Not Worthy of My Efforts This Journey

On the battlefield, Tsunade scanned her surroundings, her expression grave.

The three hundred ninjas she had brought had been halved in a short time, with fewer than two hundred remaining.

"Orochimaru! Jiraiya! We must stop that Salamander!"

Tsunade pointed toward the summoning beast behind the Rain Ninja lines.

The Salamander tilted its head back, spewing a toxic mist from its mouth that crept along the ground.

The Rain Ninja all wore specialized gas masks, while the Konoha ninjas had to contend not only with the enemy but also with the increasingly dense poison fog covering the battlefield.

Within the mist, the movements of the Konoha ninjas grew sluggish, allowing the Rain Ninja to strike them down, leaving many severely wounded or dying.

Jiraiya said, "The casualty rate is too high. In another ten minutes, the Konoha forces might be wiped out entirely."

Orochimaru frowned as he looked at Hanzo, who stood atop the Salamander.

He knew they needed to deal with the Salamander first, but Hanzo stood like a mountain, blocking the path of the three of them.

Orochimaru said, "Use your respective giant summons! We will break through the Rain Ninja formation in one go and confront Hanzo directly!"

"Summoning Technique!"

Manda, Gamabunta, and Katsuyu, three giant summoning beasts, appeared on the battlefield.

Gamabunta's voice boomed like a great bell as he complained, "What a waste of a pipe of tobacco. Jiraiya, why did you summon me into this downpour?"

Their massive size alone served as a top-tier weapon of war, crushing the Rain Ninja before them.

However, Hanzo did not care in the slightest about the deaths of his subordinates.

They were merely wandering ninjas he had recruited.

The world was cruel; a child in some village of some small nation might hear tales of ninjas and fantasize about being the protagonist, exhausting every effort to master chakra and learn ninjutsu.

Yet, mastering chakra was only the beginning.

Talent, ninjutsu, secret arts, and experience—any one of these could become an insurmountable barrier on a young person's path.

After wasting a decade, if he finally learned a single Earth Style technique, he would find that he could only ever be a wandering ninja.

The ninjas of the Five Great Hidden Villages were few, but the youths in the Five Great Nations harboring dreams of becoming ninjas were as numerous as the hairs on an ox.

Hanzo only needed to put his name out there to recruit a constant stream of cannon fodder.

The quality of the Amegakure ninjas was not high, but their sheer numbers were the capital he used to strive for the status of the Sixth Great Hidden Village.

A young man named Wuliu was one such wandering ninja recruited by Hanzo. He had a growth on his head; if not for that, his features would have been quite handsome.

He hailed from the remote Land of Bears. After discovering the technique to focus chakra into his feet, he used it to travel, setting out from the Land of Bears, crossing the Land of Earth, and joining Amegakure.

When he first arrived in Amegakure and saw Hanzo in action, he had been puzzled. Why was Lord Hanzo called a "demigod"? It was too modest; Lord Hanzo was clearly a god.

At this moment, seeing a fifty-meter-tall toad leap over his head, Wuliu felt there were truly many gods in the ninja world.

How could there be such a giant toad?

Moreover, this toad was cursing, its voice booming like a bell as it complained about the "stupid Jiraiya."

The giant toad crashed down behind him, shaking the earth. Wuliu looked back and saw the Salamander spewing a massive cloud of toxic smoke, after which Lord Hanzo and the Salamander vanished into the fog.

Searching all around, he discovered that Lord Hanzo and the Salamander had appeared behind the Konoha lines.

What a powerful Body Flicker Technique—to be able to teleport while carrying such a massive Salamander.

Lord Hanzo struck without hesitation, slaughtering the Konoha ninjas.

His sickle was the scythe of the Grim Reaper this night.

In just a short time, dozens of Konoha ninjas had died by the blade or the toxic mist.

The giant toad jumped through the air again, still cursing as it chased after Lord Hanzo.

Its voice was still like a booming bell, though this time it was complaining about its pipe being extinguished.

What a strange giant toad, still thinking about smoking at a time like this.

The battle was incredibly fierce, with ninjas from both sides falling in droves.

Half an hour later, only seventy or eighty Konoha ninjas remained. The Rain Ninja side didn't care about the losses; they were all just cannon fodder wandering ninjas anyway.

Wuliu was pleasantly surprised to see the Salamander defeat the giant toad, turning the red-skinned beast into white smoke.

He suddenly received an order from his captain to follow the main force and attack the Konoha medical station.

In the mission rankings of Amegakure, killing an enemy medical ninja was equivalent to wiping out an entire enemy squadron, earning at least an A-rank mission reward.

Wuliu followed his captain with excitement, rushing toward a location in the northwest of the rainforest.

However, a large group of Konoha ninjas charged out from the rainforest instead!

Some of these Konoha ninjas had pale, greenish faces, their poison not yet neutralized.

He hadn't expected the renowned Konoha ninjas to look so weak.

From the highest tree branch, Wuliu spotted a Konoha ninja with scarlet eyes.

It's an Uchiha!

Wuliu had long wanted to see exactly what made the Uchiha so formidable.

He hurled a kunai at the Uchiha ninja.

However, the kunai passed right through the Konoha Uchiha's body!

This... was his body fake? Was he made of air?

The next instant, a kunai was embedded in his throat, and he fell backward.

The intense pain jolted him out of the genjutsu, and only then did he see the Uchiha ninja on the tree trunk, having shifted two positions to hide partially behind the wood.

How bizarre and cunning...

It was pathetic that after setting out from the Land of Bears, trekking across the scorching earth of the Land of Earth, and enduring the ceaseless downpours of the Land of Rain to finally become a village ninja, he had met such a miserable end in his first battle, struck down by a mysterious kunai.

He raised his hand in despair, not knowing what he was pointing at.

He felt that the state of his death was unworthy of all the effort he had put into his journey.

Kawadera Uchiha, thinking the Rain Ninja still had the strength to resist, finished him off with three more kunai.

The thwip, thwip, thwip of blades entering flesh ensured the Rain Ninja was thoroughly dead.

Kawadera Uchiha felt a slight pang of annoyance; it was a waste, as the Rain Ninja had merely been experiencing a final surge of adrenaline and had no real ability to fight back.

He spoke to Tobirama Senju within his sea of consciousness:

"Second Hokage, look, Konoha is at a disadvantage; Tsunade and the other two cannot keep up with Hanzo's Body Flicker Technique. If I hadn't brought along wounded soldiers who had recovered some combat strength to act as a diversion on the battlefield, those three would have suffered a great loss."

In the distance, Hanzo turned his head and saw dozens of Konoha ninja suddenly appearing in the rainforest far across the plateau, assuming that Konoha reinforcements had arrived.

What a pity; he had wanted to play a bit longer with these Konoha geniuses, but now he had to cut it short.

"This battle, I fear, is a victory for your Hidden Leaf Village, so I shall spare you this time..."

Kawadera Uchiha hurriedly advised their captain, Mei Senju, to have everyone stay put and remain there to bluff.

If they were to charge down, it would be discovered that they were nothing but a ragtag group of wounded soldiers with no real combat power.

A Hyuga ninja nearby explained:

"Hanzo seems to be retreating! Could it be that he has also reached his limit!"

Only after Hanzo finished his performance, bestowed the title of Sannin upon Tsunade and the other two, and vanished using his Body Flicker Technique did Kawadera Uchiha say:

"Alright, our diversionary tactic was a success. Let's go rescue our Konoha comrades!"

In the sea of consciousness, Tobirama Senju said: "I had hoped to see you go head-to-head with the Rain Ninja, to fight Hanzo and assist Tsunade and the others. Your method is overly cunning; it is nothing more than a trick."

"Lord Second, you must be joking. Me, go fight Hanzo? Me, go help Tsunade and the others? You think too highly of me. Dragging wounded soldiers out to set up a decoy is already my limit; I don't have the strength to turn the tide of battle."

Tobirama Senju said nothing more and granted Kawadera Uchiha an A-rank mission reward: one instance of Mind Awakening.

Kawadera Uchiha's [Genjutsu] stat rose from 8.1 to 8.2.

Not bad at all.

He wondered how much his ocular power needed to rise before his eyes would evolve into the Three Tomoe.