The battle between Amegakure and Sunagakure raged on through the entire night.
Not only did it show no sign of dying down, it was getting worse. More and more figures were appearing in the canyon, and every new burst of steel, fire, and chakra only made the situation grimmer.
That alone was enough for Yubi to make a swift judgment. Amegakure had most likely escalated this into a full-scale offensive. The scouts they had scattered ahead of time were never meant to win on their own-they were there to rip open the border defenses from within so the Rain could flood in behind them.
Yubi had expected Hanzo to go to war sooner or later. He just had not expected it to come this fast.
"The frontline defenses were probably investigated long ago," Yubi thought as he moved through the sand-lashed darkness. "But they likely still don't have a full grasp of the exact routes and hidden strongholds behind the border. Hanzo wants to strike before Sunagakure can stabilize the rear."
A violent explosion lit up a nearby slope. Thick black smoke rolled into the storm as explosive tags shredded rock and sent debris flying into the air.
"Yubi, over here!"
Another medical ninja from the squad called out to him at once. Yubi pivoted and sprinted over, dropping to one knee beside a wounded Sand shinobi whose body had already been torn apart by the battle.
He only needed a glance.
"This one can't be saved," he said in a low voice.
The Sand Chunin was still breathing, but that was all. The injuries were too severe, and Yubi's supplies were nearly exhausted already. There was no point wasting precious antibiotics and nutrient solution on someone beyond saving when there were still others who could be pulled back from the brink.
Before coming here, Yubi had thought this would be a routine border patrol mission. He had packed for endurance, not for a single night of relentless war. But now, after only one night, the medicine he had prepared with such care was almost gone.
On a battlefield like this, hesitation was a luxury. If he wanted to keep saving people, he had to be ruthless about where his resources went.
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.
Several kunai suddenly screamed through the air.
They were coming straight for Yubi and the other medical ninja.
At the critical moment, the Chunin assigned to protect them stepped in and knocked the hidden weapons aside in a burst of sparks.
"Move!" the captain barked.
Several Rain shinobi were already appearing ahead, their silhouettes emerging from the haze like ghosts.
Yubi's eyes flicked around the battlefield.
Sasori was nowhere to be seen.
That made sense. With more and more enemies pouring into the rear, encounters were happening every few minutes now. No matter how monstrous Sasori was, he could not be everywhere at once.
The escalation of the war was forcing everyone to face reality.
Yubi and the other medical ninja immediately broke away and ran.
But Amegakure had no intention of letting them escape so easily.
Their team's captain was only one man, and the group they had run into included several Rain shinobi. As soon as one of them peeled off to occupy the Chunin, the others rushed toward Yubi and his companion.
With a casual flick of his fingertips, Yubi caught the spinning scalpel the instant it slipped into his hand.
He stopped running, turned on his heel, and dropped into a fighting stance.
"Go," Yubi said to the other medical ninja.
The man hesitated for only a split second before fleeing without looking back.
"Not bad," one of the Rain shinobi said, studying Yubi with a strange look. "For such a tiny brat to still be alive at this stage of the battle... that's impressive."
More than a dozen hours had passed since the surprise attack began, and Amegakure's forces were still increasing. This battlefield had already moved far beyond what fresh graduates should have been able to survive.
"A medical ninja, huh?" another Rain shinobi sneered.
In his eyes, that made Yubi even less of a threat. Medical ninjas were valuable, yes-but their value was supposed to lie behind the front lines, not in direct combat.
He laughed sharply and flung several shuriken forward in a blur.
Yubi dodged at once.
But the moment he moved, another Rain shinobi flashed behind him.
Yubi swung his scalpel backward without even turning his head.
It was as if he had already predicted the attack.
The scalpel's thin edge scraped against metal gauntlets in a spray of sparks.
"Fast reactions," the man said, beginning to praise him-
Then his expression twisted violently.
Yubi's small fist slammed into his abdomen.
The Rain shinobi doubled over in agony, all the air driven from his lungs. For a moment, he could not understand it. How could a child that small hit so hard?
Then realization struck.
It was not raw power.
The boy had struck a vital point-a precise, vicious blow aimed at one of the body's most sensitive regions.
Before the man could recover, Yubi had already withdrawn and opened distance.
The second Rain shinobi lunged to continue the pursuit, only to suddenly lose all feeling below the waist.
His body stopped responding.
By the time he looked down, there was already a bloody puncture in his lower back where the scalpel had gone in. The strike had disrupted his control over his limbs with terrifying efficiency.
"Such a fast blade..."
That was the horrifying part. He had only felt the punch. He had not even noticed when the knife had entered him.
The scalpel was too small, too thin, too easy to miss in the chaos. Even when it cut you, your body often did not understand it until it was too late.
"Damn it!"
The Rain shinobi finally understood something had gone horribly wrong.
Then his legs buckled beneath him.
A pool of blood began to spread beneath his body.
"Miura!"
The remaining two Rain shinobi were stunned.
They had only seen Yubi strike him once with his fist. How had their teammate suddenly gone down like that?
"After him!"
Faces twisted with malice, the two of them burst forward together.
Yubi turned and ran.
"Watch out!" one of them shouted suddenly after only a short pursuit.
But it was already too late.
The other shinobi had stepped directly into a small trap Yubi had prepared in advance, using the sandstorm for cover.
An explosive tag hidden overhead detonated with a blast that tore loose a mass of fractured rock from the cliff face. The boulders came crashing down along with the shrieking wind and sand.
The Rain shinobi were swallowed by falling stone and rolling dust.
To them, the explosive tag seemed like nothing more than a desperate move from a fleeing child-an attempt to create an opening to escape.
But they never realized that Yubi had no intention of simply running.
Using the drifting dust as concealment, he doubled back.
He had already calculated their blind spots.
He moved against instinct, against expectation, and against the habits of an ordinary shinobi.
Whoosh.
Yubi's body flickered through the haze, dropping low as he landed.
One of the Rain shinobi's pupils shrank.
He lifted a hand to his neck.
At first there was nothing. No pain. No blood. No obvious wound.
Then, several seconds later, a line of red split open across his throat.
Blood burst out in a hot spray.
"You-"
That was all he managed to say before collapsing onto his back.
Three grown Rain shinobi had fallen for a trap set by a mere child.
After killing the man, Yubi rose without even sparing the corpse another glance. He immediately leaped away from the scene.
As he moved, his mind remained cold and clear.
The people of the Rain had not yet adapted to the environment of the Land of Wind. In a canyon like this-one with unpredictable sandstorms, broken lines of sight, and countless crevices in the cliffs-the terrain itself was a weapon.
And Yubi's greatest advantage was not just the weather.
It was his age.
Enemies underestimated him almost automatically. His small frame made him easier to hide and harder to detect among the rocks. Tricks that would have looked suspicious if used by an adult could become almost invisible in the hands of a child.
That advantage alone had already saved his life more than once.
Following a concealed route, Yubi headed back toward a nearby outpost.
Compared to the Rain elite he had fought the night before, these three were much weaker. They were ordinary Amegakure combatants, not the carefully trained monsters that Hanzo kept closer to his side.
Even so, that only made the broader situation more alarming.
"Rain came prepared," Yubi thought. "Most of Sunagakure's reinforcements are still on the way. That means the forces stationed behind the border have to hold until the village's main strength arrives."
The situation was extremely unfavorable for Sunagakure.
Hanzo's surprise attack had worked.
If the fighting in the rear was already this fierce, then the battle raging on the actual front lines could only be even worse.
But...
Yubi opened the system interface in front of him as he moved, and satisfaction lit up his eyes.
His positive experience points-those earned by saving lives-had risen from 126 to 307.
His negative experience points-the kind gained through killing-had risen from 0 to 54.
At the hospital, most of the experience he earned came one point at a time, maybe two if the injury was bad enough. But this battlefield was different. The more severe the wound, the greater the return. The battlefield itself was like a brutal multiplier.
The same was true for killing.
Two different pools of experience, two different paths of exchange.
"The medicine I brought is almost gone after a single night," Yubi thought. "If I want to save more people and keep earning experience, then from here on out I'll have to rely on surgery itself... and medical ninjutsu."
The system interface shifted in response to his thoughts.
A row of techniques surfaced before his eyes.
They were all abilities he could potentially exchange for-medical ninjutsu, and not the low-level sort either.
Palm Healing Technique. An A-rank medical ninjutsu that stimulated the cells around a wound and greatly accelerated the healing of external injuries.
Yin Healing Wound Destruction. Another A-rank technique. Before an attack landed, the user had to accurately predict where the blow would strike and concentrate chakra there in advance so the damage could be automatically repaired the moment it occurred.
Delicate Illness Extraction Technique. A B-rank medical ninjutsu of considerable difficulty, capable of extracting toxins and even handling the removal or transplantation of organs.
Regeneration Healing Technique. Another A-rank medical technique.
And that was only the beginning.
At a glance, there were many more. Tsunade's original medical techniques. The Strength of a Hundred. The Kusagakure bloodline-based technique from the movie, Dragon Life Reincarnation. Even the reincarnation technique Granny Chiyo would one day use to save Gaara.
But the stronger the technique, the more terrifying the cost.
Right now, those high-end abilities were still far beyond what he could afford.
Yubi's gaze settled, and his decision crystallized at once.
"First, I'll exchange for the Chakra Scalpel and the Palm Healing Technique," he said to himself. "I have enough experience for both, and together they're practically core equipment."
The moment the thought settled, anticipation flared in his chest.
On a battlefield overflowing with injuries, corpses, and war, there was no better place to test new medical power than here-and no better place to grow stronger fast.