Chapter 53: The Little Wild Boar

Chapter 53: Chapter 53: The Little Wild Boar

Seeing that Uchiha Shinichi was actually about to start a fight right outside his house, Hyuga Kagami had no choice but to accept his challenge.

After arriving at a secluded grove, Kagami swept his gaze over the surroundings. His eyes lingered briefly on a large tree in the distance before he turned to Uchiha Shinichi.

"All right. We’ll spar here."

Uchiha Shinichi nodded, his face full of arrogance. "Let me make something clear first. I’m not like Shisui. I won’t be holding back."

"Oh."

The corner of Shinichi’s eye twitched. "Hey! Are you even listening to me!? I said I’m going to fight you for real! If you’re careless, you could die!"

Kagami replied helplessly, "I really do have something else to do, so please hurry up."

"Damn you!"

Shinichi activated his Sharingan and glared viciously at Kagami.

"You ignorant fool! Today, I’ll show you the true power of the Uchiha!"

As soon as the words left his mouth, Shinichi rapidly formed a series of hand seals and shouted,

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"

Kagami’s figure flickered aside, narrowly avoiding Shinichi’s Great Fireball Technique.

At that moment, using the Fire Style technique as cover, Uchiha Shinichi used the Body Flicker Technique to flash directly in front of Hyuga Kagami, the three tomoe in his Sharingan spinning rapidly.

In an instant, their eyes met.

Staring into Shinichi’s Sharingan, Kagami was startled for a moment. Then, as though his soul had left his body, his head slowly drooped and he stood there blankly, completely motionless.

Shinichi curled his lips in disdain. "What the hell? He’s actually this weak? How did Shisui lose to trash like this?"

Muttering to himself, he walked toward Kagami.

Through his Sharingan, he could see that the chakra inside Kagami’s body was in complete disarray, exactly what one would expect from someone who had fallen completely under a genjutsu.

Because of this, Shinichi barely had his guard up at all.

His mind was already occupied with the thought of putting a kunai against Kagami’s throat first, then releasing him from the genjutsu. That way, he could properly humiliate Kagami afterward.

But just as Shinichi raised his right arm, Kagami suddenly lowered his body and struck out with both palms.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Amid a rapid series of palm strikes, Shinichi collapsed to the ground with a look of utter shock on his face, unconscious.

Kagami dusted off his hands and said indifferently, "All right. Come out."

Whoosh!

A figure landed in front of Kagami.

It was none other than Uchiha Shisui.

Shisui first glanced at the unconscious Uchiha Shinichi, then bowed to Kagami with a smile.

"Senpai, thank you for your trouble!"

In truth, Hyuga Kagami had noticed Shisui secretly following behind Uchiha Shinichi long ago. And when Shisui hadn’t warned him beforehand, Kagami had already guessed that this Uchiha Shinichi probably wasn’t all that strong.

Otherwise, given his relationship with Shisui, Shisui definitely would have given him a heads-up in advance.

Kagami asked, "This kind of troublesome thing isn’t going to happen every day from now on, is it?"

Shisui shook his head and replied with a perfectly serious expression, "Of course not. Shinichi is a Special Jōnin, after all. Now that he’s lost this badly, those restless people in the clan will definitely have to go back and carefully discuss what to do next. I’d say it’ll be at least a few days before the next challenger comes."

Kagami was genuinely speechless this time. "So this is never going to end, is it?"

Shisui hurriedly assured him, "Don’t worry, Senpai. The clan definitely won’t send any elite jōnin after you. At most, they’ll only send someone around the level of an ordinary jōnin."

Kagami’s face darkened. "The way you’re putting it, doesn’t that mean I’m going to have to fight my way through half the Uchiha Clan? I’m not going to end up with some ridiculous nickname like ’Uchiha Bane,’ am I?"

"Hehe... Thank you for your trouble, Senpai. Really, thank you..."

Shisui gave an awkward chuckle, then hoisted the unconscious Uchiha Shinichi over his shoulder and hurriedly fled.

Kagami quickly shouted after him, "Hey! Don’t run away so fast! At least give me some intel beforehand next time!"

The main reason Kagami had been able to defeat Uchiha Shinichi so easily this time was Shinichi’s overwhelming arrogance.

All Kagami had done was use his Tenseigan to disrupt the flow of chakra within his own body, and that alone had been enough to fool Shinichi, who had absolute confidence in his genjutsu.

If Kagami had been facing a more cautious Uchiha, victory might not have come nearly so easily.

"Don’t worry, Senpai!"

Shisui’s voice drifted over from the distance.

After all, he was counting on Hyuga Kagami to knock the increasingly overbearing Uchiha clansmen down a peg or two, so naturally, he would take the initiative to provide Kagami with some help.

With Uchiha Shinichi dealt with, Kagami stuck to his original plan and headed straight for the Forest of Death.

With yesterday’s experience under his belt, collecting venomous creatures went even more smoothly today. In less than two hours, he had gathered twice as many venom sacs and venom glands as he had the day before, far exceeding his target.

Just as he was preparing to head home and concoct the compound poison, a sudden rustling sound came from within the forest.

Kagami stopped and looked toward the source of the noise.

A wave rippled through the thick grass, and a moment later, the scruffy little wild boar he had encountered yesterday burst out of the undergrowth and stared at him with a foolish expression.

"Huh? You’re still alive!?"

Kagami was somewhat surprised to see the little wild boar.

Under normal circumstances, the venom sac inside yesterday’s snake carcass contained enough venom to kill the little boar ten times over. As long as it had eaten the snake carcass, it should undoubtedly have died.

"Could it be that it didn’t eat the snake? Or did it somehow remove the venom sac before eating it?"

The moment that thought crossed his mind, Hyuga Kagami frowned, because he suddenly noticed something strange.

Yesterday, there hadn’t been the slightest trace of chakra flowing through the little wild boar’s body.

Today, however, there was actually a faint wisp of chakra inside it.

"This..."

The change surprised Kagami even more.

Wild animals could occasionally learn to use chakra by sheer chance, but the probability was extremely low, and ordinary people rarely ever encountered such a thing.

Moreover, wild animals that accidentally learned to use chakra were usually intelligent, strong, and already fairly old.

Kagami had never even heard of a wild animal learning to use chakra while it was still as young as this little boar.

The little wild boar scampered up to Kagami and grunted,

"Oink, oink..."

"You want something to eat? I don’t have anything you can—"

Halfway through his sentence, Kagami suddenly thought of something.

He reached into his waist pouch, pulled out a venom sac about the size of his thumb, and tossed it onto the ground.

"Would you eat this?"

Wild animals generally possessed an instinctive ability to seek out what benefited them and avoid what could harm them. So Kagami wanted to test whether this rather unusual little wild boar would actually eat the venom sac.

After all, venom sacs gave off an acrid, pungent smell. Forget eating one—even an ordinary animal that merely caught its scent would instinctively keep its distance.

Any animal that actually dared to eat one was definitely no ordinary creature.

Kagami had assumed that even if the little wild boar dared to eat the venom sac, it would at least sniff it first, perhaps even give it a cautious lick.

But the instant he tossed it out, the little wild boar stuck its rump into the air and leaped up, swallowing the entire venom sac before it even hit the ground.

The corner of Kagami’s mouth curled upward.

"Now this is interesting."