Desperation could turn a man into a beast. When the sheer cliff behind him sealed off his last escape route, when the endless thick fog robbed him of his senses, the last shred of reason Captain Hozuki possessed as an elite chūnin was finally consumed by the blazing flames of fear.
His lone scarlet eye reflected the boiling mist, madness burning in it—a willingness to perish together with his enemy. He abandoned all defense, letting the icy water around his feet soak his wounds, while his hands formed seals at incredible speed in a strange, twisted manner.
"Fire Release..."
The sound forced from his throat was as hoarse as two rusted iron plates scraping together. An aura more savage, hotter, and more ominous than his earlier Flame Wave Burning Kill erupted from within him!
"Glug... glug..."
The water around his feet began to bubble violently and boil. The intense heat warped the dense fog into swirling waves, forming a small vacuum around him. His tattered shinobi uniform fluttered despite the still air, and his skin had even turned an unnatural crimson from the excessive concentration of chakra.
He was burning through his life!
He would use the last of his chakra to unleash a forbidden technique powerful enough to blow the entire antechamber sky-high, reducing that brat hiding in the shadows, the accursed fog, and the damned ice wall to ashes!
On the other side of the fog, Mizuki Han narrowed his eyes slightly. He could clearly feel the terrifying heat rushing toward him, hot enough to set the air itself ablaze. He didn't even need to look. The changing temperature of the water beneath his feet told him what a horrifying technique his opponent was preparing.
Stand and take it head-on? Only an idiot would consider that.
His body was utterly drained from overusing chakra. Even maintaining a basic Ice Release defense was becoming difficult.
But not a trace of panic showed on his face. His eyes still shone brilliantly through the fog, cold and calculating with machine-like precision.
From the moment he had decided to play along and create this thick fog, he had anticipated this very outcome. An enemy driven into a corner would often choose the most extreme way to fight back. And Han excelled at cutting away the last lifeline his enemies thought they had grasped.
Captain Hozuki was on his final hand seal.
"...Great Fire Annihilation..."
Just as he was about to roar out the name of that destructive technique, Mizuki Han moved.
He didn't form any seals or shift position. He merely curled inward the five pale fingers of his right hand, which had remained steadily submerged in the water, as gently as if he were playing a piano.
It was an almost imperceptible movement.
Yet it was like striking the first note on Death's musical score.
"Snick!"
A faint, nearly inaudible twang came from Captain Hozuki's ankle.
The nearly transparent strand of ice he had stepped on during his earlier charge snapped taut!
Captain Hozuki's body, channeling chakra throughout, jerked to a halt. He instinctively looked down, but all he saw was a barely perceptible line of blood on his ankle.
Without him noticing, that strand of ice, finer than a hair, had wound around both his legs!
For an elite chūnin, such a trivial restraint should have snapped with a single tug. But with his entire focus on activating the forbidden technique, that tenth of a second of hesitation became the last straw.
His chakra flow faltered for an instant!
"Damn it!"
Alarm bells blared in Captain Hozuki's mind, but it was already too late.
Mizuki Han's curled finger didn't stop.
The first strand of ice tightening was only a signal—the signal that set off a chain of death.
"Snick! Snick! Snick! Snick!"
In an instant, countless strands of ice, some visible and some not, shot out of the murky water from every direction! Like perfectly aimed snares, they wrapped around Captain Hozuki's limbs, waist, abdomen, and neck!
These were all part of the web of death Mizuki Han had woven anew under cover of the fog!
The forbidden technique Captain Hozuki had nearly completed was forcibly interrupted by the sudden restraints closing in from all sides!
His frenzied chakra spiraled out of control and rampaged through his body. His throat tightened, and a mouthful of scalding blood burst out uncontrollably.
"Argh—!"
He let out an enraged, defiant roar and tried to tear free of the accursed threads by sheer force.
But these ice strands hadn't been set off to restrain him.
They were meant to... set off an explosion!
At the ends of the ice strands were more than a dozen Explosive Tags Mizuki Han had gathered from the weapon racks earlier! Cleverly wrapped in waterproof oilpaper, they had been hidden beneath the water, in cracks in the walls, and even in fissures in the ceiling!
"Boom—!!"
The first Explosive Tag detonated beneath Captain Hozuki's feet!
Orange-red flames tore through a corner of the fog. The violent shock wave, mixed with boiling water, slammed into his legs. The armor there shattered, leaving his flesh mangled.
But that was only the beginning.
Like firecrackers being lit, a chain of deadly explosions rang out in this cage sealed by ice walls, playing a symphony of death!
"Boom! Boom! KABOOM—!!"
The second and third Explosive Tags detonated simultaneously on either side of him. The blasts hurled his entire body into the air!
Then came the fourth, fifth, and sixth... The Explosive Tags placed on the walls and ceiling formed a three-dimensional crossfire, leaving him no place to escape!
The explosions deafened him. Flames and fog mingled as the entire antechamber shook violently. Rubble and molten chunks of metal rained down from the ceiling.
Captain Hozuki was like a rag doll tossed into a washing machine, flung about by the unending blasts as every inch of his body took a devastating beating.
His armor shattered piece by piece, shock waves tore his flesh, and the violent impacts broke his bones.
Even the scarlet gem he had prided himself on, the eye that could see through illusions, was struck by shrapnel in a powerful explosion. It shattered with a sharp crack, spilling dark red blood.
His consciousness gradually faded amid the pain and thunderous blasts.
His all-consuming rage, the pride he'd held as an elite chūnin, his mad determination to take his enemy down with him... In the face of this overwhelming, icy, utterly unreasonable barrage of firepower, they were blasted to pieces and wiped away.
"Thud."
When the last echo of the explosions died away, Captain Hozuki's charred body slammed back into the water, splashing up a murky spray mixed with blood.
He had lost.
He had lost completely, and humiliatingly.
He hadn't even seen his enemy's face before exhausting every last bit of his strength and dignity in the trap his opponent had carefully laid.
The fog began to thin.
Mizuki Han's figure emerged from behind a toppled weapon rack. His face was pale, and his breathing slightly labored. Clearly, manipulating such a precise trap had taken a tremendous toll on his mental energy.
Step by step, he approached the body twitching faintly in the water.
Captain Hozuki wasn't dead yet.
Relying on the formidable vitality of an elite chūnin, he had managed to survive the whole chain of explosions.
He struggled to lift his head. On his bloodied, mangled face, only one empty, bleeding eye socket remained, staring fixedly in Han's direction.
"Hrgh... hrgh..."
He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but his lungs had been blasted through. All he could manage was the wheezing sound of a broken bellows.
Suddenly, he braced his still-functioning arm against the ground and leaped out of the water, as if granted a brief second wind! A bloodstained kunai had somehow appeared in his hand. With the last of his strength, he thrust it toward Mizuki Han's heart!
It was his final counterattack, and the most instinctive one!
Facing this dying but still lethal strike, Mizuki Han's expression didn't waver in the slightest.
He didn't even take half a step back.
The instant the kunai was about to touch his chest, he raised his right hand with lightning speed.
He, too, held a kunai.
But this one was different.
It was made entirely of ice, crystal-clear, yet at its core glimmered a deep, chilling blue. Longer and slimmer than a standard kunai, its edge was so sharp it seemed capable of slicing through light itself.
It was a weapon of Han's own design, created after the system analyzed the construction of ninja tools and he adapted it to the properties of his Ice Release.
The Frozen Kunai.
"Whoosh!"
Without the slightest hesitation, Mizuki Han flicked his wrist. The Frozen Kunai left his hand and shot forward in a blur of deep blue, striking before Captain Hozuki's attack could land!
It didn't try to deflect the kunai Captain Hozuki thrust at him. Instead, it came in at an impossibly tricky angle and plunged precisely into the battered space between Captain Hozuki's chest and abdomen.
"Squish."
The sound of a blade sinking into flesh was faint and dull.
Captain Hozuki's lunging body jerked to a stop.
The kunai he had thrust forward halted less than a centimeter from Mizuki Han's chest.
He lowered his head, staring in disbelief at the ice kunai embedded in his abdomen, emanating a bone-chilling cold.
There was no sharp pain.
Only an extreme cold that sank to the bone, spreading rapidly from the wound.
"This... is..."
Before he could finish, something changed!
The moment the Frozen Kunai pierced him and touched his scalding organs and blood, the point of deep blue at its core suddenly burst open!
It didn't explode. Instead, it... melted!
In defiance of all reason, it instantly changed from a solid object to a primal, freezing liquid!
But during that momentary change of state, countless ice crystals, finer than pinheads and invisible to the naked eye, swept along with his bloodstream toward his internal organs like billions of ravenous piranhas!
His liver, spleen, lungs, heart...
Every soft organ keeping him alive was mercilessly torn, sliced, and pulverized from within by the surge of ice crystals!
Captain Hozuki's body convulsed violently. His pupils dilated to their limits from the incomprehensible agony coming from inside him. His mouth gaped, but he couldn't even manage a scream.
He could feel it clearly: his life was being cruelly "eaten away," bit by bit, from within.
"Plop."
The kunai slipped from his hand and hit the ground. The once formidable body finally lost all support and toppled backward, splashing water everywhere.
The last of his life was extinguished.
Mizuki Han watched it all impassively and slowly lowered his hand.
A flawless killing blow.
This was the first "gift" he had prepared for this blood-soaked world.
The battle was over.
Mizuki Han's gaze passed over the corpse slowly growing cold, crossed the wreckage of the battlefield, and finally settled on the heavy steel door, which had been pushed slightly ajar by the explosions.
Beyond it lay a deep darkness that seemed capable of swallowing every trace of light.
A heavy smell of gunpowder and metal lubricant drifted through the crack in the door.
The Armory doors had opened for him.
Just how much loot inside could ease his Firepower Deficiency Phobia?
Before you continue