As the underground clone activated the explosion and blew up the group furthest from the sensor woman to Darui’s right side, Ren was ready.

In the second it took the remaining Kumo jonin to come out of their shock and refocus on him, Ren had already etched two seals on the kunai in his hands and threw them. One headed toward a random jonin while the other sailed through the air, targeting the sensor kunoichi.

The random jonin elected to raise an Earth Wall, which would have been effective against a normal explosive seal. Unfortunately for him, Ren opted for something more brutal.

As the kunai hit the earth wall and the seal triggered, a chunk of it in a circular radius around where the kunai had landed was instantly turned into salt alongside the torso of the ninja standing behind it. Only the upper part of his head above the nose and the lower parts of his legs below the knees were outside of the explosive radius, so they flopped onto the newly made pile of salt on the ground, dyeing it red as blood started to flow out.

The sensor kunoichi, however, realized that there was an unknown seal on the kunai and opted to evade it rather than block it, so the kunai just sailed past her previous position and hit the tree behind where she was standing. turning it into glass as a cold sweat washed over her when she witnessed it.

Sadly, Ren didn’t have the leisure to see it. Pretty much the second he threw the kunai, he had to throw his body to the left because Darui blasted some kind of technique at him, firing a bolt of extra fast black lightning toward him.

Ren rolled on the surface of the side of the cliff and barely managed to get back on his feet when Samui was already upon him, viciously slashing her sword at him with sparkling streaks of lightning chakra coating the blade.

Ren evaded the first slash, but the lighting on her sword still managed to clip him and jolt him, making him realize how dangerous the blonde woman was.

It gave him a proper scare, and it was unexpected enough to make him hesitate for a moment. But despite missing the first slash, Samui just adjusted her grip on the sword and swung it back at Ren in a very well-practiced combo of fast slashes.

Because of his slight hesitation, Ren only managed to evade the first two. His eyes widening, Ren realized there would be no evading the third one as Samui’s sword suddenly accelerated via some unknown internal lightning technique. He managed to summon two kunai to his hands and flood them with wind chakra as he crossed them and blocked the sword crashing down on his left shoulder.

He was a little bit too late, however, and Samui’s sword bit into his shoulder, drawing blood. It was barely a glancing wound, but the lightning from her blade streamed into Ren’s body, numbing it and increasing the damage.

Realizing it, Ren didn’t hesitate and forcefully pushed Samui’s sword away from his body, making the slash wound worse in return but preventing himself from being stunned.

All that happened in three seconds, and by the end of it, the other Kumo ninjas were already almost upon him. As Samui was forced to take a step back to regain control of her sword because of the force with which Ren parried it, two Kumo ninjas were already in a position to execute a pincer attack on him, one coming at him from his right side while Darui was coming from his left, both swinging their swords at him.

Swearing in his mind about Kumo and their usage of swords due to overcompensating for small dick sizes, Ren glanced to the side from where a loud screaming was coming from, only to see that his initial explosive attack killed two Kumo jonin while the third was screaming himself hoarse on the ground in a puddle of his blood as chunks of his body were torn when the shrapnel made of earth hit him from below.

He was out of it due to pain but still alive, which was just perfect.

The swords neared Ren, and he offhandedly threw the two kunai in his hands up, letting them gently, almost lazily, spin in the air just as the attack struck…

Only for their victim to let out a surprised bloody gurgle.

Darui’s uncovered eye widened as he realized his sword was now up to the hilt in his comrade’s chest because Ren had used the substitution technique at the last second. He quickly moved to pull it out on instinct, and despite his shock, he noticed the two kunai spinning in the air just slightly above them.

“Oh, f-” Darui cursed and quickly leaped back as the kunai exploded and reduced the struck gurgling Kumo jonin into a shower of bloody meat chunks.

Darui was quick enough to dodge, but his pincer attack comrade was more unlucky. His sword had also pierced the unfortunate Kumo ninja through the chest, but it hit the chest bone and got stuck there.

That took his attention. It was just a split second. But that moment was enough to make him notice the dangerous kunai a bit too late. As he jumped back to evade the explosion, he tried to cover his face and chest with his arms as much as possible, but the metal shrapnel his sword turned into due to the explosion still managed to make his arms more or less useless.

The man, however, survived and got out of the way of his comrades.

After the substitution, Ren didn’t get even a second of reprieve. His body still somewhat numb from Samui’s lightning, he reacted too late as he felt a sword skewer him from behind, making him gasp in disbelief and pain as he saw the blade exit out of his stomach.

A Kumo jonin was patiently waiting for a chance for an ambush, and now he successfully got it. For a moment, Ren thought this was it for him before he registered a nudge of chakra and quickly, almost desperately, allowed it to do its thing.

His shadow clone substituted with him, the technique ripping the Kumo jonin’s sword from his hands as the grinning clone appeared in front of the man. The clone’s arms quickly embraced the jonin, exploding seals etched all over his clothes.

“Leeroy Jenkins, motherfucker!” The clone vindictively screamed as it exploded, and the Kumo jonin was reduced to red splatter on the ruined and cratered ground with a bang.

Ren appeared on a tree branch a bit farther away from the area where they fought and leaned heavily on the tree trunk, letting out a pained grunt. He idly recognized why Orochimaru primarily used something as useless as mud clones for last-minute substituting.

The shadow clones were neat but they also cost way too much freaking chakra. He offhandedly decided to learn a cheaper clone variant if he survived.

Ren had realized the only reason why he was not dead yet was that the guy did try to take him alive. Worse yet, he only had a few seconds before the remaining Kumo ninjas discovered where the substitution technique had delivered him. They did have a sensor ninja, so running was not an option. Especially not while wounded.

Wincing in pain, he looked at his stomach, where he had a puncture wound going all the way from his back to his stomach. It was bleeding quite badly, and there was no way he could fight properly with it. The pain was distracting enough that he knew he would mess up against the heavily speed-based fighting style of his opponents.

Ninja fights usually ended quickly, and one hit was all it took to decide the outcome. Naruto was an outlier. Not the norm. Now that Ren was wounded, the situation did not look very favorable for him.

Three, one, and one more. Ren quickly did the mental math to count how many of the Kumo ninjas he had killed by now. He counted five. That meant five were still unfortunately alive.

Darui, Samui, the sensor woman, the man with hurt arms, and the last one… probably a medic?

Or worse, the triumph card. Sage, Ren hoped he was a medic.

‘Damn. Fightning jonins is a pain in the ass.’ He thought with a painful grimace as he started creating a small seal with his chakra and blood on his shirt under the wound.

Ren realized that he lacked training in facing multiple opponents who could keep up with him. There weren’t many chances to train for that outside of joining ANBU or having jonin friends. Sadly, Hinata and Ino were good enough to give him the needed combat experience in facing multiple opponents. They were not quick enough to keep up with him just yet.

Funnily enough, Ren would probably have a much easier time facing one S-rank ninja than ten jonin.

‘Heh. I guess that’s also something to rectify if I get back home in one piece, eh?’ He thought.

Three seconds later, when the seal was done, Ren let out a relieved sigh as a small-scale invisible time-stop bubble formed around his wound, and his shoulders sagged.

It wasn’t ideal, but he was no longer bleeding out and could fight again.

Still, he felt the ‘weirdness’ of having a part of his body stopped in time. It was probably not a good idea to do this for long. Stopping the time of an entire organism was harmless because everything was stopped at once, but stopping only a part?

The very first thing that popped into Ren’s mind was a question of how the blood flow would even work in this kind of state… and yeah, he probably really should get out of here as fast as possible and seek a medic.

He never tested the side effects of stopping only a part of somebody’s body, and for all he knew, he could drop dead out of nowhere because of it in a minute.

Unfortunately, beggars couldn’t be choose-!

Ren ducked as Darui appeared on the branch next to him out of nowhere and sent a horizontal decapitating slash at Ren’s neck, giving him the message that the Kumo ninjas no longer gave a crap about capturing him.

Ren and Darui’s eyes met, and Ren saw that the dark man was furious. Smirking, although it came out as more of a grimace than a smirk, Ren let his body fall to the left before using his chakra to proper himself against the thick tree branch, straight toward the sensor woman.

He needed to take her out if he wanted to get a chance to run away. Or even start using sealing traps. That would make this whole thing much, much easier.

Realizing Ren’s plan, Darui jumped after him, but a seal Ren left on the branch while jumping exploded, and while it did not hurt him because he was already mid-air, it did send him off his flying course and made him tumble through the air toward the ground.

The last unknown Kumo jonin, the one who had not participated up till now and who was most likely tending to the arms of his wounded comrade, tried to intercept Ren, but much to his shock, Ren ignored him as his sword bounced off of the chakra shield that suddenly appeared around Ren.

Seeing Ren barrelling his way toward her through the air, the sensor kunoichi’s eyes momentarily widened, but she got into a stance with her sword, determination entering her brown eyes.

Ren threw a kunai at her, and she evaded it by sidestepping, not dropping her guard by jumping away because she sensed that there was no seal on it.

She inwardly scoffed. As if such a bluff could work on her-.

Ren suddenly substituted with the kunai, appearing right behind the sensor kunoichi. He didn’t have the time to make a seal. The woman would react sooner. Her comrades would react sooner.

But there was one thing that he did have, and that was fast enough.

All the hours spent helping Hinata with her lightning release paid off because Ren learned a few techniques alongside her just to be able to give her advice.

One such technique was a D-rank Lightning Release: Sudden Blackout. It was basically a ninja version of a taser. It required touch. It was weak. It could be resisted if the enemy had even a second to brace himself. And no self-respecting ninja would ever use it in combat.

It was a garbage technique.

But it was quick as hell to use, and it didn’t require handseals.

Plus, his opponent did not expect it.

Ren’s hand quickly neared the sensor woman’s back as invisible lightning chakra flooded it. He was almost there, almost touching her!

Samui abruptly appeared in a body flicker and kicked the sensor kunoichi in the stomach, sending her body crashing back through the air, saving her from being knocked out.

But in doing so, the blonde busty woman got into the path of Ren’s hand, and it landed on her shoulder before she could react, causing her eyes to widen for a moment as her body jerked and spasmed, and she released a strained ‘Ugkh’. Samui’s eyes then rolled back, and she fell bonelessly onto the ground.

Ren’s head snapped toward the sensor kunoichi, inwardly feeling both glad and annoyed that he had taken out Samui, who was the bigger threat, but had failed to get rid of the sensor.

A kunai puffed into his hand, and he intended to finish the unconscious Samui off with an exploding seal before focusing again on the sensor kunoichi… only for him to gasp as a bolt of black lightning came out of the treeline and hit him in the chest, going straight through it.

Ren only barely managed to shift his body at the last second on sheer instinct, enabling him to survive as it pierced his lung instead of his heart.

Strength suddenly left his legs as blood gushed out of his chest wound, and he stumbled forward before falling on his knees and hands right next to the Samui’s unconscious body just as Darui, twigs and leaves in his hair, slowly walked from behind a tree with a slight limp because a bit of tree bark shrapnel from Ren’s last seal hit him in the back and legs.

Darui stopped five steps away from Ren, cautious of him counterattacking out of nowhere and evading death by pulling out some sort of substitution or sealing trick again. They fell for it enough for him to get a healthy dose of respect for it by now.

“How dull. You should have taken the offer.” Darui annoyedly muttered with narrowed eyes, looking down on Ren as he, on his hands and knees, looked up and saw black lightning crackling around Darui’s hand that was pointing at him.

“Game over.”

—

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Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep