Chapter 72: Encirclement

Chapter 72: Chapter 72: Encirclement

Kumogakure had long since investigated Konoha’s roster of powerful shinobi thoroughly.

In Yugito’s view, there were no more than five people in all of Konoha capable of leading a team on this kind of deep-strike mission behind enemy lines—and that was excluding the defected Orochimaru and the deceased Fourth Hokage and his wife.

That made the still-unseen Uchiha clan head and the Third Hokage her prime suspects.

Just then, a Kumogakure shinobi hurried into the command post.

"The village just sent us the latest report!"

After reading it, Killer B, Yugito, and Aida were all rather surprised.

It turned out that the other three secret warehouses that had been attacked had suffered no losses at all. Instead, Kumogakure had completely wiped out the Konoha ANBU teams that had launched the raids, even capturing one Konoha ANBU alive.

After being interrogated with genjutsu, the captured ANBU spilled everything he knew.

And so, for the first time, Konoha’s ANBU Team 11 entered the awareness of Kumogakure’s upper echelon.

"One four-man ANBU squad from Konoha killed more than three hundred of our shinobi?" Yugito paused, then continued incredulously, "Could Lord Raikage have gotten something wrong?"

Killer B and Aida looked equally astonished.

Within Kumogakure’s entire command post, the only ones capable of pulling off something like that were Killer B and Yugito, the village’s two perfect jinchūriki. Even Aida, despite being the deputy commander, couldn’t accomplish such a feat.

It wasn’t that Aida wasn’t strong enough.

He simply didn’t have enough chakra.

Or rather, no normal shinobi could possibly possess such an enormous reserve of chakra that they could slaughter nearly a hundred times their own number in a single night.

"Konoha’s ANBU Team 11 must be eliminated!"

For a moment, the exact same thought surfaced in all three of their minds.

After exchanging glances, Yugito stepped forward.

"I’ll go kill them!"

Land of Hot Water.

"Enemy attack!"

"Everyone, watch out! He’s behind us—!"

"Quick, send the signal for reinforcements!"

Amid the chaotic shouting, Hyuga Kagami, Kusanagimaru in hand, charged straight into the Kumogakure transport unit.

The Kumogakure chunin leading the unit immediately drew a kunai and rushed forward to meet him.

"Heh..."

Seeing this, the corners of Hyuga Kagami’s mouth curled upward slightly.

He had already lost count of how many Kumogakure shinobi had tried to block Kusanagimaru with an ordinary kunai.

Clang!

With a crisp metallic ring, and entirely as expected, the Kumogakure chunin leading the unit was cleanly sliced in two by Kusanagimaru—along with the kunai in his hand!

With their chunin leader dead, the remaining Kumogakure genin barely put up any resistance and were cut down by Kagami one after another.

Only the final genin, knowing that death was inevitable, resolutely detonated the explosive tags hidden inside the transport wagons, blowing all the supplies—and himself—sky-high.

Having escorted supplies several times during the Third Shinobi World War, Kagami was all too familiar with this tactic. He had moved away well in advance and wasn’t caught in the explosion.

The supplies weren’t his objective in the first place, so there was no reason to take any unnecessary risks.

Kagami made a circuit around the battlefield and confirmed that there were no survivors. Then he picked up the Kumogakure chunin’s kunai, which had been severed cleanly into two pieces, and casually slipped both halves into the storage pouch at his waist.

If he left the broken kunai behind on the battlefield, Kumogakure could examine the smooth, clean cut and deduce that Kagami possessed an exceptionally sharp sword.

Once Kumogakure learned that, his future surprise attacks would become considerably more difficult.

After one final check to make sure he hadn’t left behind any clues, Kagami wasted no more time and immediately departed the scene.

Before long, Yugito, Kumogakure’s Two-Tails jinchūriki, arrived at the scene leading a large force of Kumogakure shinobi.

Seeing the devastation all around them, with the supplies destined for the front lines reduced to ashes, the Kumogakure shinobi wore extremely ugly expressions.

Yugito herself could barely contain her fury. Her pupils had even transformed into the beast-like eyes of the Two-Tails, Matatabi!

At that moment, a Kumogakure jonin walked over and shook his head at Yugito.

"No survivors."

Suppressing her anger, Yugito asked, "No clues at all?"

The Kumogakure jonin nodded. "Same as before. Our men were all killed with a single sword strike. It’s still that taijutsu expert who uses a short blade. His style bears some resemblance to Konoha’s White Fang from back then!"

Gritting her teeth, Yugito snarled viciously, "After him! He can’t have gotten far!"

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

At Yugito’s command, the Kumogakure shinobi immediately used the Body Flicker Technique, turning into streaks of afterimages as they scattered in every direction to search for their target.

Sensing the pursuers behind him, Hyuga Kagami smiled faintly before forming a hand seal and creating a shadow clone.

His real body and the shadow clone immediately split apart, one heading left and the other right as they fled in completely different directions.

After using the shadow clone to shake off his pursuers, Kagami arrived at a narrow crevice in a high cliff.

Not only was the place well concealed, it also offered an excellent field of view. For a dojutsu kekkei genkai shinobi like Kagami, whose powers of observation were extraordinarily sharp, it was an ideal hiding place.

Taking out a soldier pill and chewing it, Kagami began reapplying poison to Kusanagimaru while contemplating his next move.

Over the course of the past week, Hyuga Kagami had attacked three Kumogakure transport teams in succession. Although he hadn’t destroyed much in the way of supplies, nor had he inflicted particularly heavy casualties on Kumogakure, he had caused them no shortage of trouble. Several of Kumogakure’s supply routes had been thrown into a state of constant alarm, with everyone jumping at shadows.

With their rear lines destabilized, Kumogakure had no choice but to slow down its offensive within the Land of Fire.

Kumogakure’s unusual behavior immediately caught Konoha’s attention. And not only Konoha—the other major shinobi villages closely monitoring the conflict also took notice of Kumogakure’s abnormal movements.

Almost simultaneously, everyone turned their attention toward the Land of Hot Water, situated between the Land of Fire and the Land of Lightning.

It was as though this place, rather than the main battlefield, had become the key to deciding the outcome of the conflict between Konoha and Kumogakure.

At the same time, as Kagami and the others continued their activities, Konoha’s ANBU Team 11 rapidly became Kumogakure’s number-one target.

More and more of Kumogakure’s elite shinobi began joining the encirclement operation against Team 11.

On Kagami’s side alone, it had started with just a single team led by a jonin.

But now, Kumogakure had not only deployed Yugito, the Two-Tails jinchūriki, but had also dispatched more than twenty jonin in succession.

A force of this magnitude was already comparable to what one might deploy to hunt down a Kage-level shinobi.

Suddenly, Kagami’s hands paused as he was applying poison to Kusanagimaru.

Just now, he had sensed his shadow clone disappear.

Normally, that wouldn’t have meant anything. The shadow clone had been nothing more than bait meant to lure away his pursuers.

What surprised him, however, was how abruptly the clone had vanished.

And more importantly—

It had barely transmitted any memories back to him.

In other words, the shadow clone had been instantly killed.

Although Kagami still wasn’t particularly proficient with the Shadow Clone Technique and had plenty of room to improve his skill with it, the clone had inherited at least half of his combat ability and ocular power.

Yet even a shadow clone like that had been instantly taken out.

That meant his opponent wasn’t merely strong—they were also extraordinarily fast.

So fast, in fact, that even a shadow clone possessing half of Kagami’s ocular power hadn’t had time to react!

Leaning against the cliff wall, Kagami gazed leisurely in the direction where his shadow clone had disappeared and smiled.

"Someone that strong... I wonder who it could be?"