A Sight for Sore Eyes

Chiba quickly turned around and looked back warily.

Sure enough, it was Scarface. The guy still wasn't dead.

Scarface was in an appalling state. His abdomen had been sliced open down the middle, and all kinds of organs spilled out. Chiba could hardly believe anyone could survive injuries like that.

But the facts were the facts. The guy really was still alive.

Chiba tightened his grip on the Kunai, wondering whether the man still had any fight left in him.

As if he'd guessed what Chiba was thinking, Scarface casually tossed a Shuriken. It whizzed past Chiba's scalp.

With that simple gesture, Scarface made his point: I may be badly hurt, but killing you would still be no problem.

Chiba froze in place, not daring to move.

I'm done for!

That was Chiba's first thought.

He'd already killed Scarface's teammate, so there was no chance of making peace now. It looked like he was destined to die here today.

A deep sense of unwillingness rose in Chiba.

He didn't know why he'd gotten a second chance at life, but he'd cherished it from the bottom of his heart. Now, though, it seemed his life was about to end here.

Chiba thought of many things at once. Memories from the past and all kinds of strange, even bizarre, thoughts flashed through his mind. He didn't even know what he was thinking; images simply kept flickering past.

Seeing Chiba's vacant stare, Scarface suddenly burst out laughing.

"Now that's interesting. Did you get scared out of your wits?"

"Hm?"

Chiba snapped out of his thoughts and looked at Scarface in confusion.

Scarface shook his head gently. "Don't worry. I'm not going to kill you."

Chiba grew even more confused, but after a moment, that confusion turned to wariness.

The only reason this guy wouldn't kill him was that he had some use for him. Other than risking his life to search the body for medicine, Chiba couldn't think of anything else.

Chiba tentatively asked, "What do you want me to do? Do you want me to find medicine for you?"

Scarface shook his head. "There's no need. My injuries are beyond saving. I'm only still alive because my vital organs haven't been hit yet."

"Then what do you want me to do?" Chiba asked, even more confused.

Scarface shook his head again. "I don't need you to do anything for me. I just wanted to tell you that the way you were heading is a dead end."

"Hm?"

"That way leads to the heart of the battlefield. The farther in you go, the more dangerous it gets. There are traps and mechanisms everywhere. A hundred kids like you wouldn't be enough to die there."

Chiba fell silent. He couldn't see why Scarface would lie to him, but he also couldn't see why the man would help him.

"Why are you helping me?"

Scarface was silent for a moment. He didn't answer Chiba directly, only turning to look into the distance.

"Enough people have died in this war already."

A trace of sorrow unconsciously showed in Scarface's eyes.

A moment later, seeing Chiba's bewildered expression, Scarface smiled faintly. With the scar on his face, though, the smile looked especially menacing.

"You can just think of it as me taking a sudden liking to you and wanting you to live."

Scarface glanced back at Heichen's corpse, then continued, "I'm not planning to avenge him. Truth is, I never liked the guy much. If it weren't for orders from above, I wouldn't have wanted to work with him. Now that he's dead, there's no point in killing you, either. You're not a ninja, after all. When you get right down to it, we're the ones who wronged you by dragging you into this mess for no reason."

Chiba picked up on the key point in Scarface's words: he wasn't a ninja.

Because Chiba wasn't a ninja and had no chance of becoming one, Scarface had decided to let him go. He could never pose a threat to the Rock Ninja, so to Scarface, it made no difference whether he let him live.

Chiba bowed respectfully and sincerely thanked Scarface.

He might have looked fearsome, and he might have killed countless people, but at heart, he could still be called a good person.

In his previous life, Chiba had once heard this saying: the simplest way to tell whether someone was good or bad was to put them in a life-or-death situation and see how they acted before dying.

A bad person would try to drag as many people down with him as possible, using them as company on the way to the grave. A good person would choose to help others and let as many people as possible live.

By that measure, Scarface was unquestionably a good person. Thinking back on everything that had happened over the past few days, Chiba was certain of his judgment.

Scarface must have said he wanted to kill him at first because he knew Chiba was headed for a tragic end. That Venom Puppet Heichen had mentioned didn't sound like anything pleasant.

Scarface had also looked after him during their journey, even nearly falling out with the blond guy. They might have had their own issues, but Scarface had still saved him.

Chiba looked at Scarface with complicated feelings.

"Come here, kid."

Scarface called to him as he stood lost in thought.

Chiba hesitated, but still walked over. If Scarface wanted to hurt him, he wouldn't have needed to go to all this trouble.

Scarface grabbed Chiba's wrist and turned it over, then gave a low chuckle.

"Heh. Just as I thought."

Chiba clearly saw a faint black line running along his artery, and his face changed at once.

"What's this?"

"Heh, kid. Did you think killing a ninja was that easy? Heichen really couldn't fight back at the end, but that didn't mean he couldn't kill you. There was a small amount of poison in his blood. It might not do much to a ninja, but it's more than enough to kill you."

Chiba hadn't expected Heichen to have a trick like that up his sleeve. Thinking back, the guy had sprayed an awful lot of blood. There really were countless ways for a ninja to kill an ordinary person.

"Th-then what should I do?" Chiba asked in a panic, looking at Scarface with a pleading expression.

Scarface didn't let him down. He took a black pill from his ninja pouch and gestured for Chiba to swallow it.

Soon after taking the pill, Chiba watched the black line along his artery gradually fade until it disappeared.

"Thank you."

Chiba could only thank him again. He didn't know what else to say.

Scarface grinned, his expression still fearsome. "No need to thank me. I told you, I just took a liking to you."

As he spoke, Scarface picked up his ninja pouch and shook out everything inside with a few quick presses.

"There isn't much money here, but it should be enough to get you by for a while. And this steel wire—you might be able to catch some fish with it. This thing can start a fire. If you can't find clean water, use this gas mask to filter it."

In just a minute, Scarface gave Chiba a quick rundown of a whole pile of odds and ends.

"That's all I can do for you. Whether you make it out alive is up to your own luck."

Scarface pointed in a direction. "If you go that way, you should be able to get out of this forest before long. Follow the river and you should find a town. The smell of blood hasn't drawn any beasts or ninjas here yet, so hurry up and get out of here."

"You..."

Chiba looked at Scarface, whose face had already gone deathly pale, and hesitated.

"Why are you still standing there? Get lost. I might change my mind and decide to kill you after all."

Chiba gritted his teeth, thanked him once more, then picked up Scarface's ninja pouch and slung it over his waist. He turned and ran into the distance.

Chiba had gone a long way when he suddenly heard Scarface's voice behind him.

"Heh, stay alive, kid. Do whatever it takes to stay alive! Hahahaha!"

Chiba paused in surprise, then looked back toward where Scarface was and fell silent.

"Thank you."

He turned around and faced the dark forest, feeling lost.

This was his third day in this world. In that time, he'd been in mortal danger several times, witnessed a brutal battle between ninjas, and survived by sheer luck.

He'd even killed a Jonin who could be considered a top-tier fighter in the entire Ninja World.

What kind of fate awaited him next?

Staring into the dark forest, Chiba felt a strange, nameless fear.

Only one chapter today. I found parts of the chapters that follow unsatisfactory, so I need to revise them extensively.