The Masked Man's True Identity!
Sizzle—!!!
A harsh, explosive hiss tore through the air.
Ren's Great Fireball collided head-on with the incoming Water Fang Bullets, and in the next instant, fire and water devoured each other in a violent clash. Steam erupted everywhere, boiling white mist spreading across the riverbank in a matter of seconds until the entire area was buried under a thick, scalding fog.
Visibility dropped to almost nothing.
The waterfall vanished.
The river vanished.
Even the treeline on the other side of the bank became a vague blur behind rolling white vapor.
Ren didn't hesitate.
The moment the mist swallowed the battlefield, he kicked off the slick stone beneath him and shot forward like an arrow released from a bowstring, racing toward the dense forest across the river.
His speed was already impressive for a genin.
But the person behind him was even more terrifying.
The attacker reacted almost instantly. Some kind of Wind Release technique seemed to slice through the steam curtain, opening a path through the white haze. Then that person pursued Ren directly from behind with frightening speed, the pressure of their killing intent clinging to him like a chain wrapped around his spine.
Ren's expression tightened.
Damn it.
He twisted sharply in the middle of his sprint, pivoted on one foot, and drew his sword in a single fluid motion.
Then he slashed.
Clang!!!
The metallic impact exploded like thunder.
A violent force surged through his blade and into his arm so hard that the muscles in his shoulder nearly went numb. Ren's body was thrown backward by the impact, but he used the momentum to flip away, landing more than ten meters back on a wet outcrop of rock. He crouched low, blade raised, and looked up.
The attacker had landed steadily a short distance ahead, utterly unaffected.
The figure was tall and lean, dressed in plain gray combat clothes that revealed nothing. An animal-patterned mask hid the face completely, leaving only a pair of cold, unreadable eyes visible through the slits. In one hand, the masked figure held an ordinary standard-issue kunai.
Nothing flashy.
Nothing special.
And yet that casual stance alone radiated pressure.
Then the attacker spoke.
"As expected of Minato Namikaze's disciple," the figure said in a hoarse voice. "Your reactions are as fast as his."
Ren narrowed his eyes.
"Who are you?"
He had initially assumed this person was from Root.
The animal mask matched the image too well. In his previous life, he had seen enough of those masked operatives to immediately think of Danzo's shadow organization.
But now that he was facing this person directly, doubt had begun to rise.
The opponent was too strong.
Using Wind Release and Water Release interchangeably with such fluidity was already the mark of a seasoned jonin. Not only that, but the execution of both techniques was sharp and controlled, far beyond the level of some average elite operative. Their taijutsu was terrifyingly solid as well, and the force behind that one kunai clash had nearly rivaled the pressure Ren felt from Minato during sparring.
Of course, Minato had never truly fought him seriously.
But this person in front of him...
They also didn't seem to be fighting seriously.
Could Root really hide monsters like this?
Or—
A possibility flashed across Ren's mind.
The masked figure took another slow step forward.
"You want to know who I am?" the attacker said. "Then show me what you're worth."
Ren took a slow breath.
Fine.
If direct probing wouldn't work, then he would create space and force the opponent to reveal more.
His hands blurred through seals.
"Water Clone Jutsu!"
In an instant, more than a dozen water clones formed around him. Because they were standing beside a roaring waterfall, with water vapor saturating the air and a river at their feet, the cost of creating them was lower than usual. The clones were lifelike, dense, and immediately spread out in a loose protective formation around his real body.
At the same time, Ren reached into his ninja pouch, pulled out a smoke bomb, and activated it.
He had originally brought those tools back from a previous mission and rarely used them inside the village, but under the circumstances, this was completely reasonable. As far as Ren was concerned, he was being attacked by a suspicious masked enemy. Whether that person was a foreign spy or something even uglier from within Konoha, there was no reason to hold back on battlefield tools.
The smoke bomb hit the ground.
A burst of dark smoke mixed with the already thick steam, turning the area into a layered maze of visual interference.
But the masked man didn't care.
He moved.
Like a gray bolt of lightning, he pierced through the wall of clones without hesitation.
The kunai in his hand turned into a streak of cold afterimages.
One thrust.
Two.
Three.
Three water clones were shattered instantly, bursting into sprays of water before they could even react.
Ren's eyes sharpened.
The layered Victory Over Death effect began to stack.
But he did not wait for the buffs to climb higher.
The instant the masked man committed to breaking through the clone line, Ren seized the opening. He stepped forward with explosive force, his short sword flashing like a thread of pale silk through the haze as it stabbed straight toward the exposed ribs beneath the attacker's guard.
"Oh?"
The masked figure let out a faint, mocking sound.
"So this one is the real body?"
Instead of retreating, the attacker abandoned the remaining clones entirely and drove forward straight toward Ren's true body.
Then—
Buzz.
Something changed.
It felt as though an invisible ripple spread out from Ren's body in all directions.
Within a radius of roughly two meters, the world seemed to shift.
The flow of air slowed.
The movement of water droplets became clearer.
Even the angle of the attacker's shoulders, wrists, feet, and breathing suddenly sharpened with impossible clarity.
And faint pale dashed lines appeared in Ren's perception, flickering over the masked man's movements like ghostly trails only he could see.
His pupils contracted.
[Trait: Heart Blade Domain unlocked.]
[You have gained sufficient insight into the principles of Hatake Sword Style to deploy a "Heart Blade Domain" within a two-meter radius around yourself. Within this domain, your grasp of distance, angle, obstacles, and attack trajectories surpasses normal visual perception, allowing you to predict most attacks in advance and discern the opponent's weaknesses.]
That was it.
The first-stage trait of Hatake Sword Style.
Heart Blade Domain.
For a split second, Ren felt as if the battlefield itself had opened before him.
The masked man's posture.
The tightening of muscles before a strike.
The subtle shift of weight before a feint.
The lines of attack.
The blind angles.
The weaknesses.
All of it flooded into his mind in one terrifyingly sharp instant.
It wasn't true precognition.
The Domain did not increase his speed, nor did it move his body automatically. If his body could not keep up, he would still be cut down. But what it gave him was the initiative.
It gave him the ability to understand the shape of the fight before it happened.
To see the shortest defensive line.
The fastest counter angle.
The most efficient place to intercept an attack.
It was exactly the kind of sensation Hatake Sword Style had been hinting at all along during his sword training.
And now—
It had awakened in real combat.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The sound of metal crashing against metal became a continuous storm.
Like sudden rain hammering on jade.
Ren's sword flashed again and again, no longer merely reacting by instinct, but intercepting each movement of the masked man with astonishing precision. Every deflection was the most efficient possible. Every parry cut the opponent's momentum. Every counterattack came along the shortest route.
In only a few breaths, the two of them exchanged what felt like nearly a hundred moves.
Sword light and kunai shadows intertwined into a web of silver.
Their feet tore across stone and wet earth.
Mist swirled around them.
Water sprayed upward with every step and impact.
And yet—
Even in the middle of the frenzy, Ren felt something deeply wrong.
This is bad.
Very bad.
Inside Heart Blade Domain, those pale dashed lines represented flaws.
Weaknesses.
Trajectories he could punish.
But the masked man...
Had too few.
Far too few.
Compared to this person, Kakashi—who already trained seriously in swordsmanship—looked almost full of openings. And Kakashi was already a genuine elite chuunin. To so thoroughly suppress openings in close-quarters combat, while also wielding two elemental releases with such mastery...
What kind of level was this?
An elite jonin?
Or something worse?
Ren's mind raced even as his blade moved.
Then, suddenly—
An opening.
A tiny one.
Heart Blade Domain caught it the moment it appeared.
Ren's sword erupted forward with explosive speed, darting past the masked man's defense and slashing toward the neck in one clean, decisive line.
For anyone else, it would have been unavoidable.
Too fast to block.
Too close to dodge.
But the masked figure's neck suddenly bent backward at an unnatural angle, folding away like a serpent withdrawing from a strike. The blade sliced through empty air by mere centimeters.
Ren's heart skipped.
What?!
At the same moment, the attacker's kunai flashed toward Ren's chest.
He barely escaped by using the Substitution Technique, switching places with a nearby water clone just before the kunai could pierce him.
The clone exploded into water.
Ren reappeared a short distance away, landing low with his blade raised, but his eyes had already changed.
That inhuman flexibility.
That snake-like evasion.
That eerie lack of normal human rhythm.
There was only one person in Konoha who fit that feeling so perfectly.
Ren stared at the masked man and spoke the name aloud.
"...Orochimaru?"
For the first time since the battle began, the attacker stopped moving.
The mist drifted between them.
The roar of the waterfall filled the brief silence.
Then the masked figure slowly straightened.
When he spoke again, the voice had changed. It was no longer that deliberately rough disguise, but a familiar cold, hoarse tone filled with amusement.
"Heh..."
"So I was recognized after all?"
Ren's grip tightened on the sword hilt.
His mind spun.
Of all the people he had expected—
Danzo, Root, enemy spies, assassins—
Orochimaru had not been at the top of the list.
But the more he thought about it, the more the logic fell into place.
The power.
The killing intent.
The snake-like movement.
The sense that the other side still hadn't shown everything.
It all matched.
And that realization made the situation even worse.
Because if this really was Orochimaru, then the question was no longer who had attacked him.
The real question was—
Why?
Was this a test?
A whim?
An experiment?
Or had Orochimaru, like Danzo, already begun taking an interest in him?
The thought sent a chill through Ren far colder than the waterfall spray.
He did not lower his blade.
Neither did Orochimaru move again immediately.
For a few quiet seconds, the two of them simply faced each other across the wet stone and drifting steam, the atmosphere stretched tight enough to snap.
Ren's thoughts sharpened.
He could not afford to panic.
He had already exposed Heart Blade Domain.
He had used Water Clones, Water Wall, Great Fireball, and Substitution.
But he still had not shown everything.
And Orochimaru—
Without question—
Had shown even less.
The legendary Sannin's masked face tilted slightly, as though studying him with renewed interest.
Then that hoarse laugh came again, soft and unsettling.
"You're more interesting than I expected, Ren."
The name slid out naturally now.
No disguise.
No pretending.
Just confirmation.
Ren did not answer.
His breathing steadied.
The waterfall thundered behind him.
His wet clothes clung to his skin.
Heart Blade Domain remained deployed, the pale lines still flickering in his vision, trying desperately to map every possible move the man before him might make.
But even that ability could not fully calm him.
Because standing there in the mist, with a blade in hand and a Sannin on the opposite side, Ren understood one thing very clearly—
This fight had already crossed far beyond the level of a simple ambush.
He had stepped into something far more dangerous than he had imagined.
And if he made even one wrong move next—
He might not leave this waterfall alive.
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