It was a tall, slender figure with an elegant, refined air.
Yes, a man.
He had long, smooth black hair, skin white as snow, and a pair of watery, expressive eyes. His frame was slim, and his entire body gave off the soft, graceful aura of a proper young lady.
But there was no doubt about it—judging by his physical body, he was definitely male.
Just then, Harry suddenly noticed Naruto step forward a few paces and move to the front of the group.
Harry was still wondering what Naruto intended to do when the boy suddenly pulled out a shuriken and hurled it hard in one direction.
The next moment, he shouted, "I found you! Get out here!"
The shuriken shot into the woods with a crash of breaking branches and rustling leaves.
Then... nothing happened.
Seeing that, Sasuke scoffed. "The dead last is still the dead last. Always showing off."
Even Kakashi could not help sighing as he criticized him. "Naruto, you can't just throw shuriken around like that. That's way too dangerous."
Tazuna's face changed dramatically, and he immediately cursed, "You damn brat, don't do things that make people misunderstand like that!"
Naruto scratched his head, confused. "But I swear I felt someone watching us the whole time."
Harry watched the scene in silence.
A coincidence?
By all rights, Naruto Uzumaki should not have been able to detect the other enemy hiding in the shadows.
But in reality, he had detected him. More than that, he had even pinpointed the enemy's hiding place by instinct alone.
That was right—there really was someone hidden in the direction Naruto had thrown the shuriken.
That person seemed to be with the feminine-looking boy from before. Their target was also Team 7's protection objective, Tazuna.
So how exactly had Naruto found the hidden enemy?
Could it have something to do with the mass of energy inside him?
At that moment, perhaps believing Naruto had truly discovered him, the hidden ninja suddenly burst from the forest and hurled a massive blade with all his strength.
The instant the ninja threw the giant sword, Kakashi noticed it and shouted at once, "Everybody duck!"
Naruto, Sasuke, and Tazuna did not hesitate. Trusting Kakashi completely, they lowered their heads.
And then, a tremendous howl of wind tore through the air behind them.
A giant blade flew over their heads. If they had not ducked in time, that roaring weapon would have sliced their heads clean off.
But before they could even breathe a sigh of relief, they suddenly noticed that Sakura, standing at the very back, had not ducked at all.
She simply stood there, calmly watching the sword slash toward her neck.
By the time they realized what was happening, the blade was already less than a foot from Sakura's throat. There was no time to warn her, much less rush over to help.
But before they could worry for long, they saw that at the instant the blade was about to strike her pale neck, she slowly raised a hand.
Yes, slowly was exactly the right word.
Yet the bizarre part was that although Sakura's movement looked incredibly slow, she still managed to intercept the blade before it could touch her neck.
And she did it with only two fingers.
Holding the blade between two fingers, Harry immediately noticed that the weapon contained a magnetic property. Perhaps it could restore itself by absorbing blood.
But that was all.
Whether in the multiverse or in the wizarding world, there were far too many metals stronger than this.
Harry himself was unimpressed, but for Sakura Haruno, Kakashi, and the others, the blade was still a very valuable weapon. So he planned to hand it over to Kakashi later.
Its original owner, however, very clearly disagreed.
A figure rushed after the blade and charged straight at Harry, stabbing a kunai toward his throat with one hand while trying to snatch back the giant sword with the other.
In the next instant, the two collided.
...
When Zabuza Momochi hurled the Executioner's Blade, his goal had always been a sneak attack. Ideally, he would kill the mission target on the spot.
Even if he failed to kill anyone, at least giving Kakashi a nasty opening shock would still be worthwhile.
Facing the famous jōnin Kakashi, even Zabuza did not dare be careless.
At first, when he saw Kakashi notice his move and warn his companions, he had assumed his surprise attack would end in total failure.
But then he noticed that the girl standing at the rear of the group had not ducked in panic.
At once, excitement flashed across Zabuza's face.
A mere genin had no chance of blocking an all-out throw from him head-on.
A single Water Clone would have been enough to take down some genin brat, but even so, getting at least some results out of the attack would be a comfort.
However, just as he prepared to reclaim the Executioner's Blade, he found that it had suddenly stopped.
And then, in utter shock, he saw that the heavy weapon he had thrown at high speed had been stopped by the girl he had assumed was dead for sure.
Stopped with only two fingers.
That sight made Zabuza's pupils contract violently, and only one thought remained in his mind:
What the hell? How could that little girl, who obviously had only just graduated, possibly have that kind of strength?
How absurdly powerful did someone have to be to stop an Executioner's Blade thrown with the full force of a jōnin using only two fingers?
Only someone on the level of Konoha's princess, Tsunade, should have been able to do that.
But even after realizing the girl had such frightening strength, Zabuza only hesitated for an instant before charging at her anyway.
There were two reasons.
First, he had already exposed himself. If he still wanted to complete the mission, he had to attack.
If that girl joined forces with Kakashi, then he would have no chance of finishing the job.
Second, so what if the girl was a genius?
These days, who wasn't a genius?
No matter how talented she was for her age, Zabuza was certain that, as he was now, he was still far stronger than some little girl.
After all, he was Zabuza the Demon, the one who had slaughtered all his classmates at graduation.
A gap of more than ten years—especially ten years that mattered so much to a ninja—was not something a growing prodigy could overcome against a warrior already at his peak.
As for why the girl had been able to stop the Executioner's Blade, it was probably just some special secret technique.
That was hardly unusual in the ninja world.
So Zabuza charged forward, intending to kill the girl and reclaim his blade.
The process went exactly as he had imagined. Smooth.
He easily reached the girl's side. Now all he had to do was drive his kunai into her throat, kill her, and turn the situation around.
But just as the kunai came within four inches of the girl's neck—just one heartbeat away from piercing her—Zabuza's pupils shrank violently.
Because at that crucial instant, the girl who had seemed completely unaware suddenly shifted her eyes and looked right at him.
At the same time, his thick arm was caught by a small hand.
Then it stopped there completely, frozen in place by overwhelming strength, unable to move even an inch.
After stopping him, the girl suddenly smiled.
"You finally came out. I've been waiting for you for a while."
In the next moment, Zabuza saw a fist hurtling toward him.
It was clearly a very small fist, but under the reinforcement of chakra and other energies, it carried terrifying destructive force.
The instant he saw it, his instincts screamed at him that if he did not dodge, he would die.
But even though he dodged with all his might, he still felt powerless in front of the girl's heavy punch.
The fist struck him directly.
In the next instant, the ground centered on Zabuza trembled violently, then split with countless cracks that spread outward in all directions like a spiderweb.
At the same time, Zabuza's body, struck head-on by that punch, shattered under the crushing impact and turned into a spray of blood and flesh.
Naruto stared with his mouth hanging open. "Wait, that was a jōnin just now, right? And Sakura killed him with one punch?"
Sasuke, meanwhile, stared without blinking at Sakura and the enormous crater at her feet.
He was from the Uchiha clan, so was it possible that he might awaken some kind of similar kekkei genkai too?
After all, the ancestors of the Uchiha clan had been terrifyingly powerful. Without even going back too far in history, just the more recent Uchiha Madara, the Shinobi Asura, had possessed enough power to crush the entire ninja world.
If he could let Uchiha Madara possess him, then he would definitely be able to kill Itachi Uchiha.
Unlike his two students, however, Kakashi did not relax his guard in the slightest, even after watching Harry kill Zabuza with a single punch.
Instead, he warned, "Be careful. That might have been a clone! A Clone Technique combined with a Transformation Technique can create the illusion of being killed."
But after hearing Kakashi's warning, Harry merely smiled.
"Don't worry. He won't get away."
The moment Harry finished speaking, the corpse beneath his feet suddenly dissolved into a puddle of water.
At the same time, a cry of pain suddenly rang out from the forest nearby.
Kakashi and the others froze for a moment, then immediately rushed toward the sound and found Zabuza clutching his head, writhing and groaning in agony.
And beside Zabuza was the seemingly gentle "girl," who was actually the feminine-looking boy from before.
After surrounding the two of them, Kakashi finally turned to Harry in confusion and asked, "Sakura, how did you attack Zabuza's real body through the Water Clone?"
Harry smiled and explained, "Simple. I discovered that if you make slight adjustments to a Water Clone's chakra structure, you can deepen the soul link between the clone and the original body, allowing memories to pass between them.
When I attacked Zabuza's Water Clone just now, I modified the chakra structure and amplified the pain of the clone's death.
That intense pain returned to Zabuza's mind together with the clone's memories, overloading his brain and creating an effect similar to genjutsu."
Kakashi: "???"
You could do that?
After giving that brief explanation, Harry slowly stepped forward and looked at the boy, who was staring at him with full caution.
"You seem to care a lot about Zabuza, so hand your body over to me and let me use it.
You wouldn't want Zabuza to die horribly, would you?"
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