It took only minutes for the three pursuers to corner Ryusei, driving him out of the river and into a clearing a short distance from the palace.
The moment his feet hit solid ground, he gathered everything into one burst.
His body blurred with his strongest Body Flicker; he could muster, closing the gap on the jōnin in front of him in an instant.
Chakra coiled down his arm, and his fist shot out in his main taijutsu strike, the Coiling Serpent Fist.
The Yugakure jōnin's eyes widened.
He had barely enough time to flood his torso with chakra enhancement, bracing himself.
Even so, the blow crashed into him with crushing force, hurling him back into the river.
Blood sprayed from his mouth as he clutched his chest, organs rattled.
"Impossible… you hid your strength so well!?" he spat, shocked.
The two chūnin froze at the sight, but Ryusei didn't give them a heartbeat to recover.
He launched forward again, but the first chūnin suddenly snapped a whip from a scroll, chakra surging through its length.
It lashed out, not to block or parry, but to wrap around Ryusei's arm.
The moment it did, the chakra in his strike was squeezed and smothered, sealed off.
Ryusei's brows tightened. "So… a conduit weapon."
He instantly hardened his arm with Flowing Willow Guard, bones dense, chakra wrapping them like steel, stopping the crushing, but he felt his arm weaken as chakra began leaking.
Ryusei then yanked the whip taut, dragging the enemy toward him, and at the same time lunged closer himself, as if to close the gap.
"The closer you are, the faster I drain you, idiot," the man sneered. His second whip also snapped out, binding both of Ryusei's legs, anchoring him in place.
The second chūnin also darted forward, at this moment, to finish him even quicker, kunai in hand.
But just as he closed in, the ground beside him rippled, and another Ryusei splashed upward. A shadow clone.
The clone's kunai slashed into the chūnin's side, shallow but bloody.
He staggered back, already forming seals, when he noticed the kunai's glow.
Not pale blue, but darker — tainted.
The clone smiled. Poison.
Ryusei's real body, bound by the whips, smirked faintly too.
In recent weeks, his sharpened brain had re-evaluated every survival tactic the shinobi world had to offer.
Poisons stood out as one of the truest equalizers.
With his medical knowledge, he had experimented with common ingredients, mixing in traces of Yang chakra to make them bite deeper.
Primitive by specialist standards, but more than enough to cripple a chūnin if he got a deep enough cut through a lot of blood.
The clone pressed in relentlessly, stabbing again and again with the same tainted kunai.
The enemy's movements slowed, chakra faltered, and within moments his body dropped, poisoned and still, before having a chance to use any of his planned ninjutsu just now.
Meanwhile, the whip-user yanked harder, trying to tear Ryusei's chakra out by force. Ryusei exhaled, voice calm. "So this is how chakra absorption works…"
He shifted the flow, mimicking the technique with his own refined control.
For a moment, the whip jolted as Ryusei reversed the current, beginning to drain his opponent instead.
The man's eyes widened in panic, but it was too late.
Ryusei's free arm coiled with chakra, and another Coiling Serpent Fist smashed into his chest at point-blank range.
The shock tore through his ribs and heart. The whip fell slack.
Ryusei understood quickly that the enemy's chakra absorption wasn't only a skill.
A large part of it came from the special material of those whips, which acted as a conduit.
His opponent's technique gave it form, but without that kind of material, the effect wouldn't have been nearly as strong.
A true chakra absorber didn't even need such tools; they could use wires or pure chakra threads to achieve the same result.
Ryusei had already tried creating his own chakra threads during training, and while it was good practice for control, he had found little practical use for them.
He wasn't about to waste time on puppetry, nor did he see any point in forcing out some new niche application when his path lay elsewhere.
Two chūnin dead.
But the fight wasn't over.
The jōnin dragged himself upright from the river, weaving signs with practiced speed.
His hands slammed down, and a wall of water surged forward, a B-rank torrent that tore across the clearing.
Ryusei clicked his tongue, backstepping as the flood gouged the earth where he had stood.
"So… a water-type," Ryusei noted coldly. His stance lowered again. This opponent wouldn't crumble as easily.
"Why did he have to be one…" Ryusei thought grimly.
But he guessed that it made sense for the enemy commander to send a water expert at least to chase him in the water previously.
In this terrain, the man's chakra consumption would drop sharply, and with the river at his back, he had the environment on his side.
Ryusei's own fire affinity and his B-rank Flame Ring Roar were practically useless here.
The jōnin was already injured, but Ryusei knew that wouldn't be enough.
If he dragged things out, the man's comrades would eventually notice the fight, realize how frail Konoha's position inside the palace was, and send reinforcements.
By then, it would be over. He needed a different plan, and he needed to end it fast.
Ryusei didn't recall his clone. Instead, in the very next second, he shifted the plan, sending it to circle and attack the jōnin from the opposite side.
Both of them would strike with lightning. Against water, fire was useless here, but raiton could at least bite.
"Lightning Release: Thunder Fang Burst!"
From both sides, Ryusei and his clone slammed lightning into the ground.
Two arcs split and curved upward like fangs snapping shut, closing in on the jōnin.
The Yugakure veteran's face hardened.
His hands blurred through seals. "Water Release: Rising Torrent Wall!"
A geyser-like column of water erupted, intercepting one arc. The second arc crackled through regardless, forcing him back.
He gritted his teeth, but his counterattack was already flowing.
"Water Release: Rending Water Cutter!" A sharpened blade of water slashed outward, slicing clean through Ryusei's shadow clone.
The false body burst apart, collapsing into steam and sparks.
Ryusei clicked his tongue, but didn't flinch. He knew this wasn't over.
The jōnin's eyes flashed. His fingers formed another pattern mid-stride. "Water Release: Phantom Mist Mirage…"
A shimmer rolled across the clearing, water and chakra fusing into a genjutsu web.
Illusory waves rose up, refracting into watery doubles.
Ryusei felt the pulse of foreign chakra press against his mind, dragging him toward the haze.
He staggered slightly — then froze in place.
The jōnin smirked, convinced. His opponent was caught. Just like everyone else.
Closing the distance, he drew a kunai and laced it with another surge of water chakra, intending to gut Ryusei up close.
But Ryusei's eyes were cold.
He was already familiar with the workings of souls and spiritual energy better than anyone else in this world, thanks to his experience.
That knowledge let him resist the pull, while at the same time pretending as though he had been snared.
He also let his external movements slacken just enough, masking his clarity behind a façade of being trapped.
The jōnin didn't sense a thing from his spiritual chakra aura or appearance.
"Die here, brat." The man lunged in.
Ryusei's heel came down first. "Senju Heel Drop."
The strike slammed into the wet ground, detonating with chakra.
A burst of sharpened water projectiles erupted outward, turned lethal by the force of his drop.
The jōnin was caught mid-step, his own water technique breaking apart as Ryusei forced through.
The kunai still grazed him, opening a deep gash along his side as it was enforced with water chakra flow, but Ryusei welcomed it.
Injury for injury — he'd already chosen this trade. Now familiar with such routines.
His heel-drop's spray shredded into the man's chest and neck, punching deep.
The Yugakure jōnin's eyes went wide, blood spilling as his body toppled.
Ryusei straightened, clutching his wound only briefly before Yang chakra flared, knitting flesh and sealing the damage almost immediately.
He exhaled sharply, gaze fixed on the corpse.
"That's the difference," he muttered. "You thought you caught me… but you were already mine."
The man was in no way inferior to Ryusei in body, chakra, or technique.
In fact, he was without doubt the hardest opponent Ryusei had faced so far, and he hadn't fought alone.
His arsenal included at least two or three solid B-rank water releases, a vicious coiling water chakra flow that wrapped his kunai like a small razor drill, strong enough that even a slight graze cut deep into Ryusei's flesh, something that hinted at deeper shape transformation mastery, and that genjutsu, which Ryusei judged might even touch the level of an A-rank.
It wasn't pure ninjutsu, nor pure genjutsu, but something in between, a 'nin-genjutsu' hybrid of some sort, perhaps.
By all measures, this man stood closer to high-jōnin than to any ordinary jōnin, and with the battlefield itself bent to water's advantage, Ryusei should not have been the one standing.
The only reason he won was because of the layers of deception and tactics he stacked one after another.
Tricks, feints, and sacrifices, survival weapons he had been forced to sharpen ever since transmigrating into this world.
So, even if his strength grew in the future, Ryusei thought, he would never abandon that principle: to use less to defeat more.
Ryusei quickly picked up on the situation inside the Palace.
Konoha's team had already pulled out in a rush, a few of the chunin no longer with them.
Renjiro, Kanae, and Okabe were still present, while one of the jōnin carried the Fire Daimyo's envoy on his back in an almost embarrassing fashion, the rest of the man's entourage clearly abandoned to their fate.
Ryusei didn't waste another second.
He pushed his body to its fastest sprint, cutting straight toward their retreat, as his senses registered dozens of Yugakure shinobi pouring out of the palace and beginning to move in his direction.