The lightning that originally wrapped only around his right hand instantly surged to cover his entire body. The blinding light was clearly visible even from the Konoha camp hundreds of meters away!
The piercing sound of a thousand chirping birds echoed far into the night.
Chidori Stream!
If there had been a fifth enemy, such a glaring target would have been easily picked off, right? Unfortunately, there were no "ifs." There were only four enemies.
Hagoromo reached his left hand straight up, catching the enemy's long sword barehanded. The stinging pain made him involuntarily furrow his brow.
However, in that split second, a powerful electric current had already traveled up the sword, paralyzing the Jonin's body!
A five-meter-long blade of white light suddenly extended from Hagoromo's right arm, which was still embedded in the tree trunk, and then he swiftly swung his arm upward!
The tree, along with the enemy corpse still skewered on his right hand, was sliced cleanly in two. Following the arc of his swing, the white light slashed directly toward the paralyzed enemy Jonin in mid-air!
Chidori Sharp Spear!
This move was a variation of the Chidori, extending the attack range to five meters at the cost of reduced offensive power!
But this reduction was only relative to a full-power Chidori. If the Chidori Sharp Spear cut into a body, its sheer power would undoubtedly slice flesh and bone in half without issue!
Hagoromo originally intended to use this strike to finish off the Jonin, but unfortunately, a Jonin was still a Jonin. Even while paralyzed, the enemy managed to forcefully twist his body in mid-air!
Hagoromo's fatal strike only managed to sever half of his arm!
Moreover, once the arm was severed, Hagoromo could no longer channel the high-voltage current into his opponent. Though the residual numbness was uncomfortable, the Jonin's mobility had recovered. Realizing he could no longer fight missing an arm, he immediately retreated the moment he hit the ground!
In his eyes, Hagoromo was completely unscathed, making the boy seem impossible to defeat. But in reality, Hagoromo had already consumed a massive portion of his chakra.
Advanced ninjutsu boasted immense power, but similarly, the chakra drain was far from trivial.
Because of this, Hagoromo was powerless to pursue.
He dispelled the lightning coating his body and dropped the long sword clutched in his left hand, ignoring the severed half-arm still hanging from the hilt.
At that moment, Kushina rushed onto the scene in a flurry, followed by a squad of Anbu ninja.
"How is it, Hagoromo? Where are the enemies?" Seeing Hagoromo still standing in the woods, Kushina breathed a sigh of relief before immediately firing off questions.
The stench of blood in the air had thickened.
After all, this spot had just produced three corpses and a one-armed ninja.
But Hagoromo remained silent.
Normally, this would be the part of the story to describe a protagonist's psychological discomfort after their first kill, but Hagoromo felt no such thing.
Since arriving in this world, his education had focused entirely on how to kill, how to kill more precisely, and how to kill more efficiently.
Ninja were killing machines, and what he just did was merely putting twelve years of schooling into practice.
"Are you hurt?" Seeing no response from Hagoromo, Kushina immediately began checking him for injuries without another word. Fortunately, his arm had only been slashed.
"Phew..." Only then did Hagoromo let out a breath and finally react.
He hadn't been silent due to the trauma of killing; he was silent because he had overloaded.
That's right, he had overloaded. That massive, high-speed maneuver just now had pulled a maximum G-force of at least +9Gs, leaving his body highly disoriented. It took him a short while to recalibrate.
The wound on his palm was somewhat severe; the enemy's strike had cut right down to the bone. If it hadn't been for the Lightning Release, his hand would have been crippled.
However, there wasn't much pain. This was because Hagoromo had been continuously maintaining the numbing effect of the Lightning Release on his hand... But this came with a downside. While it didn't hurt, the cellular stimulation from the Lightning Release kept the wound bleeding profusely.
"I took out three, and the last one ran away. Just as I thought, I still can't handle a Jonin right now." Hagoromo took off his mask, revealing a bitter smile. Although the battle had lasted less than two minutes, it had drained a massive amount of his chakra. If that Jonin hadn't chosen to flee and continued the fight instead, Hagoromo might have ended up dead on the ground.
His words left the four Anbu ninja behind Kushina entirely speechless. As Kushina's guards, they naturally knew Hagoromo was just a brat fresh out of the Ninja Academy. A Genin feeling ashamed for not killing a Jonin? How were veteran Anbu like them supposed to live with that?
Was this really a case of the new generation aggressively replacing the old?
"This is the hand that's hurt." Kushina was frantically checking Hagoromo's blood-soaked right hand, but that was actually all enemy blood; his right hand was fine.
Instead, it was his left hand that was injured—the one that had caught the enemy's blade barehanded and was still bleeding non-stop.
The cut was deep enough to show bone.
Kushina roughly grabbed Hagoromo's hand. Seeing him not react at all, she immediately realized what was going on.
"Dispel the Lightning Release, or it can't be treated."
Hagoromo smiled wryly and obediently dropped the Lightning Release on his hand.
Intense pain instantly began to assault his nerves.
Kushina quickly brought him back to camp. Right now, the one thing this camp wasn't short on was medical ninja.
After receiving treatment from a medical ninja, Hagoromo's pain rapidly subsided.
Medical ninjutsu truly was a miraculous technique.
While Hagoromo was being treated, the Anbu ninja finished inspecting the battlefield. One of them whispered into Kushina's ear: "They were Sand Ninja. Three killed, one fled after having his arm severed..."
His tone was filled with astonishment. No one could have imagined that a freshly graduated Genin on his first real combat mission could pull this off.
Based on the Sand Ninja squad's composition, the three dead were exactly as Hagoromo had assessed: one Chunin and two Genin. This combat record was already incredibly impressive, let alone the fact that he severed a Jonin's arm.
You could say he completely held his own in a one-versus-four.
Kushina nodded to show she understood. As she helped bandage Hagoromo's wound, she said, "Well done, Hagoromo. As expected of my student. But next time you run into something like this, don't charge in alone. You won this time by pure luck..."
Hagoromo smiled wryly, not expecting Kushina to have such a preachy side.
Since he had dared to rush out alone, he had the confidence to protect himself. But he couldn't explain his underlying reasoning just yet, so he could only endure Kushina's nagging.
"I just wanted to test my abilities," he offered as a lame excuse.
Kushina glared at him fiercely, then gave his injured hand a firm smack.
Huh, it doesn't really hurt!
"Alright, how does it feel?"
Hagoromo tried to clench his fist. The bandages restricted his movement slightly, but the expected sharp pain never came. In just ten minutes, the treatment had shown obvious results.
"It barely hurts anymore. You're amazing, Sensei," Hagoromo praised, leaving the nearby medical ninja completely speechless, as if curing him was somehow Kushina's accomplishment.
"Who asked you about that? I'm asking how your first real battle felt," Kushina said.