The rain in the Land of Grass was not as endless and gloomy as the rain in the Land of Rain, nor did it nourish all things in silence like the rain in the Land of Fire. It merely churned up the rotten mud on the ground, turning the roads slick and sticky.
"The twelfth."
Kitsuchi pulled his heavy stone bracer from the mud, dragging up a splash of murky sludge. Expressionless, he looked down at the corpse beneath his feet—a boy who looked no older than fourteen, his hand still clamped tightly around a crudely made yet terrifyingly lethal Defender rifle.
A stone spike had pierced the boy's chest, yet his ash-gray eyes remained wide open. There was even a strange, mocking curve at the corner of his lips.
That look sent a chill seeping from the cracks of Kitsuchi's bones, despite him being a battle-hardened Jonin squad captain of Iwagakure.
"Captain, enemy forces spotted two kilometers ahead. They're... civilians armed with weapons." An Iwagakure Chunin appeared atop a tree trunk in a blur, his voice thick with barely concealed exhaustion and agitation. "Around three hundred of them. They've taken the high ground and are building machine-gun positions."
"Civilians? Machine-gun positions?" Kitsuchi turned the words over in his mind.
Once, shinobi had ruled the battlefield. Civilians were livestock to be protected—or weeds that could be harvested at will.
But now, the weeds had grown fangs.
"Advance with Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall. Watch out for those exploding bullets," Kitsuchi ordered in a low voice. "Don't get bogged down. Our objective is to eliminate the rebel leader called Liao."
"But, Captain..." The Chunin hesitated, glancing at his mud-covered comrades. "The brothers have burned through too much chakra. These lunatics won't fight us head-on. They fire one shot, then move somewhere else.