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After Yukan's dreams of going back soon were shattered, he lit the bonfire and sat in front of it with Sakumo while they both warmed their hands.

After some time, it got dark. The two set up a tent to spend the night in.

"So, who will be protecting in the first half?" Sakumo asked.

"I will do it. You go and sleep." Yukan answered Sakumo. He thought that being interrupted during sleep would not be the best, so he would sleep in the second half of the night.

Sakumo agreed to what Yukan said, he went into the tent to sleep first.

When it was almost time to switch with Sakumo, Yukan felt a presence in the bushes near the tent.

Yukan was worried that he would have to miss his sweet sleep to fight some shinobi, but he still went into the bushes and checked them.

After searching for a while, he saw an old man looking at their tent and hesitating to do something.

Yukan appeared in front of him and asked the old man," What do you want?"

Yukan wanted to make sure that the old man was not a ninja.

When Yukan saw the man's skin all dried and his cheekbones visible, he was very skinny. Yukan was sure that the old man was not a ninja.

'His state is not even suitable to walk. There is no way he is a ninja. How can he even fight a rabbit?'

The old man saw Yukan but was not surprised. He had seen ninjas a lot in his long life.

"My lord, do you have any extra food or any leftovers for this old man? My granddaughter has not eaten anything in the last 4 days. Please help us. We lost our home in the war." The old man knelt and begged Yukan to give him some food.

Yukan felt sad that the war the shinobi fought made the old man lose his home. The old man was still lucky, a lot of people did not even survive this long.

But Yukan also knew that wars were inevitable.

Yukan was not so inhumane to send off a dying old man and girl, so he took out the scroll containing all of his and Sakumo's rations and gave the old man a day's worth of food.

"Here, take this. You should eat this." Yukan handed the old man the rations.

The man accepted the rations, thanked Yukan and hurried back to feed his granddaughter.

Yukan went back to the tent and woke Sakumo up.

"Hey, Sensei, it is your turn now." Yukan woke Sakumo up.

"Did anything happen while I was asleep?" Sakumo asked as he woke up and stretched his body a little.

Yukan narrated everything that happened to the old man.

"Hmm, good work. You should help someone if you can. Though, no need to go the extra mile. You could have given him less than a day's worth of rations. Now we have lesser rations. It is not a big loss for us, but be careful next time." Sakumo said as he got up.

Sakumo then walked out of the tent.

After that, Yukan had a peaceful sleep for the remaining of the night.

In the morning, Yukan came out of the tent while yawning.

He saw Sakumo dozing off as he leaned on his blade.

Yukan woke him up and asked," How long have you been sleeping?"

"I did not see the daybreak," Sakumo answered sleepily.

Yukan hit his palm on his forehead. He was never going to give the job of protecting the camp at night to Sakumo again.

-1 week later-

This week, Sakumo and Yukan placed a few traps to get their work done faster.

Currently, Yukan was treading on water and learning more about Chakra control. Sakumo wanted to teach Yukan about infusing elemental chakra into the sword, but that required near-perfect chakra control.

"Sensei, at least give me a tip or something," Yukan shouted in the direction where Sakumo was sitting in peace and having a tan.

"You know, I heard that Minato has been able to do it since a year ago," Sakumo answered.

He wanted to make the fighting spirit in Yukan light up.

"You know, Sensei, that is a very childish way to try and motivate me," Yukan answered.

Sakumo was embarrassed. He had hoped that his student would do better, but it did not work at all.

As Sakumo was getting embarrassed, he felt some shinobi movement in the distance.

"Hey, Yukan, come back. I sense some shinobi movement. They may be the ones we are waiting for," Sakumo called for Yukan as he got up from the straw chair he had made and took out his blade.

Yukan quickly got out of the water, picked up his katana and followed Sakumo.

He had decided that this would be his last fight with the katana since it had gotten old and was not as good as before.

Yukan and Sakumo hid in a dense group of trees.

"There are around 13 jonin and 34 chunin and almost 100 genin. This shit is going to be a little tough," Sakumo said.

He was sure he would be able to kill all of them alone and make it out alive without any injuries, but now, he was worried about Yukan.

"It is ok. We can either go as you kill the jonin and some chunin while I kill all the genin or vice-versa. We also have the explosion tag right under where the jonin are standing." Yukan said as he gave a very brief plan.

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the explosion seals," Sakumo said and made a playful expression.

Out of the Kiri Shinobi who just came, some started talking.

Yukan and Sakumo heard them carefully, hoping that they would get some useful information.

"Hey, are you sure those two are here? We were given the mission at the last moment." One of the jonin asked.

"Yes, I am sure. Mizukage-Sama himself told me. Let's search for them here. We have to kill them."

When Sakumo and Yukan heard them, they started wondering how the Kiri Shinobi knew that the two of them would come here.

It was not possible unless there was a mole in Konoha's camps.

"Looks like I will have to clean the camp after this," Sakumo mumbled.

As the Kiri shinobi were about to search, the explosion tags were activated.

There was no formation the Kiri Shinobi maintained after the explosion tags activated. All the jonin were gathered in one place.

The jonin were able to sense explosion tags as soon as they went off, but only some were able to dodge.

Due to the large number of people, there was chaos. Many shinobi were not able to move and ended up dying a fool's death on the battlefield.