Finally Officially Assigned

Aburame Tetsumaru's hands trembled. It was his first time in battle. Even though he had not been injured—Beetle Armor had blocked the kunai and ninjutsu—he was still so tense that his muscles had stiffened.

The battle was over, but he could not relax at all. His mind was blank, his entire body rigid, and the muscles in his limbs still twitched.

Yet when he smelled the blood in the air, he felt neither nausea nor fear, nor did he want to vomit. He merely felt empty, as if he had entered the post-nut clarity stage.

Once the stiffness eased slightly, Aburame Tetsumaru stood up and inspected the enemy corpses. The corpse that had died from cardiac arrest had a purplish face, its eyes bulging so wide with rage they seemed ready to fall from their sockets.

Aburame Tetsumaru had no intention of looting the body. Searching a ninja's corpse was highly specialized work, especially when the corpse wore a Suna Ninja forehead protector. As Sunagakure's Puppet Master forces rose to prominence, their poisons had become increasingly vicious.

In the past, Suna Ninja corpses usually hid nothing more than poisonous Scorpions. Now they could contain all kinds of traps and lethal toxins. Looting bodies was better left to professionals anyway; Aburame Tetsumaru did not lack that little bit of money.

Also, the Ninja Academy had specifically taught them that during wartime, they should not expect to obtain ninjutsu from enemies.

No ninja carried ninjutsu scrolls onto the battlefield. Teaching materials had never been convenient to carry, and too much baggage would drag a ninja down and get them killed.

Aburame Tetsumaru then checked his two teammates. The teammate crushed beneath the tree still showed signs of life, while the first teammate was already dead.

Aburame Tetsumaru had no strength to move the tree right now. He drew his blade and cut off all its branches, revealing his teammate's pale face.

His teammate gasped for breath. He was clearly injured, and tension and fear had drained his strength.

The moment he saw Aburame Tetsumaru, he asked, "Did we win?"

"Yes. There were four Suna Ninja. They're all dead."

"I'm sorry. I was so useless."

"Don't say that. Without your help, I would have been killed too."

Aburame Tetsumaru was not comforting him. Without his two teammates drawing the enemies' attention, it would have been difficult for the first Locust ambush to hit every target. And handling one Chunin was already his limit. He had only narrowly survived thanks to the Beetles' protection. If there had been one more Suna Ninja, he would definitely have been killed.

"What about Gentarō? How is he?"

So his teammate was named Gentarō. Aburame Tetsumaru silently shook his head.

"!"

Sobbing broke out. Just moments ago, the two had been chatting and laughing, imagining what it would be like after reaching the frontline camp. A minute later, one of them was gone. Encountering a friend's death for the first time was an overwhelmingly cruel blow to a ten-year-old child.

A child who could face death for the first time without reacting was either a lunatic like Uchiha Itachi or a transmigrator like Aburame Tetsumaru, whose inner self was nearly fifty years old. In any case, neither was normal.

Watching his crying teammate, Aburame Tetsumaru gradually found himself affected as well. He suddenly thought of his fallen teammate and hurried away to check on him, lest he start crying too.

At that moment, reinforcements from the main force arrived. Aburame Tetsumaru suppressed his grief and went to meet them with a blank expression.

The reinforcements had come too late. From the moment Aburame Tetsumaru sent the signal to the moment they arrived, a full four minutes had passed.

Ninja battles moved far too quickly. Of the seven ninja on both sides, five had died and one was injured. Such a brutal battle had actually lasted only thirty seconds.

Aburame Tetsumaru and his teammate looked at the reinforcements, and neither of them had friendly expressions.

They had been only one hundred and fifty meters from the main force. What was the point of reinforcements arriving four minutes later? Were they simply here to collect bodies?

When the reinforcements drew near, both boys froze.

The reinforcements consisted of two Chunin leading six Genin. Both Chunin bore signs of battle and had likely fought once already. Seeing that this squad had suffered only one death and one injury, they relaxed somewhat and quickly directed the Genin to help treat the wounded.

One of the Chunin called Aburame Tetsumaru over.

"I'm Chunin Yamashiro Chikata. Report the situation here."

"Yes."

"I am the captain of the Third Temporary Reconnaissance Squad, Genin Aburame Tetsumaru. While carrying out a reconnaissance mission, we discovered a four-man squad..."

"...After killing the Suna Ninja, I was unable to help my teammate escape, so I could only wait here for rescue."

The other Chunin directed four Genin to move the tree trunk and treat the wounded man's injuries, then came over to listen to Aburame Tetsumaru's report as well.

The more the two Chunin listened, the more astonished they became. The two members of the reconnaissance squad had merely diverted the enemy's attention. Aburame Tetsumaru had effectively wiped out an entire Suna Ninja combat squad by himself.

Another genius?

The two Chunin muttered to each other for a while but said nothing. Geniuses were cheap in Konoha.

Aburame Tetsumaru also realized that his display of strength in this battle had seemed somewhat exaggerated. A fresh graduate capable of fighting a Chunin was a little too conspicuous.

But in reality, he had no way to hide his strength. He had just struggled on the brink of death and barely held on. Thinking about concealing his abilities at a time like that was no different from courting death.

Once the battlefield had been cleared, the Chunin led the group back.

After the supporting Chunin returned to the main force, Commander Jiraiya ordered them to move quickly. The attacked location was very close to the frontline camp, and the march would take no more than forty minutes. The enemy had deliberately set an ambush here to exploit the psychological gap.

An hour later, the rookie unit, slowed by the wounded, finally arrived at the camp in full. Only then did Jiraiya relax, arranging quarters for the new Genin and gathering intelligence.

The Genin, whose lingering fear had begun to settle, also started exchanging information. Aburame Tetsumaru quickly obtained a great deal of information and pieced together the full picture of the attack.

The attackers were undoubtedly Suna Ninja: four squads in total, including one squad of Puppet Masters.

The Sunagakure ninja had first attacked the reconnaissance squad led by Aburame Tetsumaru. Their attack on the right flank had been only a feint by a single squad, intended to draw attention and reinforcements away before they launched a surprise attack on the unit from the other side.

But Jiraiya made the correct judgment and supported the other side first. Of the three Suna Ninja squads, two were intercepted. The ambush turned into a frontal assault, and the surprise attack's effectiveness fell far short of expectations.

Even so, the casualties were still horrific. Of the nine Genin in the three reconnaissance squads on the left flank, only one was seriously wounded. The other eight were dead.

The unit was attacked by the Puppet Master squad that had slipped through. Four Puppet Masters controlled six puppets and fired poisoned needles. In just eight seconds of suppressive fire, they launched more than thirteen hundred Senbon, causing over seventy casualties.

The Senbon fired by puppet mechanisms were not very powerful. Their lethality depended on the deadly poison coating them.

After being poisoned, the rookies' reactions determined their fates. Those who promptly swallowed antidote pills suffered light injuries; those who were a step too slow were seriously injured; those who panicked and ran or moved about all died.

Aburame Tetsumaru saw the names of clan members on the death list. Aburame Shixin and Aburame Guitai had died in battle. In the blink of an eye, two cousins his age were gone.

Perhaps because the reinforcements had suffered severe losses, the atmosphere throughout the camp was rather oppressive.

Aburame Tetsumaru waited for orders. He found an abandoned tree stump to use as a stool and quietly reflected on today's battle. Though he had won without a scratch, it had not been through sheer strength.

He had originally thought he could fight a Chunin to a draw, but the reality was like a weightlifter challenging a mixed martial artist. He could not land a hit no matter what he did, while the enemy could attack however he pleased.

During this battle, he had been completely suppressed by the Chunin-level Suna Ninja. Especially during the brief close-quarters exchange, he had been trapped in the enemy's rhythm from beginning to end. All his attacks had been blocked, while nearly every enemy attack had landed.

He had survived only because of Beetle Armor's defensive power. Otherwise, he would have had at least four or five bloody holes punched through him by kunai. Kunai wounds were terrifying. Even if they missed vital areas, they caused massive blood loss, and a person could bleed to death in the blink of an eye.

The decisive factor had been the Snail-type Eye of Truth's pixel-analysis ability combined with the Locusts' ambush capabilities. He had taken out three Suna Ninja Genin first, creating a numerical advantage.

Finally, the Hand Seal-less Secret Technique and the neurotoxic crystalline spike powder had sealed the victory. They had all been unexpected methods. No wonder senior ninja always said that intelligence was a ninja's greatest combat power.

This battle proved that Aburame Tetsumaru's fighting skills still fell short of Chunin level, but with his reconnaissance abilities, the Locusts' attacks, and the Beetles' defense, his overall strength was sufficient to contend with a Chunin.

In future battles, he should focus on long-range attacks and make the most of the Locusts' and Snails' strengths.

As Aburame Tetsumaru carefully considered his new tactical approach, an assignment order arrived. He was assigned to replenish a depleted squad, and the order listed the captain's name: Konoha Chunin Ueno Hayato.

Following the order, Aburame Tetsumaru found a medium-sized tent in the camp's northwest corner, but no one was there.

In front of the tent was a stone-ringed campfire that had already gone out. Four large stones around it served as stools. In the shadows lay a pile of trash, mixed with bloodstained cloth and bandages that stood out sharply.

It was a rather crude campsite. Aburame Tetsumaru searched around the tent. Though he found no one, he could confirm that he had not come to the wrong place, so he chose a stone to sit on and took a box from his backpack.

He opened the box and removed rows of insect eggs. After inspecting them, he used a secret technique to stimulate their vitality, sprayed them with disinfectant, scattered them over sunlit soil, and finally covered them with a thin layer of dirt.

He took out another box. Inside were already-hatched Locust larvae. After inspecting them, he released the larvae into the surrounding grass to forage on their own.

Finally, he brought out fifteen or sixteen boxes at once, each filled with wood shavings and Locusts that had already pupated.

The Locusts bred by Aburame Tetsumaru could not possibly survive the pupation stage on their own. They needed to consume too much iron and calcium during that period. If they ingested that much metal as larvae, they would die of poisoning, so it could only be injected manually during pupation.

Carefully controlling Kikaichū, he injected the pupae with enough Nutrient Solution and ferric oxide solution, then put them away.

The sky had begun to darken, but no one had returned.

Aburame Tetsumaru was not in a hurry either. After eating some dry rations, he hung upside down from the tip of a tree branch, swaying with the wind as he trained his Chakra control and considered how to breed insects next.

Honestly, Aburame Tetsumaru was a little shaken.

He had prepared more than a hundred types of Ninja Insect in advance, all kinds of them, and had devised tactic after tactic. But today's battle proved that those ideas had all been wrong.

If not for that sudden inspiration, and if he had not successfully created one offensive and one defensive type of insect, he would most likely have been seriously injured today and forced to reveal other trump cards to save his life.

If some trump cards were exposed, the trouble that followed might prove even more deadly.

The Locusts and Armored Beetles, the main insects in battle, shared one trait: both had been implanted with the genes that allowed Kikaichū to consume Chakra.

To some extent, these two types of Ninja Insect were specialized Kikaichū. They could use Chakra to greatly enhance their traits, such as the Locusts' speed and destructive power and the Armored Beetles' defense. But they could not produce Chakra themselves, or produced only tiny amounts, and had to remain on their host for long periods to draw enough Chakra.

Practice was the sole criterion for testing truth, and actual combat was the sole criterion for testing weapon-design concepts.

Now that the results of actual combat were in, turning Ninja Insects into Kikaichū was clearly the correct approach. All those messy designs and ideas could be shelved.