Infinitely Approaching Zero

"W-What? Is this going to be seven against two?!"

"Two super geniuses versus some of the strongest young ninja in the village?"

"Th-This... this, this..."

"It's getting more and more interesting!"

"Yeah, yeah! This is even more interesting than a battle between super geniuses!"

"Exactly!"

The whispers around him reached Chiba's ears. His eyes continually shifted, sweeping over the spectators who had begun edging back to make more room for them, then over the fellow students standing opposite them, already rolling up their sleeves in anticipation. Thoughts gathered into plans, plans broke down into steps, and those steps were expanded one by one as he weighed the pros and cons. At the same time, he discarded steps with low chances of success and conceived more likely alternatives... Over and over again, in the span of a single sweep of his gaze, Chiba discarded five or six steps, came up with three or four new ones, then combined, narrowed, and linked them into fresh plans, only to...

Reject them one after another, until he had considered nearly every possibility, yet still had no complete plan.

Hirohiko and Yukina's presence, the enemy's numerical advantage, and Hyuga Yukyō joining the fight... all caused the failure rate of these plans to rise geometrically.

Although he already possessed the strength of an Elite Jonin, and had a super genius beside him who could match him evenly—who could, in fact, match anyone evenly—their strength was utterly incapable of offsetting those failure rates and bringing them into the range of a "very high chance of success."

In other words, the combined strength of the opposition had reached the point where "tactics" could no longer "make up for the disparity in numbers and strength."

That was to say, the enemy could now completely "break ingenuity with force"! At