CH_7.42 (260)

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The combined force of Camp Banana and the Hidden Steam were knocking on Yu's front door. They could hear the emergency warning bells ringing from over the wall in response to their arrival. Several dozen shinobi were already on the far sides of the wall, ready to defend the city, and were converging toward their location.

The crowd of shinobi dressed in Hidden Steam colours respectfully parted as Toridasu walked to the front.

His skin was covered with sweat and his breaths condensed before his face.. For the past thirty minutes, he had been actively rotating the chakra inside his body, warming up his chakra pathway network. As the most senior of the jonin, it was his responsibility to issue the warning to the forces inside the city, even if he didn't believe the warning would do was standard procedure during war, a common courtesy extended to the enemy, and served as legitimate justification that they didn't need.

"To whoever is in charge, heed this warning and surrender the city of Yu," Toridasu spoke, his voice amplified by chakra. His words travelled far and wide, maintaining their volume without hurting the ear. "This is the first and last warning from our side. We're generously giving you one chance to vacate the city peacefully and keep your lives intact. You have two minutes to respond by opening the city gates for us to enter. Refusal to meet our demands will result in an aggressive response most unfavourable for you."

The countdown began, and the shinobi rushed through their last-minute preparations for the impending battle. Many prayed to the gods and their own weapons for safety and victory; others psyched themselves up by hitting and hugging their comrades to drain away the nervousness; some performed their personal pre-battle routines; and a few crumbled under pressure.

Toridasu turned back to look at Shirakumo standing before the forces he commanded.

He gave him a nod that he returned.

As the clock wound down to the last ten seconds, Toridasu began walking toward the city, putting some distance between himself and the forces. The chakra inside him began to speed up as he commanded it to move faster and more vigorously.

The allotted two minutes ended, and the city gates remained shuttered.

The warning had been ignored, meaning they could officially attack the city.

Toridasu breathed in from his nose, and when he exhaled from his mouth, a cloud of fire escaped along with his breath.

A-rank ninjutsu were considered the pinnacle in the world of ninjutsu; S-rank was 'special' and existed outside the standard structure—but the few that existed were akin to calamities. Most A-rank jutsu were weapons of mass destruction that couldn't be used without deep consideration for one's allies. It was a blessing for the world that only a minority of the shinobi population could learn and use them.

Not all who were able to use A-rank ninjutsu were allowed to learn them, which kept the threat of mass destruction under control. Most people, even the most knowledgeable shinobi, wondered why jonin, who possessed A-rank jutsu, didn't use them immediately at the start to end the battle by decimating their opponents. There were factors like collateral damage, friendly fire, and chakra resource management—but the biggest reason was that:

They simply weren't able to use the jutsu immediately.

A-rank jutsu required a tremendous amount of chakra, and that absurd amount had to flow through shinobi's bodies. Human bodies weren't meant to handle that amount of chakra coursing through their chakra pathway network, which put a harsh strain on the network. Careless attempts to force the use of those jutsu could permanently damage the chakra pathway network in the worst-case scenario.

Shinobi trained their bodies to the limit to endure the stress and strain that the jutsu and chakra exerted—most people couldn't temper their bodies to that level and thus failed to use A-rank jutsu. Even if someone had the physical apparatus to use A-rank jutsu, they couldn't use it thoughtlessly—the body needed to be prepared appropriately before using the jutsu.

Chakra Burn was a condition observed when a shinobi handled a large amount of chakra very quickly. It was common during the use of A-rank jutsu and even happened with B-rank jutsu. Any type of jutsu required chakra to flow through the chakra pathway network; ordinarily, this happened without any problems, but the load on the chakra network brought by higher grade jutsu like A-rank jutsu damaged the network, leading to a damage akin to burning.

Those burns would physically hurt when chakra would flow through the area—which was constantly, as the body produced a small amount of passively mixed chakra as part of the normal physical bodily function. For that reason, the chakra pathway network needed to be "warmed up" before A-rank jutsu could be used.

Shinobi had no choice but to slowly ramp up their chakra usage to prepare their bodies to handle the strain from using an A-rank jutsu. The best and quickest way to warm up the chakra pathway network was to use lower-ranked ninjutsu.

Toridasu was in his mid-fifties. He was old. His chakra reserves had naturally declined from the peak of his youth. It was a waste of chakra to use jutsu to warm up, so he had been slowly rotating chakra around his body and alternating the speed of its flow for the past half an hour to warm up his chakra pathway network.

If he simply moulded the chakra, it would naturally dissipate throughout his body, so methods like Toridasu's only worked outside of combat—though he wouldn't hold off on using jutsu in combat, anyway.

He weaved a complex set of hand seals, and chakra flooded his body, racing through his network. He immediately felt his body strain under the jutsu, but he was used to it, so he proceeded smoothly to apply the nature transformation to his chakra, turning it into the fire nature. He finished the last hand seal and separated his hands for an orb to grow between his palms. With wisps of fire, chakra flowed from his fingertips into the orb.

The jutsu wasn't over; Toridasu focused on shape transformation and pushed more and more chakra into the orb's centre, turning it into a hot white. He looked up at city gates and roughly estimated how much it would take to destroy them, added some more in case there was a counter, and then added some more for the awe-and-fear factor.

His fingers twitched, and the orb bloomed into a small firebird, and with a firm push, it glided away. It scorched the air behind it, leaving dark plumes to trail behind it. As Toridasu expected, a B-rank lightning ninjutsu had been cast from the walls to counter his jutsu, but it was shrugged away, and the firebird slammed into the city gates.

There was no explosion.

A raging fire spread from the point of contact at an astounding speed. In less than five seconds, the heavy city gates were enveloped in flames that quickly spread to the walls. The fire continued to spread, swallowing several dozen metres of the wall, burning so hot that the city turned into weak charcoal and collapsed under its own instability.

Toridasu watched in silent satisfaction as even the special walls fortified by ninjutsu couldn't withstand his jutsu's sheer heat, crumbling while the fire ate away the material from the inside. The shinobi on the wall dove off it to escape but not all of them were lucky enough to do so in time.

He breathed a long sigh before turning to face the forces—though he had to hold back a smile at the glaring Hidden Steam jonin.

The damage to the wall was done, and there was nothing anyone could do. It did, however, bring the benefit of reinvigorating his men, who were staring at the scene of carnage in front of them. The fire was so bright that their faces were dyed orange with its light as the sun broke over the horizon.

He gathered chakra into his throat and spoke,

"Don't be scared of the fire. I will protect you," his words gathered their attention, "so charge... CHARGE AND BE VICTORIOUS!"

It was short, but it did the work as the combined forces did exactly as asked, bloodlust saturating the air.

The battle had begun.

———

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Ebi stared at the flames climbing toward the sky. He wasn't stationed near the wall but was some distance away inside the city. He couldn't see the particulars at the wall from where he was, but he knew that they had just lost at least six to eight people to the A-rank jutsu—and that was the bare minimum.

He wanted to blame the jonin stationed near the wall for their failure to counter the ninjutsu, but he also didn't expect the other side to open with an A-rank ninjutsu. The standard for the situation was using a B-rank jutsu to clear out a section of wall guards, aggressively flood that now undefended area with troops, and use that as an entry point—but using A-rank jutsu was needlessly aggressive, and told him that the jonin who used the jutsu was not a Hidden Steam shinobi as the damage to the city walls was too big of an expense.

Which meant it was a Hidden Leaf jonin.

The fire at the collapsed gate was suddenly snuffed as though someone had cut all access to oxygen, and waves of shinobi dressed in the Hidden Steam colours charged into the city. The fire still burned the walls and even continued to spread slowly, which acted as a barrier, slowing down the shinobi on the unaffected walls from getting down to pincer the enemy shinobi from behind.

"Announce that I'm going forward," Ebi said to the radio comms genin near him.

Without waiting for a response, he leapt from the rooftop and took to the air. He scanned the battlefield for the few seconds he remained suspended in the air, his leaping force acting against gravity, and immediately spotted a few people moving faster than others.

Only jonin had that luxury.

Ebi fixed his gaze on the jonin spearheading the effort and weaved hand seals as he let himself fall from the sky. He spewed water from his mouth and formed a thick ring around his body. Ebi swiped his hand, and the water shot forward in a line at ultra-high pressure. The pressurised line of water cut clean through the side of a building as though it was made from styrofoam, ripped a crevice in the road, and then cut halfway through the building on the other side of the street.

The enemy jonin only saw the water ninjutsu when it sliced off a corner of the first building. He froze on the spot, which required so much force that he cracked the pavement under his stopping foot and slammed to a halt mere inches from the jutsu's trajectory.

Ebi landed in front of the jonin and mentally searched through any matching intelligence reports over the past year before he landed on a name and a face matching the one before him. Dull grey hair tied into a ponytail, a small scar on the right side of his lips, just on the edge, and deep tear troughs under his eyes.

And the most obvious tell of all was the sword strapped across his back—according to his bingo book, it was the cornerstone of his fighting style. Though Ebi took that particular piece of information with more than a few grains of salt. Bingo book entries were by and large exaggerated—or worse, outdated—which helped obfuscate the realistic capabilities of a shinobi.

Still, there was only one man the jonin before him could be. Ebi pulled his lips into a thin, hard line and readied himself by greeting his opponent. "Shirakumo Hayama of the Leaf."

"You're Ebi Wato," said Shirakumo as he pulled an especially thin katana out of the sheath. "I hear you're the one in charge here. Without you, your forces will crumble... so, I'll give you a chance to leave the city and spare us a fight—deny it, and you'll die here today in a foreign country. How about it?"

"And leave my men to die?" Ebi scoffed.

"Respectable." Shirakumo nodded and then, in the blink of an eye, his stance changed, and he swung his katana, releasing a wind blade that spanned the entire street width.

Ebi jumped in the air to evade the wind nature kenjutsu, twisting his body parallel to the ground. The wind cutter howled below him, but Ebi's pupils shrank when he felt himself being sucked towards the wind blade. He was barely a few inches above the wind blade, and the vacuum suction effect of the wind blade brought that distance down to a mere couple of centimetres.

While shocked, Ebi was still a competent shinobi. He kept his eye on Shirakumo and saw him use the Body Flicker Jutsu, momentarily losing sight of him. When he reappeared, he cleared half the distance between them and ripped another wind blade toward him.

Ebi's feet touched the ground just as Shirakumo swung his katana, and he immediately jumped yet again, pushing chakra into his feet to gain more height while weaving hand seals. Shirakumo launched a second consecutive wind blade, but this time, Ebi was ready and countered with a pressurised water cord that neutralised the wind blade.

Ebi immediately put some distance between them so that he would have more time to react to the wind blades.

Again, Shirakumo launched another wind blade, keeping Ebi on the move due to their speed. The width of the wind blades made it even worse and restricted his ability to evade vertically. He jumped again, gaining more than enough height to clear the wind blade and, like before, began weaving hand seals for his next move.

Shirakumo swung his katana again, and out of the blade emerged a second wind blade—one much faster than ever before. The second wind blade hit the first one and changed its trajectory.

It arced at a sharp angle, surging towards Ebi at blistering speeds. He couldn't change direction in mid-air and was barely able to react by covering his body with a dense layer of chakra for a last-second, chakra-extensive, and highly inefficient defence. The wind cutter instantly ripped through the chakra layer, but it absorbed a significant amount of its lethality. However, the front of his armour was already destroyed by the very first cutter, allowing the remains of the blade to cut into his forearm and chest.

When Ebi landed on his feet, he knew he had been set up but could do little except take in the sight of blood flooding down his torso. Shirakumo had deliberately slowed down the speed of his wind blades to mislead Ebi of their maximum speed—because there was reason for him to think otherwise—and then caught him off-guard by unleashing a faster wind blade.

That aside, the wind blade didn't just possess simple slicing power. He felt it flare out at the point of contact, and what he thought would be a cut on his chest that he could fight through suddenly led to his pectoral muscles aching at the slightest flex.

Ebi could endure the pain, but it would hinder his movements.

"I gave you a chance," said Shirakumo.

He looked up at his opponent; while he might have been wearing Hidden Steam colours, the jonin before him was a Hidden Leaf shinobi.

"Now you live with that knowledge until I end your life..."

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