(June, year 54 AK)
As soon as the three enemy ninjas bodies hit the ground, Yuta dispelled his clones and quickly ran to the corpses, he briefly and rashly searched their bodies. First, he checked the covered headbands and under the fabric he saw the Kirigakure village's sign on them. Without missing a bit, Yuta checked their ninja tool pouches and grabbed about a dozen paper tag bombs from them in a hurry.
'Nice, good stuff...' Yuta thought absentmindedly, as his hands quickly attached a paper tag to each corpse and then he made a basic booby trap with ninja wire, it only took a few seconds, and immediately after that, sensing some movements in the distance with his chakra senses Yuta quickly flickered away and hidden himself in the trees.
As Yuta hid himself in the branches some distance away, while observing the corpses he slowed down his breathing and suppressed his chakra and presence to the best of his abilities.
'I had taken down three supposedly Chunins just now.' Yuta thought as he finally had some time to analyze what happened, 'And they died quite easily, none of them was even fighting seriously from start to finish... I knew my genjutsu was quite strong, but wasn't that too easy? I even used clones to mask my final attack, so if some of them would've sensed something and able to survive that attack, the clones were concealing my attack from the start, and they would've been fooled by them, while I was still hidden from their perception by the Shadow Cloak genjutsu, but all my follow up moves ended up unnecessary in the end.'
...
'No, it wasn't too easy. There were multiple factors at work that led to this outcome. First, they were severely underestimating me the whole time, and right until the end they didn't suspect a thing, I was just a some talented Genin in their eyes, nothing more.'
'Second, although my genjutsu is strong, still they would've noticed something and would've dispelled it if I didn't conceal each activation of my genjutsu with some other jutsu, first with Clone jutsu, then with Substitution jutsu, each time I was weaving a full series of hand seals for those jutsus, but that was only a decoy, where only one seal was real, and it was used for my genjutsu, while I had activated the Clone and the Substitution jutsus without hand seals, manually molding the chakra for them.'
...
'Now that I think about it, it was quite hard to pull off, without my good chakra control and many months of practicing just that in the time-loops I wouldn't be able to pull something like that. They just couldn't be able to even start to assume that some kid would be able to pull something advanced like that, so they weren't on guard against it.'
'No sane ninja ever trains to do things like that, it's too much work for too little advantage, regular ninja will become much stronger if he just trains normally, practicing taijutsu and ninjutsu, without wasting months and years to learn how to reduce the amount of hand seals needed for the jutsu, professional ninjas are weaving through the series of hand seals very fast anyway, why bother? Even elite Jonin Zabuza went through all 44 hand seals in a flash in the fight against Kakashi to use the Water Dragon Bullet jutsu.'
'Well, there is some exceptions to this, like Substitution and Body Flicker jutsus that a lot of ninjas decide to train to use them without hand seals, but very few ninjas ever train to reduce hand seals requirement for all the jutsus they use, there is just too much wasted time for too little value.'
...
'But if I were to make even a single mistake, those guys I'm sure would've caught on my genjutsu and dispelled it, it's a subtle type genjutsu and it's easy to dispel after all. I have such a huge advantage only until my enemies don't know about my genjutsu, after they'll discover it – it will become much harder to catch my enemies with it, and I will have to employ much more tricks to pull something like that off.'
...
'With all the previous running at a high speed and a lack of proper rest, at the start of the fight I wasn't at my best and I only had about 80% of my chakra left. Now, with all the jutsus being used, I had spent another 30% or so, so I only have half of my chakra left. Basic jutsus like Clone and Substitution didn't take much, Body Flicker took some more, maintaining the Calm State wasted some chakra as well, but still, all of that wasn't a lot, it was the three casts of the Shadow Cloak on the enemies that had more chakra than me that put some dent in my chakra reserves, especially draining was to maintain it on the three targets with superior chakra at once.'
'In fact, maintaining the genjutsu on the three targets like that had put so much strain on me that I was forced to make an immediate decisive move and try to kill at least some of the enemies if I wanted to continue fighting, I just didn't expected that I will score all three of them with that one move.'
Under the clarity of the Calm State, Yuta had analyzed the situation in just a few seconds, and then he saw three more ninjas appear beside the corpses.
"How could this happen?!" One of the ninjas asked angerly, "They were confronting one of the kids! Don't tell me that it was the kid who did this!"
As he was talking, the other ninja sits beside the corpses and examined them without touching them, "All three of them were killed with a single kunai to the neck."
"Were there any other wounds on the bodies?" The first ninja asked.
As the second ninja was about to turn the corpses over to examine them more closely, Yuta thought with some hesitation, 'When they'll trigger my booby trap, it would be the best moment to attack, but should I engage in a new fight like that? After all, my chakra reserves aren't full and these three new ninjas will be on guard unlike the first three, it would be much harder to deal with them.'
...
'Sigh, what choice do I have? There are still Shinji, Itachi and Hikari that are fighting in the area. If I don't deal with these guys here, then my teammates will have to, and I don't know how full their plates already are. For all I know, they might be on the verge of defeat already. I can't put them into even bigger trouble. Besides, who said that these guys won't be able to find me and I will be able to hide and escape? I must deal with them here and now.'
Although the enemy ninjas were about to trigger the booby trap on the bodies, Yuta didn't think even for a second that his trap would be able to finish them off, so he prepared to act himself.
Yuta was paying attention on the movements of the ninja, that went to check the bodies, and as the ninja was about to trigger his booby trap, Yuta went through the series of hand seals and then he whistled, creating a continuous and prolonged sound, trying to imitate one of the local birds' sounds, releasing the jutsu through it.
The sound came out quite crude and anyone who was paying attention to the environment would've noticed that something was off with that bird's sound, but still, it didn't immediately attract the attention of the three ninjas beside the corpses, since they had a more important problem at hand than some suspicious bird's sound – they heard the sizzling of the paper tag bombs sounds that were coming from the corpses.
"Paper bomb! Scatter!" The first ninja immediately shouted and quickly jumped back, as well as the third ninja beside him.
But the second ninja who was examining the corpses and who were the closest to the trap, he didn't move at all. He continued sitting beside the corpses and didn't react at all.
"Daisuke! Get away from there!" The first ninja shouted in a panicked tone from a distance.
"Can't... Move..." Daisuke hissed quietly, and it was the last thing he said as the paper tag bombs went off and exploded.
Daisuke was caught up in the epicenter of the explosions, the dirt, flesh and body parts were flown in all directions and when the fire and dirt in the air had subsided after a second, it was hard to determine which piece of the mangled and charred flesh that were thrown everywhere belonged to Daisuke and which to the one of the other three corpses...
Yuta was panting hard in the branches of the tree, he wanted to follow up and perform another move right after that one, but this use of the Shadow Chains genjutsu on the target that had more chakra than him had costed Yuta much more chakra and effort than he expected, it had put such a strain on him that he wasn't able to move for a few seconds and had to drop his follow up attack plans for the time being to recover.
'Another 30% of my chakra spent in one move just like that...' Yuta thought as he was trying to slow down his breathing and to gather the remaining of his strength, his face was covered in sweat, 'I only have about 20% of my chakra left...'
'Targeting a ninja that has more chakra than me turned out much more difficult than I expected, it seems that I can paralyze someone with so much more chakra than me only for a few seconds at best. According to my chakra senses, that last guy had about 1.5C of chakra, or 15G, while I only have 8G. It was unexpectedly very hard, almost unbearable to hold on to the jutsu like that. I feel like if the target would have more than twice of my chakra reserves, I won't be able to immobilize them with my Shadow Chains genjutsu at all...'
...
'It will be tricky...' Yuta thought as he looked at the remaining two ninjas with a cold and emotionless look in his eyes.
--- AN ---
The fight is progressing quite slow with all the thought processes of the MC, but I hope you will bear with me for this one, after all, this is the first serious fight with the use of the new genjutsu and stuff.
I wanted to showcase here the foundation of Yuta's fighting style and his thought process, also, I wanted to bring back the same vibe that fights in the anime are giving me, at least when it wasn't Naruto who is fighting, but someone like Kakashi or Shikamaru, when there is a thought process showcased during the fight, about what the character thinks and how he decides on his strategy and moves.
In the future fights I probably won't write so much thoughts of the MC during the fight and it will be more dynamic and will progress much faster.
Also, what do you think about the ruthlessness of the MC that was displayed during this fight? Normally Yuta probably won't act like that in a fight, but this time he was using the Calm State, his emotions and feelings were suppressed, so here he doesn't mind using everything he could to win, even if it turns out quite gory.
Also, I never liked to read the fights of the side characters when MC is not even present in the fight, so don't expect me to write the fights of Hikari or Shinji and Itachi, Yuta wasn't present there, so you as a reader will know only as much as he does. If you don't like that – let me know, and I might change my mind on this.
If you like the story, please consider writing a comment, a review, voting with power stones, or check out my Patreon, 5 advanced chapters is currently available there (patreon.com/SycoreNovels)
Thanks to Eyes_Of_The_Void, Denuncia, G_Anderson_2314, Thourfin, Elijah_Thomas_1921, Krishna_Razz, Loalola, Jayroy_63, Zen_Slacker, Shadow_reader_, Xx_Dd_5536 for the power stones. Damn, that's a lot, thanks!