15 Chapter 15: Yin Release, Tree
"Danzo…"
Izuryu's eyes narrowed in rage and contempt as he flashed next to another Root.
'Katon: Senkō Honō!"
A blinding flash spread from Izuryu's mouth. He stabbed the Jonin in the chest but the Jonin moved backwards.
But before he could go far enough, Muramasa extended and stabbed him in the chest. Izuryu moved the blade sidewards as the blade cut the Jonin off from the heart.
2 Root quickly attacked Izuryu. Muramasa reduced in length. Izuryu made the blade short enough to be wielded easily but long enough to be able to block both swords.
'Suiton: Suiryuudan No Jutsu!'
'Futon: Kaze Ha Danmake!'
A water dragon and a barrage of wind blades sliced towards Izuryu.
"Katon: Gōkakyū No Jutsu!"
"Doton: Funjin Kumo!"
Izuryu created a fireball and dust cloud that collided with the wind barrage and wind blades.
The dust cloud, fireball and wind exploded into a mini dust bomb. The explosion engulfed the two Jonin and exploded into bits and pieces.
Izuryu looked around to see Katomo fighting 3 Jonin. He was fighting equally against the two of them but was struggling when the third one joined the fight.
Izuryu pulled out a stack of explosive tags and ran towards Katomo.
A Root rushed straight towards Izuryu. Izuryu brought out Muramasa and channeled a lot of chakra in it, extending the blade instantly and stabbing the blade into the shinobi's stomach.
Izuryu slashed it upwards and the Jonin was cut in half from the brain.
He quickly reached Katomo's location. Izuryu sticked an explosion tag onto the Root's mask and exploded it instantly revealing his face.
Before he could do anything, Izuryu opened his mask and made eye contact with the man, sending him into a genjutsu illusion.
Izuryu stabbed the man and killed him.
He turned to see the other two Jonin dead as well. One was stabbed by an earth spike while the other had his face exploded, revealing his brain matter.
Katomo had slight sweat on his forehead but he was fine.
6 quickly attacked as the rest sent jutsu from the sidelines.
"Kage Bunshin No Jutsu!"
5 Izuryu's popped out near Izuryu and quickly rushed towards the 6 shinobi.
Katomo made clones too and rushed towards the remaining shinobi, wondering why he didn't use the jutsu earlier.
Izuryu slashed Muramasa downwards at a Jonin. The Jonin, who had seen Muramasa's feat immediately flickered away from Izuryu, not wanting to get into a melee battle.
'Tch!'
During the second the Jonin landed away from Izuryu and looked at him, Izuryu found an opening as he quickly put him in a genjutsu and killed him.
BOOM!
A giant explosion sounded afar. All the shinobi looked towards it with subconscious reflexes. Izuryu quickly went behind another Jonin and slashed Muramasa down at him. The Jonin who had woken up from his stupor quickly brought his sword to block Muramasa but the pitch-black blade cut through the blade and killed the unsuspecting Jonin immediately.
***
"Suiton: Suiryuudan!"
"Doton: Ganchūsō!"
A water dragon smashed into a Jonin, and as he was dealing with the water dragon, earth spikes erupted from the ground and stabbed into him, killing the Jonin.
Katomo looked around and saw that 6 more Jonin were left, the other 14 being dead bodies.
'Izuryu was right, we got attacked on the way back. These shinobi are definitely for our border information.'
"Katon: Gōkakyū No Jutsu!"
"Doton: Tsuchi Hashira Danmaku!"
A giant fireball and tens of stone pillar flew towards Katomo.
"Doton: Taju Doryūheki!"
Many stone walls were raised in front of Katomo. The fireball, earth pillars collided with the walls and created a giant explosion.
The walls slowly collapsed under the combined attack of the Root shinobi.
While Katomo was defending himself from those attacks another Root shinobi sneaked up next to him.
SWOOSH!
STAB!
The blade stabbed into Katomo's stomach. He quickly jumped upwards and retreated.
"F*ck!"
He placed his hand on his stomach and slowly backed up to a tree.
4 Root shinobi neared Katomo who was pushed onto a corner.
Katomo's brain ran through every option he had yet every option ended with him dying.
All but one.
"Katon: Enyari!"
"Suiton: Mizu Arare!"
"Doton: Dosekiryū!"
"Katon: Gōkakyū No Jutsu!"
Katomo gazed upon all the jutsu coming at him.
His 'life' flashed before his eyes as the jutsu kept getting closer to him.
Yet all that came out was.
"Sigh…"
***
"Chidori!"
The sound of thousands of birds crackled around Izuryu as a clone stabbed into a Jonin. Both the clone and the Jonin stabbed into each other.
The clone exploded into smoke but the Jonin collapsed, his blood flowing on the floor.
"Clang!"
"Clang!"
"Clang!"
The sound of two swords clashing echoed around. Two figures were flashing, each flash creating the sound of blade hitting blade.
Both figures were wearing masks, one of a fox and the other of a bear.
Izuryu was fighting with the last Jonin. Yet compared to others, this one was a little different.
As though an AI, he had learned about Izuryu's techniques after watching him fight with the other Root members. He had been analyzing Izuryu's fighting style with the expense of his team-member's lives.
After he determined that he had known everything about Izuryu's fighting style, The Root Shinobi finally decided to come out.
And analyze he did.
Izuryu hadn't been able to use any of the tricks he used previously on this shinobi.
The shinobi knew that Muramasa's blade was exceptionally sharp, so instead of clashing against the blade's edge, he always made the blade hit the side of Muramasa.
He never made direct eye contact with Izuryu either, he had most definitely seen Izuryu making eye contact with his opponents, where they'd fall into a daze and die right after.
"Chirp!"
As the crackle of birds sounded and disappeared right after, Izuryu gained the knowledge of what happened with the clone. Soon after, 3 other explosions were sounded, with each being Izuryu's clone performing a jutsu and killing their opponent.
After the retrieval of his clones, Izuryu regained a little bit of chakra.
Yet before he could notice anything, a giant fireball came his way!
"Oh shit!"
He quickly jumped out of the way and extended Muramasa as he slashed downwards with full force.
Yet instead of cutting through the Root Shinobi's blade, the shinobi quickly dodged to the side and collided with Muramasa's body.
Sparks were created upon impact but nothing substantial happened to the Jonin's blade.
'Fuck! He keeps doing that!'
Izuryu cursed inwardly as he made hand-signs.
"Katon: Gōka Nami!"
A small wave of flames rushed to the Jonin, who raised up an earth wall to block the flames
'This jutsu can't scratch him!' Izuryu thought in frustration.
It was true. Izuryu's attacks have been having a great deal of trouble effective against the Jonin, who on the other hand, only had problems on direct eye-contact.
The Jonin went on the offensive, slashing at Izuryu.
Izuryu dodged the oncoming attack by rolling to the side.
The Jonin tried to slash down at Izuryu but Izuryu blocked the weapon with Muramasa. The Jonin quickly made it so that his blade slid against Muramasa's body and didn't come in contact with it's blade.
While Izuryu blocked the slash of the Jonin to his head, the blade slid off it's original path. The blade hit his forearm.
Izuryu blocked the weapon, but almost had his arm cut off, his skin had been cut mid-way into his bone.
Blood started furiously falling from the wound as Izuryu's face paled into a sickly white color.
As he clutched his arm and retreated, Izuryu's healing factor kicked in and started slowly healing the wound.
"Kage Bunshin No Jutsu!"
Two shadow clones quickly appeared in front of Izuryu and rushed at the Jonin, trying to stall time for Izuryu.
Until now, both of them had been in a stalemate. While the Jonin was able to block Izuryu's attacks, he wasn't able to hurt him either. The sharingan's Eye Of Insight gave him the ability to read his movements and copy the shinobi's jutsu, the two had mostly been in a Taijutsu and Kenjutsu battle, with hardly any jutsu being used other than the occasional few.
As his chakra slowly started falling, Izuryu's movement became sluggish, leading to him being cut by the blade.
He quickly bandaged the wound tightly, hoping the wound wouldn't make him lose anymore blood.
'It seems I'll have to use 'that''
Izuryu grimaced but acquiesced to his own decision.
He quickly sat down and starting gathering more chakra in hopes that he could gain enough while his clones lasted during the time.
As chakra flooded into his direction, Izuryu felt a weird chakra signature among the chakra he was absorbing.
It felt as though it was nature itself.
'Is this natural energy?'
Izuryu though to himself but quickly disapproved of that.
While natural energy was part of the world, it was fundamentally different than chakra, yet what Izuryu was sensing was definitely chakra. Yet the sheer fact that the chakra seemed so close to nature made Izuryu think of something.
'Is this Mokuton chakra?'
Indeed, perhaps only Mokuton or Wood Release, would have chakra so close to nature itself.
Yet, here was the problem. Other than Hashirama Senju, who else used Mokuton?
Izuryu quickly though of Yamato but it was impossible for it to be him for a simple reason.
Yamato wasn't even born yet.
While Izuryu was in his stupor, her was quickly woken up by two smoke explosions.
'Just in time…'
Izuryu smirked as he stood up.
Izuryu's hand had already partially healed. While not completely, it wouldn't be hard for him to do non-strenuous things.
"Doton: Tsuchi Kairō!"
A cavern was raised over the Jonin as Izuryu quickly started making hand-signs.
Dog → Dragon → Serpent → Boar → Dragon → Tiger → Bird → Rabbit → Monkey → Tiger
"Yin Release: Complete Mirror Confinement!"
From thin-air, mirrors started appearing around the Jonin, trapping him within a cocoon of mirrors, each reflecting him.
Izuryu made hand-signs again.
Dog → Dragon → Serpent → Boar → Monkey → Bird
"Yin Release: Complete Mirror Reflection!"
Within the mirror cocoon, the Jonin saw Izuryu instead of himself.
No matter where he faced, he saw Izuryus everywhere
And within that moment, the Izuryus took off their masks.
The three tomoe sharingan was reflected in every mirror. No matter where the Jonin looked, he saw the sharingan.
The Jonin quickly fell into Izuryu's genjutsu and his body stopped moving.
As soon as his body stopped moving, Izuryu stopped the jutsu and fell on the ground. He was sweaty all over. He had a pale face and was panting the whole time.
Izuryu barely stood up, taking support of a nearby tree.
He walked to the Jonin and put the now blade-less Muramasa right before the man's throat and injected chakra into it.
The pitch-black blade stabbed through the Jonin's neck and came through the other side.
"Swoosh!"
Izuryu swung his blade and the blade sliced through the Jonin's head, separating him and instantly killing him.
Izuryu collapsed onto the floor and quickly leaned on a tree.
"To create form out of imagination. Truly, Yin Release is one of the two greatest elements alongside Yang Release."
Izuryu laughed and started recovering his chakra.
Yet before he could do anything, he heard the shouts of 4 Jonin.
"Katon: Enyari!"
"Suiton: Mizu Arare!"
"Doton: Dosekiryū!"
"Katon: Gōkakyū No Jutsu!"
Izuryu immediately stood up, barely caring about his exhaustion and injuries, yet he heard something he never thought he'd hear.
"Sigh…"
"Mokuton: Daisōju."
