The Mission Desk inside the Hokage Building was crowded as always.

Shinobi came and went, some collecting assignments, others reporting results.

The air smelled faintly of ink and paper, mixed with the sweat of too many flak jackets crammed into one hall.

Okabe led them through the line, his expression steady.

When their turn came, the duty officer flipped through a stack of scrolls and selected one, his eyes flicking briefly toward their rank markings before sliding the mission across the counter.

“A pack of dangerous, unusually large wolves,” the man recited, his voice flat with routine.

“They’ve been preying on travelers along the eastern trade road. Several merchants reported losing guards, and soldiers tried and failed to drive them back.”

“The alpha is said to be unusually large, with red-glowing eyes, and seems to coordinate its pack with… more than animal intelligence.”

Renjiro gave a low whistle, his eyes sharp with interest. “Wolves, huh? Better than chasing runaway cats, at least.”

His smirk curled faintly, though he tapped the hilt of his sword like he was already imagining a test of steel against fangs.

Okabe accepted the scroll, scanning it carefully before tucking it into his vest. “C-rank. Dangerous enough if underestimated. Travel light and be ready for night attacks, that’s when they’ve struck the last three times.”

Ryusei’s narrowed eyes gave nothing away, but inwardly he noted every detail. ‘Wolves with probably abnormally large or strange chakra, fighting like shinobi. A leader clever enough to command them…’

‘That’s no ordinary nuisance. But stuff like this does exist in this world. After all, animals also have chakra here, every living being, really, not only humans. For soldiers to lose men means it’s not just a rumor.’

He almost smiled to himself. Wolves fit perfectly into the Land of Fire’s deep woods.

And if chakra could harden claws and sharpen instincts, then these beasts were the kind of foe civilians could never face.

Shinobi were tools for this exact kind of problem.

Kanae stood silent beside them, her gaze steady and unreadable as always.

If she had an opinion on hunting wolves in the wild, she didn’t share it.

Renjiro stretched his arms with mock casualness.

“So we’re going after dogs, then? If one of them makes a nice enough corpse, maybe I’ll tan the hide for a rug.”

Ryusei kept his smile polite, even as his mind ticked away.

‘Perfect training in live conditions… if we don’t slip up.’

Okabe’s eyes swept over them once more, weighing each.

Then, in his calm tone, “We leave immediately. Supplies are already covered. Once outside the walls, stay sharp. A careless step is all it takes for wolves like these to tear a squad apart.”

Ryusei adjusted the strap of his dark-blue training uniform, feeling the pull of the hidden weights beneath.

His body still throbbed faintly from days of Duy’s brutal drills, but his will was calm, honed.

He gave the same warm, narrowed-eyed smile he always wore and inclined his head. “Understood.”

They left Konoha before dawn, cutting east through the trade roads, and didn’t stop.

By the time they reached the reported site, morning had already broken.

The forest canopy overhead was drenched in dew, the air carrying that sharp freshness after a night of predators gone quiet.

It was almost ironic. The wolves struck only at night, which meant they had already melted back into the wilderness.

That was the true difficulty of the mission.

Catching them wasn’t just fighting beasts; it was finding them in endless miles of forest where they moved like shadows.

Ryusei knew it immediately. ‘So this is why it was bumped up to C-rank. The Daimyo himself had to file the complaint, and still, the village sends us instead of ANBU. Hah… Wolves must be an embarrassment if left unchecked, but not important enough for the elite. Fine. That means a good testing ground for me.’

Kanae activated her Byakugan, pale eyes widening with veins bulging faintly at the temples.

She swept the forest line in silence, her gaze piercing through trunks and undergrowth.

But after a long moment, her head tilted just slightly. “Not nearly enough range, obviously, and they are not around here anymore. They could be anywhere by now.”

Renjiro frowned. “So what now? Just wander the woods and hope the dogs sniff us out?”

Okabe gave him a look sharp enough to cut the sarcasm short. “We cast a net. Ryusei, your sensing has better coverage than her eyes. Use it.”

Ryusei gave a small, narrow-eyed smile, as if humbled by the trust. “Understood.”

He pressed his hands together and, after a small puff of chakra, split into two. A perfect Shadow Clone stood at his side.

The others didn’t notice the faint trick of timing: Ryusei had shifted a few steps away first, standing on a small ridge and pretending to be lost in concentration.

From there, he dispelled one clone quietly and made another closer to Okabe’s flank, so they couldn’t be sure which one was real.

“Let’s meet again later today here, before the night comes, if there are no results,” Ryusei said as the group split.

Okabe nodded and then took “Ryusei” with him, moving north into the brush.

Kanae and Renjiro fell in behind the real Ryusei, the one still standing where the ridge caught the light.

He had made only a single clone for this search.

Too many, and their shared chakra would burn out long before they covered enough ground.

It was always a tradeoff: spread wider but risk running out of “battery,” or keep fewer bodies and last longer.

He chose the balance that made sense.

Okabe went off with the clone alone. That wasn’t neglect, it was strategy.

The man’s strength was greater than Renjiro and Kanae combined, so he could easily anchor one half of Ryusei on his own if they stumbled across the wolves.

Also, Ryusei still didn’t trust Okabe enough to go alone with him so deep with his real body.

For all he knew, the man could try and take him down mid-search, then pin the blame on the wolves or something else.

Better to play it safe. That was why he made the optical switch, sending his clone with Okabe while keeping his true body with Renjiro and Kanae, whom he trusted a little more.

Okabe, for his part, didn’t comment. Asking about which “half” he got would only draw suspicion.

Officially, it didn’t matter anyway. As far as the mission was concerned, both sides were just covering ground.

The three of them soon moved in silence through the dense undergrowth, the morning mist still clinging to the forest floor.

Ryusei took point, his eyes narrowed in their usual slit-like shape, head slightly lowered as though he were simply scanning casually.

In truth, his senses stretched outward in all directions, threads of perception brushing across every faint disturbance in the air and ground, looking for and analyzing every living being.

He made it look effortless, even though the strain of maintaining that level of focus was heavy.

Kanae followed behind, Byakugan active in short bursts. Her pale eyes flicked left and right, pupils dilating slightly as she focused, then dimming again when she deactivated it to conserve stamina.

She wasn’t wasteful; she used her dojutsu sparingly, supplementing Ryusei’s sensory net rather than competing with it. She was looking only for physical trails and other signs.

She remained quiet as always, expression cold, but every so often her head tilted faintly toward Ryusei, as if silently measuring the accuracy of his calls against her own sight.

Renjiro, on the other hand, trailed just a little further back, arms crossed even while moving, an almost bored look on his face.

He hated long stretches of “chasing shadows,” and his silence wasn’t the same as Kanae’s professional indifference.

It was the silence of someone itching for action.

His chakra was steady but restless, his eyes occasionally cutting toward Ryusei with faint annoyance.

“Anything?” Renjiro finally muttered, impatience leaking through.

Ryusei didn’t glance back. His voice was calm, “Faint traces. A few kilometers east, a residual chakra is clinging to the soil. But it’s old. They’ve already moved.”

Kanae spoke then, her tone clipped, cold as ever. “He’s right. Their trail is faint, weaker than fresh prints. They changed paths sometime in the night.”

Renjiro let out a short, irritated breath through his nose. “So we’re chasing ghosts until we get lucky. Perfect.”

Ryusei’s lips curved faintly, his slit eyes narrowing more. “Luck favors persistence. Keep walking. We’ll catch them sooner or later.”

Kanae gave him a brief glance at that, almost unreadable, but just sharp enough to suggest she was studying him again, not his words.

They pressed on, leaves crunching softly underfoot, the silence broken only by the occasional rustle of wildlife avoiding them.

It was a tense trio. One searching with hidden cunning, one evaluating with cold detachment, and one simmering with restless energy, covering ground together, yet each with entirely different thoughts.

Hours dragged on, the forest stretching endlessly with no sign of the wolves.

The monotony gnawed at Renjiro’s nerves, his patience thinning with every step.

His lips curled in a smirk as he glanced at Ryusei’s back.

“You know, if we keep walking like this, even you might start looking like prey. How about we wake things up with a little spar? Unless you’re scared, I’ll expose that your taijutsu’s still trash.”

It wasn’t the first jab he had thrown since the beginning of their search.

Renjiro had been pushing for a fight since the second hour, his voice dripping with boredom and mockery.

But this time, Ryusei stopped mid-step.

He straightened, the faint smile he usually wore fading. His slit eyes narrowed further, expression calm but cold, his voice steady.

“Fine. If you want it so badly, let’s do it.”

The words cut through the quiet air like a blade.

Renjiro blinked, caught off guard, his smirk faltering. He had expected another brush-off, maybe a polite laugh, never an actual acceptance. “Tch… what?”

Kanae’s head turned sharply, her pale eyes fixing on Ryusei.

Even her face, usually unreadable, betrayed the slightest flicker of surprise.

She had seen him endure Renjiro’s baiting dozens of times before, always sidestepping with politeness.

To hear him agree so suddenly – it didn’t add up.

Ryusei didn’t elaborate.

He just stood there, posture loose but edged, waiting for Renjiro to answer his own challenge.

For a rare moment, both of them, the hotheaded Hatake and the indifferent Hyuga, were staring at him in silence, unsettled by a Ryusei they hadn’t seen before.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep