Kakashi's expression changed when he heard Max said that and quickly retreated. Still, what Max had said was true. He let his guard down as he approached, which made him completely open to Max.
"I never told you how to release yourself from genjutsu. So, how were you able to break free?" Kakashi asked seriously.
"2 things happened that were surprisingly to me, but one of them was just luck. But let me just ask this first. Can you break free from genjutsu by inserting chakra from outside into your body?" Max smiled as he asked.
Kakashi gave the question some thought and said. "Technically, you need someone to shake away your own chakra flow since what genjutsu affect mostly that. Seals couldn't really help with high level genjutsu, but the one that I just performed was one of the basics ones. So, you are practically right." Kakashi looked at Max and what he had on, but he couldn't see what Max could have used to get more chakra in him.
"You don't have to look for it that intensely since its one of the things that I have on me most of the time." Max decided to give him a hint but nothing more. Still, Kakashi couldn't figure it out.
"Lastly, your genjutsu should only affect the sense on my body, right? Which means that if I had a sense that is outside of your knowledge, your genjutsu would have a flaw that I could exploit." Max said with a grind.
"But still, you would have to use chakra to send those waves that you used to locate me. Which means that there is no way for you to sense my location, even if I got hit by those waves." Kakashi asked the main point of the thing he couldn't understand.
He saw that only at the last moment did Max's chakra flow stabilized, so that should have been the moment that he got liberated.
'But still, how could have him known when to do it, since he did it at the perfect moment to ambush me.' Kakashi was thinking.
"You should had asked around the village about what I did over there, right? What did you find?" Max felt that Kakashi should be someone that would do that, not that it was wrong of him to do. He knew that it shouldn't be so easy to get permission to enter another village, so the least Kakashi could do to check that Max wasn't a spy or worst was to ask around.
"Tazuna told me that your father Rex was the village's blacksmith before leaving. He also told me that you knew how to do some of that work, which made you still have money enough to not starve yourself." Kakashi said as he looked at Max.
Kakashi heard some others rumors about Rex and Max that he found a little concerning, but nothing that could be dangerous. Still, he decided to only mention that.
"At least you got the main point of what I'm trying to say. These two blades that I have on me are the product of my craft. Making them took me a lot of time because of my inexperience, but at the end I made them." Max said as he hit the handle of the katana on his waist with the sword in his left hand.
Kakashi was about to say something, but Max continued speaking since he knew that he hadn't spoken about the main point of the story.
"Since little, Rex taught me to only craft what I could use since only by using them can you find ways to improve them. That is what made you believe that I was a samurai, right?"
"Well, I had my doubts since the beginning. From what I know about samurais, cloaking their weapons with chakra have never been a problem for them. In your case, your arms get injured performing those techniques." Kakashi mentions the thing that bother him about Max's techniques.
"Well, my sword and katana were specially made to help me with my training. Instead of just using high conductive chakra iron, I used a different folding method to add another property to the iron. They knew property is high retention of chakra.
Because of that, my chakra gets stored every time that I give it to my weapons, which makes it harder for me to get that chakra back into my body. This process is what I called as 'folding chakra'." Max said as he took another stand getting ready to face Kakashi again.
Kakashi frowned as he focused his sharingan on Max's hands. After looking at it, he finally saw the difference that he had not noticed before.
Instead of a natural flow of chakra, Max's chakra flowed to his sword through a retractable bridge. He needed to lower the bridge each time he wanted to send or take chakra, which also retracts after a certain volume of chakra pass through it.
'I haven't heard of something like that before. Can a blacksmith really do something like this?'
"Since the chakra stored in my sword was not affected by the genjutsu, I used it to send waves in my surroundings. With that wave, a located you when you were approaching me." Max explained.
"Wait. How can you control chakra that is not yours anymore? You'll need to connect to it in some form or way to have it do something like that." Kakashi found a flaw in what Max was saying.
"Which means that you have never known crafters and how they do what they do. Every crafter developed a new sense as they practice. In my case, I developed a 'Metal Sense' that connects me with the weapons that I forge. Since I don't use chakra with that, your genjutsu didn't affect that connection.
In the end, the wave of chakra that my sword sent received some feedback from you which I was transmitted to me. After you were close enough, I was prepared to do a move on you which made the chakra in the sword enter my body and disrupt the genjutsu. Just skill and luck."
'Skill and luck? It seems that you are the one that don't know what crafters really are. Which is why you are not one of them.' Kakashi thought but didn't say as he knew that Max only knew one crafter which was Rex.
Max started charging at Kakashi again. This time he got close fast enough to interrupt the hand sign that Kakashi had started to make.
*thang*
Kakashi decided to guard himself with a kunai seen that he won't be able to do hand signs for a while. As he parried the sword of Max, he sent a kick to his right side.
"Cheater!" Max couldn't help but to yell as he retreated to dodge the kick. Max's right side was the mayor weakness of him for now since his arm was crippled.
Kakashi didn't mind what Max had said as he started to do hand signs and ended with his hand doing a circle on his mouth.
Max noticed that and prepared to defend himself.
"Fire style: Fireball jutsu!" Kakashi said as he releases a fireball to Max's feet.
'This should injure you a little and end the fight. I don't want to spend more chakra for now.' Kakashi thought as he breath the fireball.
"Fire!?" Max face changed after noticing the fireball forming. But he quickly smiles and change weapons as he charged and jumped passed the fireball.
"Idiot!" Kakashi couldn't help but to say as he stops the jutsu and prepared to guard with his kunai.
Kakashi said that as he saw that Max didn't jump high enough to evade the fireball. That act would make him take some damage but be quick enough to get an attack on Kakashi and close the distance again.
'I told you nothing serious danmit.' Kakashi cursed in his mind while thinking of how burned Max should be after doing that.
Max on the other hand did a from flip as he passed the top part of the fireball. As he completed the from flip on air, he slashed at Kakashi from the top with his katana.
"What!?"
*boom*
A sudden explosion happened when Max's and Kakashi's attacks meet. Kakashi had to flip back to negate the force of the explosion which left him with some light burns on his hands.
Max on the other hand didn't have an injury on him. His body had clearly passed by the fireball, but he didn't get burned.
"What did you do?" Kakashi calmed himself and asked. He only noticed at the end that Max's katana had some of his chakra on him when he parried the attack. The only way for his chakra to appear on Max's katana was if-.
"I took it from the fireball." Max said as he knew about what Kakashi was thinking. "The second property of my katana is low element absorption. Since that fireball was weak enough, I decided to absorb some of it and used it when you parried my attack.
Also, thanks for that I could pass by some of the fireball without getting injured in the process. Still was kind of hot though."
Kakashi's expression change as he heard what Max said, but he decided to let it go for now and address the situation at hand.
"We should stop here. You should have learned what a ninja is from that, so any more than this will interfere with our mission. Let's take a quick rest and continue going back to the village after that."
"Ok." Max knew that more than this won't be accepted by Kakashi, so he let it go.
'At least I got you back for cheating.' Max said as he made a evil laugh. Max believe himself to be a devil, and they can never get tricked on without retaliation.
While Kakashi and Max made their way towards the trio, the trio in question were still dazed by what they saw.
'As strong as Kakashi is, Max got the jump on him!' Sasuke thought as he had a pained expression on his face.
'So strong! Is Max really the same age as us?' Sakura said as she was impressed by what had happened.
'Did talking to Haku made him that strong? And look at Sakura-chan. She starting to look at max like she looks at Sasuke.' Naruto said as he frowns and had looked at Max with challenger eyes.
Kakashi was already accustomed to the way the trio acted so he didn't say anything, but Max was not the same.
"This Devil is awesome, I know. If you are interested of been kin, I could introduce you a way to become devils. Still, the chances of becoming one are too low for you now." Max said as he raised his nose and shoulders with smugness.
"I don't want to become some Trash Devil." Sakura said on reflex. She latter noticed what she had said and got a little embarrassed.
Max on the other hand looked at Naruto. Blaming him in his head. Naruto averted his gaze away from him with a little guilt.
Sasuke was still glaring at Max, this time with some confusion and pain on them.
*sigh* "You guys seem to be confusing something here. Kakashi could had defeated me at any moment but didn't since he wanted to teach me what a ninja is. His hand sign speed and movement should be a lot quicker than that."
Max spoke as he also took out the katana from his sheath and showed it to them.
The trio couldn't find anything wrong with the katana, but Max flick it at the base and they saw what was wrong with it.
The katana started to break away and part of it just broke and fell on the ground. The katana was now useless.
"By using the fireball to attack Kakashi with, the Katana's got compromised which made it become a onetime attack weapon. Only when my smiting technique evolves can I use such moves more than one time without losing weapons in the process." Max said as he sighed again.