At the same time, Ryusei's suppressed clone moved. It was too fast, silent as smoke, striking when all eyes were locked elsewhere in their own fights.
Reiji never even sensed it until the shadow blurred into view.
A hand clamped his shoulder, then his joints shattered one after another under precise, brutal palms.
His body crumpled instantly, unable to resist.
Seals flared across his skin as a scroll snapped open, Ryusei's sealing logic binding him in an instant.
Reiji's eyes widened, horror dawning as the attacker's face came into focus.
Bewildered, shocked, and full of fear, he recognized him.
"Ryusei… Nishida…? Why… how—"
The words never left his mouth.
The seal devoured them, swallowing sound and chakra alike, dragging him into another dimension of ink and binding.
The clone rolled the scroll shut and tucked it away as if nothing important had happened.
"As long as they don't see me do it… what can they prove?" the real Ryusei thought from the frontlines, grin sharpening even as his fists hammered into bubbling cloaks.
And unlike before, he wasn't fearful.
At any moment, Katsuyu could reverse summon him to Shikkotsu Forest.
No clan, no elder, no Hokage could cage him anymore in a literal kind of way, not even the great Uchiha.
And this was only the beginning.
Because another clone, dozens of kilometers away, was already closing in on his next target. The elder brother.
The battlefield's noise dimmed in Ryusei's ears. His world narrowed to two bubbling monsters in front of him.
His grin sharpened. "One clone's enough."
The clone blurred at his flank, mirroring his movements perfectly.
Together, they drove into the jinchūriki with gate-fueled speed.
Ryusei stepped, the ground detonating under his foot, Shock Step, appearing before Arata in a blink.
His palm crashed forward, Shatter Palm, slamming into the ice armor across the Yuki's ribs.
The crack rang out like breaking glass, shards of frozen coral scattering into the mist.
Arata slid back, breath heavy, frost bleeding off him. "Fast…!"
His voice stayed flat, but his eyes narrowed, sharp. "His movements bend air itself."
Kaien roared from the side, blade cleaving downward with corrosive mist trailing.
Ryusei pivoted, Flowing Willow Guard, arms weaving, catching the strike on redirected angles, chakra cushioning his frame.
His clone darted in, fists snapping like snakes, Coiling Serpent Fist, driving into Kaien's torso. Acid hissed, but the force still staggered him.
Renjiro darted from the flank, his lightning blade carving shallow lines along Kaien's shoulder.
Sparks hissed against the bubbling chakra.
"Stay off balance!" Ryusei barked, heel snapping up and down in a crushing arc, Senju Heel-Drop. The impact shook the earth, slamming Kaien to one knee.
But the cloak around them surged hotter.
The bubbling red chakra spread in jagged waves, tails lashing harder.
Arata's breath rasped as two tails split behind him, his body warping.
Red silhouette wrapped over his frame, a humanoid outline of hatred glowing around him.
Frost and steam hissed off the cloak, his voice distorting.
"You'll… break first."
Kaien's roar deepened into something inhuman, five tails bursting behind him, his body swelling grotesque, limbs coated in corrosive chakra.
The red humanoid shell stretched over him, bubbling, pulsing, less man than beast.
His voice was a guttural snarl. "Tear you apart!"
The ground cracked under their combined pressure, chakra blasting outward.
Trees bent and split from the sheer force.
Ryusei only smirked sharply, veins bulging with gate power. "Good. I was waiting for this."
In the next instant, Ryusei slammed his hands together, summoning the largest Katsuyu he could currently manage with his strained reserves.
The slug's bulk spread across the broken field, and his thoughts cut into it sharply.
'Pass me some of Tsunade's chakra. And split, latch onto them. I want their chakra stolen, every drop you can manage. It's for Konoha… and for me.'
Katsuyu's mind brushed back against his, calm and heavy as the earth.
'As you wish, Ryusei-san. But remember… this is dangerous. Their chakra is corrosive, unstable. Not even my body welcomes it fully. I can't hold a lot of it.'
The slug split apart in great chunks, slamming across the battlefield.
Segments dove into the soil, bursting up again like roots, swarming over Kaien and Arata.
The slug endured their counterattacks, splitting further, wrapping like chains.
Ryusei also staggered back from their attacks in this form, his clone weaving support jutsu, buying seconds.
His chest heaved, blood staining his lips, his body peppered with bruises and burns.
However, some of the slug fragments had already delivered him some of Tsunade's chakra.
And then it worked. Katsuyu's divided masses began to drink.
Chakra oozed from the jinchūriki's cloaks, dragged into the slug's body.
Their hardshells shrank, boiling less violently.
"I was right. Perfect absorbers… any chakra, even this filth." His thoughts sharpened.
"Damn, if Tsunade had been more ambitious, she could have turned this into the deadliest weapon alive."
In his vision, he saw it clearly: two distinct strands of alien chakra, captured and contained in smaller slug fragments, writhing inside their slimy bodies.
He pressed forward again, fists lashing with his A-rank ninjutsu, fire roaring from his palms, lightning arcing off his strikes.
His attacks weren't decisive, but they were enough, enough to keep the jinchūriki distracted while Katsuyu gnawed deeper into their cloaks.
Until suddenly, with a shudder, the beastly chakra armor tore away from their frames.
Arata and Kaien gasped, their eyes snapping back to clarity for the first time.
In that brief window of sanity, horror lit their faces as they realized what was clinging to them.
"The slug… It's feeding on us—!"
They whipped their gazes across the battlefield.
Their squad was already gone, wiped out, corpses scattered like ash.
Panic surged, and they roared again, tails bursting back to life.
Their bodies warped, cloak forms surging to full humanoid shapes once more.
Without hesitation, they turned and bolted into the mist, retreating into the deeper forest.
Ryusei stood still, bloody and grinning, watching them vanish.
He didn't chase. He had his reasons.
Kiyomi had been close the whole time, her Sharingan tracing every motion.
But no report, no rumor, could compare to what she just saw.
Ryusei trading blows with those two monsters head-on, matching their Version One forms in speed, taijutsu, and coordination.
The storm of combination jutsu was tearing the battlefield apart like an army was casting them, not one shinobi.
And then… that summon.
Her breath caught even now, crimson eyes locked on the faint slime trail where Katsuyu had split and multiplied.
She had only ever heard whispers: three great sage regions, three legendary summons. Toads, snakes, and slugs.
To see one here, obeying Ryusei of all people, made her pulse quicken.
He didn't even look shaken, just stood there bloodied, grinning, as the two jinchūriki fled into the shadows.
He was definitely beyond any jonin level nowadays.
She stepped forward, her voice sharper than she intended. "Why didn't you chase them?"
Ryusei tilted his head, his slit-eyed grin never fading. "Because if I did, we'd be the ones dead right now."
She blinked. "What?"
"My slug can't hold any more of their chakra. Any longer, and she'd tear apart trying. And if we fought them in those forms…" His grin sharpened.
"They have way more chakra than any human, faster regeneration, and their physicality's beyond mine, in that second stage, even with three gates. If I forced it, it wouldn't be a victory. It'd be suicide."
Kiyomi's lips parted slightly, words catching in her throat.
He said it so casually, as if he were explaining why not to waste shuriken on rabbits.
But inside, Ryusei's thoughts were colder.
'There's no reward in it. I don't have the fuinjutsu on the level enough to seal their beasts, and I can't just bag them alive like some common fodder. Bodies like theirs can't be stuffed into scrolls like Reiji. And if Konoha even suspected me of holding them, they'd either demand I hand them over or brand me a traitor. Then every gun would turn on me. Yet I don't want to make my enemies stronger. So it was not worth it. Not yet, when I have other plans, I can't discard Konoha yet.'
And it was not only that, actually, both of them could be considered early-Kage level in sheer physicality when wrapped in those forms.
The only reason the battlefield wasn't reduced to rubble was that the slug clones had absorbed most of the aftershocks as he summoned them soon after their Version 2 was finalized, or else it would've been much worse from them all.
After all, this was the same, very underrated summon contract that once withstood Pain's Shinra Tensei that leveled the entire Leaf and protected the villagers in the original series.
It promptly latched onto their leaking chakra, draining enough to unsettle them and force a retreat. Ryusei only smirked to himself.
Against monsters built on raw chakra, there would be no clear winner or loser.
His usual cunning tricks meant little when faced with that kind of brute force.
It struck him then, too, he was struggling this much against the Level 2 forms of hosts bound to the weaker beasts, yet Tsunade could stand toe-to-toe with Killer B himself, not only in his full Version 2 cloak but even when he pushed into partial transformations. The gap was clear. At least in raw physical specs, he was still far behind her.
He exhaled, waving a hand lightly. "Let them run. I got what I wanted."
Katsuyu's voice pulsed faintly in his head, 'I have taken what I could. Any more, and it would corrode even me.'
"Good. Store it. Don't overdo it," Ryusei replied, then snapped his fingers.
With a puff of smoke, the slug vanished, leaving the field slick and quiet.
Renjiro sheathed his blade with a sharp exhale, looking between them. "Tch. You're too calm after that. We just fought two demons."
Ryusei's grin only widened. "And we're still alive. That's what matters."
Kiyomi's crimson eyes lingered on him, unreadable.
She looked like she wanted to speak again, but stopped, lips pressing thin.
Kanae arrived not long after, brushing dust from her arm, violet eyes sweeping over him once before settling into their usual calm.
She was unhurt, her Byakugan veins fading back.
"A quarter of them are gone," she reported flatly, meaning the Uchiha.
Her voice didn't waver, but her gaze flicked briefly toward the bodies lying crumpled in the dirt. Kiyomi's jaw tightened, but she said nothing.
Her surviving clansmen stood behind her, exhausted, bleeding, but victorious.
Ryusei only looked over the corpses once, then back at the three still standing with him.
His narrow-eyed grin curved again. "Losses happen. But the important ones are still here."
All of a sudden, Kiyomi realized something was wrong. Reiji's body was gone. She called it out sharply, eyes scanning the battlefield.
For just a heartbeat, she thought she caught Ryusei's smirk.
Her chest tightened, a pulse of heat running through her as a strange thought flickered.
'Could it be… he did it? Because of me!? In all this chaos… somehow…'
The possibility shocked her, but instead of anger, what she felt was… relief.
No, more than relief, happiness. A dark, guilty happiness. Reiji had always been forced on her. If Ryusei had removed him, it was as if he had cut her last chain.
Still, the danger was clear. The clan would be suspicious, and she couldn't be linked to it.
She wasn't, not directly, but her heart pounded for Ryusei's sake.
Kanae, standing off to the side, wasn't blind either.
With her Byakugan, she'd already caught glimpses of what had happened to Reiji before he vanished.
And now, she noticed something sharper, the look in Kiyomi's eyes when they lingered on Ryusei.
Not hatred. Not suspicion. Something closer to affection.
It made Kanae's chest tighten in ways she couldn't quite name.
'Why did he take him? Why seal him away like that?' Kanae wondered, her pale eyes narrowing.
The answer was obvious: Ryusei was pulling strings no one else could see.
But how deep did his ties with this Uchiha girl run? And how come she didn't know?
And wasn't she the same arrogant princess from the Academy, the one who always tried to bury Ryusei beneath her pride? How had things shifted so far between them, and when?
Kanae's pale eyes narrowed. Too many questions circled in her mind, and sooner or later, she would demand answers from Ryusei himself.
Ryusei himself was calm, his narrow grin unreadable.
Internally, though, he tallied the results.
First, the two jinchūriki had been repelled, mostly thanks to him, which would echo loudly on his record.
Second, with them driven back, this entire section of the front could finally be cleaned up.
And last, the most valuable: he had their chakra stored.
His body, his Senju vitality, his regenerative abilities, he doubted there would be any danger in making use of it.
More than that, he could share it if he wished, feed it to Renjiro or Kanae in the future.
Tsunade's "clean" chakra, the reserve she had entrusted to him, was something he'd never squander. But this chakra… this was different.
Tailed beast chakra came with its own quirks. Regeneration. Physical amplification. Unique elements. Already, he could sense faint traces lingering in the slugs that had absorbed it.
Coral. Acid. And more importantly, ice.
Arata's Yuki blood had bled into his beast's chakra, fusing strangely, giving it an icy edge.
Ryusei's grin sharpened at the thought.
'If I refine it right… if I make the ice aspect the most dominant…'
With his sensory ability, with his precision, he was confident he could experiment.
Perhaps even manifest Ice Release itself in some form, pulled from the residue of the stolen chakra.
For now, it was only theory.
But one day, it might be another weapon, hidden and unexpected.
And he would be the only one who knew it.