Before long, Asuna's report reached Kazemori Masaki. He knew at a glance that she had written it herself, because the Ciphertext had been modified with senjutsu chakra. It was almost impossible for anyone who could not also use sage arts to decipher the Ciphertext.
Kazemori Masaki decoded the Ciphertext piece by piece, revealing Asuna's report. It began with a greeting to him. At first, he thought it was merely a report on her routine work, but he soon realized something was wrong, because Asuna went on to describe her battle with Tobi—
"...We could come up with only two possible explanations. Although this is merely my intuition, I don't think Tobi came here as a shadow clone. He probably possesses an exceptionally strange ability, and I believe we must be careful from now on. We will do our best to send you information about Tobi. Father, I hope you can assign people to analyze it thoroughly, so that if a real conflict breaks out in the future, we can find a way to deal with him in time."
"Please don't worry about my safety. Although he got the better of me this time, he won't succeed so easily next time. I will give everything I have to complete the mission, so please rest assured, Father."
"—Respectfully, your daughter, Kazemori Asuna."
After reading the final word, Kazemori Masaki set the report on his desk, his brows drawing into a tight frown. He had not expected Asuna and the others to run into something like this so soon after arriving in the Capital. They had already clashed directly with Tobi and suffered a considerable setback. Tobi's behavior toward the end concerned him greatly.
As Asuna had said, either Tobi had been a shadow clone from the very start of the battle, or