The shrill alarm tore through every nerve ending in the underground base like countless red-hot needles.
It was a scream powerful enough to make the soul tremble, mixed with the piercing whine of chakra circuits overloading after the seal was forcibly broken.
"Boom—!"
The granite foundation burst apart with a crash, the heaviest drumbeat in this symphony of death.
Outside the corridor, the two elite Chunin stood like statues. At that moment, the pale masks on their faces seemed to come alive, twisting with utter shock and fury. Their bodies reacted faster than their minds. Their chakra erupted like a volcano, surging from beneath their feet as they became two blurred streaks and charged recklessly toward the gaping steel doors!
Chaos was the perfect cover.
The instant their fury left them distracted and all their attention fixed on the damaged doors, a deeper shadow quietly slipped out of a drainage channel in the corridor corner.
Mizuki Han moved without making a sound or splashing a drop of water. Like a ghost born of darkness and filth, he used the gusts stirred up by the two Chunin's charge as cover. With an eerie, almost ground-hugging glide, he slipped inside just before the heavy steel doors closed completely.
Almost the moment he entered, a pair of scarlet eyes blazed in the darkness beyond the doors!
A surge of chakra far more focused and colder than that of the two Chunin outside crashed forward like an invisible wave from the depths of the sea!
"Intruders die!"
A hoarse, low voice, like metal scraping against metal, rang out from the depths of the darkness.
"Thud! Thud!"
Two muffled impacts rang out. The two elite Chunin had just reached the doors when they struck an invisible wall and were forced back several steps by the sheer wave of chakra!
"Captain Hozuki!" One of the Chunin steadied himself and dropped to one knee, facing the darkness beyond the doors. His voice was full of fear and shame.
The doors did not close.
The unfathomable darkness slowly receded.
Mizuki Han held his breath and curled his whole body into the shadow cast by a huge weapon rack. Only one eye showed as he stared intently at what lay beyond the doors.
This was the outer section of the Armory, a vast circular antechamber. Its ceiling soared overhead, and rows of uniform steel weapon racks stood in neat lines, loaded with kunai, shuriken, and standard short swords. The air carried the cold scent of oil and metal.
At the very center of the antechamber, a man sat cross-legged on a seat carved from black basalt.
He wore a Mist Anbu uniform, but no mask. His weather-beaten face was marked with countless tiny scars. He looked about thirty-five or thirty-six. His eyes were shut, but a ruby the size of a pigeon's egg was embedded in the center of his brow, glowing scarlet.
Those inhuman eyes came from that ruby!
He was Captain Hozuki, the man the two elite Chunin had addressed—the guardian of the Armory's core section. A genuine elite Chunin, and one of the very best among them!
"The seal's foundation was split from within by physical force. Such a method... I've never heard of it." Captain Hozuki did not open his eyes. The ruby in his brow flickered as if he had already seen through everything that had just happened. "The intruder is clever. He knows how to exploit loopholes in the rules. He's here."
His voice was not loud, but it carried clearly to everyone present—and to Mizuki Han.
Mizuki Han's heart clenched.
He had been discovered! No—not pinpointed. His opponent had analyzed the situation and concluded that he was somewhere in this area.
What a terrifying opponent! Calm, rational, skilled at analyzing information, and utterly confident in the territory he guarded.
At his words, the two Chunin who had been kneeling immediately rose and stood back-to-back. They drew their ninja blades and warily scanned every shadow around them.
"No need," Captain Hozuki said, stopping them. "He's cautious. He won't show himself without a sure advantage. You two, seal off the outer passages. From now on, don't let even a fly get in. Leave this to me."
"Yes!" The two Chunin dared not disobey. They immediately took their orders and left the antechamber, returning to guard the damaged doors.
The vast antechamber was left with only Mizuki Han and Captain Hozuki, still sitting cross-legged.
And the ruby that gleamed in the darkness like a demon's eye.
Time seemed to freeze.
Captain Hozuki did not move. He remained seated cross-legged, like a stone statue. But the aura he gave off was an invisible web covering the entire space. Any unusual chakra fluctuation or unnecessary sound would bring down a thunderous attack at once.
He was waiting.
Waiting for the clever intruder to make a mistake.
Mizuki Han did not move either. He was like a real stone, fused with the weapon rack's shadow. He forced his heartbeat as low as it would go, slowed the flow of his blood, and made his breathing almost imperceptible.
But his mind raced faster than ever before.
Charge in? His opponent was an elite Chunin with some kind of powerful sensory ability. In a direct fight, Mizuki Han had less than a one-in-ten chance.
Assassinate him? His opponent sat at the center, steady as a mountain, giving him no chance to get close.
This was a dead end, even more hopeless than when he had faced the two guards.
Mizuki Han's pathological persecutory delusion blared its warning. His soul shrieked and roared, urging him to flee at once.
But his perfect rationality kept that instinctive impulse firmly in check.
Flee? Where could he go? The seventy-hour death countdown still hung over him. This was his only hope.
If he couldn't win by force, he would have to use his wits.
Mizuki Han's gaze slowly swept across the antechamber. The layout here was much more complex than in the corridor outside. The rows of weapon racks formed natural visual barriers. The ceiling was packed with tangled ventilation ducts and support beams. A thin layer of frost covered the floor, the result of years of low temperatures.
All of it could be used.
A bold, meticulous plan, full of cold calculation, took shape in his mind like the blueprint of a finely engineered structure, line by line.
He was not going to look for a weakness in his enemy.
He would create a deadly stage full of weaknesses for him!
Slowly, he slipped his one good hand into a drainage groove beneath him.
The cold, faintly foul water covered his fingertips.
The performance began.
The next three hours were a long, agonizing dance on the edge of a blade for Mizuki Han.
Like a master watchmaker, he held his breath and focused every bit of his attention on precise chakra control.
The first hour.
He controlled streams of water finer than a strand of hair, silently weaving an enormous, nearly invisible web across the antechamber floor. It connected the base of every weapon rack to the shadows in every corner. Then he infused the streams with the nature transformation of Ice Release. The water instantly froze into threads of almost perfectly transparent ice.
These were his tripwires, and the nerve center of his traps.
The second hour.
He began laying his killing moves. Silently, he took dozens of the plainest, most ordinary shuriken from the weapon racks. Then he fixed them with ice threads in the blind spots among the ceiling pipes and beams, their blades all pointing down. The end of each shuriken was connected to the web of ice threads on the floor.
Next, he formed an extremely thin layer of ice with chakra across the ground in several key passages. It did not reflect light, but was extraordinarily slick. He cleverly covered it with dust to throw off his enemy's balance when he moved at high speed.
The third hour.
He began laying false trails. Using Ice Release, he created several ice mirrors in remote corners at tricky angles. They could reflect the distant lights and, from certain angles, produce blurred afterimages that vanished in an instant. They could also faintly reflect sounds, creating false impressions of where they came from.
Twelve traps.
One linked to the next, each ring closing around another.
From the ground to the air, from sight to sound, from physical restraints to psychological misdirection, they formed a complete and deadly chain of traps.
When he cautiously connected the last ice thread to the base of the weapon rack where he was hiding, Mizuki Han slowly let out a breath.
His forehead was covered in cold sweat, and his face had grown even paler from overusing his chakra.
But his eyes shone with startling brightness.
They were the eyes of a hunter who had everything under control.
Three hours had passed.
On the central stone seat, Captain Hozuki still had not moved, as if he had fallen asleep.
But the scarlet ruby embedded in his brow continued to pulse with a steady, eerie glow, proving that he had not let his guard down for even a moment.
He was an experienced hunter with endless patience.
Mizuki Han watched him, the corner of his mouth curving into a cold smile.
He knew ordinary bait would not work on an old fox like this.
He had to give him a reason he could neither refuse nor ignore—one that would make him rise from that perfectly safe stone seat.
The traps were laid. The deadly snare was ready.
How would this experienced Chunin be led, step by step, into the web of ice and death he had woven?
Before you continue