Spoils Distribution

As he pulled one enemy into the earth, Chiba Shun appeared aboveground.

His hands flashed as he drew his blades, slashing left and right at two ninja who were about to cast jutsu.

With two clangs, the startled ninjutsu specialists immediately abandoned their techniques and quickly drew kunai to block Chiba Shun's twin blades.

But just as they breathed a sigh of relief, Chiba Shun swung one leg in an odd motion, and a third blade appeared, slashing at one of them.

At the same time, he tilted his head, sending the long blade clenched in his mouth flying straight at the other.

Two wet splatters rang out.

One of them had an arm cleanly severed by Chiba Shun.

The other avoided a fatal blow because Chiba Shun was still unfamiliar with his fourth blade, suffering only a cut across the chest.

In horror, the two retreated in opposite directions.

Chiba Shun did not pursue. He sheathed his blades, took a step forward, then thrust a blade straight behind him.

At the instant he struck, the taijutsu ninja whom he had trapped underground had just forcibly broken free of the chakra Chiba Shun had left in the earth and burst from below.

Yet the moment he surfaced, before he could understand what was happening, he was pierced by Chiba Shun's backstab.

Chiba Shun viciously twisted the long blade embedded in the taijutsu ninja's body, snuffing out his life.

This sudden change caused both sides, who had been locked in fierce combat, to pause.

Even the Kumogakure shinobi had not expected Chiba Shun to give them such a huge surprise.

With a single move, he had killed one person, severely wounded one, and lightly wounded another.

However, Chiba Shun's good fortune ended there.

A ninja who had been pressing a Kumogakure Jonin suddenly abandoned his opponent and cast a jutsu at Chiba Shun.

And at that moment, the Kumogakure side made a mistake.

The Jonin who had freed up his hands did not go restrain his former opponent. He chose to support the others instead.

In his view, Chiba Shun had eliminated a three-Chunin squad as soon as he entered the fight, so his strength was certainly not weak. Even if he could not defeat that Jonin, he should not be killed immediately.

The others, meanwhile, were already in grave danger.

No, several people had already died.

Thus, instead of supporting Chiba Shun, he chose to leave Chiba Shun alone against a Jonin.

A curse nearly slipped from Chiba Shun's mouth.

But at that moment, several water spheres were already hurtling toward him.

Chiba Shun could only dodge while retreating away from the main battle.

He had just completed a flanking maneuver and was now separated from Yozuki A and the others. Rejoining them meant crossing several enemies, which was simply unrealistic.

That Jonin had never expected a C-rank Jutsu to finish Chiba Shun.

He merely did not want Chiba Shun to continue attacking the others.

After Chiba Shun escaped the water spheres, the Jonin immediately began forming hand seals. This time, he formed quite a lot of them. He was clearly preparing something big.

The corner of Chiba Shun's mouth twitched at the sight, and he began forming hand seals as well.

Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet!

Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall!

The Jonin completed his seals first. A water dragon emerged just as Chiba Shun finished his own.

Clearly, his opponent's hand seals were even faster than Chiba Shun's.

Though he had finished first, the opponent had used an A-rank Jutsu, while Chiba Shun had used only a C-rank Jutsu.

Seeing Chiba Shun's Earth-Style Wall, strengthened though it was but still worryingly small, the Jonin sneered inwardly.

That kind of Earth-Style Wall thinks it can block my Water Dragon Bullet?

Naturally, Chiba Shun did not expect the Earth-Style Wall to stop the Water Dragon Bullet either.

In fact, the Earth-Style Wall did not even last a second.

The water dragon directly swept away Chiba Shun's Earth-Style Wall.

But... what was this?

The Jonin was somewhat stunned. He had never seen anyone deal with a water dragon attack like this before.

Normally, an Earth-Style Wall was firmly rooted in the ground. Otherwise, it would fall over with a push, and what use would it have?

But Chiba Shun had done the opposite. His Earth-Style Wall had no connection to the ground at all.

When the water dragon struck it, it was simply sent flying.

At this point, the Earth-Style Wall did not resemble a wall at all. It was more like a thickened slab of earth.

The water dragon pushed the earthen slab along, while Chiba Shun hid behind it.

The three shot rapidly into the distance like that.

The earthen slab had cracked, but it did not collapse outright. It had clearly absorbed most of the impact for Chiba Shun.

The Jonin finally reacted. His lips curled, and the next moment, the water dragon changed direction. It first carried the slab and Chiba Shun into the air for some distance, then plunged straight down toward the ground.

However, before the water dragon crashed into the ground, Chiba Shun kicked off the earthen slab and leaped away.

Boom! The water dragon slammed into the ground, blasting out a huge crater. The slab formed from the Earth-Style Wall shattered into chunks that flew everywhere, striking the nearby Chiba Shun hard enough to make him bare his teeth.

But those injuries were nothing. Chiba Shun had finally endured it.

The Jonin's expression changed slightly because he saw that Chiba Shun's hands had been forming seals the entire time!

Not good!

He rapidly formed seals and cast another Water Dragon Bullet!

It seemed that this B-rank Jutsu, Water Dragon Bullet, was likely his strongest move.

But he was still too late.

Chiba Shun had completed his seals the moment the Jonin began forming his own, and he sank into the ground before the Water Dragon Bullet could hit him.

Underground Movement was a jutsu Chiba Shun was very unfamiliar with, requiring twenty-five hand seals.

Under normal circumstances, Chiba Shun could not possibly use it in battle.

However, while he had been carried around by the water dragon, he had already been forming seals, so he still got ahead of the Jonin.

"Damn it!" Seeing the Water Dragon Bullet blast a huge crater in the ground without revealing any trace of Chiba Shun, the Jonin cursed.

Then he turned to look at the people still fighting fiercely, then at the ground.

Finally, he gritted his teeth and said, "Retreat!"

They still held the advantage, but Chiba Shun would certainly launch attacks from underground.

He had succeeded in a sneak attack once. No one could say whether he might succeed a second or third time.

Chiba Shun's performance just now clearly showed that he was a ninja skilled in tactics. Ninja who played tactics like that were the most troublesome!

He could not predict Chiba Shun's next move.

Moreover, Chiba Shun was one of the targets of this operation, likely the primary target.

If Chiba Shun escaped directly, then even if they killed everyone else, the mission would still be a failure.

Since that was the case, there was no need to keep taking losses.

The next moment, the group began withdrawing in an orderly fashion.

They held the advantage in battle, so their retreat was calm and unhurried.

The Chunin retreated first, while three Jonin slowly backed away under the harassment of Yozuki A and the others.

In the end, the two ninjutsu-specialist Jonin withdrew first, while the taijutsu Jonin who had been fighting Yozuki A stayed behind to cover them.

Only after confirming that Yozuki A and the others could not catch the rest did he break away from Yozuki A and begin to retreat.

Unwilling to let him leave, Yozuki A immediately pursued him.

The taijutsu Jonin chuckled, feinted, then leaped swiftly into the distance.

But at that moment, an earthen wall suddenly rose from the ground in his path.

Both the taijutsu Jonin and Yozuki A saw it.

Yozuki A had originally planned to give up, but his eyes lit up at the sight and he charged forward again.

The taijutsu Jonin, on the other hand, was completely dumbfounded.

Though he reacted quickly, the Earth-Style Wall still blocked him for a moment, causing his body to stall in midair for an instant.

Boom!

Yozuki A did not waste the opportunity Chiba Shun had created. With a savage charge, he slammed his entire body into the taijutsu Jonin. The two crashed together into the Earth-Style Wall, bringing it down at once.

Not far from the Earth-Style Wall, Chiba Shun poked out half his head. Seeing this, he sucked in a breath on behalf of the taijutsu Jonin, whose fate was unknown.

This scene left the ambushers, who had already withdrawn some distance, greatly alarmed.

They had not expected the strongest among them to fall just like that!

They involuntarily stopped, and some immediately suggested counterattacking.

But the Jonin who had attacked Chiba Shun with Water Dragon Bullet shook his head. "Retreat! We have no chance anymore!"

At that moment, the other surviving Kumogakure shinobi, who had not intended to pursue, hurried to Yozuki A's side as well.

After several breaths of standoff, the ambushers finally retreated.

On the Kumogakure side, after confirming that the enemies had left, two more people immediately collapsed onto the ground.

Chiba Shun also emerged from underground.

Yozuki A nodded at Chiba Shun.

He was extremely surprised by Chiba Shun's performance.

In his mind, a ninja like Chiba Shun belonged in clerical work. His combat ability was not supposed to be reliable.

When he had seen Chiba Shun hide inside the Earth-Style Wall, he had thought Chiba Shun did not intend to come back out.

That would have been fine too, saving them from having to divide their attention to protect Chiba Shun and the two children.

He had not expected Chiba Shun to perform so brilliantly. In this battle, Chiba Shun's contribution was no less than that of another Jonin.

At a critical moment, Chiba Shun had restrained a Jonin and forced him to retreat voluntarily, then cooperated with Yozuki A to kill the enemy's strongest fighter at the end.

Seeing that everyone was injured, with even Yozuki A bearing many wounds, Chiba Shun proactively went to clean up the battlefield.

A short while later, Chiba Shun gathered the spoils, along with the corpse of the taijutsu Jonin who had died at Yozuki A's hands.

The corpses of the other fallen ambushers had already been taken away by their companions, so this was the only enemy corpse left.

Most of the bodies belonged to their own side. The corpses of the twenty-two children were especially glaring.

But this Jonin truly carried quite a few valuable things.

He had several hundred thousand ryo in cash, along with a C-rank Water Release Technique scroll.

In addition, the long blade he used was far better than Chiba Shun's own.

This blade could conduct chakra to a certain degree, much like the prized item Chiba Shun had seen in Kumogakure's ninja tool shop.

Chiba Shun remembered that the long blade had been priced at three hundred thousand ryo.

Chiba Shun handed the spoils to Yozuki A and said, "It's confirmed. These people were undoubtedly Kirigakure shinobi."

In truth, during the earlier battle, everyone had already roughly guessed the group's identities from their jutsu.

However, jutsu could be faked.

Based on the items carried by the enemy's strongest fighter, as well as the information contained in the corpse, Chiba Shun made a definite judgment.