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Clouds began to gather and cover the sun as the forest suddenly got darker.
"I see. Where is your employer?" Gilgamesh asked but was met with silence.
"I see. So that's how it's going to be?" Gilgamesh said. "You guys can come out and start. I was already getting bored."
Gilgamesh looked to one part of the forest, causing the small shinobi group at the mercy of his blade and Kakashi to look in that same direction as well.
"So you're really as good as they say, huh? Even though we put a lot of effort into masking ourselves, you still found us," a cloaked shinobi leading two other cloaked shinobi said with a gruff voice.
"I noticed you all trailing this group of miscreants a long time ago," Gilgamesh corrected.
Everyone's eyes widened except Mura's, who had returned after applying his Snowland around their base and watched from a tree he perched on next to Kakashi.
The cloaked ninja didn't say much and ran forward with his allies flanking him until they were below Gilgamesh.
'Jumping up to meet him in the air is a death sentence as shown by these thugs, and staying below him is also setting oneself up for failure,' the cloaked shinobi who ran in the middle thought as he slammed his hands on the floor, causing his allies to halt their run.
"Earth Release: Moving Earth Core!" the cloaked shinobi said out loud as the earth below them suddenly moved upwards to meet Gilgamesh with decent speed.
'Stone Shinobi!' was what everyone thought as they saw that jutsu even though they were cloaked.
"Hmph." Gilgamesh scoffed and stretched his right hand, calling for his blade.
His blade quickly left its initial position, causing the cloaked ninjas that flanked the one raising the earth to stand in defensive positions, but the blade flew past them and into Gilgamesh's hand.
Suddenly, a huge chakra pressure weighed on everyone around as the earth stopped rising.
It seemed like it was raining, but it was raining down pressure that forced everyone to remain in their fixed position.
'Impossible! At this age already! He can even affect me?' Kakashi thought as he struggled to keep watching.
Gilgamesh sheathed the blade, and the pressure couldn't be felt again as if nothing happened.
There were looks of confusion on everyone's faces until Gilgamesh bent forward as if enacting the art of battojutsu (the art of drawing the sword), then the hearts of the cloaked shinobi started beating faster and continued their ascent.
Before they could continue, Gilgamesh unsheathed his blade, and the same pressure they once felt came upon them again, halting their movements.
"ENUMA… SLASH!"
Gilgamesh sheathed his blade once more slowly as the cloaked ninjas checked themselves to see if they were cut and tried to look up at Gilgamesh but fell.
No sound was made but sand rushing in to fill a large crevice was made as all could see that Gilgamesh had split the earth!
The cloaked shinobi were cleaved in half neatly, and their torn cloaks revealed the colours of the Hidden Stone shinobi vest.
'He is able to do that by applying wind nature to his blade. It sounds easy to do, but the power behind the slash is no joke. Just a slash from him changes the nature of the environment,' Kakashi thought as he leaned on the tree he was resting against to close his eyes for a bit.
"And now, where was I?" Gilgamesh said as he looked at the shinobi who remained with their leader only to find all of them unconscious.
"Ugh. Mura set up camp. We are staying until Kakashi wakes up," Gilgamesh said as he lay down in the sky, looking at the clouds clear up a bit as if he were lying down on his bed.
Mura nodded and offered to carry Kakashi since he was sleeping, but Kakashi reacted to being touched and immediately reached for a kunai in his gear and slashed at Mura's throat!
'No way. There's still a long way for me to go if I can't react to a sleeping man's attack,' Mura looked disappointed in himself as he put Kakashi's hand down after Kakashi apologized for reacting like that since his nights were like that before Team Zero came along. Nights of constant assassinations without sleep took a toll on him indeed.
But Kakashi was surprised at how sturdy Mura's clothes were since his kunai met Mura's fabric, but it wasn't dented. Instead, it caused a spark as if there were small scales sewn into his fabric.
As Kakashi thought of it, he drifted off to sleep and let Mura carry him back to base, where Mura started a fire and cooked rabbits he hunted after securing the area around them.
Gilgamesh joined the others, and the cloaked boy looked at Gilgamesh as if he had seen a ghost. He was sure he wasn't younger than Gilgamesh, yet this golden-haired boy could take on entire platoons by himself and display strength that was unheard of. He greeted Gilgamesh instinctively when he saw Gilgamesh entering the base with the enemy shinobi that sought his life earlier.
Right now, those remaining shinobi just wanted to go back home more than anything. Their bodies were burnt, but some of them swore that if they made it out of there alive, they would work an honest job instead of being mercenaries for hire. Who knows whether the next client might ask for something as suicidal as kidnapping someone in the Hidden Cloud Village?
"See the kid you wanted to kill? You can kill him now if you want. Here's your chance," Gilgamesh smiled as Mura served him a steaming hot bowl of rabbit stew. The forest provided enough herbs, and a tomato farm wasn't even far off, which Mura made sure that his Snowland never reached.
"It's okay. The person who sent us is hiding in the Hidden Grass Village. I can give you his location if you want," the leader of the shinobi said as he and his group stood by the fire, untied. They were unbound by ropes, but they felt bound with Gilgamesh around.
"Do you have a messenger bird?" Gilgamesh asked as he took in the aroma of the stew.
"Yes, I can call it now if you wish."
"Call it then. I have a message to send there."
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