"What did you say?!" Rasa, the Third Kazekage, sat in the highest seat of command, looking down at the trembling intelligence officer below.
"R-reporting to Lord Rasa, the Third Kazekage! According to feedback from the battlefield, casualties currently number close to several hundred, including forty confirmed dead! And... and several squads have completely lost contact!" The intelligence officer finally mustered the courage to repeat the figures.
Bang!
Upon hearing those figures, Rasa, the Third Kazekage, slammed his fist into the table beside him.
The Sand Shinobi they had brought this time numbered roughly a thousand, yet this battle alone had left well over a tenth of them dead or wounded. Around forty had been confirmed dead, and the whereabouts of several squads remained completely unknown.
By the rules of the battlefield, anyone who had not returned after the retreat was sounded had generally either been captured or killed.
Moreover, the captains of those missing squads were elite chunin at the very least. People of that caliber could not possibly have been killed without a sound.
"Do we know where those missing men went last?" Rasa, the Third Kazekage, suppressed his anger and looked straight at the intelligence officer.
"According to the earlier reports, all these squads disappeared on the western side of the battlefield." The intelligence officer flipped through the documents, which recorded the missions assigned to these squads before their departure.
Yes, they had all been part of the forces on the western side of the battlefield.
"The western side? According to the intelligence we received, there didn't seem to be any particularly strong squads there?" Rasa, the Third Kazekage, frowned.
At a time like this, if someone powerful really had arrived, it should have been impossible not to obtain any intelligence about them.
"Lord Rasa, the Third Kazekage,