"Your so-called nindo couldn't even raise my heart rate by two beats." The gray-clad boy stared at Dahui with utterly emotionless eyes. His fingers tightened slightly, and the blade broke the skin of Dahui's neck, drawing a bead of blood.
Dahui's mouth hung open, a rattling sound escaping his throat—the physiological response of vocal cords spasming under extreme terror.
The courage he had been so proud of, the teamwork he had rehearsed countless times on the school training grounds, seemed like a cheap joke before this boy his own age, whose breathing he could not even hear.
Bang!
A cloud of white smoke exploded between the gray-clad boy and Dahui.
Two masked Konoha Chunin examiners landed on the scene in an instant.
One of them, wearing cut-resistant gloves, forcibly caught the short blade just before it sliced through Dahui's artery.
The other quickly scooped up Satomi from the muddy water, pulled out the senbon, and injected her with a neural Awakening Agent.
"That's enough.
"Team 37, all members eliminated." The Chunin examiner's voice carried a trace of severity and lingering fear he could not hide. He stared hard at the gray-clad boy. "Anbu candidate team, you've already won. There's no need to kill them."
The gray-clad boy offered no argument, nor did he show a victor's smugness.
He simply withdrew his short blade with complete composure, wiped the trace of Dahui's blood off on his cuff, then returned the
blade to its sheath.
He did not even glance at Dahui again. His body tipped backward, melting straight into the thick darkness of the swamp.
His two Anbu teammates, who had never shown their faces at all, also vanished completely, leaving only a few faint ripples in the muddy water.
Dahui slumped in the mud, watching the examiner expertly bandage Satomi,