CH_50

They finally managed to make it until dawn.

Each of them had gotten about four hours of rest, since they had to take turns keeping watch.

Kenji, like Tōji and Neru, had grown accustomed to Iwa's night raids… and to seeing comrades die right in front of them.

Since there hadn't been any distress signals in the area calling for their kind of rescue squad, they sat together eating dry rations, waiting for orders.

After a night's sleep, Natchi had recovered quite a bit. Or rather, the 【Healing Palms Technique】 was really something.

At this point, aside from not being able to fight or engage in strenuous activity, Natchi was practically a healthy person.

But what they got wasn't a new "protection squad" at all. Konoha command had no intention of allocating more personnel to "rescue squads."

So the four of them officially became Kenji's squad.

And the orders from above were clearer: they weren't just supposed to do rescue work—when necessary, they'd have to fight head-on as well.

There was also a subtext that needed reading between the lines: squad casualties wouldn't be replaced. The surviving shinobi would continue to earn their merits on the battlefield… In other words, from this point on, if the situation required it, anyone on the front lines—no matter who—could be used as cannon fodder.

Tōji could guess that this meant the Third Hokage had already dispatched Minato and Kakashi's squad. And Fugaku had likely issued some orders that weren't exactly friendly to low-level fighters like them.

Which made sense—since the front lines had already been pushed this far, this had to be the final wave.

If they could just hold on until Kakashi succeeded in destroying the bridge, they'd be able to head back to the village soon.

It was just… sending one jōnin with three genin into a battlefield against swarms of enemy jōnin and chūnin felt like the casualty rate would be way too high.

Especially now, when Tōji had already used up all his "life insurance"—those three-thousand-ryō Exploding Tags.

All he had left were a few smoke bombs he'd scavenged from the battlefield to use for survival (or escape)…

…

The days of living on edge dragged on for another two days.

Or rather, only two days had passed.

Kenji's squad had started to build a little rapport.

The main issue was that Kokubō Kenji hadn't been working with Tōji and the others for long. The three of them had been together for a while and had already developed a "rhythm."

These two days followed the same pattern as before—responding to signals and giving emergency treatment to the wounded.

After Iwa had launched a massive wave of raids on the first night following Konoha's advance, the past two days had been surprisingly—and understandably—"calm."

Though night raids weren't as frequent as regular daytime skirmishes, they were usually carried out with a suicidal resolve—making them far more intense.

Most of what Tōji and his squad faced were night raids.

They occasionally encountered attacks during the day too—but those weren't part of the Iwa-nin's "plan." They were more like chance encounters…

That was why night raids were terrifying. The Iwa forces had identified their logistics targets and came prepared. Each night raid squad was likely deployed with precise combat power—calculated to be slightly superior on paper.

It wasn't hard to imagine that there must have been an intense undercurrent of espionage between the two sides. They'd probably stolen a lot of each other's intelligence, leading to these highly targeted operations from time to time.

『It's been over two days of high-intensity fighting. If Kakashi still hasn't blown up the bridge by now, this is going to turn into a full-scale decisive battle… Can Konoha afford that?』 Tōji muttered inwardly as he followed Kenji and the others to the next distress signal location.

It was unlikely Konoha could accept that outcome. Whether they won or lost, if Konoha's combat strength took severe losses here, things would get really rough down the line.