Chapter 92

I've already said goodbye to Rotaro and Tsume, so leaning against the stone wall surrounding our outpost, I lazily surveyed my colleagues. There was no outright nervousness among anyone, as everyone present had participated in numerous large-scale operations, but the atmosphere of nervous tension was palpable.

The grim faces of the remaining Chunin didn't help set a positive mood either. Ultimately, if enemies were to attack during our absence, defending ourselves without the support of strong shinobi would be very difficult, despite our fighters having a qualitative advantage.

What personally reassured me in this situation was the opportunity not to get involved in the meat grinder along with everyone else. My role is small—setting up a hospital and patching up the wounded brought under slight protection. And they wouldn't have let me go to the front line—Ikki-san can't afford to lose the only decent medic out of two hundred people.

Despite having control over my chakra and almost balancing the yin and yang components, my ability to suppress chakra emission remains at the level of an average Chunin, and skilled enemy sensors can detect me immediately. One of the downsides of having a large reserve of denser chakra than other users. Although it's an excellent result for a member of the Uzumaki clan, whose control in their early years was simply appalling compared to other clans. You could say that with my abnormally high amount of Yin energy, I am an anomaly among redheads.

"Nara-san?" a voice interrupted me from the right.

"Yes?" I turned my head to look at the shinobi who had interrupted my thoughts.

It turned out to be a fairly elderly Jonin by shinobi standards, typical in appearance for the Fire Country, with dark hair and eyes, a nose that had been broken several times, and a thin white scar running across his right eyebrow.

"Ichiya Gubashi, they've assigned me as your guard during the operation," he informed me.

"Nice to meet you," I nodded, shaking his outstretched hand. "What's the plan?"

Since he's been appointed as my guard, he surely knows the details of the attack and my role in it.

"We're moving out twenty minutes after all the squads and following them at a certain distance," the Jonin said, leaning against the wall in a similar manner. "The plan is to leave the wounded behind during the patrol sweeps and secrets clearing, and you'll need to patch them up to an acceptable state, either leaving them nearby or sending them back to the main groups."

Considering that each of these groups consists of twelve strong fighters, I don't anticipate any problems with the clearing, but just in case, I brought along the scroll gifted by Mito, where we can seal severely wounded until the appropriate moment.

"Understood," I was about to ask him about communication devices—whether we were equipped with radios—but the arriving commander didn't allow me to.

"Teams one and five, move forward on the designated route and clear all patrols," Maito immediately began issuing instructions. "Teams two, three, and four on backup, move out!"

The shinobi rushed forward, leaping over the wall, and within a couple of seconds, only I remained in place with my guard, while the swiftly departing cluster of chakra sources gradually became much less noticeable. One could only envy their ability to conceal their reserves so well—if I were in their place, even the worst sensor wouldn't have noticed anything at a distance of three hundred meters. And right now, the colleagues moving away felt more like Chunin to me than Jonin, except the density of sources seemed higher than usual.

"I suppose we can start moving quietly too," Ichiya decided.

"I don't mind," I shrugged.

After jumping over the wall, we initially moved west for some time, following a meticulously memorized path through the labyrinth of traps about five hundred meters from the camp, after which we turned north and, wading through the tall grass up to our necks, gradually began to make a large arc northward.

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