The silence broke again, but this time not with thunder.
Figures emerged from the treeline in every direction, cloaks black and red with bone-and-blood motifs, hoods pulled low, eyes gleaming with fanatic light.
Nearly forty of them, eight teams in groups of five, forming a wide circle around Gorō and Emi.
Their steps were steady, deliberate, like a ritual already in motion.
The air was swiftly filled with muttered chanting.
They already clutched crude wooden dolls.
Others smeared their own blood into symbols across the dirt, faces twisted in a mix of pain and ecstasy.
The ring tightened, madness pressing down as surely as Gorō's killing intent had.
Emi froze, wide-eyed.
She had expected Kumo to come.
She had not expected this.
"What… what the hell are these freaks?"
She thought, her breath caught between disbelief and alarm.
Gorō's masked gaze swept the circle once, calm, unreadable.
His hand flexed faintly at his side, lightning sparking along his knuckles.
He hadn't sensed them, not until they stepped into the open.
Despite them now not appearing to be much different than untrained civilians.
That was very unusual.
His mind marked the detail immediately.
Very high-level suppression seals.
Whoever led them wasn't an amateur.
And then he saw him.
At the center of the gathering, walking with deliberate calm, Kimimaro stepped into view.
Beside him trailed Reika, calm and indifferent despite the scene, and Saya, her grin sharp and hungry beneath her hood.
All three wore suppression seals, even more advanced than the rabble, their presence muted, their chakra masked almost to nothing.
Their cloaks marked them apart, finer stitching, heavier fabric, the mark of leaders.
Kimimaro stopped a few paces away, bone-white hair stirring faintly in the breeze.
His gaze moved over Emi, then locked on Gorō, measuring him with an intensity that cut deeper than any blade.
"This is rare," Kimimaro said quietly, voice calm, steady.
"An elite from Kumogakure. Alone. To stumble across you here is fortune I cannot ignore."
Reika's eyes flicked toward the masked man.
Her whisper was soft, but carried sharp edges.
"He's not like the others we've caught. This one is strong, Kimimaro. The kind of man the big five villages build reputations around. If we make a mistake, we'll lose more than pawns."
Saya laughed harshly, licking blood from the edge of her knife.
"Good. Finally, something worth carving. His skull will crack louder than the others."
She tilted her head back, grin wide, eyes crazed. "Let me have the first taste."
Kimimaro didn't look at her. "No. You'll die if you treat him like prey. Elites like him already stand near the top of the shinobi world, one step beneath the Kage themselves. Few like him could even topple weaker ones in ideal circumstances. Carelessness is death."
Saya's grin faltered, but only for a heartbeat.
Then it twisted sharper. "Then we bleed him with care. Doesn't change the end."
Reika folded her arms, indifferent as ever. "We'll do what we must. But don't underestimate him. He's already crushed a Leaf jōnin fairly quickly. That should say enough."
Kimimaro's gaze never left Gorō.
He could see it, the lightning humming in the man's frame, the speed that had erased the Konoha team before they could react. An isolated elite.
Perfect material for the altar.
If they managed to take him, Kumo would never believe some ragged cult in the Land of Hot Water had been responsible.
They would blame only Konoha logically first, thinking that they had won, with foresight, this time by setting up some trap successfully.
He lifted a hand, and the chanting from the currently only Inner Circle Jashinists present pressed even closer, their symbols painted thick with fresh blood, their dolls raised high.
Individually, they were weak, most no stronger than fresh genin, but forty bodies in formation had weight, and their fanatic devotion was a weapon in itself.
Emi stood inside the ring, trapped between storm and madness.
She had no idea what to do.
The masked man was supposed to be her deliverance.
This cult, she had never even imagined, and her pale eyes darted from one side to the other in disbelief.
Gorō's voice finally broke the silence, low and even beneath the mask. "More vermin."
Lightning sparked across his frame, legs coiled to strike again.
But his mind was cold, steady.
The girl was his objective.
The rest, whether cultists or monsters, were obstacles.
And he would erase them as swiftly as the Konoha team.
Kimimaro allowed himself a thin smile. "Be careful," he murmured to Saya and Reika without taking his eyes off the masked shinobi.
"This is no common prey. One mistake, and he'll end you. But if we succeed…"
The bone-white hair shifted as he tilted his head. "If we succeed, certainly he'll burn brighter on the altar than anything we've offered before."
Gorō finally launched forward with a burst of lightning.
His body blurred into streaks of blue-white as the Lightning Release Body Flicker propelled him like a cannon shot toward Kimimaro, Saya, and Reika.
But this time, something dragged at him.
His speed faltered, the burst stuttering as though invisible weights had latched onto his body.
Pain stabbed into his nerves, dull but relentless, like a storm of heavy balls slamming into his skin from every direction.
Not sharp enough to wound, but impossible to ignore.
His mask tilted slightly, the first sign of surprise.
Kimimaro's eyes sharpened. "So. His Lightning Body Flicker is only a burst. Not a constant flow like the Raikage's Lightning Chakra Mode. No reinforcement of the entire nervous system, for reflexes, and only localized bursts along the legs. Strong… but temporary."
Saya was already moving, faster than her frame should allow.
Blood pumped into her limbs with vicious circulation, her scythe carving manic arcs through the air.
"You're mine!" she shouted, a laugh bubbling behind her teeth.
Reika's voice also cut coldly over the chanting.
Her hands weaved seals, breath misting in the warm air.
"Ice Release: Spikes of the Shield"
Pillars of jagged ice erupted from the ground around Gorō, forcing him to twist sharply to avoid being impaled.
She held her ground at a distance, serving as the long-range spear of their formation.
His flicker stuttered again, slowed further by the ritual's phantom agony.
Kimimaro moved with deliberate patience.
He didn't dive at Gorō, not yet.
Instead, he layered the battlefield with quick traps, weaving C-rank Earth Release walls that collapsed into false dead-ends, water clones hidden in shallow pits.
His trump cards stayed hidden.
He wanted Gorō tired, hemmed in, forced into desperation.
But Gorō was no ordinary shinobi.
Lightning crackled up his arm and surged outward in a fan of white arcs.
"Lightning Release: Hands of Torture."
Saya snarled as sparks raked across her scythe arm, the skin blistering.
She forced more blood into her muscles, laughing even as the burns spread.
Reika raised another jutsu next, voice like ice. "Ice Release: Swallow Snowstorm."
A cloud of razor-sharp ice birds whirled around Gorō, tearing at his cloak and skin.
He batted them away with a surge of lightning, but the ritual gnawed at his speed, leaving shallow cuts across his arms.
Kimimaro's calm voice carried across the clash, dry and cutting.
"You're not fast enough, not anymore."
Gorō's masked head snapped toward him, lightning flaring violently.
His voice was low, controlled, but sharp with irritation. "Vermin brats with odd tricks."
Saya spun her scythe, blood dripping from her burned hand, grin wide. "Doesn't matter. You're already bleeding. We'll see how long you laugh when your heart stops."
Saya had already forced her will into his blood during the last exchange, twisting it just enough to slow his movements and leave his insides crawling with discomfort even more.
Now that she had tasted it, she could do far worse.
The more her blood mixed with her target's, even faintly, enhanced by her recent Yin–Yang breakthroughs, the deeper her Ketsuryūgan could reach, both in illusion and in physical blood control, everything compounded even further with her refined Jashinist techniques.
With a proper sample, her large, coiling, unpredictable Triple-Bladed Scythe picked up on its way at some point, she was ready to seize him from within even further.
Reika's eyes narrowed, calculating. "He'll try to end this quickly. The longer he stays, the weaker he gets. Don't let him out."
Gorō landed from a flicker, lightning skittering across his armor.
He swept his gaze across them, and for the first time, his attention lingered not only on Emi, 'frozen' just inside the ring, but on Reika.
"Ice Release...", His mind noted it instantly.
Kumo believed it was fully extinct in the Water Country currently.
To find it here, of all places, was… valuable.
He would be even more rewarded if he brought her with him as well.
"She comes too," he thought coldly, lightning crawling across his skin.
And with another thunderclap burst, he moved again.
His mind throbbed under the strain, many nerves screaming as the ritual gnawed at him.
His moderate civilian chakra reserves also slowly bled away, his body growing heavier, slower with each burst.
He knew subtlety was useless at this point. The only path left was to commit fully and finish things before the balance shifted.
"Even if I can't take those three brats right away, I can still butcher the weaker ones. The trash-tier cultists? I can carve through them easily and tear their whole little act apart."