Chapter 84

All I could do was shake my head at that—I feel like I'll have quite a time ahead of me. Sighing, I decided to focus on my immediate duties and headed towards Inuzuka with Kuromaru. Their wounds may be minor, but they still need to be treated and bandaged, since we still have the journey back to camp ahead of us, and they won't be able to move independently for at least another day, even with my help.

"How are you?" I asked my teammate, helping her remove her vest and outer clothing.

"Tolerable," grimaced the kunoichi as the fabric passed over a deep scratch on her side, "but Rotaro..."

"He put himself at risk foolishly, simply underestimating the desperation of an opponent who realized defeat was imminent," I nodded, retrieving disinfectant from the field kit and treating minor wounds, "but in a week, he'll be moving like new, if I have the time to attend to him."

Indeed, an experienced iryo-nin can get someone back on their feet even after a severe injury like limb loss in about a week or two, with full mobility restored, rather than the usual month or two. But for the village, this isn't advantageous in terms of both time spent on one patient and purely economically, as it's much easier to heal a wound once and let the shinobi recover on their own. Considering the shortage of medical personnel, carelessly and hastily treated wounds are nothing out of the ordinary. If I didn't have the ability to use clones and enough chakra, I would achieve similar results, just not as quickly.

"Alright, you can get dressed," I said, finishing up.

And mentally chuckled, shifting my focus to the dog—fourteen years already, and he's barely grown to a second size, unlike my Byakugan-wielding friend.

"Thank you."

Nodding, I quickly glanced at the still slightly pinkish face of the girl, smiled, but said nothing, continuing my work.

"Boss, I'm running out of chakra!" distractedly called out one of the clones a few minutes later, busy with Aburame.

Considering it was the one dealing with the commander, there was nothing surprising about that.

"I'm coming!"

After tending to the last scratch on Kuromaru's side, I hurried to assist.

"What's the problem?" I didn't dare dispel the clone to avoid interrupting memory sorting, so I had to find out the old-fashioned way.

"The lung is punctured and the spinal column is slightly grazed," answered the Kage Bunshin, "the insects are helping with healing, but involuntarily drain any chakra, hence the issues."

"Got it, I'll take over," I nodded, activating the Chakra Scalpel Technique, "don't dispel yet."

Aburame hadn't fallen into my hands before, because their symbiotic insects handled even minor and medium injuries on their own, and carriers usually died from chakra depletion before reaching the hospital, so I had to work hard to prevent the Chunin from dying. But after half an hour, we were ready to move back to camp. Not least of all, my three sealed stretchers played a role—Ishi also had to be carried, as he had lost a fair amount of blood and passed out before the clone finished regrowing his arm. Yes, and as carriers again clones, but now water clones, as they are more economical.

A week after such a successful (or perhaps unsuccessful, as I consider it myself) patrol mission, during which I acquired three prisoners (though one had to be handed over to the authorities) and a few intact bodies, filled with concern for my primary profession, Shigeru approached me silently and handed me an open page of a softcover book. At first, I didn't understand what was going on, but a couple of seconds later I realized that on the second page of the photograph, a suspiciously familiar masked face in a hooded robe, half-mask covering the face, and close-fitting dark glasses with RED eyebrows stood out on the pale skin staring at me!

"We picked this off a shinobi from Iwagakure yesterday," explained Uchiha, "apparently, Goto the 'Butcher' hasn't forgotten about you."

Staring blankly at the wanted poster, I could only express all the emotions swirling inside me in one simple word:

"F**k!!!"

I've got more interesting stuff on patreon (up to 170 chapter)

patreon.com/Chill76