Chapter 176 - Ch-176 Camouflage.
According to the standing protocol among the rogue ninjas occupying the village, every assigned unit was required to report their status once every hour. It had been nearly fifteen minutes past the last check-in, and no word had co from several sectors.
One missed report could be explained away—maybe a delay, maybe a technical issue. But multiple teams, all silent at the sa ti? That wasn't a coincidence.
The higher-ranking rogue commanders took notice imdiately. Sothing was wrong. And so, search teams were quickly dispatched—one to each silent zone—with urgent orders: assess the situation and report back imdiately.
One such search team arrived in the sector where Inoiki had already completed his silent massacre.
As they stepped into the area, the tension was imdiate. The air carried a tallic scent—faint but unmistakable. Blood.
The team leader raised a fist, signaling the others to halt. He sniffed the air, grimaced, and advanced cautiously.
Then one of the scouts called out from just ahead. "Boss! We've got a body!"
The team moved in quickly. There, lying neatly on the ground in the middle of the street, was the corpse of a ninja—his throat cleanly sliced, surrounded by a small pool of blood. No sign of a struggle. No broken ground. Just surgical execution.
The others began fanning out through the area, checking buildings, rooftops, alleys.
And everywhere they looked, they found the sa scene.
Bodies.
Dozens of them.
All of them killed with terrifying precision. No signs of resistance. No alarms had been triggered. Whoever had done this hadn't just been skilled—they had been untouchable.
As the team regrouped near the center of the area, the weight of the discovery settled over them. A creeping chill spread through the group. No one spoke for a mont. They didn't have to.
Each of them understood the implication.
This wasn't an ambush. It wasn't a battle.
It was a clean execution.
Soone powerful had co through this area—and either they were still here... or they had moved on to do the sa elsewhere.
The team leader scanned the carnage one last ti before muttering, "We need to leave. Now. This place is dangerous."
His voice was low but firm, betraying the anxiety creeping into his gut. He didn't need to see more—whoever had done this wasn't just deadly; they were surgical, efficient, and silent. There hadn't been a single alarm. Not a single survivor. Whoever was responsible was operating on a level far beyond what this squad could handle.
As the team turned to retreat, a strange sensation hit them—sharp, brief pain behind the eyes and temples. Each ninja instinctively flinched, touching their foreheads or blinking rapidly. But the discomfort faded almost as quickly as it had co, and no one spoke up. It seed minor—easy to dismiss.
Crucially, none of them realized that every single one of them had felt the sa thing at the exact sa ti.
If they had known, they might have felt so suspicion.
They took off at full speed, eager to put distance between themselves and the silent battlefield. But unknown to them, soone was already waiting in their path.
Inoiki.
He stood completely still, directly in their line of escape. But not a single one of them reacted. They ran past him as if he didn't exist—eyes wide open, senses alert, yet none of them registered his presence.
To them, he was invisible.
Not because of any trick of light or traditional ninja genjutsu. This wasn't camouflage in the way most shinobi understood it.
Inoiki called it the Camouflage Technique, but it wasn't rooted in deception or optics. It was pure neural manipulation. Using psychokinesis, he directly altered the visual perception of each enemy ninja—reaching into their minds and filtering out his presence entirely. To their brains, he simply wasn't there.
That brief spike of pain they all felt just monts earlier? That was the cost—the side effect of having their sensory pathways forcibly overridden.
They hadn't just overlooked him.
They had been programd not to see him.
And now, they were running straight toward whatever end Inoiki had already decided for them.
Inoiki turned and moved forward with quiet purpose, his body gliding a few inches above the ground. His feet never touched the earth—each step guided by psychokinesis, smooth and soundless, as if he were walking on air itself.
As he advanced, his hand reached back and unsheathed the blade strapped across his back. The sword erged without a whisper, the tal catching no light, gleaming only in silence.
Then he vanished in a blur.
In a single motion—effortless, silent, final—he passed through the retreating squad. None of them saw him. None of them reacted. It was as if a gust of wind had swept between them.
And then they stopped.
One by one, the fleeing rogue ninjas froze mid-stride. Confusion flickered across their faces. Hands instinctively rose to their throats. Blood began to seep through their fingers, thin red lines running down their necks.
They didn't even realize they'd been cut—until their bodies could no longer support them.
They collapsed in unison, lifeless, hitting the ground in a soft cascade.
Inoiki stood a few ters ahead, his back to them. Calm. Composed. He reached back and sheathed his sword in a single clean motion. Not a drop of blood marked him.
No words. No wasted movent.
Just perfect execution.
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