Ninja Mentor: Pathways to Power

Chapter 16

The air hummed with tension. Mukai gazed across the now silent clearing. The students in the trees stayed hidden. 'Good, I could be an enemy in disguise' He thought.

His frontline students were battered and on the brink of exhaustion, they stood in a precarious line of defense against three enemy genin, their forms wavering.

Mukai's gaze shifted over to the three genin before him, their forms a stark testament to the beating his dear students must have delivered.

A smile almost crept onto his face. They were making him so proud!

All thoughts of smiling dropped as his gaze landed on Kenji. 'His wounds are severe, I have to evacuate him immediately!' Mukai's muscles tensed, preparing to rush to his student's aid. But then, a strange sight stopped his movement. Surrounding Kenji was a faint, pulsating green glow

Mukai paused for a second before his eyes widened "The Eight Gates," he murmured under his breath, almost in disbelief. It was a rare and dangerous technique, known to grant extraordinary power at great risk. Kenji, driven by sheer survival instinct, must have inadvertently unlocked the First Gate, the Gate of Opening.

Mukai couldn't help it, he had been so wound up all day, and getting any kind of good news was all he needed to burst into laughter. The tension lifted from his shoulders.

"Haha, very good Kenji!" He placed his hand on his student's messy brown hair "And I'm assuming you lead this retreat?"

"Yes, Teacher Mukai." Kenji responded. He waved his hand in the direction of the clearing. "We all took what you taught us to heart and held out for as long as we could."

Mukai was beaming at this point. 'My efforts were not in vain!' He thought to himself.

"Good, good. I ought to give you all a reward when this is all over." He said ruffling Kenji's hair as he said so.

He sighed as he stood. "Well, at least something good came of this."

"You all can come out now, take all wounded to the infirmary. I will question our... friends here."

The leaves rustled as six students emerged from the foliage, all in varying stages of disarray. Scanning them Mukai could see they all sported some kind of injury, none as severe as Kenji though.

"Yes, Teacher Mukai." They said in Unison before gathering themselves to leave.

Mukai had taken care to spread his sensory ninjutsu from their position to the exit of the forest. He was sure there were no more ninjas en route. However, he still sent a shadow clone with them to ensure they were safe.

As their chakra signatures grew fainter Mukai's attention shifted back to the genin in front of him

Once confident and brimming with arrogance, the genin now stood hunched and wheezing, as if the very air around them was a burden too heavy to bear.

Their attire, once a clean matte black, was now torn and dirtied, hanging off their bodies in tatters, Sweat mixed with the grime of the forest floor, painting their faces with streaks of mud and blood.

The genins, sensing a shift, hesitated as they assessed the threat.

"You thought you could challenge the leaf and walk away unscathed?" Mukai's voice was cold, a stark contrast to the humor that filled it a second ago.

The genin, struggling to maintain his composure, tried to find his voice, "We... we were just following orders. We didn't know—"

"Silence," Mukai cut him off sharply. "Your excuses are as weak as your leader was." Their eyes widened at that.