The rogue ninja tried desperately to twist away from the most lethal angles, but it was already too late. Even after avoiding the deadliest points, he was still struck by several shuriken in succession. He crashed to the ground with a hoarse scream, his body convulsing in pain.
Hyuga Keiko reacted at once. She lunged forward without hesitation and drove a shuriken straight into the rogue ninja's throat, ending his life in a single clean movement. Only after he stopped moving did she finally let out the breath she had been holding.
Then she turned to look at Kitahara Kaede, standing atop the high wall not far away, and shock flooded her face. How had his strength risen so sharply in such a short time?
Could shuriken kill people? Of course they could. Against fragile targets like ninjas - fighters with frightening offense but bodies that were still flesh and blood - a well-placed shuriken was more than enough to take a life.
But against a Chunin, or even an elite Chunin, the threat should have dropped drastically. Their reflexes were too sharp, their instincts too polished. Under normal circumstances, it was nearly impossible to pin them down so completely with nothing but thrown weapons.
And yet Kitahara Kaede's attack had looked almost unreal.
That chain of shuriken had not been simple marksmanship. It had felt like prediction, as though he had already seen every possible move the enemy might make and calmly filled in every path of escape before the man even chose one. The rogue ninja had not been defeated by force alone. He had been cornered, measured, and executed.
Keiko's gaze sharpened. Even if she had not delivered the finishing blow herself, Kaede would still have killed the enemy in the very next instant. Sure enough, she saw that he was still holding another shuriken between his fingers. If she had hesitated for even a heartbeat, that final blade would already have been lodged in the man's throat.
To put down an elite Chunin with only a handful of shuriken... that level of skill was terrifying. In Keiko's eyes, it was already no weaker than the famed techniques once associated with the Uchiha clan.
But the part she could not understand was something else entirely.
How had Kitahara Kaede predicted the enemy's every reaction so perfectly?
Even with her Byakugan, she could not have done that.
No one understood the strength of that rogue ninja better than she did. His abilities were far beyond theirs, and if not for the Byakugan sharpening her dynamic vision, she would have been cut down long ago. She had barely managed to hold him off at all.
That was the truth about dojutsu and bloodline limits: they were powerful, but they did not make a person invincible. Her eyes could follow his movements, yes - but her body could not always keep pace. She had only survived by relying on the Byakugan's ability to read the flow of battle and predict part of his attack pattern.
And yet Kaede had just overwhelmed that same enemy with ease.
By then, Kitahara Kaede had already quietly deactivated his Sharingan. Because of that, Keiko never saw the change in his eyes. She did, however, notice something even harder to ignore.
The chakra inside his body had become monstrous.
Originally, among the three of them, her chakra reserves had been the highest. That was only natural. As a member of the Hyuga clan, she possessed a bloodline that gave her a clear advantage in that regard. Xiang Tianyuanlong and Kaede had once been roughly on the same level, with Kaede only slightly ahead.
But now it was completely different.
The chakra within Kaede's body had reached an astonishing level, several times greater than her own. Compared to the amount she had observed from him only days before, it had increased at least tenfold. It was already approaching the reserves of some Jonin from the Hyuga branch family.
And that was what made it so unbelievable.
It had only been a few days.
What shook her even more was the fact that the increase had not stopped. With the Byakugan, she could see his chakra growing at a rate visible to the naked eye. It was not her imagination. The change was still happening, right in front of her.
Keiko fell silent.
In the end, she forced herself to look away.
She did not know how Kaede had grown so much in such a short span of time, but she understood one thing very clearly: every ninja had secrets. Some secrets were tied to survival. Some to strength. Some to things that should never be spoken aloud.
She had no intention of prying into something she was never meant to know.
Instead, she activated her Byakugan again and swept her gaze across the entire bandit stronghold. After confirming that there were no surviving enemies nearby, she released the technique, rushed to Xiang Tianyuanlong's side, and knelt beside him. Working quickly, she wrapped his wound, then used her still-unsteady Mystical Palm Technique to stop the bleeding and begin treating the injury.
At the same time, Kitahara Kaede was watching her closely.
He knew Keiko had definitely noticed something.
She probably had not seen his Sharingan awaken, but there was no way she could have missed the surge of chakra inside him. That much was impossible to hide from the Byakugan.
Still, what surprised Kaede was not her silence. It was his own body.
After awakening the Sharingan, the chakra that had already been growing steadily inside him had surged again, increasing by another thirty percent in a very short period of time. At this rate, it would not be long before he reached the standard Kakashi unit - the kind of chakra level associated with an elite Jonin.
So this was the bonus that came with the Sharingan?
No wonder the Uchiha clan had once dominated the battlefield to such a degree. No wonder there had once been a saying that facing an Uchiha one-on-one was the same as courting death.
The great ninja clans with bloodline limits were simply born on a different foundation than ordinary civilian-born shinobi. Once their bloodline power awakened, their strength rose at a speed ordinary people could never hope to match.
Thinking about it, Kaede could only sigh inwardly.
Life for commoner ninjas really had been too hard.
Take Hyuga Keiko as an example. Within the Hyuga branch family, she could only be considered average, and in raw talent she was about on par with the old Kaede and with Xiang Tianyuanlong. Yet even so, thanks to her bloodline, her chakra reserves had always been more than double theirs.
That was the difference a bloodline made.
And that was before counting the Hyuga clan's inherited techniques.
On paper, Kaede might already have been considered stronger. But in an actual fight before all these recent changes, he might not even have been able to defeat Keiko at all.
"Are you all right?" Kaede asked.
He blurred forward and appeared in front of Xiang Tianyuanlong almost instantly, his voice calm but edged with concern.
"I'm fine. Much better now," Xiang Tianyuanlong said, though his face was still pale from blood loss.
Thanks to Keiko's clumsy but effective use of the Mystical Palm Technique, the bleeding had at least stopped. What remained now was recovery. As long as he rested properly, the wound should not cause any lasting damage.
Their team could already be considered fairly luxurious by ordinary standards. Not every squad had a support ninja who could perform healing ninjutsu, even imperfectly.
The Mystical Palm Technique was extremely practical, but it was notoriously difficult to learn. It was not something most ordinary ninjas could master with a bit of practice. Under normal circumstances, someone like Xiang Tianyuanlong would have had ointment slapped on the wound and then been told to grit his teeth and recover the slow way.
He clicked his tongue bitterly.
"That bastard was too shameless," he said. "He actually pretended to be asleep and then launched a sneak attack. Does he have no martial honor at all?"
Hyuga Keiko smacked him on the head without mercy.
"How many times have I told you to be careful?" she snapped. "That's what being a ninja is. If you keep charging ahead like an idiot, one day I really won't be able to save you."
Tianyuanlong winced and covered his head, looking aggrieved, but he did not dare argue back.
Kaede nodded inwardly.
Among the three of them, Xiang Tianyuanlong had always been the most reckless. He had already paid for that impulsiveness more than once in the past. The only difference was that previous dangerous situations had mostly been handled by their teacher, Akai Akimoto, before things reached the point of real crisis.
Back then, they had never truly been forced to face an opponent of this level on their own.
Now it was different.
The three of them had already grown close to the level of their former team leader. And tonight's battle had made one thing clearer than ever: they could no longer approach missions with the mentality of sheltered subordinates.
They were the ones responsible now.
"Rest for a while," Kaede said. "I'll set traps around the perimeter and keep watch. If any other bandits come back, we'll deal with them before they know what happened."
His tone was light, but the intent behind it was cold and practical.
That was the way of ninjas.
Insidious? So what if it was insidious?
What did honor matter when the profession itself was built on killing, deception, infiltration, and survival?
If a hidden trap could spare them a direct clash, then that was the correct choice. If an ambush could reduce risk, then it should be used without hesitation. This was not some storybook world where warriors announced themselves proudly and fought fair duels under the sun.
A ninja who insisted on being upright at all times would die early.
Kaede moved through the stronghold like a shadow, setting trap after trap in silence. Wire, tags, concealed shuriken angles, fallback points - he laid out a web of contingencies with practiced care. If anyone returned during the night, they would walk straight into death.
Meanwhile, Keiko remained by Tianyuanlong's side, periodically checking his wound. The moon drifted higher. The mountain wind turned colder. The corpses of the bandits lay still under the dark sky, and the entire stronghold gradually sank into an eerie silence.
No one came back that night.
Even so, the three of them did not lower their guard.
They stayed hidden and waited an entire extra day.
By the next afternoon, Xiang Tianyuanlong's injury had mostly stabilized. He could move again, though he still looked a little weak. After thoroughly confirming that no surviving bandits had escaped and that no reinforcements were returning, the three finally prepared to leave.
Their mission was over.
They set out for Konoha at once.
On the return trip, none of them spoke much. Tianyuanlong seemed to have finally learned something from the pain. Keiko remained thoughtful and unusually quiet. As for Kaede, he spent most of the journey sorting through the changes in his body and the implications of what had happened.
He had awakened the Sharingan.
Not only that - the awakening had come far more easily than the terrifying stories from the Uchiha clan's past would have suggested. No clan massacre. No watching a loved one die before his eyes. No descent into despair so deep it shattered his soul.
He had simply seen his teammates in danger, felt the urgency of the moment, and crossed the threshold.
Maybe the system's version of the Uchiha bloodline was different.
Or maybe the so-called legends had always been exaggerated by people who only saw the most extreme cases.
Either way, the result was real.
His vision had sharpened. His perception had leapt forward. His chakra had surged again. More importantly, his control over the entire battle had changed completely the moment those eyes opened. The world itself had seemed to slow down for him. Angles, movement, killing intent, openings - everything had become clearer.
That feeling still lingered in his mind.
It was intoxicating.
But Kaede did not let himself get carried away.
This had only been the beginning.
A newly awakened Sharingan was still just a newly awakened Sharingan. In the true power structure of the ninja world, this little bit of improvement was not enough to make him arrogant. Not when monsters like Itachi, Orochimaru, and the forces behind the coming disasters still existed.
Still...
It was enough to change something fundamental in his heart.
For the first time since arriving in this world, he could feel it clearly.
He was no longer just struggling to survive.
He was beginning to seize control.
By the time the gates of Konoha came into view, the three of them had regained their usual composure. They headed straight back to the village to submit the mission report.
Because the operation had involved an enemy with elite Chunin-level strength, the mission itself had been reassessed on the spot. What should have been a routine C-rank bandit suppression task had now officially been upgraded to B-rank.
Konoha would send Anbu to investigate the dead rogue ninja and determine whether he truly was an unaffiliated wandering shinobi - or whether some hidden village had sent him to stir up trouble in the Land of Fire.
As for Team Kaede, their reward and evaluation would naturally rise with the new classification.
But compared to that, what mattered more to Kitahara Kaede was something else.
Tonight's mission had confirmed that his current strength was no illusion.
The bloodline he had drawn was real.
The Sharingan was real.
And the future he had once thought was fixed... might not be fixed after all.