Chapter 22: The Trap

Having accepted their missions, everyone left in such a rush that the breakfast carefully prepared by Choza the chef was wasted entirely. Shiraki, unfazed, grabbed dozens of rice balls of various flavors, packing them up to enjoy along the way.

All the teams' objectives were confidential, and Shiraki had no idea where they were headed, except for one certainty: their destinations lay within the borders of the Land of Fire.

He traveled at a leisurely pace—such was the life of a mercenary. No family, no attachments, paid to resolve others' troubles; whoever died on either side was none of his concern. His mind drifted instead to how he might modify the mask he’d brought from the base.

Wearing a one-eyed mask was terribly uncomfortable, wasting the field of vision of an entire eye—a nearly fatal flaw in battle. It would have to be improved. Fortunately, the mask was a product of Wood Release, and as long as he had a design, Afei could reshape it at any time.

Drawing from memories of his previous life, Shiraki soon devised a mask inspired by the clown from Saw—a pallid, grotesque face, marked with two red spiral clan crests. At first glance, it seemed almost comical, but the longer one looked, the more disturbing it became.

He decided it was best to design a forehead protector from a fictional Ancestral Peace Village, so that he, too, could claim some sense of belonging. He considered various symbols, but none seemed to capture the harmonious and reserved culture of Ancestral Peace. In the end, he simply used the character “Gan,” leaving these unlettered country bumpkins to puzzle out its meaning.

“Wander, wander, roam and roam, carefree with no skills to show. Never reveal the heart’s true thought, a mouse’s mouth will steal your pot…” Shiraki recited a playful rhyme as he strolled aimlessly.

…

The patrol squad led by Hayate Moonlight had been reorganized, and he was now captain, joined by Yugao Uzuki and a young ninja named Toka Ryuzan. Their mission was to drive out Stone ninja from a small village and rescue the civilians.

Unlike the Leaf, the Third Tsuchikage Onoki favored overwhelming numbers. The quantity of Stone ninja was astonishing: in the late stages of the Third Great War, Onoki still had the strength to send ten thousand Stone ninja to besiege the Third Raikage. At its height, the Hidden Stone Village likely boasted more than twenty thousand shinobi.

Of course, a large portion of those were probably semi-samurai types, whose only skill was channeling chakra to boost their strength.

To make matters worse, Onoki also liked hiring mercenary ninja. In the original story, he once employed the Akatsuki, providing them with considerable funding.

Although no one expected those cowards—mercenaries who cared for nothing but money and would flee at the first sign of danger—to fight head-on, they excelled at harassment, hurling shuriken from five hundred miles away to create chaos, and bullying civilians. The Leaf was forced to spare what little manpower they had to protect noncombatants.

Now, with Konoha fighting on all fronts, each defense line had no more than two thousand troops. That meant every Leaf ninja faced more than five times their own number in enemies—a testament to the ferocity of the struggle.

Hayate led his team on a swift dash. Their destination was a village on the Land of Fire’s border, a vital supplier of medicinal herbs. The villagers often gathered rare plants, selling them to the Leaf for use in medical supplies. If the village was destroyed, the strain on Leaf logistics would only worsen.

This mission should never have fallen to a newly cobbled-together genin squad, even if Hayate and Yugao’s abilities were barely at chunin level.

But Shikafu Nara had no choice—the Leaf was stretched too thin, so he had to send two promising genin.

“I shouldn’t have stayed up so late yesterday… My chakra is even lower than usual. Here’s hoping the coming fight isn’t too intense,” Hayate thought regretfully to himself. But “Make-Out Paradise” was simply too captivating, and he’d lost himself in its pages.

“I wonder if Yugao thinks less of me after seeing me in women’s clothes yesterday…” Hayate stole a glance at the beautiful profile of Yugao Uzuki, suppressing his feelings deep within.

Just then, as the trio rushed along their path, the ground suddenly trembled. Without warning, more than a dozen stone pillars shot up from beneath the earth, completely blocking their way. Each pillar was adorned with burning explosive tags.

“Damn! It’s a trap!” Hayate didn’t even have time to warn his teammates before the stone pillars exploded thunderously, sending a storm of debris crashing down.

Their new teammate, Toka Ryuzan, was a tad slow to react. He was struck on the forehead by a chunk of stone, lost all responsiveness, and was instantly buried.

Hayate and Yugao, nimble and skilled with the blade, drew their swords in a flash, weaving a defensive net that blocked the larger chunks. Even so, the smaller shards stung sharply as they struck their bodies.

When the dust settled, Hayate landed lightly and instantly used his Vanishing Technique to hide himself. This was no ordinary explosive tag trap set with a tripwire—it was a jutsu, actively controlled. That meant there was someone nearby, the trap’s mastermind.

“Hehehe… Still one left alive. Ishifang, your trap’s got some flaws,” sneered a leering Stone ninja with a long sword slung over his back, stepping out from the roadside grass.

Clearly, he took the now-invisible Hayate for dead, buried with the others.

“You should at least praise me for taking out two so easily, shouldn’t you?” retorted the gaunt Stone ninja called Ishifang, emerging from underground—the trap’s operator.

“It’s a shame it’s just a girl… Otherwise, we could’ve had a real blood-pumping fight.” A deep, muffled voice sounded from another bush, and a burly man poked his head out, his body too large to fit. When he forced himself through, he tore up an entire patch of ground.

“Yamago, enough of that. What do you mean, ‘just a girl’? Talk like that and you’re no different from a mountain monkey.” Tetsuishi drew his long sword with a grin. In a sure-win situation, toying with and then killing a kunoichi was the most entertaining outcome—wasn’t it?

“Mom always told me, be gentle with girls. I don’t like fighting them,” Yamago said bashfully, scratching the back of his head, showing no interest in joining the fray.

The other two shook their heads. Yamago was powerful—his monstrous strength and swordplay rivaled that of a jonin, and the Tsuchikage