Their numbers melted away like snow beneath the sun.
From more than two hundred, to one hundred, then to fifty...
Their room to maneuver kept shrinking, and the survivors were gradually driven toward the command post at the center of the mountain fortress.
Everyone was wounded, their chakra nearly depleted. Even maintaining the basic Substitution Technique had become difficult.
Their Ninja Blades were chipped, their kunai spent. Many had no choice but to pick up stones from the ground as weapons.
Mimura Yome's hair was disheveled, and she breathed like a broken bellows.
Her delicate face was smeared with blood, dust, and sweat. The wound in her left shoulder had split open again from the relentless fighting, and blood kept seeping out, staining her green flak jacket a deep brown.
Her chakra had long since run dry. Even casting the most basic genjutsu brought on a wave of violent dizziness.
She looked at the few subordinates left by her side—fewer than thirty, almost all of them wounded and leaning on one another—as they retreated to this final fortress, a three-story stone command post.
The building was already in ruins, its walls riddled with cracks and holes, as if it might collapse at any moment.
They flooded inside and used the remaining chunks of stone to block the doors and windows, forming their last line of defense.
Outside stood ranks upon ranks of Iwagakure Ninja, silent and brimming with killing intent. They were like a closing fist of stone, sealing off every possible escape.
The heavy footsteps and scraping stone drew closer. The shadow of death hung so thickly that it seemed almost tangible.
Kitsuchi's towering, mountain-like figure emerged at the front of the encirclement, passing through the smoke and rubble.
His gaze calmly swept over the tottering building and the