Naruto: My Progress in Konoha.

Pop... pop...

The soft sound of bursting water bubbles echoed now and then.

Uchiha Haruki stood before the blazing corpses of the four fallen enemies, the charred stench wafting into his nose, making him frown slightly.

After waiting a moment to confirm that the bodies were beyond any possible recovery, Haruki immediately left the area and headed back toward the battlefield in the distance.

On the battlefield, the Konoha shinobi lit up with joy when they saw him approaching. In stark contrast, the Iwagakure shinobi who caught sight of him displayed visible fear.

Without uttering a word, Haruki swept his gaze across the field and quickly located an ongoing skirmish between a Konoha Jonin and an Iwa Jonin. Without hesitation, he charged in and joined the fight.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

It didn't take long for Haruki and the Konoha Jonin to finish off the enemy together.

In the distance, Ichiro Kurokawa, the commanding officer of Iwagakure's forces, witnessed the scene and couldn't help but recall the crushing defeat from just over half a month ago.

It had been the same scenario—Haruki had swiftly eliminated his opponent, then helped other Konoha shinobi break their deadlocks, ultimately crumbling the entire Iwa offensive.

"Is it going to happen again?" Kurokawa wondered, his eyes darting from the burning corpses in the distance to the fresh Iwa Jonin Haruki had just slain.

His left hand and forearm, now encased in hardened armor, twitched involuntarily. Fury stirred in his chest.

Scanning the battlefield, Kurokawa estimated that nearly half of the Konoha forces had already fallen. All they needed to do was hold out a bit longer, and victory would be theirs.

Resolved, he wasted no time and immediately mobilized a team to encircle and eliminate Haruki.

Before long, a group of thirty Iwa shinobi surrounded Haruki.

Yet, despite being outnumbered, Haruki showed no fear whatsoever. He stood calmly as if he hadn't even noticed them.

This wasn't arrogance. The truth was, these people posed no threat to him.

In fact, Haruki had long noticed their movements but chose neither to evade nor strike preemptively. He let them come to him.

At the beginning of the battle, Haruki had already used Wind Style: Great Breakthrough to scatter the Iwa formation, allowing his comrades to seize an early advantage.

But sheer numbers were not on Konoha's side. Iwa's forces gradually regained momentum, and by the time Haruki was fighting Nobunaga Kamihara and the others, five or six dozen Konoha shinobi had already died.

If this continued, even if Haruki personally took out every Iwa Jonin, the battle might still end in defeat due to sheer attrition.

Worse, even if they won, very few of his allies would survive.

Haruki's goal wasn't just to hold this outpost. He wanted his people to survive this war.

That meant he couldn't restrict himself to only targeting Iwa Jonin. He needed to relieve pressure on the Konoha lines.

However, if he openly broke battlefield convention and attacked Iwa's lower-ranking shinobi, he risked retaliation from their Jonin, leading to even greater casualties.

What once seemed like a no-win deadlock...

...now had an opening. The enemy had voluntarily grouped their mid- and lower-tier shinobi to target him.

In other words—they had given him permission to go all out.

Among the thirty Iwa shinobi sent by Kurokawa, only he and one other Jonin were of high rank. The rest were mid- and lower-tier combatants.

That's why Haruki remained so composed.

With his current power, unless the number of mid/lower-tier ninja surpassed a certain threshold, they simply didn't pose a threat.

And that threshold?

Haruki glanced around the battlefield—even three hundred of them wouldn't be enough, let alone just thirty.

"Kill him!"

With Kurokawa's shout, the thirty Iwa shinobi sprang into action.

Some hurled kunai, others launched shuriken, while several unleashed ninjutsu.

The barrage closed in from all directions.

Any ordinary person, facing such a dense flurry of attacks, would have had no choice but to dodge or retreat.

But Haruki was different—he chose to fight head-on.

Boom!

With a fierce stomp, he launched into the air.

While airborne, his body twisted mid-flight, narrowly avoiding several sneak attacks by shuriken.

Then, with a blur of hand signs, he inhaled deeply—

"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"

In an instant, over 2,000 chakra points vanished from his reserves.

A fierce gale erupted from his mouth, quickly coalescing into a tornado that tore across the ground.

It whipped up thick layers of soil and rubble, which were then hurled outward in every direction by the roaring vortex.

All incoming attacks—kunai, shuriken, explosive tags, even ninjutsu—were swept away by the storm.

Some of the explosive tags detonated mid-air, and the resulting fire fused with the wind, making the storm even more savage.

The Iwa shinobi instinctively backed off, eyes wide in disbelief and panic.

"Can a human really unleash Wind Release of this magnitude?!"

Even though many of them had chakra pools exceeding 2,000 points, to channel that much chakra into a single jutsu—and do it with precision and control—was something few could ever achieve.

Not only did it require mastery over chakra control, but it also demanded deep understanding of the specific technique.

If not for Haruki's Level 5 Chakra Control and his mastery of Wind Style: Great Breakthrough, even he couldn't have pulled this off.

And the result?

Nothing short of devastating.

This kind of battlefield-clearing ability was top-tier.

Back when he first learned Great Breakthrough, it was because he couldn't yet master Fire Style: Majestic Destroyer Flame, a wide-range technique.

Now, though? This "substitute" was performing better than expected—and Haruki was truly satisfied.

Mid-air, as he began to descend, his Sharingan spun rapidly, locking onto several Iwa shinobi below.

Reaching into his weapons pouch, he retrieved a handful of shuriken.

Whizz! Whizz! Whizz!

The blades shot through the chaos, flying ten to twenty meters and striking down several mid-tier Iwa shinobi in the midst of their confusion.

Screams rang out.

Haruki landed, didn't pause for even a second, and instantly leapt aside.

Just as he moved, several kunai embedded themselves into the spot he'd just stood on, their attached explosive tags igniting.

Haruki blurred away—

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Explosions shook the ground.

In the cloud of dust and smoke, Haruki's footwork was swift and fluid, dodging every incoming attack with elegance and precision.

He homed in on a single mid-tier Iwa shinobi.

Slash!

A cold gleam swept through the air—

No one knew when he had drawn his short sword, but with one fluid motion, he sliced the enemy's throat cleanly.

Immediately afterward, he pulled out an explosive tag, stuck it onto the dying man's body, and once again darted away.

BOOM!

Another explosion. Another scream.

Haruki glanced over and saw another Iwa shinobi lying beside the one he'd just killed, burned pitch black, clearly beyond saving.

Then—Haruki vanished again into the enemy ranks, his figure ghost-like.

His three-tomoe Sharingan spun at full throttle, and in the ensuing carnage, he efficiently cut down enemy after enemy.

Throughout it all, Kurokawa and the other Iwa Jonin tried desperately to intervene, but they couldn't even get close.

In just a few short minutes—

More than half of the thirty Iwa shinobi had been slain or crippled.