CH_5.7 (150)

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Earth Release: Hardening Jutsu

Takuma recognized the jutsu used by the chunin. The well-known B-rank jutsu would pull the surrounding earth onto the body and harden it to a rocky consistency. The jutsu worked the best when the material used was naturally rigid, but it could use even the most porous of sand into an armor that could handle boatloads of damage.

Takuma jumped away from the chunin and landed beside Arisu.

"Drop them," he said to her. "Come on, boys. Not the time to rest. I want my heavy hitters if we're going to survive through this."

Arisu dropped Nenro and Masaaki on the ground, and the boys groaned as they got up. Masaaki punched the ground as he got up and pulled Nenro along with him, who was grabbing his head in agony.

"Are you both up for it?" Takuma asked as he kept an eye on the chunin, who was now getting up.

"It'll take more than that to take me down," said Masaaki. Nenro nodded.

"Nenro, lightning is super effective. Use it," said Takuma.

Takuma stretched his limbs. Double Suicide Decapitation Jutsu was a simple D-rank jutsu that trapped the target in the ground— it first softened the ground to pull the target in and then hardened it to trap the target. But in the hands of the chunin, the jutsu could harden loose soil into dense rock. He had to shoot chakra out of his tenketsu all over his body repeatedly to soften the ground enough so he could get out. Most jutsu couldn't be scaled up, but then there were those like his Water Release: Hidden Mist Jutsu that could create mist as dense as required and, in any volume, as long as enough chakra was pumped into the jutsu.

"Good," Takuma clapped his hand to gain their attention. "We go according to plan. Me and Akimichi will have his attention while you chip away at his armor. That armor uses chakra every second it's up and sucks up more chakra to recover any damage done to it. We either drill through the armor or drain him out of his chakra until he drops it. Pick your poison, 'Damage' team." 

Gouki landed beside him with a pissed look on his face, but he didn't look injured. A couple of tree trunks weren't enough to stop an Uchiha.

"The armor makes him slower; be on your toes," Takuma told Akimichi.

He glanced back at the forest; still no sign of either Minoru or Inuzuka. He sighed before turning his attention back to the chunin, who was now facing them. The soil around him rose up, traveling up the legs and distributing to the damaged parts. A few seconds later, the armor was back to full integrity.

Takuma turned to Arisu and tossed her something. She looked at her palm to see a bell that was a bit too big to fit on a palm. She looked up at Takuma.

"Give this to Yuhi; tell her to ring it— tell her to keep ringing it," he said. "Fall back and snipe him from a distance."

Arisu jumped away, and Takuma weaved hand seals. The water from Water Release: Wild Water Wave rose up into a blob behind his back that extended into five tentacle-like appendages. Water Release: Eight Tentacles was a D-rank jutsu, but Takuma believed it to be mis-ranked. It was definitely a C-rank jutsu.

Jutsu rank classification wasn't an exact science. There were many factors involved in classifying a jutsu— the learning difficulty, chakra requirements, damage, and intended effect in the case of non-combat jutsu, among other factors.

D-rank jutsu were usually easier to learn than C-rank jutsu, but Eight Tentacles was hard to learn, harder than any C-rank jutsu Takuma knew, and he had yet to learn it completely. But for the effect it provided, the jutsu was too tough— but it was easy to learn at the same time. The skill floor was low while the skill ceiling was too high. As the name suggested, the jutsu allowed the creation of eight tentacles that could be freely controlled— creating those eight tentacles was easy enough, and the difficulty matched other D-rank jutsu. The 'real' difficulty came in controlling the tentacles. Every tentacle was an additional limb that needed to be controlled consciously. The brain wasn't designed to suddenly have one more limb integrated, much less eight.

Takuma had to gradually train his brain to control the additional limbs. It was an arduous process. When Takuma had sparred against Momoe, he could manage two tentacles while moving and four while standing still. It had taken eight months of training between his Narcotics Taskforce to get his usage up to five tentacles when he was moving and six when he was standing still. The higher the number, the higher the difficulty.

*Ding*

Takuma tossed three kunai into the air that were snatched up by the tentacles. He left his hands and two tentacles empty for other usages.

"Come on, big guy. Let's dance, you and me." Takuma charged for the chunin.

The chunin laughed and started running towards Takuma with heavy steps that shook the surroundings. The armor made him slow, but he was still agile, just not for someone his level. Takuma took to the air with a spinning kick, chakra pumping through his leg. The chunin punched out the impact shredded through the rock armor. Chunks of rock flew everywhere, but the moment they separated from the armor, they turned into soil.

The two free tentacles snaked around the arm and propped him up, giving Takuma an additional moment of air time. He used the leverage to twist mid-air and landed another kick straight in the chunin's face. But the chunin was faster and blocked it with his other arm. More soil exploded.

*Ding*

"That's it, boy? I can piss this much off," said the chunin.

"Nope," said Takuma. "There's a reason evolution gave us hands with fingers, and you exchanged them with clubs…"

The three tentacles with kunai jammed the blades into the small gaps between the rocks before Takuma jumped away.

The chunin looked down to see three explosive tags dangling from the tail of the kunai.

*BOOM!*

The three Grade-2 explosion tags tore through the armor, leaving huge gaping hole-shaped vulnerabilities in the armor. Before Takuma even landed on his feet, he saw the holes already mending. He clicked his tongue— the recovery was too fast.

But he wasn't alone.

The 'Damage' team picked up the hammer.

*Ding*

Nenro had his arm outstretched as a dangerous amount of lightning arcs circles around his arm. Lightning Release: Lightning Bolt Jutsu looked a lot like Lightning Release: Shock because the former was a C-rank jutsu, and the latter was a weaker D-rank derivative. It made sense why Nenro would choose Lightning Bolt as one of his C-rank choices. Learning a derivative jutsu made learning the higher-rank jutsu easier. If Takuma's Lightning affinity had been any good, he would've followed the same path as Nenro.

A shrill whistle followed a powerful lightning bolt that slammed into the chunin.

There was a huge canyon between C-rank and B-rank jutsu. The jutsu ranking system had a certain quality. The rank scaling wasn't linear. There was a jump from D-rank to C-rank, a sharper leap from C-rank to B-rank, and a rocket climb from B-rank to A-rank.

But there were cases when the jutsu rank gaps could be bridged. And those cases were known as affinity match-ups. Lightning Bolt might be a C-rank just, but because Lightning trumped Earth, it could do significant damage to Hardening Jutsu.

The chunin must've known that because he tried to dodge, but the heavy weight slowed him down. The lightning bolt ripped rock on the left side of his body. There was still a thick layer remaining because affinity advantage could only do much when the two jutsu were of different ranks, and the chunin was clearly more skilled in his jutsu than Nenro was with his.

But it was enough for the next part.

*Ding*

Masaaki dropped in front of the chunin with his shining fists and laid down a brutal combo that made Takuma wonder for a second if he should extend the invitation to the Ring. It was getting quite boring underground, be it ninjutsu-category or the 2v1 fights, and Tsubura refused 2v1 ninjutsu-category fights to him because if he won one of those, none of the ninjutsu-category fighters would even consider a fight with him. Well, at least the money was good.

Masaaki's knuckle dusters tore through the armor like jackhammers against a paved road. Masaaki's bukijutsu was comparable to Takuma's augmented strikes, but unlike Takuma, Masaaki could do damage from a distance through concentrated shockwaves— the simple knucklehead simply preferred to punch it out close distance.

The chunin backhanded Masaaki away but was blocked by Akimichi, who caught the arm. She looked like it was straining her to the limit to hold her down. Takuma narrowed his eyes, recognizing the signs of augmentation— it was similar to what Akimichi Hideaki used, but she was not as skillful as him.

Akimichi pulled on the chunin to gain his attention, so he didn't notice in time when Gouki spat out globs of silver-tinged mucus all over the chunin's body. Akimichi jumped away and the next moment, a kunai whistled down from the trees with an explosive tag that lit the mucus on fire. The mucus was highly flammable as it took mere seconds before the entire chunin was on heat fire.

Fire Release: Incendiary Jutsu. A nasty C-rank jutsu which was napalm. It burned hot, adhered to the target, and the flames were super hard to extinguish.

Takuma clicked his tongue.

"Fall back," he said.

*Ding*

The Damage team hesitated for a moment, but they jumped back as Takuma stepped forth.

"He's not done yet?" Akimichi asked, standing by his side.

Before Takuma could reply, a yell came from within the flames.

"Kiddy gloves are off you little vermins. I'm going to kill you all!"

Takuma re-equipped three of his tentacles with kunai and sighed,

"It's a chunin with B-rank jutsu in his arsenal… he wouldn't have survived being a rogue if he went down so easily."

*Ding*

———

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Akimichi Mika gripped her bo-staff till her knuckles were white as she saw the madness going on in front of her. Just a couple of minutes ago, they had the upper hand. The chunin was burning in high flames with armor riddled with chunks— they just needed a few more blows to take a chunin.

And according to Takuma, it was not just any chunin. It was a chunin who had the ability to efficiently access the considerable amount of chakra reserves through B-rank jutsu.

But it seemed that it was a wrong decision to strip the chunin's armor because the armor seemed to be a defensive strategy. When it fell away, the chunin switched to an offensive strategy.

She looked to her right at a crater where Masaaki was stomped a moment ago. On her left, she saw Nenro hanging from a branch after he was punched out by earthen projectiles that weren't even aimed at him— the chunin had unleashed an offensive B-rank jutsu at Takuma, and Nenro was caught in the crossfire.

Nenro, still hanging on the branch, twitched. Off balance, he fell off the branch but grabbed onto it at the last second, but the grip failed almost immediately, and he fell to the ground. Nenro groaned as he clutched his stomach.

"H-He's in bad shape," said 'Nenro.'

It was Yamanaka controlling Nenro's body. He had done the same with Masaaki. He hadn't been helpful in combat, but he had been able to take over control when someone was in trouble and move them away. It was annoying when Yamanaka took control of her body mid-air— to be fair, she blacked out, unconscious— it was mighty helpful that he kicked her back up when she was back on two feet.

"Try to get him back; we need people. Also, try to find what the fuck is taking Inuzuka so long!" she yelled before facing the front.

The chunin was a formidable opponent, and with the Uchiha the only member of the 'Damage' team still active and Fuma aiding him, they needed more firepower. She was going to switch to attack, leaving Takuma as the person to keep the chunin in check.

It was a dangerous choice— for Takuma, but it was a choice she was making— because, as far as she had seen, he seemed to be doing fine entertaining the chunin on his own.

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