Naruto: We Agreed on a Simulation, But They Actually Came to Life? Chapter 8 8: Encountering the Enemy

A man stood amidst the brush.

He was lean, with a sheathed short sword tucked into his waist. His clothes were stained with mud and clinging bits of dried grass, looking as though he had been living in the wild for a long ti.

The two parties locked eyes.

Silence hung in the air for about two seconds.

Jiraiya was the first to react—or rather, his mind bypassed every logical question a normal person would have and jumped straight to the answer he wanted most.

"Oh—!"

He clapped his hands, his voice brimming with excitent. "Wait—is this part of the exercise?!"

Tsunade didn't move.

Jiraiya turned to her. "The teacher didn't ntion anything about this! They actually arranged for soone to play the enemy and ambush us? This is way more exciting—"

Halfway through his sentence, he had already drawn a wooden kunai from behind his waist.

"Watch this!"

Jiraiya gave his wrist a sharp flick, spinning the kunai in a flashy flourish. He had practiced this move in front of a mirror at least a hundred tis; he thought it looked incredibly cool.

Then, dropping his center of gravity, he lunged forward.

A seven-year-old child isn't exactly fast, but Jiraiya made up for it with sheer audacity. He ignored tactics and terrain, opting for a direct, linear charge. He held the wooden kunai at his side, assuming the "Third Thrusting Stance" straight out of the textbook.

Jiraiya knew Tsunade was watching.

Back at school, he couldn't beat Kitahara Kaede in a proper spar, and his grades were consistently at the bottom of the class. But real combat was different; real combat was about guts. If Jiraiya lacked anything else, he had guts to spare.

Seeing the white-haired boy charging at him, the man's body tensed slightly. He instinctively tightened his grip on the tree branch in his hand. His eyes darted around quickly, scanning the periter. Once he confird there was no one else around, he shifted his gaze back to the two "enemies" before him.

A blonde girl and a white-haired boy.

They barely reached his chest.

The boy was shouting sothing about acting and teachers; it seed they were from the Ninja Academy. And here ca the white-haired one, charging at him with a piece of wood.

The man's body relaxed, and a thin smile curled his lips.

Tsunade's gaze, however, hadn't followed Jiraiya. She was staring at the man's forehead.

The symbol carved into his protector wasn't that of the Hidden Leaf.

Four rippling waves. Kirigakure.

And right through the center of those four waves was a deep, horizontal gash.

Tsunade's mouth fell open.

"Jiraiya, get back—!"

By the ti she scread, the man had already moved.

It wasn't Jiraiya who had moved.

There was no wasted motion, no preparatory wind-up. One mont he was standing still; the next, he was directly in front of Jiraiya.

Jiraiya's kunai was still suspended in mid-air, his thrust only halfway complete. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a grey-blue sleeve flashing across his lower field of vision.

Then ca the impact to his abdon.

Jiraiya felt the contents of his stomach surge upward; the rice ball he'd eaten for breakfast did a complete u-turn in his throat. His feet left the ground as his body was sent flying horizontally.

There was a dull thud as his back slamd into a tree trunk. The wooden kunai flew from his hand, disappearing sowhere into the brush.

From the charge to hitting the ground, less than three seconds had passed.

The second half of Tsunade's warning died in her throat. Her mind raced through the evidence from those three seconds: the Kirigakure headband, the gash, the appearance in the Leaf's rear mountains, and the imdiate attack without a word.

He had hesitated for not a single second, choosing the most efficient way to neutralize the target—a knee to the gut, enough to knock him unconscious but not kill him.

This wasn't sothing the Academy would arrange.

This was a real rogue ninja.

Tsunade dropped into a standard defensive stance. It might have been useless, but it was the only thing she could do right now. Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced toward the base of the tree.

Jiraiya was curled up against the trunk, clutching his stomach with one hand. He hadn't passed out, but his face was ghostly pale.

"...Jiraiya!"

A muffled voice drifted back to her.

"Don't... don't yell so loud..." Jiraiya coughed twice, spitting out so bile. "...I'm fine."

He tried to push himself up using the tree trunk, but his legs gave way, and he slid halfway back down. His knee knocked against a root, making him grimace in pain. Still, he kept trying to prop himself up.

"I'm fine... that guy... he cheated..."

His voice was intermittent and strained.

Tsunade didn't look back; her eyes remained locked on the figure in front of her.

The man didn't pursue. He stood where he was, tilting his head as he looked at the wooden kunai on the ground, then at Jiraiya under the tree. There was no killing intent, nor was there pity. It was a faint sense of annoyance—the kind one feels when their schedule has been delayed.

His gaze shifted to Tsunade, and his right hand rested on the hilt of the short sword at his waist.

He took a step forward.

Tsunade's breath hitched. Only one thought remained in her mind:

'I can't get away.'

***

At the mountain peak.

Kitahara Kaede was tossing a wooden token in his hand.

Eight points.

He looked down at it, feeling quite satisfied. He'd had to scour half the mountain to find it; it had been tucked away in a tricky crevice on a cliff face.

Not far away, three children lay scattered across the ground in various states of disarray.

He hadn't beaten them.

—Okay, he had.

These three were from another team. Relying on their numbers, they had tried to snatch his token and charged him all at once. Kitahara Kaede had used two moves to take down two of them, and the third had knocked himself unconscious after tripping over a tree root while trying to flee.

He tucked the token into his waist pouch, dusted off his hands, and began heading back the way he ca. It was ti to regroup with Tsunade.

Suddenly, a sound echoed in his mind.

[Ding—Side Quest Triggered: Hero Saves the Beauty]

[Objective: Kill the hostile target and ensure the survival of Tsunade Senju.]

[Reward: Based on combat rating. A flawless victory and a strong emotional reaction from the target will significantly increase the evaluation.]

[Failure Penalty: Simulation terminated; current evaluation reset to zero.]

Kitahara Kaede stopped in his tracks.

He stared at the text on the light screen, his brow slowly furrowing.

Hero saves the beauty. Kill the hostile target.

...How cliché?

A second later, he realized sothing was wrong.

"Kill."

Not "defeat," not "drive away."

Kill.

In a Ninja Academy exercise, there would never be a target that required "killing."

Sothing had happened to Tsunade.