain."
"Then let's move. We need to get this intel back."
"Yes, sir!"
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