The lights died.
Kai didn't flinch.
She was already moving, sliding across the Undergrid's rusted floor with silent precision, slamming her palm into an old release glyph embedded in the wall. A steel gate groaned open behind them.
"Secondary corridor," she said quickly. "We split them. You take the right flank, I'll loop them left. Use the shadows. Don't try to go full chakra — they'll sniff that out instantly."
Naruto nodded, his system pulsing again — faint orange gridlines flickered along his arms as he entered Stealth Mode.
[Mode: Silent Protocol – Active]
[Phantom detection radius reduced by 78%]
[Stamina Drain: Minimal]
The dead zone twisted ahead, lit only by the occasional flicker of damaged conduit panels. This place wasn't just forgotten — it had been buried. Shut off from chakra flow. Isolated from the timeline itself.
And now the Phantoms were inside.
Naruto raced forward through the right path, slipping past fractured walls and old shinobi engravings half-melted by entropy. He passed broken databots, husks of weaponized scroll tech, even the shattered torso of a mechanical summon that twitched once as he passed.
Then they arrived.
Not with sound. Not with footsteps.
Just—presence.
A ripple in reality. Like gravity distorting in reverse.
They came through the walls, not around them.
Three Phantom Executors.
Each of them wore black cloaks stitched with the Throne's sigil — a crimson spiral embedded with a jagged crown — and their faces were smooth like porcelain, featureless, except for the eyes: cold, mechanical, a deep silver ringed with code.
[Warning: Phantom Executor Class 2-4 detected]
[Combat protocol auto-initiated]
[Skill unlocked: Kage Rewrite Lv. 1]
Naruto's fingers twitched. Kage Rewrite?
He didn't get time to read the tooltip.
The first Phantom attacked, launching forward with unreal speed, twin scythes erupting from its arms. Naruto dodged low, the wind shear nearly tearing open his shoulder. He rolled forward, came up, and triggered the system instinctively.
[Kage Rewrite: Activate]
[Mimicking: Shadow Clone Jutsu — Original Variant Detected]
His body shimmered. Three clones flickered into existence — but they weren't like his usual ones. They glowed with data residue, and their eyes burned with fragments of old code.
They moved independently.
Smart clones. Adaptive code.
They rushed the Phantoms without hesitation.
Naruto took the rear, sprinting around a rusted generator block, angling toward the lead Phantom's blind spot — or what would've been one, if it were human.
It turned mid-attack, blade sweeping.
Too slow.
Naruto ducked and drove his kunai into its joint plate.
[Hit registered: Vital system breach]
[Integrity: 74% → 59%]
The Phantom recoiled.
That's when Kai struck.
She dropped from the upper gantry, slamming a short blade straight into the neck of the second Executor, triggering a static surge that lit the tunnel like lightning. Her body flickered — a movement-enhancement seal burned across her back.
"Move now!" she shouted. "While they're adapting—!"
Naruto didn't hesitate. He rushed the wounded Phantom again, slamming his fist into its chest — not to damage, but to tag.
[System Tag embedded]
[Initiating Data Hijack: Phase 1]
A countdown began in his vision. He needed five more seconds.
The Phantom's armor cracked open, revealing its internal lattice — not bone, not chakra, but something in between. A hybrid fusion of sealed chakra threads and coded logic.
The result of the Throne System rewriting biology itself.
The Phantom screamed — or glitched.
Its face twisted, eyes flashing wild.
Then—
[Data Hijack complete]
[Skill obtained: Blade Matrix Lv. 1]
[Fragment key: 1/12]
Naruto staggered back as the Phantom dissolved into static shards, leaving behind a metal core that pulsed faintly. He grabbed it instinctively.
Kai landed beside him.
"You got a fragment key?"
He held it up.
"That's one," she said, eyes narrowing. "We need all twelve to locate the central throne node."
The third Phantom roared behind them, slamming into a wall and triggering a cave-in.
Kai cursed. "Fall back. Now."
They sprinted, Naruto's system flaring again.
Behind them, the tunnel collapsed, crushing the final Phantom under tons of broken stone.
They didn't stop running until they reached a sealed checkpoint — a vault Kai activated with a blood print and a glyph burned into her forearm.
The gate shut behind them.
Silence.
Naruto slumped against the wall, panting hard. "So that's what the Phantom Hunt feels like."
Kai smiled grimly, holding up the second fragment she'd claimed. "Get used to it. This was the easiest node."
He looked down at the fragment in his palm, glowing softly.
Twelve of these… and they could trace the root.
Find the core.
Destroy the Throne.
The war had officially begun.