"Lord... Lord Chiba?"
Beads of sweat silently slid down the face behind the fox mask. In the grim, quiet atmosphere, even though this intelligence liaison ninja had long been accustomed to danger, to the ever-changing tides of war and its sudden unpredictability, cold sweat now streamed down his back.
Perhaps it was this grim silence that instinctively filled him with unease and fear.
But ultimately, it was because of the man before him, who had suddenly dropped to one knee as if his body had been struck by some agony so intense that, to the liaison ninja, it seemed unbearable.
He was their acting Hokage. With the Third Hokage unable to command this latest war that had broken out at their headquarters, he was Konoha's supreme commander. He was also the existence who had scared off the Sound Village and Sunagakure—foes they had been fighting for so long without victory—by merely showing a few tricks. No, he had not even fought them alone.
To be honest, he had never seen this man like this before, kneeling on the ground as if unable to bear the pain.
To him, the man before him was like a mountain or a sea—an existence that would never fall, one with a breadth of heart as vast as the ocean, someone they willingly served, someone who had always protected them.
And now, that existence who should never have fallen was showing a "wounded and weakened" side. He was no longer unshakable, and he was facing Uchiha Nobuhiko, the source of dread for almost the entire Shinobi World. The fear in his heart could no longer be restrained.
Because he knew that only this man, and only this man, had always protected them. He had even blocked most of the danger—the threat of Uchiha Nobuhiko, the