The heavy steel doors loomed before them, ancient bolts locking away secrets Amatsu intended to claim. Higanbana stood beside him, her crimson eyes reflecting the dim torchlight, silent and calm. Behind them, Ryojin cracked his neck, chains rattling lightly against his arms.
The underground chamber was vast, but the air felt dense—thick with the scent of damp stone and rusted metal. Faint torches flickered along the walls, casting shifting shadows across the cold, uneven floor.
Then, movement.
The torches wavered. Four figures emerged from the darkness, stepping from the tunnels that branched off into the unknown. They did not speak. They did not posture.
Ryojin rolled his shoulder, cracking his neck. "Tch. Always guarding doors like statues. Do they even know they're about to die?"
None of the enforcers reacted. They simply stood, waiting, watching. The stillness before the storm.
Then, a sudden blur—a kunai streaked toward Amatsu's eye.
His head tilted a fraction. The kunai sliced past, embedding into the cavern wall.
Amateur. He had already lost the moment he attacked.
The attack had come from the leftmost shinobi, a wiry figure whose movements were near-silent, his stance loose and shifting. The second he missed, his form flickered, already repositioning to strike again.
A second shinobi raised his arms. Water seeped from the cracks in the floor—no, not water. It moved unnaturally, thickening into dark, viscous tendrils. Poison.
The poison-user smirked. "You don't belong here."
Amatsu's eyes remained unreadable. "And yet, here I am."
The poisoned liquid lunged forward.
Desperation. A real threat is silent, unseen. This was neither.
The third enemy moved like a phantom. No weapon drawn. His hands weaved through a sequence of seals. The torchlight dimmed, swallowed by the thickening air. No, not air—mist. A genjutsu, warping perception, twisting reality at the edges.
The fourth remained still. His breath slow. His right hand hovered over the hilt of his blade, stance rooted. Not a swordsman. A counterstriker. Waiting.
Four enemies. Four styles.
The moment stretched.
Then, the first shinobi struck—silent, near-invisible, kunai flashing toward Amatsu's ribs.
A mistake.
Amatsu did not retreat. His fingers twitched—a fine wire looped between them. The instant the enemy stepped in, his foot caught the nearly invisible thread. A snap of tension—kunai embedded in the walls jerked free, launching from multiple angles. The shinobi twisted, barely evading—
But Amatsu was already moving.
A flicker. Body Flicker Technique.
He reappeared behind the enemy, kunai slicing clean through the tendon of the shinobi's leg. A short, strangled exhale. His mobility was gone in an instant.
Amatsu turned before the body even fell.
The poisoned water surged. A whip-like tendril lashed toward him. Amatsu's fingers blurred through seals—a perfect mimicry of the enemy's own technique. Water coiled at his feet, mirroring the opponent's shape. A feint.
The poison-user instinctively adjusted. That was all Amatsu needed.
A second Body Flicker—he reappeared at the enemy's flank, blade flashing toward the wrist controlling the liquid. Steel met flesh. A choked gasp. The severed tendrils of poison collapsed into the dirt.
Ryojin's chains lashed out, fire erupting in the enclosed space, incinerating the remnants. The air crackled, thick with the stench of burnt poison.
The mist deepened.
Amatsu's fingers flexed. Unseen, his earlier wire traps had already been laid. The illusionist thought himself unseen—but in stepping forward, he crossed an invisible line. A glint of steel—one of Amatsu's pre-set kunai snapped free, wire tension launching it toward its mark.
It struck true. A sharp intake of breath—the shinobi's palm, impaled before he could finish his seal. The genjutsu shattered.
A step forward.
Higanbana moved, graceful, silent. A prisoner of her own presence.
The illusionist's breath caught as his gaze landed on her.
Then—his vision wavered.
A bloom of red.
The scent of flowers filled the air—faint, intoxicating, unnatural.
His breath hitched. Something was wrong. His heartbeat slowed. His limbs weakened. The world around him became distant, fading beneath a crimson haze.
The first petal fell.
No wasted motion.
Higanbana's fingers barely grazed his chest—light as a whisper.
Crack.
His body collapsed, boneless. His mind trapped—sinking into a field of endless, blooming red.
Only one remained.
The counterstriker had not moved. He stood exactly where he had begun, watching, waiting. His patience was a weapon sharper than his blade.
Amatsu met his gaze.
A single heartbeat passed.
Then Amatsu attacked.
Not with deception. Not with misdirection. A direct, clean strike—calculated to draw out the reaction he wanted.
The shinobi's blade flashed.
Lightning surged along its edge, an execution honed through a thousand encounters.
But Amatsu had already adjusted.
Patience. A rare trait among the weak. But patience without control is hesitation
His kunai shifted mid-strike—not clashing, not blocking, but redirecting. A deviation by a fraction of an inch.
And in that inch, Amatsu's free hand struck.
A palm to the throat. A precise burst of chakra.
The shinobi choked, body convulsing.
A thousand battles, a lifetime of training—undone in a single instant.
Then, silence.
One by one, the bodies lay still.
The underground tunnels remained unchanged, their darkness unmoved by death.
Higanbana did not speak.
Ryojin cracked his knuckles, exhaling.
Ryojin kicked a corpse aside, shaking embers from his chains. "Tch. That's all? I was hoping they'd at least scream."
Amatsu stepped over the fallen enemy without pause. The door to the laboratory loomed ahead, untouched, unguarded.
Higanbana wiped a speck of blood from her fingers.
No answer was needed.
Amatsu pushed the heavy doors open. A gust of cold, stale air greeted him, thick with the scent of ink, old parchment, and rusted metal. The chamber stretched into the underground gloom, shelves packed with brittle scrolls, stacked tomes, and faded documents—remnants of experiments long buried.
He took everything.
His hands moved with precision, sweeping through the shelves, plucking scrolls bound in wax seals, manuscripts lined with intricate formulas. Some bore the markings of old clans, others the sigils of forbidden research. Each one a fragment of power. Each one his to claim.
With a flick of his wrist, the first scroll unraveled. He skimmed its contents—chakra transference, unstable. Useless. He cast it aside. Another—bloodline augmentation, partial success. It vanished into a storage scroll in a blur of motion.
Higanbana moved beside him, silent, her crimson eyes scanning every detail. Without instruction, she gathered the intact tomes, her delicate fingers brushing over aged paper as she sealed them away. She understood. What could be used was kept. What was worthless was abandoned.
Ryojin scoffed, running a hand over a stack of metal cases. "Hmph. You sure about this? Looks like the kind of shit that gets people killed."
Amatsu did not reply. He reached for a set of research logs, unraveling a page. His gaze flicked over the contents—diagrams of human anatomy, chakra flow disruption, experimental notes scrawled in hurried ink. The name "Hanzo" appeared in the margins.
His grip tightened.
One by one, the shelves emptied. Scrolls vanished into storage seals. Symbols and sealing arrays were stripped from the walls, copied, memorized, erased. The room, once a vault of lost knowledge, was reduced to hollow shelves and scattered remnants.
Only when nothing useful remained did Amatsu step back. He exhaled, slow.
"Done?" Ryojin asked.
Amatsu rolled the final scroll between his fingers before sealing it away.
"Move"
Without another word, they turned, leaving the chamber in silence. Behind them, the weight of forgotten history remained undisturbed—except for the knowledge they had taken.
Paper bombs. Dozens. Placed along structural points, between shelves, under tables, behind reinforced doors. Not merely to destroy—to erase. To leave nothing behind but ash and ruin.
As he placed the final seal, Amatsu whispered, "Knowledge belongs to the strong."
He turned without a word, stepping out of the laboratory. Higanbana followed, untouched by greed, but understanding. Ryojin was already ahead, leading the way toward the hidden exit.
Behind them, a whisper of fire kissed the seals.
The seals ignited.
For a breath, nothing happened.
Then—
Detonation.
The explosion did not erupt—it consumed.
A deafening roar shook the fortress, a wave of fire and pressure swallowing everything in its path. The shelves buckled, splintering like brittle bones. Scrolls ignited in an instant, their knowledge reduced to drifting embers, twisting and curling in the superheated air.
Stone groaned, splitting apart as cracks raced along the walls, veins of destruction spreading like jagged lightning. Metal warped under the heat, beams collapsing into ruin, sending up a chorus of shrieking iron and crashing debris. The scent of burning parchment, scorched ink, and molten steel choked the air.
A final tremor. Then the foundation caved.
The laboratory, the knowledge, the history—gone.
Higanbana watched in silence, her crimson eyes reflecting the blaze. After a moment, she blinked once, then turned away.
Amatsu did not turn to watch.
As the flames devoured the past behind him, he muttered, voice cold, absolute.
"If it can't be mine, it shouldn't exist."
And without a glance back, he walked forward, into the darkness.