Chapter 304 - 304: 304 - Karin's Kagura Shingan!!!

Late at night, a knock sounded at the door.

To Karin, it felt strangely far away, like it was happening in someone else's house. Her mother, Rina, heard it too, but neither of them moved at first.

Rina's first thought was that Konoha had finally come to seek her out. But when she opened the door and saw who was waiting, she realized they weren't here for her at all.

They were here for Karin.

And it wasn't for medical treatment this time, but for a sensory mission.

Over the past few years, Konoha had slowly earned a place in Rina's heart. Trust warred with worry, but in the end she turned back inside and shook her daughter awake.

"A mission?"

Still half-asleep, Karin clumsily changed her clothes. It wasn't until she stepped into the hall and saw the two masked Anbu standing at the door that she understood this wasn't a dream.

When she stepped outside, a cool night breeze brushed past her, making her shiver and finally clearing the last of the drowsiness from her mind.

She said goodbye to her mother and, under Rina's anxious gaze, followed the Anbu into the night.

The rendezvous point was at the village gate, where a small team was already assembled.

"You're Uzumaki Karin, right?" A young man with round-framed glasses gave her a gentle smile. "Nice to meet you. I'm Yakushi Kabuto."

"H-Hello, Kabuto-senpai." Karin straightened reflexively and greeted him with stiff formality.

"No need to be so tense." Kabuto's smile softened. "To be personally asked by Lord Roshi at your age, and for an emergency mobilization no less… Karin, you must have remarkable talent."

"The Captain… personally called for me?" Karin's voice rose before she could stop it.

The streetlamp overhead cast its light into her red eyes, scattering tiny sparks of brightness across them.

"The mission order clearly states the emergency mobilization of 'Uzumaki Karin,'" Kabuto continued. "It seems Lord Roshi has great faith in your abilities."

Karin's breathing hitched.

'Finally… finally, it's not that arrogant Uchiha Sasuke, not that loudmouth Naruto who's always making a scene, and not Gaara later on… Has the Captain finally noticed me too?'

"We're heading out," Kabuto's voice cut cleanly through her thoughts. "Our destination is Takigakure. It's a long way, and we'll have to move fast. We'll need to carry you to make up time—is that all right?"

"Yes! No problem at all, Kabuto-senpai!" Karin answered without hesitation.

Even if she had to run herself into the ground, she would keep up.

Reality, of course, taught her a quick lesson.

A true emergency border-crossing dash—its pace, its strain on body and mind—was on a completely different level from any endurance training run on the Academy field.

The last time she'd experienced this kind of high-speed travel was four years ago, when she'd been taken from Kusagakure. At the tensest point of that journey, she'd even been transported by Flying Thunder God while unconscious.

By the time she finally set foot on the soil of the Land of Waterfalls and neared their destination, her excitement was barely enough to hold back the exhaustion weighing down her limbs. But the moment they entered Takigakure and she saw the scene before her, that lingering fatigue vanished in an instant.

As a village with a reputation like Kusagakure's, even after a rough cleanup, the traces left on the ground were still horrifying.

'Is the Captain here…? Is he okay…?'

Karin couldn't help worrying. She closed her eyes and activated her sensory perception.

Almost immediately, she picked up Roshi's powerful, unmistakable chakra.

From what she sensed, he hadn't been injured. Karin finally let out the breath she'd been holding.

"This way."

The leading Jonin gestured, guiding Karin toward a temporarily cleared open area.

More than a dozen shinobi were already gathered there, most wearing Konoha forehead protectors, with a few from Takigakure mixed in.

Karin spotted Roshi at once.

He stood in the center of the clearing, speaking with several jonin from the Sensory Unit.

Sensing her arrival, Roshi turned. His gaze landed directly on her.

"Karin."

"Yes! Captain!"

"You've worked hard on the long journey." Roshi walked over and stopped in front of her. "The situation is urgent, so I'll keep this brief."

Karin nodded sharply, attention locking onto him.

"Takigakure was attacked earlier. Among the enemies was a ninja who uses a special parasitic ninjutsu."

Roshi's eyes shifted toward Asuma's team, waiting nearby, and the Takigakure shinobi standing with them, including Shibuki.

Karin followed his line of sight.

"This ninjutsu can lie dormant in a target, completely blending into the host's chakra. Standard sensory techniques—Byakugan included—can't detect it before it actively manifests."

"I've found a way to force it to manifest."

"But I need your cooperation. Next, I need all of you to use your respective methods to record three key points—"

He raised three fingers.

"First, its chakra characteristics while it's dormant."

"Second, the chakra changes at the exact moment it activates and manifests."

"Third, a comparison between its manifested state and its dormant state."

The assembled shinobi voiced their acknowledgment one after another. Karin also nodded hard.

Roshi walked up to Asuma. "Are you ready?"

"Bring it on." Asuma's tone was casual. "It beats having something growing on you without knowing when."

Roshi summoned a small slug.

"I'll transfer a small amount of natural energy into your body." He placed the slug on Asuma's shoulder. "Remember, don't actively absorb this energy. If anything unusual happens, don't panic. I'll use Wood Release to forcibly extract the Natural Energy."

Asuma nodded.

Karin closed her eyes again, fully opening her sensory perception.

She forced herself to ignore the most prominent chakra signature nearby and instead focused on Asuma.

She narrowed all her sensory precision onto him—every fine node of his chakra network—searching for any theoretical impurity, anything that shouldn't belong to him.

Once. Twice. Karin checked stubbornly, over and over.

Until a completely different kind of energy seeped into Asuma's body through the slug.

The instant the natural energy passed through a point behind Asuma's right shoulder, something suddenly changed!

At first, that point was completely identical to Asuma's own chakra, so fused with it that it seemed to have no independent existence at all—until it suddenly came to life.

It began to swell and spread on its own. Even as it rapidly proliferated and took shape, the chakra it carried stayed almost perfectly in tune with Asuma's natural chakra frequency and attributes.

But beneath that near-perfect facade, the razor-sharp insight of the Kagura Shingan—able to pierce beyond normal perception into emotion and will—let Karin sense a different core hidden inside.

It was a cold, foreign will: faint yet purposeful, clearly distinct from Asuma's consciousness, carrying a strange, detached indifference.

"It's appeared!" Hyūga Tokuma called out in a low voice.

Roshi moved even faster than his shout. The instant a small, pale bulge pushed up under the skin behind Asuma's shoulder, Roshi's hand was already there, ripping the growth free.

That was only the beginning. Just as the spore on Asuma was forced to mature, White Zetsu clones began to greedily absorb chakra and emerge from Izumo, Kotetsu, Himon, and even Shibuki, trying to detach and escape.

The Konoha shinobi waiting nearby sprang into action, imitating Roshi—tearing the White Zetsu off their comrades and finishing them off on the spot.

The Sealing Team, who had been standing by, moved in immediately. They pressed special sealing tags onto the writhing white masses, then secured them in prepared containers.

Kabuto took the still-living one from Roshi's hand and personally stored it away.

Hyūga Tokuma was the first to speak, Byakugan veins still bulging at his temples. "Roshi, within the Byakugan's field of vision, there really was no abnormality at all—until they actively absorbed chakra and manifested."

"Like a part of the host's chakra," another sensory jōnin added. "No, to be precise—they are a part of the host's chakra."

Other sensory-nin reported in turn, all with similar conclusions: before manifestation, standard sensory techniques were completely ineffective.

"I… me too," Karin said softly, fingers unconsciously twisting the hem of her clothes. "Before it was activated, I couldn't find it either…"

Then, recalling that fleeting discrepancy she'd just perceived, she gathered her courage and added, "It's just that… it has its own thoughts, completely different from Asuma-san's."

"It can still hide while it's in the spore stage, but once it grows, it can be seen clearly."

At that, Roshi glanced over at Karin. The Kagura Shingan's ability could still make a difference here.

At the very least, it could serve a role similar to sensing the Nine-Tails' malice.

"Karin."

"Yes!"

"I heard you want to become an excellent medical ninja."

Karin blinked, momentarily stunned, then answered, "Y-yes!"

Roshi gave a slight nod. "In that case, I may have to temporarily disrupt your future plans."

Karin held her breath, acutely aware of every gaze in the room settling on her.

"In the next two or three years, could you temporarily shift your focus from medical ninjutsu to developing your sensory abilities?"

"The village needs a pair of eyes that can detect this kind of threat in advance," Roshi went on, his gaze drifting over the containers that held the White Zetsu. "Conventional sensory methods have their limits, but your Kagura Shingan might be able to reach beyond them."

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