Chapter 48:

Under dark night sky of Kiri. A small force could be seen moving. It consisted of A and roughly 20 ninja of high skill. They're eyes were bloodshot and their faces grim as they ran and exhausted themselves to the nearest town.

It had been roughly a month and a week since they had entered the country discreetly and begun looking for the location of the sealing array capable of mass teleportation.

Over the course of their journey, they had received updates from the Raikage. At first they were just updates about the search for any oddities regarding the sealing array on Kumo's side. But after some timeof entering Kiri, the news slowly got worse.

At first it was a few squads of enemy ninja, then overnight it turned into an army of Kiri shinobi.

The most recent letter which they received which read.

'A, it's been two days since the last wave of ninja attacked. They came from the opposite end of the coast where we were expecting them. It seems the shinobi they had sent before that you and your brother pursued were just meant as a distraction. We'll hold them off, find the teleportation array before we become overwhelmed. Iwa also shows signs of an assault against us your brother is holding them off for now."

The letter had shown the true urgency of the situation prompting A to push his team as much as possible. They went to every information broker and chased any lead.

The morale was soaring due to the stakes and A's burning passion and charisma, but as things were it would dwindle if the situation deteriorated further. A himself had noticed, but he didn't have the leeway to let them rest and recover.

They had been getting close to their goal, little by little. If their information was correct their target was closer than ever, the Mizukage was seen passing through here, presumablyhesding towards the teleportation array. Right now they were following him and when they arrived they'd send an update and retreat. A well placed shot kf their own secret weapon would destroy everthing.

While A was rushing into a potential battle against Kiri's forces B himself and the army he was tasked with defending were anxiously waiting for word on whether to move or not.

Everybody stood ready to ppay their part and ensure the destruction of Kiri's teleportation array even at the cost of their lives, each party unaware of just how badly they were being played.

.....

Ichigo's location 3rd person POV

Ichigo paced around her tent madly as she thought of ways to deal with the delima that faced her.

She was ill equiped since most of their manpower was spread thin in different locations to fulfil their parts towards Inferno's purpose.

Besdies satisfying their leader's desire to battle strong opponents, Inferno also had other plans that were laid out carefully for years and planned for accordingly and all these plans had accounted for any traitorous acts against inferno.

Somehow these plans were all bypassed. Their oppenent this time not only managed to get ahold of a very important facility they had done so whithout alerting anybody until it was already too late.

She speculated that they wouod hole themselves in the facility to buy time for their plan to bear fruit. Since their plan invlovled stealing dark chakra. An source that was revered for it's ability to improve an average person's physical abilities a hundredfold then they must have a plan to create their own superweapon against Inferno. Luckily Nero had already taken the source of the energy. But a decent amount of storage units containing chakra were present in that place.

Ichigo's was seething in rage. The very thing that shouldn't have gone wrong went wrong. She'd go there herself to solve it, nothing less would suffice. Nero had Ayaka to accompany him and take care of this side's matters. She'd return as soon as possible.

This was the nicest part about being a level 9. Full anatomy, as long as it wasn't against Inferno's fundamental principles a level 9 could even sometimes go against Nero's orders. A level 9 agent could decide a course of action based on their own judgement and face virtually no punishment and even gain merit if their actions proved to be effective.

Ichigo sat down, she opened her HUD interface, a new level 9 classified mission was already shown on the interface to investigate the cause of Daisuke's rebellion. There was also additional information about the base's recent destruction which surprised Ichigo. She accepted the mission request quickly.

But once she thought about more on the matter, she deduced that Nero might have panicked and decided to take care of the problem himself.

'He isn't very good at holding back.' She shook her head dissaprovingly. Any evidence might've been destroyed, but so was Daisuke's best resource to harvest wahtever power the dark chakra countainers held. Although Ichigo didn't doubt that he could build a new one given his intellect and resourcefulness and given time.

Hopefully him and his followers died from the attack. She'd have to make sure if that herself though.

of her mission. After making sure the network was secure she sent it to Nero and left.

Ichigo called a wyvern outside of the water country to pick her up, and packed up before leaving.

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