The Most Powerful Ninjutsu

Ever since the day he entered the Ninja Academy, Soji had reminded himself of this again and again.

As a special combat unit that wielded the full might of nature, a ninja could inflict far more damage than they could withstand.

Even Senju Hashirama, the "God of Shinobi" whose name was passed down from generation to generation, couldn't fully withstand the damage dealt by an opponent of equal strength. And if he couldn't, what hope was there for Uchiha Izuna, killed by the Flying Thunder God Slash, or the Second Hokage, Tobirama, ambushed by Kinkaku and Ginkaku...

Even these great figures, who commanded world-shaping power, could meet their ends through schemes and machinations. Ordinary ninjas, needless to say, were even more vulnerable.

As long as their bodies remained carbon-based life forms made up of 206 bones and 639 muscles, and as long as they couldn't escape an energy-conversion process so heavily dependent on mitochondria, they were nothing more than ordinary flesh and blood.

Even the Sannin Orochimaru, who had mastered the most advanced secrets!

No matter how many skills or tricks he had, if his opponent prepared well in advance, a gap in intelligence-gathering could still cost him everything he'd built, leaving it all to be buried beneath the Sword of Totsuka...

To solve this predicament of "high attack, paper-thin defense," Soji could think of only two solutions.

The first was simply to stay off the front lines!

Clay pots were bound to break near the well; generals were bound to fall on the battlefield.

Years of war had engraved this unbreakable truth into the minds of every village's leaders!

The Kage, famed as the strongest person in their village, was indeed a key force capable of swaying the course of a battle. But if they really led every charge and rushed to the front, they would be handing their greatest weakness to the enemy!

In other words, if Soji could climb high enough, Konoha would naturally avoid sending him off as cannon fodder or using him to fill the front line, all for the sake of maximizing its interests. That would leave the enemy no chance to scheme against him!

...But for an ordinary Ninja Academy graduate from a civilian background, with no connections, that path was far too distant. It wasn't something he could realistically pursue in the near future.

So he eventually compromised and chose the more complicated "secret-keeper" plan instead.

—Since completing the Rain Woman's Heart Technique, Soji had used it in actual combat only a handful of times.

Even when circumstances left him no choice, he did his best to avoid revealing the technique's specific effects in front of others.

Even during his brief clash with Motochika-sensei, Soji had restrained the effects of Rain Woman's Heart in various ways, deliberately leaving behind all sorts of "smoke screens."

This had nothing to do with whether he trusted his teammates. It was simply a matter of respecting the science of intelligence and preventing leaks at their source.

After all, no one could guarantee that his teammates on Team Five wouldn't run into trouble on the battlefield, let alone that the enemy's intelligence division wouldn't use special interrogation methods on the bodies of captured prisoners.

...And from the other side of the equation, that was why, if Soji ever used the Rain Woman's Heart Technique in actual combat, he had to do everything possible to eliminate all survivors!

Like these Waterfall Ninja lying in ambush in the forest.

With every advantage on his side, Soji could easily have wounded them without killing them and brought them back to camp alive, expanding the Frontline Support Battalion's sources of intelligence.

Yet in actual combat, the boy had unhesitatingly pushed his newly mastered technique to its limit, determined to kill every last person who experienced one of his new ninjutsu!

Only then would the weaknesses and limitations of "Sudden Rain" remain forever shrouded in mystery...

And any analysis of his own bloodline ability would remain nothing more than unverified speculation...

Even Soji himself hadn't expected that his innate caution would prove useful in other, entirely unforeseen ways against the Waterfall Ninja assassins who'd set this trap for him tonight!

—Amid the steady patter of bloody rain, a "corpse" noticeably bulkier than the others fell with a thud after the Rain Woman's Heart Technique took effect, crashing into the bushes near the base of a zelkova tree.

But as the black robe used to conceal his figure was flung aside by the force of his fall, Noguchi, the jōnin in charge of the attempted massacre, finally revealed his "true form."

Though the Glass Fiber had wreaked terrible damage on his torso, just as it had on the other victims, what now thrust through his skin wasn't a tangle of bloodied white bones...

Instead, a row of black, brush-like threads burst out. In a matter of moments, they twisted and swelled, forming a mass of long, horrifying tentacles!

Those skin-crawlingly strange threads had replaced most of his organs and bones, crudely stitching his human skin back together, though it had been torn into many pieces.

Where his arms should have been, there were now only tangled skeins of thread, leaving him a grotesque, unrecognizable monstrosity...

Soji hadn't expected to run into a monster like this.

But the memories he'd inherited from his previous life let him quickly figure out what he was dealing with.

—Though it was nowhere near as complete as the Earth Grudge Fear used by Kakuzu after he joined the Akatsuki, this assassin from Takigakure was clearly using the body-modification secret art passed down from the Warring States era... Earth Grudge Fear!

That was the only way to explain how he'd survived some of the "true damage" inflicted from the inside out by "Sudden Rain," and even managed to keep fighting after his organs were destroyed!

...Fortunately, though things had taken an unexpected turn, this bait operation had been carefully planned by Konoha, unlike the frantic emergency that had erupted when they'd suddenly received a distress signal earlier.

Thanks to that, Soji, who knew full well he wasn't good at adapting on the fly, had made all his preparations well before the "duel" began!

Watching the Waterfall Ninja prop himself up with his black tentacles, the boy didn't flee in panic. Instead, he raised both hands and pointed toward his enemy.

He gathered half of the chakra he had left into his palms, preparing to imbue the Rain Woman's Heart Technique with another transformation on a scale he'd never attempted before.

The Glass Fiber scattered throughout the forest also answered the magic's call, stirring and rising into the air!

But before the boy could launch his second attack, a blurry-edged shadow suddenly emerged from the body of the Waterfall Ninja using Earth Grudge Fear...

Unlike the shadow techniques favored by Nara Motonari,

the mysterious man who had been acting as a messenger and carrying messages to Director Inoue seemed, as he detached himself from Noguchi, more like a parasite caught somewhere between the real and the unreal!

That let him remain closely connected to the Waterfall Ninja transformed by Earth Grudge Fear, while completely ignoring the black tentacles' attempts to pierce and grab him!

...Having just barely escaped death, with Soji having destroyed one of his hearts, Noguchi was utterly helpless against this elusive killer!

As the man gradually pulled himself free of the body woven by Earth Grudge Fear, the Waterfall Ninja's burly form visibly aged, rotted, and lost its vitality.

Only when the mysterious man's form had become almost complete did Noguchi, the jōnin who hadn't fired a single shot throughout the entire ordeal, finally turn into a cold corpse after suffering one ambush after another...

"He won't wake up again, will he?"

"No."

"Good..."

Soji let out a sigh of relief.

Looking at the hapless lot strewn across the ground before him, he once again reaffirmed his original belief.

—The most powerful ninjutsu in the world was called a sneak attack!