Chapter 125: Kitsuchi Arrives
With the Third Great Ninja War underway, the biggest impact for Ishiro came from Konoha. In addition to concentrating a large force near the Land of Grass to counter Iwa's southern main forces, Konoha also stationed around 600 shinobi on the border of the Land of Taki.
This 600-strong force was clearly meant to contain Ishiro's Eastern Division. Though he suspected that Konoha wouldn't attack such a larger force with a smaller one, Ishiro didn't take chances.
First, he ramped up patrol frequency again, and then redirected ANBU operations to focus primarily on the Taki border.
While a 600-man army wasn't enough to concern him deeply, the commander of this Konoha force did.
The spy report named him: Namikaze Minato.
When Ishiro heard that his opponent would be the future Yellow Flash, his heart nearly stopped.
As a jōnin of Iwagakure, Ishiro had access to a fair number of classified files, including detailed profiles on significant ninja from other nations. Naturally, the man who would one day become the Fourth Hokage was a subject of focused observation.
Namikaze Minato was three years older than Ishiro, now 18. He had graduated from the Academy a year earlier than Ishiro, and for reasons unknown, had later been taken as a personal disciple by one of the Sannin—Jiraiya.
But according to intel, Jiraiya had not been his first squad leader, suggesting that the personal tutelage came later.
Despite being a civilian-born ninja, Minato's natural talent was exceptional. Yet during his school days, he hadn't been among the very top of his class.
His reputation exploded only after becoming Jiraiya's student. It took barely more than a year for him to reach jōnin under Jiraiya's guidance.
From there, his fame continued to skyrocket. The confirmed kills attributed to him included at least four elite jōnin—one of whom was from Iwa. The report implied that Minato had soloed that elite jōnin.
Ishiro deduced that Minato had likely already completed the crucial elite jōnin-level breakthrough—just like Ikura had.
What Ishiro wasn't sure of, however, was whether Minato had already mastered the Flying Thunder God Technique. The intelligence lacked confirmation. All they knew was that Minato's Body Flicker was incredibly fast and that he also had a powerful melee technique.
Given the lack of detail, Ishiro couldn't confirm if that technique was the Rasengan.
His mindset became conflicted: one part of him wanted to test himself against this future legend, the other part wanted nothing to do with him.
This contradiction—fear of death clashing with the thrill of a dangerous encounter—weighed heavily on him.
But he didn't have to hesitate long.
The village made the decision for him—Kitsuchi arrived at the Eastern Front.
Originally, the plan had been to send Kurotsuchi's father, but the elders changed their mind and instead deployed ANBU Team 18, a unit Ishiro once served with.
The current captain of Team 18 was Shiden, now an elite jōnin. While not as formidable as the owl, he was still strong. And with Ishiro's rapid rise in influence, sending Shiden was considered sufficient.
Most importantly, Ishiro's proposal to set up a natural energy seal on the Eastern Front provided the perfect excuse to transfer Shiden—and with him, the ninken Dan'go (Shironeko's summoned beast companion)—to the East.
In wartime, the village couldn't afford to let an elite jōnin like Shiden go unused. But if Shiden continued to take Dan'go into missions, it would hinder the creature's natural energy absorption.
Just when the higher-ups were worrying about this dilemma, Ishiro's plan arrived as the perfect solution. With Shiden stationed on the Eastern Front and Dan'go free to absorb natural energy uninterrupted, Kurotsuchi could be reassigned elsewhere. Everyone benefitted.
So, the higher-ups approved Ishiro's request swiftly and sent the necessary sealing materials along with Kitsuchi.
Kitsuchi's arrival greatly eased Ishiro's pressure. Although both were elite jōnin, Kitsuchi was clearly the stronger of the two. Shiden, with his sharp experience and blade, also exceeded Ishiro in real combat.
With their support, Ishiro now felt more confident about facing Namikaze Minato.
Not to gang up on him—but to let them help analyze Minato's tactics and build a strategy to match.
But before he could confront Minato, Ishiro had two pressing tasks:
First, set up the natural energy sealing formation.
Despite claiming he could handle it alone, the village sent several specialists to assist. With help from a few Barrier Corps members, Ishiro completed the seal in less than half a day.
Thanks to years of improvements, the latest version only required five chakra sources of differing attributes to maintain. With over a thousand ninja in his unit, finding five fitting volunteers wasn't hard.
The second task was to spar with Kitsuchi and Shiden.
Until now, Ishiro occasionally sparred with his own jōnin, but the gap in strength made the experience less valuable. Kitsuchi and Shiden were rare equals—sparring with them was a gift.
He brought his three students along to watch and learn.
His battles with Kitsuchi were fierce but one-sided—he was completely suppressed. Not because Kitsuchi's strength vastly exceeded his, but because Kitsuchi's mastery over Earth Release techniques outshone Ishiro's in both depth and fluidity.
Their styles were similar, both ninjutsu-focused. Ishiro's only edge was hand seal speed.
After changing his daily schedule, Ishiro had been practicing one-handed hand seals. But he soon realized how hard it was.
Some basic hand signs could be performed one-handed—but chaining them together into a full technique was nearly impossible.
He found that simplified jutsu—those he'd already reduced the seal count for—refused to activate at all with one-handed seals. And for unsimplified jutsu, there were simply too many seals to perform one-handed.
Take Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall for example—it needed over twenty seals. Ishiro could only do a few one-handed. The rest still needed both hands.
This made the entire endeavor mostly pointless.
Still, it wasn't a total loss. The effort helped him further refine his chakra control, and his seal speed had improved again—now at 5.2 to 5.7 seals per second.
This alone let him survive longer against Kitsuchi.
Kitsuchi's advantage was simple: powerful Earth Release, backed by a huge chakra pool.
He could cast versions of jutsu that far exceeded the standard. Ishiro, whose chakra had never been abundant, never used excessive chakra to power up his jutsu. It simply wasn't worth it.
Take Water Release: Water Surge and Water Release: Violent Water Wave. Both were similar. The former was C-rank, the latter B-rank.
Even if Ishiro dumped B-rank chakra amounts into the C-rank version, it would still fall short in power. The only benefit was fewer hand seals. But for Ishiro, whose hand seal speed was already fast and chakra was limited, that wasn't a good trade-off.
If Kitsuchi's only advantage was power, Ishiro might still put up a fight. But Kitsuchi had also been through real war. His adaptability and tactical response were leagues above Ishiro's.
He strung together ninjutsu seamlessly. Ishiro, by contrast, relied heavily on his sensory ninjutsu to anticipate threats and plan his battles in advance.
But because he always had the advantage of foresight, his reaction instincts had atrophied.
Seeing this, Kitsuchi deliberately toyed with him—stretching out what could've been a five-minute win into an hour-long training session. He used only C and B-rank jutsu, yet Ishiro couldn't fight back at all.
It was in that moment that Ishiro finally understood the biggest gap between himself and the native-born ninja of this world:
They had lived their whole lives in danger.
They lived like ninja, constantly on edge, integrating survival skills into everyday life. For them, combat was second nature.
Ishiro didn't have that. Kitsuchi realized it too—but had no good way to fix it.
All he could do was forge Ishiro's instincts through pressure.
Shiden's approach was similar. When they sparred, he was shocked that Ishiro had learned sword aura.
But while Ishiro had aura, his actual swordsmanship was far behind.
Shiden, who also wielded aura, easily handled Ishiro in close combat without even unsheathing his blade.
That hit Ishiro hard. He had trained so much—how could he still have no way to fight back?
He wondered why there was such a gap. The best kenjutsu in Iwagakure only went up to B-rank. A-rank sword styles were incomplete fragments—just theories and scattered notes.
Ishiro's own training used a B-rank sword art. It shouldn't have left him this overwhelmed.
Shiden's explanation was blunt:
"You don't have a swordsman's heart. I don't know how you learned sword aura, but your blade has form without spirit. In short—just flashy technique."
Ishiro's three students didn't understand, but Ishiro did. He'd read enough wuxia novels in his past life to know what that meant.
Understanding was one thing. Changing it was another.
Good thing he wasn't aiming to be a close-range fighter. His lack of sword mastery wasn't critical.
Still… since Namikaze Minato was a melee specialist, Ishiro figured he'd better spar with Shiden a few more times—just in case.
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