"You can refuse the job, if you do not mind dying inside a genjutsu without ever understanding how it happened," Akira added dryly.
Anko ground her teeth, furious, but she knew this was serious and could only shoot him a murderous glare.
"Enough chatter. I will brief you on the way. Our targets, the Oni Clan, are incredibly strange. Even I know very little about them, so stay sharp. Every second."
Hearing Akira speak so gravely, both women turned serious at once.
A mission that required three jōnin to deploy together was dangerous by definition.
Still, seeing the calm in Akira's eyes, Anko felt half her worry disappear. With that monster on their side, dying would take real effort.
They moved fast and reached the village where the incident had taken place in a single day.
When they stood on the ridge outside and looked down, fury shot straight through them.
What had once been a quiet settlement was now a field of blackened ruin.
There were almost no signs of a fierce battle in the wreckage, yet the corpses were horrifying to look at.
Many of the shinobi had died twisted into grotesque positions, as if they had been fighting invisible demons before the end.
"Looks like they meant to wipe this place off the map," Akira said, his voice cold as ice.
The ruins reeked of rot. Civilians and shinobi alike had died horribly, but the ninja were the worst of all, eyes rolled back, every sign pointing to complete mental collapse before death.
Kurenai finished examining the area and returned to Akira, her face pale. "All of them died in a state of mental breakdown. Most of them killed themselves. Before that, they went through unimaginable psychological torment. Some even murdered villagers around them while they were losing their minds."
Anko kicked a chunk of stone across the ruins and spat through clenched teeth. "Animals. Absolute monsters."
"Why is the place so clean? Not a trace of the attackers."
Akira and Kurenai exchanged a glance. Anko's voice carried far too loudly through the dead silence.
Kurenai gave a grim explanation. "That is what makes the Oni Clan terrifying. Their Ghost Transformation Jutsu lets them kill in astral form. Ordinary physical attacks are useless."
"If you do not destroy their real bodies, this becomes a one-sided slaughter."
"Looks like they used genjutsu first, broke the local shinobi mentally, and made them butcher one another."
Akira walked deeper into the wreckage.
With his senses fully extended, he suddenly stopped and snapped his gaze toward a collapsed wall.
"Come out."
The instant he spoke, Kurenai and Anko flashed to his sides, kunai in hand, murderous intent rising.
The air froze for a few seconds. Then something stirred behind the wall.
A ragged man emerged first, clutching a charred length of wood like a spear, shaking so hard he could barely stand. Behind him, two terrified children huddled close.
"D-don't come any closer! I mean it!"
His hands trembled like leaves. The stick was nothing more than a desperate comfort.
Kurenai and Anko both faltered. In a place like this, they had not expected survivors.
The man finally saw the Konoha symbol on Akira's forehead protector. The tension inside him snapped at once, and the stick clattered from his hand.
"Y-you are Konoha shinobi?"
When they confirmed it, his knees nearly buckled, though he still kept himself between them and the children.
Akira gave the three a measured look, confirmed there was no chakra fluctuation, and said quietly, "What happened here? Tell me everything you know."
The man looked around at the destruction and covered his face in pain. "I do not know… last night, the shinobi in the village suddenly went mad. They started killing anyone they saw."
"They kept slaughtering each other until none of them were left. If I had not taken the children to visit relatives in the next village over, we would have…"
Akira was silent for a moment, then spoke in a low voice. "Tell me every detail you remember."
The man described the nightmare in broken fragments. He had not witnessed the massacre firsthand, but what he had seen upon returning was enough to haunt him for the rest of his life.
That invisible terror made even Kurenai and Anko feel a chill crawl up their backs.
This was not murder committed for a mission. This was killing for the sheer joy of killing.
When the man finished, a sharp light flashed in Akira's eyes. "You said you have relatives in the neighboring village?"
The man blinked and nodded.
Akira immediately pulled out a map and spread it on the ground. One by one, he marked the locations of the attacked villages.
As the points connected into a grotesque pattern, Kurenai and Anko sucked in a breath.
"This… this is a Corpse Spirit Barrier?!"
Kurenai blurted it out.
Anko did not understand the deeper mechanics, but even she could see that the nine points formed some kind of sinister array.
Akira pointed to the final missing gap. "Their next target is the neighboring village. Once that last point is filled, the barrier will be complete."
The Corpse Spirit Barrier was a large-scale genjutsu formation long thought lost.
It was not meant to seal anything. It was meant to deceive death itself, allowing the caster to complete a perfect transformation into spirit form.
But the price was at least two hundred and seventy shinobi souls. It was monstrous.
"Take us there," Akira said, folding the map away. His tone left no room for argument.
The man instinctively wanted to refuse. A place like that had to be another hell on earth by now.
"If you do not go," Akira said coldly, "your relatives will end up as corpses just like the ones here. And that village is their final target. If we go there, this ends."
The man looked into the hopeful eyes around him, clenched his jaw, and nodded. "Fine. I know a shortcut."
They crossed the mountain forest for more than an hour before they finally saw the village tucked into the valley below.
But the instant they stepped through the entrance, Akira felt it, a gaze from several miles away, fixed on them with pure malice.
"Heh heh heh…"
A cold, eerie laugh seemed to slip directly into their minds.
Akira's brow tightened. Then he reached out and tapped both women lightly on the shoulder.
In an instant, the world flipped upside down.
The peaceful village of green hills and clear water vanished.
In its place rose a vision of hell.
Kurenai and Anko stared in horror as the man who had guided them, along with the two children, transformed in an instant into three stark white skeletons.
The ground beneath their feet became blistering rock. Rivers of lava flowed on every side. The air was thick with choking sulfur.
"W-where are we?!" Anko cried, feeling as though her skin might blister off her body.
Kurenai's face changed at once, her hands flying into seals. "It is a genjutsu, and a very high-level one!"
Akira had seen through everything from the start. He had only played along so he could follow the trail straight back to the enemy's den.
Those three "survivors" had not been fully dead.
They were failed test subjects of the Oni Clan, souls trapped inside bone after losing their flesh, reduced to bait meant to lure prey in.