Things were getting worse. Continuous slashes came at me from inside the mist, most of them evaded, some slipping through just enough to scratch. Each shallow cut made sure my blood stayed thin, refusing to clot, and I was losing more of it with every passing second. By now, I was smeared with enough blood to look like I had stepped out of a horror movie finale.
If this continued, I would bleed out sooner rather than later.
The moment another water slash cut through the mist, I dodged and surged forward along its trajectory. I found a wooden section of cover where Setsuna had fired from moments earlier and reinforced my legs with chakra, kicking it hard enough to shatter it. Wood exploded outward, fragments and debris flung in every direction.
The audience gasped as pieces of cover burst out of the fog, whispers spreading rapidly. "Is the tyrant rampaging inside?" someone muttered. They could not see anything, and that only made it worse. Their frustration fed their imagination.
I moved again and reached another section of cover, this one metal. No breaking that. Another series of slashes came in, forcing me to evade instead of pressing forward. As I moved, the answer finally clicked into place.
He was sensing me through the mist. Not directly, but through the interaction between his chakra-infused fog and the chakra I was constantly emitting.
So I stopped.
I suppressed my chakra output as much as I dared and moved slowly, staying low and close to the cover I could feel rather than see. The attacks slowed, then stopped entirely for a while.
I smiled despite myself.
He could not maintain the mist forever, not with how much chakra he had poured into it. Water was already interfering with my chakra control anyway, so I was not losing much by going quiet. And he made a huge mistake underestimating my enormous stamina reserves, even in a weakened state. I was willing to trade stamina and blood for his chakra, a bet I was more than ready to make.
After some time, probing slashes came from different angles, careful and searching. I stayed behind cover and let it take the damage. Against these weak water techniques, solid obstacles worked just fine.
Slowly, the mist began to thin. I could feel the pressure easing as Setsuna's control slipped, his attacks growing more frequent, less precise, sweeping wider as he tried to force a hit. He was burning chakra fast.
My stamina was not in great shape after the past few days, but compared to this, I could last longer than he could keep it up. What followed turned into something brutal and ugly. I bled while evading his increasingly inaccurate but still dangerous slashes, and as the seconds dragged on, I could feel him noticing it. He felt how much stamina I still had left, and that realization made him panic.
My vision blurred at the edges, the blood loss catching up with me, but the mist was no longer as dense as before. It still clung to the arena, but the pressure behind it was weakening. His chakra reserves were draining fast. I moved from cover to cover through the thinning fog, searching for him, only to be answered by water slashes that struck stone and metal instead of flesh.
"You monster," Setsuna shouted, his voice echoing unevenly through the mist. "How are you still standing?"
I did not answer. My grin widened instead, sharp and unhinged. The mist thinned further, especially around us, leaving only heavy patches clinging to the edges of the field. When it became just thin enough, I surged forward, chakra rolling through my body despite the pain.
A slash came at me. I flickered sideways in an instant and pushed forward along its trajectory. Another blade cut through the air and I ducked beneath it, adjusting my approach as I closed the distance. His outline emerged through the fog, tense and frantic, eyes wide as he saw me coming, covered in blood, angry, and grinning unsettlingly.
He lost control of the jutsu, the larger, desperate water slash he was preparing destabilizing before it could fully form.
The mist collapsed as I reached him. I slashed with my tanto and he barely managed to block with a kunai, metal screeching as the impact jolted his arm. Before he could recover, my leg snapped upward in a sharp kick aimed at his chest. He tried to block with his own leg, but the moment our limbs met, a brutal crack echoed. His leg buckled under the force and he was sent flying, surprising me with how weak his body was. He was a jutsu-focused fighter through and through.
However, I pushed in as he was sent flying, slashing at him midair and using the extra reach of my tanto to carve across his chest. Pain shattered his focus completely, and the cut opened cleanly as he was thrown clear of the remaining mist.
The audience went silent as Setsuna hit the ground hard, his chest bleeding and his leg twisted at a wrong angle. I emerged from the fog a moment later, soaked in blood, my angry grin still fixed in place, frustration and adrenaline burning hot as I advanced on him. He crawled backward in desperation and hurled a kunai at me. I tilted my head aside and let it pass, then flickered forward.
"I give u..."
I appeared beside him and drove his head into the ground with a single, overwhelming push. The impact knocked him unconscious instantly.
"Take that, you piece of shit," I spat as I forced myself upright, blood seeping freely from my fist. The proctor appeared almost immediately, crouching beside Setsuna and checking his condition. He exhaled in relief when he confirmed he was alive, though clearly injured, then stood and raised his voice. "Noa of the Hidden Leaf is the winner."
Thin cheers followed at first, scattered and uncertain, before dissolving into heavy murmuring that rolled through the arena like a tide. "He's really a demon," someone whispered. Another nodded in fear. "He's covered in his enemy's blood. What kind of monster fights like that?" The ideas spiraled quickly, feeding on each other, growing more unhinged by the second. One voice cut through louder than the rest. "So the title is true after all. I thought it was an exaggeration, but now I think it was an understatement. He really is a tyrant."
I tried to respond, even forced chakra into my voice as I shouted back, "This is my blood. He's the real demon here." It did not matter. The weight of thousands of voices drowned me out, my words swallowed by rumor and unreasonable fear before they could land. I was too dizzy, too injured, and too exhausted to fight it any longer. I turned and walked toward Shisui, who was waiting at the edge of the arena with Kaen and Sena.
The moment I reached them, Sena grimaced at the sight of me. "Couldn't you at least try not to look horrifying and encourage those rumors?" she asked, half concern, half exasperation. I sighed and shrugged weakly as Shisui placed a steadying hand on my shoulder and guided me toward the medical area.
Once we reached multiple ready and prepared medic-nin moved quickly once I was on the table. The first thing they did was purge the foreign chakra clinging to my wounds, breaking the technique that had been interfering with clotting. Only after the bleeding finally slowed did they apply a focused healing jutsu to close the cuts properly. Most of the damage was shallow, but the blood loss and exhaustion were not ignored.
I was given fluids, nutrient pills, and a very firm order to lie still while they checked my chakra pathways and muscle response for strain. By the time they were done, I was patched up, shaky, and uncomfortably aware that I had pushed myself far past what was reasonable.
Apparently, underestimating my enemy had been a huge mistake, one I had no intention of repeating again.
Once I was stabilized, Shisui nodded and said, "I'll have to go. Kaen's match is about to start. Do you need anything?" I shook my head. "Thank you, sensei. I'll rest for now. Just come get me once all our team matches are over and we've won." Shisui smiled softly, clearly pleased by the confidence I had in my teammates. "You did great out there, Noa." He patted my shoulder with quiet pride, then turned and left the room. I let my head sink back into the bed and slipped immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.