29: Sudden Rain

The battle plan had been finalized.

All that remained was patience, caution, and the resolve to see it through!

Fortunately, Soji had no shortage of those rare qualities...

Though still young, he didn't lose his composure under the weight of his responsibility. Instead, he handled his subtle shifts in emotion with remarkable precision.

At least to outsiders who didn't know the truth, Yamada Soji seemed like nothing more than a kid on his first mission, trying too hard to act mature while keeping his nerves wound tight all day.

He kept to his usual routine, taking his turn on watch and talking with the fellow medics at the camp...

Most importantly, as before, he left the center of camp in the middle of the night to work on the still-unfinished ninjutsu.

This small detail gave Yamada Soji a stretch of time alone each day that the others didn't have. It also objectively gave enemies intent on intercepting the support convoy a chance to strike!

After all, from the attackers' perspective, this was not only a perfect opportunity to silence him and weaken the guards, but also an ideal opening to use the Transformation Technique to impersonate him and undermine the Konoha Ninja defenses from within!

As long as they acted quickly and kept the noise to a minimum, the temporary infiltrator taking Soji's place could serve as a guide for the operation. Before the fighting began, they could eliminate the shadow secret-technique user they feared most, greatly reducing the pressure on their frontal assault.

So, after a brief planning meeting, the Waterfall Ninja assassins who had arrived later to carry out the mission reached an agreement the day after the battle began. They drew up a careful plan for the raid that night.

"Squads Two and Three will join me in ambushing the camp's perimeter and keeping a constant watch on the Konoha Ninja's movements.

"Squads Four and Five will be our main assault force. Wait for the order at a concealed position.

"As for Squad One..."

The Waterfall Ninja with matte-black earrings outlined a simple map on the ground with a twig as he assigned the tasks.

When he got to Squad One, he looked across at his companion, whose entire body was hidden beneath a loose black cloak, and gave his instructions in a solemn tone. "Noguchi will handle the kid who keeps leaving camp. Make it quick and make it count. Don't give him a chance to call for help."

"Can I use that?" the cloaked man, Noguchi, didn't answer his leader's order. Instead, he asked an abrupt question.

At that very moment, his arms began to writhe strangely beneath the cloak...

Twisted, winding lines appeared beneath the black fabric, as though what lay beneath wasn't human muscle and bone, but some kind of terrifying creature living inside him.

"According to our informants, the kid's practice sessions are fairly regular, and the overall situation is in our favor. So as long as you can make sure the Konoha Ninja in the camp don't notice anything unusual, you're free to use any means necessary."

"Understood. No objections." The cloaked man gave a slight nod, and the outlines of his arms returned to normal.

The earring-wearing leader nodded to himself, then turned his attention to the others.

"Does everyone understand the assignments?"

"Yes!"

"Good. Get ready. Dismissed!"

More than twenty Waterfall Ninja assassins scattered through the dense woods, each heading to the post assigned by their leader.

They waited until dusk, when the Konoha Frontline Support Battalion had set up camp again, before finally launching their operation after a long stretch in hiding.

The surveillance squad, led by the leader himself, had identified every sentry's position!

The assault squad, ready to launch a direct attack, had also reached its designated position!

At the same time, Yamada Soji, completely unaware of the danger, left camp as usual and began working on his ninjutsu for the day.

--Konoha Ninja Village's reputation from the First Shinobi World War had yet to fade completely. Still shaken by it, the Waterfall Ninja didn't attack as soon as Soji appeared.

To be safe, Noguchi's squad stayed hidden and waited for their target to exhaust all the chakra in his body during practice. Then they would strike with all their strength and take him down!

Of course, the self-proclaimed mantises hadn't realized that the shadow lurking in the dark had already revealed their every move to the oriole.

...Yamada-kun, who had received an advance warning, calmly changed up his training routine for the day.

He stopped stubbornly struggling with a tree branch. Instead, without drawing attention, he undid the fastener on the back of his tactical glove and gradually scattered the Glass Fiber he'd prepared in advance.

On a moonless night, these tiny, needle-like objects were almost impossible to see with the naked eye and even harder to defend against. The Waterfall Ninja lying in wait had also received no information about Soji's bloodline ability.

So they watched the boy "clumsily" gather chakra in his palm and repeatedly fire it outward, secretly laughing at how he couldn't even manage the most basic chakra-transformation process.

"Noguchi, should we strike early?"

"Wait."

The cloaked man instinctively sensed that something was off.

But how could he have guessed that, with the help of the Superman Drug, Soji had made a breakthrough on the very night Motochika-sensei's "investment" arrived!

Not only had he quickly mastered the Extracorporeal Transformation Method invented by Second Hokage Tobirama Senju, but while the drug was still in effect, he'd also optimized the chakra flow throughout his body's network of pathways!

The knockoff Shinra Tensei still fell far short of the original in power, but combined with the bloodline secret technique the boy had developed earlier, it greatly expanded his otherwise meager arsenal.

Especially in a situation like today's, where he could prepare the battlefield in advance, Soji could make the most of his strengths and avoid his weaknesses, pushing his talent for planning and calculation to the limit while compensating for his poor ability to adapt on the fly!

--Enhanced by the Extracorporeal Transformation Method, Accio's control over the Glass Fiber and its range had both increased dramatically.

In turn, the Rain Woman's Heart Technique's ability to pierce defenses and inflict damage had also improved at once.

Soji had accordingly modified the way he scattered his ninja tools, sacrificing attack density to further enhance the technique's stealth.

Under the hazy night sky, countless strands of Glass Wire, finer than human hair, spread outward from Soji, soon enveloping the entire stretch of woods where Noguchi's squad lay in wait...

The inconspicuous killers no longer limited themselves to piercing the relatively thin skin on their wrists, fingertips, and underarms. Instead, the strands crept into their noses and mouths, the corners of their eyes, and every other part left exposed by their gear.

Thanks to the way they made contact with their targets, far fewer strands were needed than in the original Rain Woman's Heart Technique. Not one of the Waterfall Ninja assassins, braced for battle, sensed anything amiss.

And so the tiny reapers seeped in, little by little.

Only when Soji crossed his palms and leisurely formed the "Goat" seal did the killing intent, held back until then, suddenly rip through its gentle disguise and reveal its cruel, merciless nature!

...A string of nauseating "pfft, pfft" sounds rang out as the tiny amounts of Glass Fiber inside the targets began to tear through the assassins' bodies from the inside out!

"How could this..."

"It hurts! It hurts!"

"Help... help me..."

Within seconds of the technique taking effect, their hearts, livers, spleens, and lungs had been pierced through one after another...

Wounds that could neither be prevented nor healed spread through vital parts of their bodies...

The panicked Waterfall Ninja first vomited torrents of blood! Then they began to resemble burst blood-filled balloons, their entire bodies shrinking before their eyes!

Beneath their feet, bright red blood mixed with bits of tissue and pooled into shallow "puddles." It dripped through the tree branches, like an unexpected autumn rain, making anyone who saw it break out in goosebumps and shudder with dread.

"Secret Technique: Rain Woman's Heart — Sudden Rain."