Cleared

Unfortunately, for various unavoidable reasons, Yuhara had no way to obey Captain Hayase's orders.

After expressing his final thoughts and feelings to the captain, Yuhara lightly flipped the Mercury Longsword in his hand until its edge faced upward. Then he twisted his wrist and flicked it up, effortlessly splitting the spherical object resting on the blade into two.

That was how people were. Once they possessed the power to decide whether others lived or died, it was hard to expect them to follow the rules completely. Yuhara was not so chuunibyou as to believe he had the right to judge others, but he truly felt that this captain deserved to die.

Since he deserved to die, then he could go and die.

To be honest, such an emotional course of action was not worth advocating. However, Yuhara could not think of a single reason why the other man was worth protecting.

Seeing such a young child die on the battlefield was still difficult for Yuhara to accept. Judging from the location of the child's injuries, he seemed not to have fled with much determination. Or rather, he had very likely carried out some damn order to hold back the enemy.

No one could expect a child to accurately judge whether an order should be followed, nor could they expect him to openly defy the instructions of his adult captain. Therefore, the responsibility for his death did not lie with him, but with the person who had issued the order and the person who had appointed that man captain.

Yuhara calmed himself somewhat, then abandoned the two bodies and continued retreating... There was no need to agonize over whether he should collect the child's remains. The boy was already dead, after all.

To avoid encountering the overwhelmingly powerful Karatachi Yagura, Yuhara became even more cautious in his subsequent movements.

The farther he retreated into the Land of Fire's interior, the worse Yuhara felt. He had originally thought that since even that idiot captain had managed to evade Yagura's pursuit and survive, there should be others who had survived as well. But reality did not seem as beautiful as he had imagined.

All he saw was one corpse after another, and then...

His bad premonition came true.

Yuhara's gaze swept over a certain spot, and he abruptly stopped his figure as it hurried through the forest. On the ground not far to his right lay a very familiar figure.

"Tigo..."

Yuhara quickly reached her side and discovered that it really was Tigo.

At first glance, he saw the severity of her injuries, and Yuhara's mood instantly grew heavy. Tigo's left abdomen had been pierced front to back by a fist-sized hole. Some of her organs had been blasted away, and the blood gushing from her wound had already dyed the surrounding ground red.

When that much blood flowed out, people often wondered how such a small body could contain so much of it...

"Cough..."

Tigo's life was rapidly slipping away, but she still had one last breath left.

She seemed to recognize Yuhara and tried to say something, but she was already nearly incapable of speech.

"Tigo, can you hear me?"

Yuhara crouched beside her and gently pressed his hand against her neck. Her breathing and heartbeat had weakened to the point where they were almost impossible to detect.

How could he save her?

Yuhara's relationship with Tigo was simple, yet complicated. They were comrades, or perhaps friends—that was all. Yet she was the only person in this world whom Yuhara knew well.

So Yuhara absolutely did not want her to die just like this.

The problem was that Yuhara knew nothing about medicine. Given Tigo's current grievous injuries, he had no means of treating her at all... No, if there was one method that could prolong a person's life, then Yuhara did have one in his hands:

Living Corpse Reincarnation.

However, Living Corpse Reincarnation was a Forbidden Technique that the caster used on himself. Could it be used by one person on another? The key problem was that Yuhara did not have a body for reincarnation, and he had never seriously studied Living Corpse Reincarnation beforehand...

But he had no time to think carefully about these questions. Tigo could stop breathing and lose her heartbeat at any moment, so this was the only method Yuhara could try.

"Don't worry. I'll definitely save you."

Yuhara moved his hand away from Tigo's neck, then firmly squeezed her palm. Only after that did he take out the scroll recording the Secret Techniques of Living Corpse Reincarnation from his Ninja Tool Bag, followed by several blank scrolls.

After spreading out the Living Corpse Reincarnation scroll and a blank scroll, Yuhara wiped up some of Tigo's blood and prepared to copy the technique by reference.

"A complete reincarnation ritual is impossible. The only thing I can try now is converting her life and Chakra into a special mixture of spirit and energy, then temporarily sealing that energy away..."

Yuhara quickly sorted out the only possibility, then focused his mind and began operating step by step.

Right? Wrong? Success? Failure?

To be honest, Yuhara had no time to consider the consequences. Would the irresponsible promise he had just made hold true? Only heaven knew.

In a short while, Yuhara quickly finished drawing the technique, and by then sweat had appeared on his forehead.

Next, he reluctantly helped Tigo sit up. He pressed his left palm against her abdomen and injected his Chakra, mixed with Nature Energy, into her body. Then, while guiding her Chakra through the meridian system within her body, he used his right hand to manipulate both her palms into forming one hand seal after another.

"Tigo, hold on a little longer."

When the hand seals in Tigo's hands finally ended, something suddenly shot out of her body and was drawn into the scroll bearing the special technique.

Yuhara then rapidly formed hand seals, completing the locking of the technique on the scroll. After rolling up the scroll and sealing it tightly, he discovered that Tigo in his arms had completely lost all signs of life.

He had ultimately completed the ritual before Tigo's life force was extinguished. However, Yuhara had no way to determine whether what had been extracted was Tigo's true mixture of spirit and energy or merely her Chakra.

Judging by common sense and experience, it was essentially impossible for such a difficult S-rank Forbidden Technique to succeed on the first attempt, even if he had only wanted to complete a third of the entire process.

The living person could no longer offer any response, leaving Yuhara with only a light, empty scroll.

After carefully putting away the scroll, Yuhara sealed Tigo's body as well.

When Yuhara stood up again, his face unconsciously took on a lost, bewildered expression.

Rindou, Xinliang, Jian Dong, Tigo—although Yuhara's interactions with these people had not been especially deep, after Tigo, he felt that his connection with this world had been cleared once again.

Everything seemed to have returned to the moment he first awoke in the dungeon. Yuhara felt somewhat desolate and bereft.

People acted loyally toward their own emotions. Perhaps for precisely that reason, he had been especially unwilling to let Tigo die.

Since he did not know whether Yagura had left, Yuhara's current position remained extremely dangerous. Under normal circumstances, he should have left as quickly as possible. Yet at this moment, he stood motionless where he was...

Since all his connections had been severed, Yuhara began to consider whether he should still return to Konoha.

He soon figured out the answer.

How had Jian Dong died? And why had Tigo encountered something like this?

Were lives divided into noble and lowly, and personalities into high and low?

Why had they assigned the squad a captain who lacked even basic tactical competence?

Who was wrong, and who was blameless? Who had taken responsibility and made a contribution? Who had betrayed the trust placed in them?

After figuring out these questions, Yuhara naturally made his decision... He would return to Konoha.

Because he seemed to have finally understood what he was supposed to do.

After making that decision, Yuhara did not leave immediately.

Before returning, he still needed to recover as many of his teammates' bodies as possible... Of course, he also needed to destroy the captain's corpse.

This was not to vent his anger. It was simply because the captain's method of death and the wounds left on his body were completely different from everyone else's, making it easy for people to notice that something was wrong.

Therefore, he could not leave behind any loose ends.