Ryusei had been running for hours, at this point, pushing himself through the forests.
Normally, it wouldn't have been an issue, but keeping his chakra expanded for speed came at a price.
His breathing was heavier now, each inhale sharp, each exhale controlled.
Fatigue pressed at him, but he refused to slow.
He kept forcing himself forward, step after step, always thinking,
"Ten more. Just ten more."
It became a cycle, his willpower straining, but also growing with every push.
He realized even now his spiritual energy, aka chakra, was strangely strengthening, the very pressure shaping him.
That thought drew a dry smile across his face.
"This world really is insane. Suffering turns into strength quite literally."
And he wasn't blind.
His sensing confirmed what he had hoped.
Tsunade, after her hesitation, had moved.
She was coming toward him. He smirked faintly.
"Thankfully, she isn't completely heartless yet."
All those deliberately exaggerated signals of his desperation and unseen pursuits, maybe, finally worked.
But whether they would actually cross paths in time was another matter.
Root was still on him, closing in whenever he faltered.
There was also another problem gnawing at him now, the more he thought about it during the last few hours.
Yoji Aburame.
That ability with Kochū was too broken, too dangerous.
To let someone like that live was to carry a sword above his own neck forever.
Maybe above the necks of anyone who might ever stand with him.
Only after facing it directly did he grasp how insidious it was. "I was too complacent… I didn't give enough weight to a character like this." The realization left goosebumps on his skin.
If they had used that ability on him earlier, before his senses sharpened to today's level, even just a month ago, perhaps, he might have died without a chance to resist or knowing what hit him then.
He consoled himself only with the thought that maybe Yoji hadn't mastered it then, or had been tied down with other assignments, or simply that Root hadn't deemed him worth the trouble yet.
Whatever the reason, he had survived.
But he would not count on such luck twice.
The danger stretched beyond himself.
His thoughts turned grim.
"If Yoji decided to move against the six Senju bodyguards around the Daimyō, I wanted to activate soon, would any of them even realize it before they were dead?"
Without sensing on his level, they would be helpless.
And if that happened, his plans for leverage, the one solid card he had, would be gone.
He clenched his teeth, still running, the forest whipping past.
Tsunade might meet him today, and maybe that would give him a shield for a short while, due to his enemies being unprepared and scrambling for the next moves.
But he wasn't foolish enough to think she could, or would, protect him forever.
Relying on Orochimaru, for no reason yet, was even more absurd.
"It's my life. My arrangements. No one else will keep me alive."
Yoji Aburame had to die.
But how?
With Root swarming around him, every move watched, every breath counted, how could he create the opening?
The question ate at him even as he forced his legs to keep pounding forward.
His face stayed set, somber, not relieved.
"There's no point in drowning in despair. If I keep moving, I'll find a chance. If I stop, it's over."
So he pushed on, breath ragged, spirit burning, unwilling to let the pursuit or the weight of his thoughts drag him down.
He kept running, but his mind was racing even faster than his feet.
Every breath of air cut into his lungs, every branch whipping past, and still he calculated.
'How are they holding on to me this tight…?'
The answer wasn't hard to piece together.
The Inuzuka's ninken, its evolved, chakra-enhanced nose locking onto his scent.
The Aburame's bugs, tracing every sliver of chakra he shed while running at this speed.
Together, they made a perfect net.
He grit his teeth. "So they're walking my path, step by step. Every place I've been, they're crawling over it."
The thought was bitter, but it sparked something.
A shift in his mind, small but growing.
If they were relying on his trail… then he could use that.
Gradually, he began easing off, just slightly at first, letting his pace dip.
His breaths came harsher, his body swaying with effort, as though fatigue was finally catching up.
His chakra output flickered, less steady, more ragged.
To an observer, it would look like his strength was fraying, like his desperate sprint was finally faltering.
His lips curled faintly. "Come on. Take the bait."
Every step forward now wasn't just an escape. It was setup.
He knew the plan flirted with madness, but madness and necessity had the same edge in his hands.
Trust had never been his currency, and he wasn't about to start spending it now.
If this gambit worked, everything shifted.
Stay near Tsunade long enough, and he could contact his uncle, activate the Daimyō plays he'd been arranging, and turn himself from hunted to dangerous collateral.
That would buy at least a few months, possibly even more, of precious, undeniable breathing space to build actual power and tap into other things he had in mind as his staircase to survival and counterattack during this war.
But none of it mattered unless that Aburame stopped existing.
There was one more truth he swallowed without flinching, and it hardened him.
"If I fail now, there is no 'later.' I will bet everything on this."
***
Some time slipped away as the chase wound deeper through the forest.
The rhythm of pursuit had become almost routine, the sound of branches snapping under weight, the whisper of insects darting through the air, the faint growl of a hound guiding its master.
At last, the hunters closed the gap.
Tatsuma Aburame's eyes narrowed, his voice low but steady. "There he is. Finally exhausted."
In the distance, Ryusei's outline wavered through the trees, his form stumbling, his chakra signature leaking like a punctured skin.
Yoji's swarm tightened, the insects buzzing louder now, hungry, eager to finish what they had started.
His pale face was blank as always, but there was a faint curl of relief in the set of his jaw.
Even he could see the end.
Gakuya Mushin's ninken barked once, sharp and certain, its nose locked on the scent.
Gakuya grinned faintly, baring teeth. "He's done. Cornered prey always dies the same way."
The three remaining Root members, all mid-jōnin trailing behind, let out breaths they hadn't realized they were holding.
The boy looked half-dead already, his pace uneven, his chakra flickering like a candle in the wind.
"Relentless brat," one muttered, shaking his head. "But it ends here."
They were close enough now to taste the kill, the trees thinning just enough for the final push.
Ryusei was right ahead, swaying with exhaustion, ready to be cut down.
Relief passed between them like an unspoken wave.
The net was finally closing, and their mission would be complete.
And then, just as the branches parted and their quarry faltered one more step forward—
Something happened.
At the same moment, Ryusei's mask slipped.
A little ahead of the hunters, he tore off the last suppression talismans hidden under his clothes, letting his chakra flare more for the first time in hours since he made that plan.
The forest seemed to ripple with it, a pulse that cut through the trees and air alike.
He released all of it at once, not holding anything back.
They froze for a heartbeat, caught mid-step, as if their bodies knew before their minds did.
"Six of them… Yoji's the weak point anyway," Ryusei thought, his eyes sharp, breath ragged.
"No bugs, no prep, he's nothing up front. It's not impossible. The rest doesn't matter. If he dies here, it's enough." His lips curled in a dry smile. "It's up to fate now."
All the exhaustion they had read on him was theater, layered piece by piece.
For hours, he had let his steps drag, his chakra flicker, his body sway, all while carefully narrowing the distance between them in order to be able to plant that trap logistically.
They had no idea about his abnormal chakra recovery ability, sharpened by that exhaustion training he did with Kanae recently.
From the moment he first formed this plan on the run here, every bit he recovered, while pretending to slow down, he stored in secret, due to his internal control and talismans, and it never looked suspicious, because none of them also knew he even had such recovery potential, to begin with, as well.
To them, it had looked like a boy burning out.
In truth, he was stockpiling fuel for one strike.
That strike was waiting now.
Earlier, when he stumbled and slowed, he had left behind a shadow clone, but not a normal one.
On the spot, he had carved a new idea into reality, layering it with shiki formulas and crude fuinjutsu programming he had pieced together himself.
It wasn't just suppressed.
Its very presence was buried beneath symbolic chakra traces, camouflaged to look like nothing more than scraps of his exhausted trail.
The hunters had walked right past it.
Now the seal-work triggered.
The clone activated not as a fighter, but as a bomb, roaring awake with the flood of chakra Ryusei shoved into it, every shred of his remaining strength packed inside.
The forest lit up with killing intent.