"Even I, who never attended the Ninja Academy, know better than to light a fire in the jungle at night. It's far too easy to expose your position," Jie Uchiha said. "But since I dared to do it, I obviously had a trump card. What did you people rely on? Your own ignorance?"
Mid-sentence, Jie vanished in a blur, reappearing directly in front of the fleeing Anbu trainee.
Thud! With a muffled impact, the trainee collapsed instantly.
Jie casually gnawed on a roasted wild rabbit with one hand while expertly patting down the unconscious ninja's body with the other.
'Just another poor bastard without a single scroll,' he thought, tossing the trainee aside. 'That makes four in a row. It looks like if I want to complete this mission, I still need to track down that guy named Zane.'
He glanced toward the central tower in the distance, completely ignoring the unconscious ninja groaning at his feet.
Early the next morning, fully rested, Jie set out straight for the central tower. He needed to arrive before anyone else to set his plan in motion. Sprinting recklessly through the dense foliage for two hours, he casually dispatched the six or seven Anbu trainees who were foolish enough to attempt an ambush along the way.
Finally, Jie arrived at his destination.
Seeing the heavy tower doors tightly shut, looking as though they hadn't been touched since the exam began, Jie breathed a sigh of relief.
'Good, I made it in time,' he thought. 'Now, it's my turn to shine. To everyone else taking this exam—if you want someone to blame, blame Zane.'
Muttering to himself, his figure slowly faded from the clearing.
"Finally escaped those maniacs," Zane gasped.
His clothes were shredded, and a thick streak of black soot marred his face as he bolted rapidly toward the central tower. After hoarding the scrolls, he had dashed into the jungle, only to be relentlessly hunted down by every other trainee in the forest.
However, Zane had dared to pull such a stunt because he had the skills to back it up. Relying on his masterful Konoha-Style Kenjutsu and superb Body Flicker Technique, he had carved a bloody path right through their heavy encirclement.
Still, fighting against those odds had left him completely drained. Just to be safe, he had spent the last twenty-four hours wedged tightly inside a hollowed-out tree he had stumbled across. He hadn't moved an inch or even dared to close his eyes, paralyzed by the fear of exposing his position. In his exhausted state, he would have been easy prey.
"But in the end, I'm the one who came out on top! I kept them all!" he laughed breathlessly. "The only one becoming a true Anbu today is yours truly, Zane!"
Looking at the dozens of scrolls bundled heavily in his arms, his eyes gleamed with greed.
'Just one pair is enough to pass, and I hold almost all of them right now,' he calculated internally. 'If I bring the entire batch to the central tower, will I get all the remaining rewards too? That's a full ten jutsu!'
He set the bundle down and began sorting the scrolls into matching pairs. But before he could finish, he froze. Something was wrong.
It was too quiet. Eerily quiet.
An untamed jungle couldn't possibly be this devoid of life, yet he couldn't hear even the faint hum of insects or the distant call of a bird. Without a doubt, a terrifying predator was nearby—an aura so oppressive that it had driven all the native wildlife out of their own habitat in sheer panic.
Drawing the short sword strapped to his back, Zane crept forward with extreme caution. As he took a few tentative steps, his eyes locked onto something he hadn't noticed before. Several neat lines of text had been freshly carved into the trunk of a massive tree ahead of him.
-I opened this road. I planted this tree. If you want to pass, leave your toll money.-
He squinted at the grooves. "Who's there?" he snapped. "Who's playing tricks on me? Do you think some cryptic bullshit is enough to scare me?"
Gripping his blade tightly, Zane swept his gaze across the shadows, his senses dialed to the absolute maximum. "Cowardly rats! Come out and face me if you have a death wish!"
Five agonizing minutes ticked by. The jungle remained dead silent. Aside from him, there wasn't a single soul in sight.
"Too scared to show your face?" he taunted into the canopy. "Fine! Then sit back and watch as I take all these scrolls into the tower and claim every single reward for myself!"
He abruptly bent down to scoop up the pile of scrolls, acting as though he was turning to leave. However, his white-knuckled grip on his short sword betrayed his true intentions—it was a feint.
If an outside observer had been watching, they would have noticed something incredibly pathetic: there wasn't a second living person within a hundred-meter radius. The hyper-vigilant Zane was entirely unaware that he was fighting a fierce battle of wits against thin air.
In his mind, however, the hidden enemy was simply a master of patience. To hold back and refrain from attacking even when Zane blatantly exposed his back to pick up the scrolls? This invisible foe possessed a truly terrifying mental state.
As for the possibility that there was no ambush at all? Zane would never believe it. How could anyone be stupid enough to carve a meaningless, theatrical message during a high-stakes Anbu exam, risking the exposure of their position for absolutely no reason?
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