Bounty Hunters

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Seeing that their attack had landed, the attacker on the other side gave a malicious laugh. "Brother, this twenty-five-million-ryo target is nothing special. We dropped him right away."

Pop.

The moment he finished speaking, Naoki, who had been pierced through both ribs by two blades, turned into a cloud of smoke.

Both attackers froze at the same time. "A Shadow Clone?"

At that moment, a figure dropped from above and landed on both men's heads, driving the two stunned attackers hard into the ground.

The figure was Naoki. Standing on their heads, he slowly crouched down and said, "Hey, was my name not on the bounty notice? You two were crouching in the grass that openly. Were you looking down on me that much?"

"Damn it!"

"How was it a Shadow Clone?"

With their heads pinned under his feet, the two bounty hunters still sounded unable to believe it.

Naoki's expression chilled as he thought, 'Has the Hyuga Clan's deterrence in the shinobi world really fallen this low?'

In his view, since the bounty notice listed his name, any bounty hunter who dared accept the job should know that he was a Byakugan kekkei genkai shinobi.

But these two bounty hunters seemed to have no real understanding of the Byakugan.

Their skill was not weak either. Judging by the ambush just now, both were at least chunin level.

That made Naoki uncertain. He could not tell whether these two bounty hunters were simply ignorant, or whether the Hyuga Clan no longer inspired much fear in the shinobi world.

After binding the two bounty hunters, Naoki returned to the village.

At the village mission center, Naoki learned that the two men were missing-nin from Kirigakure. After defecting, they had committed crimes and built up a bloody record, so there were bounties on their heads as well. Together, the two were worth close to three million ryo.

At the same time, Naoki also learned that Kirigakure had recently fallen into internal chaos.

Reportedly, several of Kirigakure's bloodline clans had taken part in a rebellion, throwing the entire village into disorder. As a result, many Kirigakure shinobi had defected. Some became wandering shinobi, while others became bounty hunters.

After dealing with the bounty hunters, Naoki did not delay. He left the village again.

As he walked along the road, the large unexpected profit he had just gained did not make him look happy. On the contrary, his expression gradually grew colder.

When he was attacked earlier, he had hidden his real body in the shadows and carefully observed the surroundings, worried that the enemy might launch follow-up attacks.

Because of that, he noticed that when he was attacked, the Root shinobi assigned to monitor him from behind showed no intention of stepping in to help.

No matter how one looked at it, they were shinobi from the same village.

Watching one's own comrade get attacked and showing no concern at all made one thing clear. The Root shinobi was not merely monitoring Naoki. He was treating Naoki as an enemy.

Once Naoki understood that, killing intent surged through him.

At first, he had thought that the Root shinobi was only following orders and had little choice in the matter. Shaking him off would have been enough. There was no need to kill him. Now, Naoki's thoughts had changed.

That night, Naoki chose a flat area in the forest as his campsite. He lit a campfire and rested while eating roasted rabbit.

Not far away, the Root shinobi responsible for monitoring him sat on the branch of a large tree, his back against the trunk, watching the direction of the fire from a distance.

'Hmph. He actually lit a campfire. His vigilance is awful. How does someone like that qualify as ANBU?'

The Root shinobi chewed the dry rations he carried with him while sneering inwardly.

This Root shinobi's code name was Dingyou. Surveillance missions were second nature to him, because every mission he had ever carried out fell into one of two categories.

One was surveillance. The other was assassination.

And often, those two types of missions could be treated as the same kind of mission, because every target he had monitored eventually became a target he was ordered to kill.

Suddenly, Dingyou sensed killing intent. With years of assassination experience, he keenly realized that something had locked onto him.

"Ninja Art: Super Beast Imitating Drawing!"

Almost by instinct, he sprang into the air. While flipping down from the tree, he took out paper and brush midair and quickly drew an ink bird.

Swish, swish.

But before he could land on the ink bird, two iron spears shot through it at high speed, smashing it into a burst of ink that scattered through the air.

Dingyou landed on the ground in a sorry state. Only then did he discover that the one ambushing him was a mysterious shinobi wrapped entirely in bandages, with no visible features at all.

Then he noticed the Iron Sand floating around the mysterious shinobi and was startled.

"Magnet Release?"

As a member of Root, Dingyou had heard of many strange kekkei genkai and secret techniques from across the shinobi world. He recognized at a glance that this was the kekkei genkai unique to Sunagakure.

Dingyou asked tensely, "Who are you?"

Even in Sunagakure, shinobi who mastered Magnet Release were extremely rare. At present, the only widely known examples were the missing Third Kazekage and the current Fourth Kazekage.

Dingyou did not believe that either the Third Kazekage or the Fourth Kazekage would suddenly come to the wilderness to ambush him for no reason. In his mind, the mysterious shinobi in front of him was most likely a missing-nin from Sunagakure who had mastered Magnet Release.

The reason he assumed the enemy was a Sunagakure missing-nin was that Dingyou carried neither important intelligence nor important items. Sunagakure would never dispatch an elite shinobi who had mastered Magnet Release merely to assassinate him.

Besides, Konoha and Sunagakure were currently moving toward an alliance. Sunagakure had no reason to attack a Konoha shinobi at a time like this.

'His target is Naoki Hyuga.'

Considering the huge bounty on Naoki, Dingyou began to suspect that. Only a bounty of that size would be enough to tempt a Sunagakure missing-nin of this caliber.

'He must think I am in the way, so he wants to remove me first and then attack Naoki Hyuga.'

Once he thought of that, Dingyou came up with a plan.

In his view, if the enemy's target was Naoki, then as long as he led the enemy to Naoki, the enemy would likely ignore him and turn to attack Naoki instead.

At that point, he could escape calmly.

After all, with only special jonin-level strength, he was not strong enough to fight a powerful shinobi who had mastered Magnet Release.

After quickly drawing two ink lions to delay the enemy, Dingyou immediately used the Body Flicker Technique and fled toward the nearby campfire.

As he sped through the forest, he suddenly noticed that Naoki was still sitting beside the campfire, calmly chewing on a rabbit leg. Dingyou sneered inwardly, 'What an idiot. He did not even notice a battle this close.'

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