Kanae, who had been tracking every mont with her Byakugan, let out a small gasp.
To her eyes, it was as if she'd fought the battle herself.
The Byakugan sharpened perception to the extre, making movents appear almost in slow motion.
Not only could she trace their steps, she could see the chakra flows inside their bodies as they clashed.
Kanae still rembered their Academy days.
Renjiro had always been second in the year, just behind Kiyomi Uchiha.
Ryusei, on the other hand, had sat squarely in the middle ranks.
Yet here he was now, effortlessly defeating Renjiro.
By this point, it wasn't speculation anymore. He had hidden his true strength back then, and now it was clear: Ryusei was a threat, one rising far too quickly.
'He really beat Renjiro comfortably with only taijutsu… without a single ninjutsu. And taijutsu wasn't even his strength before. Has he really grown this much in just a month?'
They had suspected he was hiding sothing before, but this… this was far beyond what she expected.
Her chest felt strangely heavy.
She didn't understand why her mood dipped lower as she watched him standing there.
Maybe it was because she knew what ca next.
She would have to report this growth. To ANBU, sooner or later.
anwhile, Ryusei walked toward Renjiro, his steps steady, the dust still settling around them.
Renjiro pushed himself up against a broken trunk, blood at the corner of his mouth.
Ryusei stopped in front of him, arms loose at his sides. His voice was calm, not mocking.
"Don't get the wrong idea. It's not that I'm so much stronger than you that I beat you in five minutes. I technically didn't use taijutsu alone, as you probably guessed, although it was my only thod of attack and defense. I used my 'sensory net' around to track you the entire ti. Every movent of your chakra, every shift in your blade, I saw it before it landed."
Renjiro's grip on the tanto tightened, his jaw locked, but his eyes stayed on Ryusei.
Ryusei continued, tone steady, almost like advice.
"If you want to get stronger, focus on your internal perception next. Learn to mask your own flow. Otherwise, one day it'll be fatal. A sensor will always read you like an open scroll."
Renjiro's lip curled, but this ti it wasn't sarcasm. It was frustration mixed with recognition.
"…Tch. Damn it. I knew I was missing sothing. You're right. Against soone like you, it's like fighting blind."
Ryusei crouched without another word, his hands already glowing green with chakra. Renjiro blinked.
"What are you—"
"Hold still," Ryusei cut him off, pressing his palm to the bruised chest. "It's for the mission. We can't waste ti dragging you around half-dead."
Warmth spread through Renjiro's body as the Mystic Palm nded tissue and steadied his breath. He looked away, silent for once, then muttered under his breath, "…Thanks."
Ryusei didn't answer. He only kept healing until the worst of the damage faded.
For a mont, the air between them changed. The sarcasm, the constant baiting, it was gone. Beaten once, Renjiro no longer looked down on him at all.
Ryusei caught that shift and thought, 'So that's how it is. With soone like him, you have to beat him first. After that, he'll listen.'
He stood and pulled his hand back, expression faint as ever. 'Good. He has potential. If I can turn him to my side, he'll be a sharp blade worth holding.'
Renjiro flexed his fingers around the tanto's hilt, then slid it back into its sheath. His voice was quieter than usual.
"Next ti, I won't fall for the sa trick."
Ryusei gave him his usual narrow-eyed smile. "Good. That's what I expect."
Ryusei glanced at Renjiro, curiosity finally breaking past his restraint.
"Those tricks you showed just now are rare, and in their essence, almost world-class. But tell , was that all the White Fang relied on? Was Sakumo Hatake really just a close-range fighter like you?"
He couldn't help asking. In his past life, no records existed of Sakumo's techniques, and even in this world, reports were scarce.
Anyone who witnessed the White Fang's blade usually didn't live to speak about it. Ryusei wanted to know: was Sakumo's legend built only on refining a "basic" kenjutsu style through decades of experience, or was there more?
Renjiro stiffened at the question, though not in anger. It wasn't the first ti he'd been asked.
Many shinobi their age had grown up on stories of Sakumo, the hero who had taken his own life only a few years ago.
Everyone wanted to know what he had truly been like.
Since Ryusei had defeated him fairly and even healed him, Renjiro gave a small nod.
"…It's not exactly a secret. The higher-ups knew, and those who fought him firsthand knew too. What you saw from today - that's only the foundation of the Hatake style. Sakumo raised those basics to their peak, and that alone let him move freely through the shinobi world."
His eyes sharpened, voice dropping lower.
"But what made him feared wasn't just that. He understood chakra flow to its deepest point, not only channeling into the blade, but pushing it outward, into waves. Like a sword's intent given form. It expanded his range, multiplied the force of his cuts. Even a sweep could tear through dozens."
He paused, then added, "And he wasn't just a swordsman. He had affinities for three elents, lightning, wind, and earth, almost unheard of in history. He mastered all of them. Lightning to strike, wind to enhance speed, earth to vanish and reappear from the ground. That's how he could take on hundreds at once."
Ryusei's slit eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he listened, nodding slowly.
'So that was the mystery. Not only perfecting the foundation, but also adding reach, nature transformations, and battlefield versatility. The White Fang wasn't just a close-range blade… he was a storm, a phantom, a force of nature.'
Ryusei could already imagine it: waves of white light cleaving the battlefield, wind at his back carrying him through the air, earth swallowing him whole only to spit him out in the middle of an enemy command squad. At last, the picture of Sakumo made sense.
This also reminded Ryusei of Kakashi and what he now considered wasted potential. Seeing the Hatake style firsthand, hearing Sakumo's legend up close, the truth beca obvious.
If Kakashi had stayed on that path, he would have undoubtedly grown far stronger than in the tiline Ryusei rembered.
From that perspective, Obito's Sharingan wasn't a blessing. It was a poisoned gift, tempting at first but rotting the one who accepted it.
In the original history, Kakashi reached only Elite Jonin, or a Quasi-Kage at best, until Obito's second eye gave him that temporary surge, depending on the period.
Yet Sakumo, without any Sharingan, had stood at a Late Kage level in Ryusei's estimate. And Kakashi, his son, with talent at least decently comparable, could have reached true kage heights far earlier had he never been shackled to that foreign eye.
But because of Obito's death and his dying words, Kakashi let sentint blind him.
He abandoned the sword, perhaps because there weren't enough kenjutsu masters for the Sharingan to copy, and shifted toward ninjutsu instead, honoring his friend as the so-called Copy Ninja.
In truth, that only turned him into a slightly stronger piece on the board, not a true player who could shape the ga.
What amazed Ryusei even more was how long Kakashi endured with the Sharingan despite not being a Uchiha.
The eye drained more chakra from foreigners than even the Byakugan did from outsiders, and yet he kept it uncovered for years.
Others like Ao sealed their stolen dōjutsu, using them only when necessary. Kakashi, whether out of sentint or stubbornness, refused, wasting oceans of chakra just to carry the weight of a dead friend.
Until Obito handed him that "apple," Kakashi had been a turbo genius, breaking records and sprinting ahead of his generation. The mont he accepted it, he stagnated, locked in place for more than a decade.
He still managed to create higher forms of nature release jutsu, a purplish, more advanced variant of lightning release.
The potential was always there. The problem was the direction. Obito had steered him wrong, and Ryusei couldn't help but laugh to himself.
'So the great Copy Ninja… was a genius who chose the wrong road. Obito ruined him without ever aning to.'
anwhile, Ryusei's curiosity wasn't satisfied. He pressed Renjiro further about his clan.
It turned out the Hatake had originally co from the Land of Iron, but they weren't counted among the honored samurai retainers there.
They were outcasts, straddling the line between sword and shinobi, which was why they blended so easily into a hidden village.
Their philosophy was always closer to shinobi pragmatism than samurai codes.
Ryusei already knew the Land of Iron had no hidden village.
Instead, countless samurai clans served as retainers, and each generation, the strongest among them was chosen as the General, currently Mifune.
Ever since arriving in this world, two groups had fascinated Ryusei more than any others: the monks and the samurai.
For thousands of years, before the chakra fruit, the God Tree, Kaguya, and Hagoromo's Ninshū, these had been the strongest fighters in the world.
But when shinobi began twisting chakra for combat, those who benefited weren't the proud monasteries or disciplined samurai.
It was the shinobi clans, versatile, amoral, unbound by codes, who broke Hagoromo's teachings, weaponized chakra, and triggered the chain reaction that reshaped the world.
In ti, shinobi dominated every land. Samurai were driven into the small corner now called the Land of Iron.
Monasteries dwindled, scattered and forgotten, surviving only in pockets.
And those who remained had to adopt chakra engineering themselves, though in ways that still revolved around physical combat.
Yet Ryusei always doubted the records. The way old stories and fairy tales described monks and samurai, their feats seed far greater than what modern chakra users could show.
How could they have ruled the battlefield for so long if their strength was truly so small?
The answer, Ryusei suspected, was that the greatest among them once had other thods, a more advanced form of power now lost or deliberately erased from history.
That was why he pressed Renjiro, hoping the Hatake might be connected to that forgotten strength.
But the truth was disappointing.
The Hatake had always leaned toward shinobi thods even in the age of samurai, and were the weaker outcasts there, the first to abandon codes and embrace chakra engineering.
They left Iron's lands early, accepted by shinobi circles and villages as assassins and swordsn.
Whatever secrets the samurai and monks once held, the Hatake had no link to them.
Watching Ryusei fall into thought after his last words, for so reason, Renjiro also sank into his own.
From this previous combat exchange alone, he was certain, Ryusei had already stepped into Low-Jonin level strength.
A genin in na, but standing just a step below their own sensei. Two whole ranks skipped.
And yet, Renjiro didn't see this as a good sign for him.
If anything, it made his chest feel heavy.
'I can't let personal feelings get in the way. I have to join ANBU, grow stronger, and carry on the Hatake na into these new tis. Bring the clan back to a real place in this world.'
Still, he wasn't sure what kind of man Ryusei truly was.
The Hatake way had always been loyalty first.
As assassins, they were raised to complete missions without letting emotions or morals interfere.
Perhaps that was why Sakumo, his most famous clan elder and role model, had chosen death so quickly, because he, too, had been raised on that sa unforgiving creed.
Renjiro's jaw tightened slightly.
'If I don't report him, Kanae will. And then I'll be dragged down with him, and any hope for my own promotion will die with that. No matter what good impression I have of him now…'
He exhaled slowly, his eyes narrowing as he reached his conclusion.
Despite the respect he had co to hold for Ryusei, despite even starting to see him as a true comrade, Renjiro's resolve did not waver.
He would report everything, exactly as it happened, even if it had been his own provoking that dragged Ryusei's strength into the open.
Just then, Ryusei and Kanae, who ca to their side at so point, reacted at the sa ti.
"A giant bear!" they shouted together, both turning sharply toward the sound.
Their eyes t for a brief second, then Kanae glanced down at the ground, almost flustered, though Ryusei didn't have the ti to dwell on it.
He spoke quickly, voice firm. "Renjiro, you're injured. Kanae, fighting bears isn't your specialty. Let handle this."
Without waiting for an answer, he stepped forward, closing the distance toward the massive shape barreling through the trees.
The beast was several tis larger than any bear Ryusei rembered seeing on television from his old world, its bulk packed with chakra that churned violently beneath its skin.
Its eyes glead with raw ferocity as it charged.
Ryusei's thoughts flicked rapidly. 'The large amount of blood Renjiro coughed up must have lured it out… makes sense. Beasts like this would usually thrive in forests like these.'
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