"Shimizu, your injuries?"
"It's nothing serious. I avoided the vital points."
Shimizu didn't pay much attention to the several bloody holes in his body. After stopping the bleeding, he simply ignored them.
Pain of this level had become routine during his more than ten years as a ninja.
"Let's go find Yoshimaru and the others first."
When Shimizu and Minato arrived at the other battlefield, the fighting there had already ended.
At that moment, Satomi and Yoshimaru were guarding a Konoha ninja lying in a pool of blood—Nikaidō Naoko.
Naoko still had a faint smile on her face, but the stillness of her chest made it clear that her life had already come to an end.
Yoshimaru occasionally let out faint choking sounds, but anyone could see that he was desperately suppressing his emotions.
"Akimichi-senpai… sometimes crying doesn't mean weakness," Satomi said gently, patting Yoshimaru's shoulder. She glanced at Shimizu and Minato nearby and softly added, "There are no outsiders here… it's okay. Go ahead and cry. You'll feel better."
The next moment, the sobs he had been suppressing for so long burst out like a dam breaking.
"Waaahhh…!"
Large tears rolled down his cheeks.
The hot-blooded man of the Akimichi clan now cried loudly like a child.
"Yoshimaru, you…" Shimizu finally noticed that the Yoshimaru before him was actually a handsome young man—there was no trace of the bulky, fat figure he had before.
As expected, every fat person has hidden potential.
The Akimichi clan had been a powerful noble family in Konoha since the village's founding. Everyone outside knew that members of their clan loved to eat, and that each of them had extremely exaggerated, plump bodies.
But outsiders didn't know the real reason they ate so much.
They did it to gain greater power on the battlefield.
Shimizu had once heard that members of the Akimichi clan possessed a very special ability: they could convert fat into massive amounts of chakra and unleash extremely powerful taijutsu. In terms of sheer destructive power of physical techniques, their clan was considered the strongest among Konoha's families.
The technique was called "Butterfly Transformation."
This secret technique was the Akimichi clan's transformation mode—their strongest combat form.
When activated, it rapidly consumes the fat accumulated in their bodies and converts it into huge amounts of chakra. This chakra manifests behind them as wings, known as Chakra Wings.
After activation, the user's speed and strength increase several times over, and their body becomes slim and handsome—completely different from their usual overweight appearance.
All that body fat existed for one purpose:
to bloom at a critical moment in the future.
"Nikaidō-senpai was mortally wounded while saving Akimichi-senpai…" Satomi explained.
"Let's give Yoshimaru some time alone," Minato suggested.
The other two nodded in agreement.
Emotional wounds were something no words could truly heal.
All they could do was wait patiently—wait for this rising star of the Akimichi clan to regain his strength and stand up again, continuing his duty as a Konoha ninja.
After stepping aside, Minato quickly used the Summoning Technique again.
With a "poof," two messenger toads appeared. These two were smaller—one red and one blue.
"Little Minato, you really put Kiiro and Midori through hell."
"I'm really sorry… even I didn't realize the enemy had ambushed us nearby," Minato said awkwardly, scratching his head. "Are they alright?"
"Those two idiots… thick skin and tough flesh. They won't die. They're sleeping like logs right now," the red toad said casually. "Alright, what's the matter?"
"Ah, it's like this…"
Minato quickly explained the entire situation to the two toads and asked them to deliver the information back.
"Konoha will receive the message in time… but Rakuyō City probably won't. There isn't enough time."
By now the morning sun had risen. Konoha's main force heading to conquer the Southwest Canyon had certainly already departed.
"…I see. Then please send it as soon as possible," Minato said. There was nothing he could do about that.
Finally he added:
"Take more of the Rain Village ninja corpses back and examine them. See if you can find any clues. I suspect they were controlled by some kind of secret technique. Also… please bring Naoko's body back to Konoha."
"And one more thing…" Minato glanced at Shimizu.
"This sealed letter is for the Third Hokage and Jiraiya. Remember carefully—it must only be given to the Third Hokage and Jiraiya. Absolutely no one else."
Shimizu solemnly handed a simply written letter to the red toad.
"I got it, I got it. Stop nagging. A man should be decisive," the red toad muttered, casually stuffing the letter into its front pouch.
"..." Shimizu looked at Minato, who responded with a bitter smile.
"It's really important. This concerns the survival of Konoha!"
"…Alright, got it—this concerns the survival of Konoha. We're leaving now."
The two toads quickly grabbed several corpses. With two "poof" sounds, they disappeared on the spot.
Summoning techniques… Shimizu had no resources that could allow him to obtain powerful summoning beasts like that.
"Satomi, are you injured?" Shimizu suddenly asked. He had been so focused on Yoshimaru and the intelligence report that he had forgotten about their scout.
Satomi froze for a moment, then quickly replied, "No. I just ran out of chakra and feel a bit weak."
"As long as you're okay."
Shimizu then went to retrieve the Lightning Release chakra-infused kunai and shuriken he had thrown earlier.
In Satomi's current condition, she couldn't help much, so he had to do it himself.
Seeing this, Minato immediately helped Shimizu search for those extremely expensive ninja tools.
"These things work pretty well."
"You get what you pay for."
"Find them all?"
"Yeah, they didn't scatter far."
Suddenly Yoshimaru walked up to them. He had already wiped away his tears.
"Minato, Shimizu… let's go."
"Alright. Let's head toward the main force that left Rakuyō City. They should be on their way here already. I'm afraid relying on Ao alone won't be fast enough."
Ao referred to the blue toad that had been sent to deliver the message to Rakuyō City.
"Let's replenish our chakra first."
With that, Shimizu took a soldier pill (ration pill).
Minato swallowed one as well.
Satomi frowned slightly, but also took one.
Shimizu then asked, "Minato, do you really think those were Rain Village ninjas?"
"They have to be. There were so many Rain Village forehead protectors, and they're all dead now. If it were a transformation technique, the effect would've already disappeared…"
"They looked kind of dull to me," Yoshimaru said. "More like they were under some kind of secret technique."
Minato had the same suspicion.
"Like… a genjutsu?" Shimizu followed their line of thinking.
For example… the Sharingan?
"Is there really a genjutsu that strong?" Minato asked. "One that could control over a hundred ninjas, including elite jonin?"
Actually… there was, Shimizu thought. The Mangekyō Sharingan.
"Satomi, did you notice anything unusual?" Shimizu asked.
"No… their chakra flow looked completely normal. I didn't see any signs of external interference…"
"Well, we can't figure it out for now. But my intuition tells me they weren't Rain Village ninjas," Shimizu said, voicing his guess.
The other three looked at him with puzzled expressions.
"Some of their techniques felt… improvised. Ninjas trained in regular ninja academies usually carry a bit of textbook-style patterns in their movements. But some of those people moved extremely efficiently."
Shimizu felt this most strongly when he had been surrounded by four of them earlier.
Their movements had been too clean and decisive—no feints, every strike aimed to kill.
That wasn't typical of a normal jonin's combat style.
Such wide-open, aggressive attack patterns did exist, but they were rare.
After all, ninjas generally had high attack but low defense. One careless mistake and even a jonin could be killed by a genin.
Anyone who reached the rank of jonin must possess a certain level of caution and carefulness.
"I had the same feeling… it was like they were fighting without caring about their lives," Minato said after thinking carefully.
So many people sharing the exact same fighting style…
It was almost as if they were copies molded from the same template.
"Maybe it's a side effect of being controlled by that secret technique?" Yoshimaru guessed. "Just like how they all used that strange Earth Release technique that appeared and disappeared like ghosts…"
At this point, none of them could figure out what was really going on.
They could only wait for news from Konoha.
"Are we still going to investigate the cave?" Satomi asked at last.
Everyone shook their heads.
Soon after recovering some chakra, the four of them immediately headed south of the canyon.
But none of them noticed that beneath a large tree nearby, a small blade of grass was gently swaying.
For a moment—
a flash of white flickered there.