The time for the match was approaching, and I stood near the stands of the arena, waiting to be called into the center for battle, staring at the terrain with tired focus. Sandstone ridges, uneven ground, scattered cover. Tricky. I took a slow breath and tried to lock in, ignoring the fact that my mind and body still felt like they had not fully forgiven me for existing.
That was when the whispers started.
At first, I assumed it was normal crowd noise. Chunin Exams must come with background murmuring. Betting, gossip, last-minute bravado. I tuned it out.
Then someone said, very clearly, "That's him."
Another voice followed, hushed but intense. "The tyrant."
…Excuse me?
A third person whispered loudly enough to defeat the purpose of whispering, "What do you mean, the tyrant?"
"I heard someone from his own village called him that."
That stopped me cold.
Another person said, "Our merchants picked it up next, given how tyrannical he is with them. The Tyrant of the Leaf. Too strong. Apparently even his teammates are scared of him." Another continued, "Must be how they train over there." One guy confidently declared, without any doubt, that I probably ate other genin for breakfast. I did not know where he got that idea, but I deeply resented it.
A tick appeared on my forehead.
I clenched my jaw and stared very hard at the ground, desperately trying to remember that I was here to fight, not turn around and start cursing at strangers. My focus was already hanging by a thread. I did not need this.
Then someone shouted, with despair, "I bet against him." There was a brief pause. Then a second voice, much sadder, said, "You already lost." A hand patted a shoulder. "Sorry, man."
I closed my eyes for half a second.
Chakra stirred in response, slipping out due to weak control, not exactly a flare but more like an annoyed leak, heavy and uncomfortable, tinted with frustration and the emotional mess I had been carrying around for days.
Some Sand shinobi nearby stiffened.
"Oh," he said slowly. "That chakra is… impressive."
The civilian next to him leaned away like I might bite. "Is he dangerous?"
The shinobi hesitated, which was the worst possible thing he could have done. "He's very strong," he said carefully. "And that chakra feels… intense."
Fantastic.
"Well," another civilian muttered, nodding sagely, "that explains the nickname."
Heads started nodding. Whispers multiplied. The tyrant thing officially took on a life of its own. I heard it repeated with increasing confidence, each version worse than the last. Apparently, I was violent, unstable, terrifying, and possibly allergic to mercy.
I exhaled slowly and dragged my chakra back under control before it could make things even worse. My hands shook a little, partly from fatigue, partly from the sheer absurdity of the situation.
Then the announcer's voice came in, ignited with energy. "Combatants, move to the center of the arena. It is time to battleeeee!" The audience shuddered with excitement at the first match of the tournament.
In front of me stood Setsuna, the Yugakure genin, who had not looked like much to me the first time I saw him at the oasis. I had assumed their ice kekkei genkai user carried the team, so I was not particularly on edge or concerned. My mind still felt unprimed, thoughts coming slow and sluggish, and my physical energy was running low after days of eating and drinking very little.
The jonin proctor who would supervise this stage of the Chunin Exam came walking in from the side. He was wearing sunglasses in the shadow-covered arena. I narrowed my eyes, looking at the arena and then at him, which somehow managed to annoy him. He was bald, with no eyebrows, thin, tall, and wiry, which made him look scary, to be honest. However, when he spoke, his voice was clear and precise. "My name is Kazan, and I will be supervising this stage of the Chunin Exam. Once I say a match has ended, you will stop. Otherwise, I will beat you down like a dog and announce your loss, no matter the condition of the other person. Is that clear?"
We both nodded, Setsuna especially, his fear obvious in the slight shake running through him. I silently thanked the gods for an easy match, given my current condition. As the jonin raised a hand, the stadium fell silent in anticipation. When he brought it down in a sharp, decisive motion and shouted, "Begin," he flickered away, and the audience erupted into explosive cheers.
Setsuna hastily and inaccurately sent multiple kunai my way while shaking. I jumped back, evading their trajectories easily, not in any rush to attack. He immediately turned and ran, clearly frightened, heading straight for an area of heavy cover littered with debris. I narrowed my eyes and sighed. "I hope this won't turn into a pathetic game of hide-and-seek where I end up looking like the bully," I muttered as I started walking slowly after him.
The audience gasped at my deliberately slow advance and the terrified genin fleeing ahead, nodding to themselves as they confirmed whatever conclusion they had already reached.
I reached the heavy cover area and spoke while looking around. "Just give up, and I won't hurt you." Then I continued under my breath, "Too much." No response came. I scratched my head and extended my chakra senses around me. Immediately, I felt a strange feedback.
There was too much chakra in the air.
The realization finished forming just as the mist thickened, rolling outward from between the stone slabs like something alive. It was not the light, drifting haze I expected. This fog was heavy and saturated, clinging to the ground before rising in slow, deliberate waves. Visibility collapsed almost instantly, shapes blurring, edges dissolving, distance becoming meaningless. The air itself felt dense, pressing against my skin and lungs as if I had stepped into deep water.
Water Release: Obscuring Shroud
I felt it then, the real problem. My chakra senses did not go blind. They screamed. As the mist began to spread, I realized it was saturated with chakra, not hostile exactly, but overwhelming, layered so thick that individual signatures drowned inside it. Everything felt close. Everything felt far. The feedback never stopped, constant and disorienting, like trying to pick out a single voice in the middle of a crowd all shouting at once. The arena vanished from my awareness, replaced by a suffocating haze of false signals and warped echoes that pressed in from every direction.
Sound changed next. The cheers of the audience dulled into a distant, hollow murmur, warped and scattered by the fog. Footsteps became impossible to place. Even my own breathing sounded wrong, swallowed and returned to me from the wrong direction as the mist settled.
That was when I understood. This was not a jutsu meant to hide. It was meant to lie. To make every instinct unreliable, every sense second-guess itself. Somewhere inside the fog, Setsuna was no longer running. He was lurking.
He had been acting like a frightened genin, but he was a hunter. He had poured too much chakra into the mist to make it thick and spread it over a wide area, I was sure of that, since he could not fully conceal his real reserves from me, something I had observed at the oasis and here as well, and that meant one thing. He was planning to rely on low-cost jutsu to deal damage while keeping me disoriented and confused by this devious technique.
Water Release: Corrosive Breath Cut.
The mist suddenly behaved strangely, shifting in a chaotic, unnatural way. A crescent blade of condensed water surged out of it almost directly in front of me, previously concealed by the mist. My mind felt heavy and my body sluggish, slowing my reactions just enough. I twisted away at the last moment, but not cleanly. The blade grazed my arm, carving a thin line across the skin.
He was using the mist as cover for his slashes.
I shook my head and forced myself to focus, watching for the mist to churn again as a warning sign of another attack. When it happened, I moved immediately. A blade appeared without any visible disturbance this time, catching me off guard. I jumped upward instinctively, only to be met by another crescent of water rising to intercept me.
I drew the tanto from my back and blocked the slash as I landed. Before I could reset my footing, another blade flashed toward my face. I tilted my head just in time, but it still managed to cut my cheek, shallow but precise.
I growled under my breath.
I had followed a supposedly scared genin into an area packed with obstacles, thinking he was running. Instead, I had walked straight into his trap. Flickering was risky without clear sightlines, especially in an area crowded with broken terrain and solid cover I could not see, and the mist was distorting my chakra senses badly enough that I could not trust them as well.
I glanced down at my arm, surprised to see that although the cut was shallow, it was bleeding far more than it should and showed no sign of stopping. My eyes widened slightly as I sensed foreign chakra clinging to the wound, interfering with clotting and forcing the blood to keep seeping. It was controlled bloodletting, subtle and insidious, designed to weaken me over time.
I had thought Yugakure was supposed to be a relaxed place with relaxed people. Turns out I was fighting an actual demon.