To avoid being wiped out, the squad immediately banded together to resist the Missing-nin faction's attack, retreating while defending themselves.
Perhaps seeing that they could not take down the Konoha Squad anytime soon—and that none of the Genin underlings were willing to risk their lives in a direct assault—the Missing-nin stopped pursuing them.
By the time the Konoha Squad had recovered and returned to the village, the enemy had long since left.
They could only clear away the villagers' bodies and follow a few traces to several suspected Missing-nin forward bases, but they found no one.
The squad felt that the mission could no longer continue and that they would be unable to handle whatever came next, so they had no choice but to return to the village. That was how the B-rank mission from a few days ago came about.
"The timing is a little tight. We can only take a gamble." It would be extremely difficult to catch this group of Missing-nin now.
After combining the intelligence in his hands with what Orochimaru, an old hand, knew about the various trading markets in the Land of Fire, Shuichi decided to reach Rock Mountain City as quickly as possible.
Rock Mountain City was not near Konoha's border. It lay along the middle stretch of the road west from Konoha Village toward the Land of Rivers, then nearly a hundred kilometers north.
Shuichi was currently at Konoha's western border. The fork leading to the middle stretch of the main western road in the Land of Fire and Rock Mountain City formed a triangle with his location.
To save time, they could only take a straight route to Rock Mountain City. It meant traveling through vast forests in the Land of Fire, but they had to take a little risk for