Chapter 41: Harvest of the Seven
The world slowed to a crawl.
Seven Kirigakure chunin, disoriented by the seismic shockwave Ragnar had punched into the earth, stumbled in a ragged circle around him. Mud and shredded grass rained down in a dirty haze. Thirty meters away, the cataclysm of water still churned where Might Dai had vanished—a thundering convergence of two high-level Water Release techniques that had turned the forest clearing into a temporary, violent lake.
Ragnar's senses, sharpened by Level 3 Observation Haki, mapped every twitch, every panicked breath. Among the seven, their reactions split. Two immediately attached chakra to their feet and leaped to nearby branches, seeking high ground. Three others froze, eyes wide with shock at the devastation a single fist had wrought. The remaining two backpedaled, kunai held in white-knuckled grips.
Even ninjas can have poor composure, Ragnar noted coldly. It was a flaw he would exploit without mercy.
He targeted the panicked ones first.
Shave.
His body became a blur. The air cracked once as he vanished from where he stood, then again as he reappeared. Level 3 Shave had doubled his effective range to sixty meters, and the speed was now comparable to a high-grade Body Flicker. Combined with the raw velocity granted by his enhanced physique and the crackling suggestion of Lightning Release chakra channeled to his legs, he moved like a bolt of human lightning.
"Lightning Cutter: Thrust!"
He materialized behind a chunin who was still staring at the crater. Ragnar's right hand, sheathed in the white-blue arc of concentrated lightning chakra, stabbed forward. It wasn't the perfected, focused needle of Kakashi's future technique, but a cruder, wilder spear of energy. It punched through the man's lower back and erupted from his abdomen in a spray of charred tissue and blood. The victim made a wet, gasping sound before collapsing.
Ragnar didn't watch him fall. He was already gone.
Shave.
He reappeared to the left of another stumbling ninja. This one had begun to turn, kunai rising. Too slow.
"Spiral Force!"
Ragnar's fist, hardened black with Armament Haki and vibrating with the compressed, rotating power he'd trained from Tsunade's notes, hammered into the man's chest. There was no dramatic explosion—just a terrible, wet crunch-thud as the force bypassed ribs and obliterated the heart within. The chunin was thrown back five meters, a fist-sized cavity where his sternum had been, his dead eyes wide with surprise.
Two breaths. Two kills.
A fierce, primal thrill surged through Ragnar's veins, cutting through the cold pragmatism. This wasn't just survival. This was dominance. The system's EXP notifications chimed in the back of his mind, a satisfying counterpoint to the adrenaline. This was the path—fighting, killing, growing stronger. It felt less like a duty and more like an addiction he was born to feed.
"Whoosh!"
He halted his assault, landing lightly on a thick tree branch, chakra adhering his feet to the bark. He stood above them, looking down. A faint white electric arc still danced around his right fingers. A streak of blackish blood—not his own—was smeared across his cheek, stark against his pale, intense features. At that moment, with his dark eyes surveying the carnage below, he looked less like a child soldier and more like a demonic spirit of the forest.
The remaining five Kirigakure ninjas regrouped, clustering together. Their eyes darted between the two horrific corpses—one electrocuted and gutted, the other with a hollow chest. Fear was a tangible smell in the air.
"You monstrous little devil!" the central ninja, likely the squad leader by his tone, shouted. His voice trembled despite his effort. "All together! Now!"
The order was a lifeline for their fraying nerves. "Yes, squad leader!"
As one, the five leaped, fanning out to surround Ragnar's perch. Kunai gleamed, and a spread of shuriken whistled through the air in a coordinated barrage.
Ragnar didn't retreat. He dropped into their encirclement.
Observation Haki, fully active.
The world gained a layer of translucent intent. He saw the shuriken's paths as pale streaks, saw the slight shift in a ninja's shoulder before they lunged. His body moved with impossible economy—a slight tilt of the head here, a pivot on the ball of his foot there. A shuriken grazed his hair as he spun, the kunai thrusts finding only empty space where he had just been.
In the heart of their flurry, he planted his feet and twisted his torso.
Armament Haki: Emission.
He didn't need to make contact. He crossed his arms and then flung them outward in a short, explosive arc. The unleashed, invisible force of Armament Haki hit two chunin like battering rams of compressed air. They were blasted off their feet with twin cries of surprise and pain, crashing into nearby trees.
The remaining three faltered, their rhythm broken. In that opening, Ragnar's expression shifted. His brows drew together, his gaze intensifying. An immense, invisible pressure began to swell from his core, a weight that had nothing to do with chakra.
Conqueror's Haki. Release.
The clearing darkened. Not physically, but in the spirit of every living thing present. A suffocating, kingly aura erupted from the eight-year-old, bending the grass flat in a circle around him. The very air grew heavy and still.
The three chunin directly facing him were the first to be overwhelmed. Their eyes rolled back, their bodies went rigid, and they dropped like marionettes with cut strings, unconscious before they hit the forest floor.
Ragnar was a blur of ruthless efficiency. Shave. He appeared beside each slumped form. "Lightning Cutter." A quick, precise stab to the heart or brain. Three sharp, crackling zaps, three lives extinguished. He felt no revulsion, only the cold calculus of a completed task.
He then turned to the two he had knocked away with the air blast. One was struggling to his knees, disoriented. The other clutched a broken arm. They saw him coming, saw the absolute absence of mercy in his eyes.
The end was swift. A hardened fist to a temple. A lightning-charged palm to the throat.
Silence.
Whoosh… whoosh…
Ragnar stood amidst the seven bodies, breathing heavily. Sweat beaded on his forehead, mixing with the grime and blood. Killing seven chunin in under a minute was not a trivial feat, even for him. It had pushed his enhanced stamina to its limit, a high-intensity burst he couldn't immediately repeat. His muscles sang with fatigue.
But the system's chimes were a sweet reward.
*Ding! Experience +400!*
*Ding! Experience +600!*
*Ding! Experience +800!*
…
A cascade of notifications. In total, the seven chunin yielded 4,200 EXP. His tally jumped.
Experience: 8,300 + 4,200 = 12,500/10,000
Excess experience will be held. Level Up available.
A fierce grin touched his lips. Killing is the fastest path after all. He was now 2,500 EXP beyond his needed threshold. The power-up was imminent.
A tremendous roar shattered his momentary focus.
"MORNING PEACOCK!"
From the direction of the colossal water techniques, a sound like a shrieking phoenix split the air. The massive body of water was churning violently. Through the spray, Ragnar's enhanced sight glimpsed two gigantic humanoid figures made of water—Water Release: Water Formation Pillar technique, massively amplified by the environment and the caster's skill. The hallmark of the Ghost Lantern clan's Hydrification Technique.
And against them was Might Dai.
The man was a comet of green flame. The aura of the Sixth Gate had solidified around him, dark emerald and blazing. He was moving so fast he seemed to hang in the air, his afterimages painting streaks of light. Then he began to punch.
His fists became a blur, moving at such phenomenal speed that the friction with the air ignited them. Each punch launched a compressed fireball of pure concussive force, trailing flames like the tail of a meteor. Dozens, then hundreds, of these flaming shockwaves rained down upon the water giants in a spectacular, omnidirectional barrage. It looked like a peacock of fire spreading its tail across the sky—a beautiful, devastating technique that evaporated the surrounding water jutsu on contact.
The two water giants, embodiments of the Kiri jonins' power, were being systematically, violently dismantled under the storm of fists.
One of the watery forms suddenly lost cohesion, reverting to a human shape that was hurled from the sky like a broken doll. It landed with a heavy, bone-jarring thud in the mud barely ten feet from Ragnar.
It was one of the Kirigakure jonin. His clothes were torn, his body was covered in bruises and shallow burns from the concussive blows. He was gasping, one arm twisted at a wrong angle, trying to push himself up. His eyes, glazed with pain, found Ragnar.
A delivery, Ragnar thought, the cold calculus returning. An experience package delivered right to my feet.
The jonin's eyes widened in dawning horror as the blood-smeared boy took a step toward him.
Ragnar didn't speak. He simply cocked his right arm back, his fist sheathing itself in the deepest, most concentrated black of Level 3 Armament Haki.
"Iron Fist."
He drove it downward in a piston-straight line. The jonin had no time to weave a hand sign, no chakra left for a substitution. The armored fist connected with the top of his skull.
CRUNCH.
It was a terrible, final sound. The jonin's body went limp.
*Ding! Experience +1300!*
Experience: 12,500 + 1,300 = 13,800/10,000
The rush of new power was immediate and intoxicating.
"BROTHER!"
A raw, grief-stricken scream ripped from the remaining Kirigakure jonin. He had also shed his water form, landing unevenly on the far side of the shrinking lake. His face was a mask of fury and agony, his eyes fixed on his dead sibling. "I'LL KILL YOU!"
He took a lurching step toward Ragnar.
"Don't you dare lay a hand on Ragnar!"
Might Dai landed between them with a thump that shook the ground. The green flames around him were flickering, but his stance was firm, his expression fiercely protective. "Your fight is with me!"
"Tch. Nice assist, Dai," Ragnar muttered, a thread of genuine respect in his tone.
But as soon as the words left his mouth, Dai's mighty posture faltered. He took one step forward and his leg buckled. He stumbled to his knees, then collapsed forward onto his hands. The blazing green aura winked out like a snuffed candle. White, superheated steam erupted from every pore of his body with a violent hiss. His muscles, previously swollen with power, now visibly deflated and trembled with violent spasms. Stars swam in his vision.
The Sixth Gate's catastrophic recoil had arrived.
"Guh… R-Ragnar…" Dai gasped, his voice a ragged whisper. He tried to lift his head, tried to push himself up, but his arms gave way. He lay in the mud, utterly spent, a vessel emptied by his own magnificent effort. With immense difficulty, he turned his head toward Ragnar. "Leave me… Go! Get out of here!"
On the other side, the remaining Kirigakure jonin watched the steam pour off Dai. The grief on his face twisted into a vicious, triumphant sneer. He slowly straightened up, cracking his neck. The chakra around him, while depleted, began to coil again with deadly intent.
"Hah… hahaha!" he laughed, a broken, hysterical sound. "The forbidden technique's backlash! It's my turn now!"
He formed a single hand seal. Water from the soaked ground began to creep up his legs, forming wicked, serrated blades around his forearms—Water Release: Water Cutter. He started a slow, deliberate walk toward the helpless Dai and the fatigued Ragnar.
"Starting with the green beast," the jonin snarled, his eyes burning with vengeance. "Then the little demon."
Ragnar stood his ground between the advancing jonin and the fallen Dai. His breath was still uneven, his muscles protested, and he was down to his last reserves. But 13,800 EXP burned in his system, begging to be used. The power-up was right there, a mere thought away.
He clenched his fists, feeling the familiar, comforting hardness of Armament Haki stir within. The fight wasn't over.
(End of Chapter)
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