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Chapter 71: Layers of the Dream
"Ninja Art: Realm of Eternal Dusk!"
The world plunged into sensory oblivion. A perfect, genjutsu-crafted void.
But Yuhi Dreamshatter's technique only targeted the traditional five senses. He had no concept of a sixth sense, a will-made perception that operated independently of stolen light or sound. To Ragnar's Observation Haki, the two Root operatives were still vivid, chakra-bright beacons in the physical world.
Yet, the illusion was clever. It didn't just blind him; it fed his Haki a false confirmation, making his mind believe the void was the real world's state. The disconnect was the trap.
"Ninja Art: Demonic Tree Entanglement!"
Yuhi's follow-up was swift. In the 'void' of Ragnar's mind, dark, thorned vines erupted from nothingness, coiling around his limbs and torso with vicious speed. Psychosomatic feedback made the bite of the thorns feel real, a cold numbness spreading where they 'pierced' his skin. The illusion was layeredâfirst deprivation, then attack.
Ragnar's Haki-sensed fist, aimed at the chakra source of Yuhi, stopped mid-air in the real world. His physical body hesitated, confused by the conflicting data.
Yuhi Dreamshatter, safe in the knowledge his foe was mentally entangled, allowed himself a flicker of relief. "Impressive instincts," he muttered, his voice reaching Ragnar as a whisper in the void. "But instinct cannot break a properly woven genjutsu. Cease your struggle. You will return with us to see Lord Danzo."
Inside the layered illusion, Ragnar felt the 'vines' constrict. The numbness crept further. A lesser mind would have panicked, believing the paralysis real.
But Ragnar's mind was a fortress tempered by Conqueror's Haki. Annoyance, cold and sharp, cut through the false sensations. They think they can cage my will with phantoms?
He didn't know the hand seals to break a genjutsu. He knew only one way to deal with an attack on his mind.
He stopped struggling against the illusory vines. He turned his focus inward, to the core of his being, to the power that declared dominion.
Conqueror's Haki.
In the void, his 'eyes' snapped open, blazing with crimson light.
BOOM.
It was a silent detonation in the physical world, but in the realm of spirit and will, it was a supernova.
The oppressive, kingly pressure erupted from Ragnar. The stagnant, humid air of the Rain Country shivered. The falling rain within a twenty-foot radius halted in mid-air for a split second, droplets vibrating violently before resuming their fall. Every small creature in the underbrush fled or fell unconscious.
The meticulously constructed genjutsu, a house of cards built on manipulating perception, met a force that rejected all manipulation outright.
CRACK-SHATTER!
The Demonic Tree vines evaporated into black mist. The Eternal Dusk tore apart like rotten cloth. Ragnar's vision and senses slammed back into the rainy, muddy reality.
Yuhi Dreamshatter, who had been mentally maintaining the complex illusion, recoiled as if physically struck. His eyes behind the mask went wide with shock and pain. The feedback was brutal.
Ragnar didn't give him a heartbeat to recover. The fist that had stopped now completed its journey, propelled by the fury of a freed king.
"Iron Fist!"
The blow, enhanced by Level 4 Armament, connected with Yuhi's sternum. There was a wet, crushing sound. Yuhi's body folded around the fist, then hurtled backwards, slamming into the trunk of a rain-slicked tree before slumping to the ground. A final, wet gasp escaped his mask, followed by silence.
Ragnar stood, his breathing steady, the faint red aura around his eyes fading. He looked at the fallen Root ninja. No system chime. No experience. A faint, persistent wrongness tickled the back of his mind. Something was⌠off. The rain felt real. The mud. The body. But the victory felt hollow, like solving the first layer of a puzzle only to find another underneath.
He frowned, scanning the area with his Observation Haki. The other signature, Kurama Bloodmist, was still there, but it was⌠muted. Flickering. And why was his own Senjutsu-chakra, that dormant connection to natural energy he could sense but not use, suddenly agitated?
The Real World. Five seconds prior.
"Has it taken hold?" Yuhi Dreamshatter asked, his voice low. He stood perfectly still, five feet from Ragnar's motionless form. Ragnar stood like a statue in the rain, eyes glazed, fist half-raised but unmoving.
From the shadows beneath a twisted tree, Kurama Bloodmist answered, his voice strained, a thin trickle of blood leaking from under his fox mask. "A-ah⌠His spirit⌠it's a monolith. I have him in the Dreamweb, but I cannot hold it for long. The backlashâŚ" He coughed, more blood staining his chin. "You must incapacitate him physically. Now. Before he shatters the web from inside."
The Kurama clan's genjutsu were legendary nightmares. They didn't just hijack senses; they wove a secondary, convincing dream-world directly in the target's mind, where death in the dream could trigger real trauma, even real death. But the cost on the caster's body and mind was horrific.
"Understood," Yuhi said. A cruel glint entered his eyes. "Lord Danzo said alive. He didn't say unharmed." He drew a kunai, its edge glinting dully in the rain-light, and stepped towards the entranced Ragnar.
He raised the blade, aiming for the tendons behind Ragnar's knees. A practical, disabling strike.
Swish.
The air froze.
Yuhi's kunai stopped an inch from its target, halted by a hand that had moved faster than sight. Not Ragnar's raised fist. His other hand.
Ragnar's head turned. The glassy, unfocused look in his eyes was gone, replaced by a chilling, lucid clarity. The faint, natural-energy-induced agitation had been the flaw in the perfect dreamâa sensation the illusion couldn't perfectly replicate, a tiny crack in the prison of his mind that his Conqueror's Haki had exploded outward through.
He looked directly at Yuhi Dreamshatter, whose own eyes were now wide with terror behind his mask.
"Looks like I have to kill you," Ragnar said, his voice a low rumble, "all over again."
CRUNCH.
He didn't punch. He grabbed the wrist holding the kunai and twisted. Bone and cartilage gave way with a sickening pop. Before the scream could fully form, Ragnar's other hand shot out, closing around Yuhi's throat. A single, brutal squeeze and wrench severed the spinal cord. He dropped the lifeless body to the mud without a second glance.
Then he was moving. Three steps brought him to the hunched, trembling form of Kurama Bloodmist, who was desperately trying to maintain a genjutsu that had already been broken.
Yama appeared in Ragnar's grip in a puff of smoke. The sword's inherent malice sang.
"Noâ" Kurama managed, looking up.
The black blade fell in a vertical arc. A clean cut. The fox-masked head toppled from its shoulders. The body remained kneeling for a moment before slumping sideways.
Ding!
Slain: Root Operative (Chunin). EXP +600.
Slain: Root Operative (Chunin). EXP +600.
Total EXP: 7,800 / 50,000.
The system's confirmation was the final proof. The illusion was truly over.
Ragnar let out a long, controlled breath, sheathing Yama. The Kurama clan's techniques were insidious. They hadn't just trapped his senses; they'd built a false reality within his own mind and made him the protagonist of his own breakout. If not for that discordant flicker of senjutsu chakraâa power too profound for their illusion to mimicâhe might have been stuck fighting phantoms until his real body was crippled.
"Genjutsu users," he muttered to the falling rain, wiping a speck of blood from his cheek. "The counter isn't just power. It's absolute awareness. I cannot afford to be caught unaware again."
He turned and continued his journey east, leaving the two Root corpses for the rain to cleanse. They were tools that had broken against a harder surface. He felt nothing for them.
Long after he had vanished into the gray landscape, the air rippled. Danzo emerged from a camouflage technique, several more Root agents at his heels. He looked down at the scene: Yuhi Dreamshatter with a ruined throat, Kurama Bloodmist decapitated. The rain was slowly washing the blood into artistic, pink swirls in the mud.
A low, furious sound escaped Danzo's lips, barely audible over the rain. Not grief for the lost toolsâthey were replaceable. It was fury at the waste, at the defiance, at the proof that the boy was even more dangerous and willful than he'd imagined.
Such brutality. Such disregard for Konoha's own. A rabid dog, not a loyal hound.
The thought solidified his resolve. This asset was flawed, corrupted. He needed to be retrieved, his secrets extracted, and then⌠repurposed. Or eliminated.
Ragnar, miles away now, felt a faint, cold prickling on the back of his neckânot Haki, just instinct. He didn't look back. If Danzo came himself next time, he would simply add a bigger number to his experience total. The lines were drawn. There was no going back.
(End of Chapter)
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