Hey guys, here is the new chapter hope you will liked and read thru everything.
If we hit 100 PW I post a extra chapter.
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The underground passage leading from the arena floor to the competitors' waiting area was a cold stone tunnel, dimly lit by flickering oil torches. Long shadows stretched across the polished rock walls, keeping pace with Sunae's heavy steps. The muffled roar of the colosseum—filled with the cheers of the crowd and the tournament announcements—grew increasingly distant, absorbed by the massive stone structures of the stadium.
Sunae walked at a fast pace. Her sandals struck the ground with a heavy rhythm, reflecting the storm of emotions raging in her chest. Cold sweat still trickled down her face, mixing with traces of sand and minor burn marks on her skin. However, it was not the physical pain from her grueling battle against Naruto Uzumaki that burned within her, but a deep, bitter, and sharp frustration.
She had been disqualified. Her own father, the Kazekage, had stopped her in front of thousands of spectators, declaring her defeat in an absolute and irrevocable manner before all the Five Great Nations.
"It's not fair!" she whispered to herself, her voice laced with rage as she clenched her jaw so tightly her temples throbbed. "I was giving it my all! He was charging his attack too!"
The feeling of helplessness grew in her stomach until it became unbearable. She needed to release the built-up pressure, to break something, to discharge the surge of anger threatening to choke her. Upon reaching a deserted intersection in the corridor, Sunae clenched her right fist until her knuckles turned white. She channeled a residual burst of chakra into her muscles and, with an impulsive, defiant motion, threw a direct punch toward the solid stone wall beside her.
The strike never landed.
A mere fraction of an inch from the rock, the fingers of a firm, cold, and extraordinarily solid hand intercepted her wrist. The force of Sunae's punch, heavy with fury and momentum, dissipated instantly, neutralized by a grip that did not tremble a single millimeter under the impact.
Sunae froze in place. Startled by the sudden interruption, she snapped her head up, ready to confront whoever had dared step in her way.
Standing before her was Kimimaro.
The young pale-haired ninja looked down at her with absolute composure. His deep green eyes radiated an unshakeable calmness, a peace so dense it felt capable of soothing the most tempestuous ocean. He wore his Sunagakure combat attire—light, fitted, and ready to step onto the arena floor at any moment.
As her eyes met her older brother's, the entire armor of pride, stubbornness, and toughness that Sunae had built to walk off the stage shattered in a fraction of a second. She was no longer the lethal Sand kunoichi mastering Scorch Style and the Seven Heavens Breathing; in Kimimaro's presence, she became the little sister she had always been.
Sunae stepped forward and threw herself into his arms, burying her face against his chest.
The sobs she had held back with such immense effort since leaving the ring burst from her throat in a bitter, uncontrolled wave. Hot tears soaked the fabric of Kimimaro's uniform as her shoulders shook violently under the weight of her release.
Despite growing at a rapid pace, despite her rising power and her relentless drive to become a respected kunoichi in her own right, deep down she was still the young girl who sought refuge in her family when the world became too heavy.
Kimimaro did not rush her. He said nothing right away, nor did he try to stifle her tears. He simply wrapped his arms around her protectively, holding her with the same absolute solidity with which he had caught her fist. He rested his chin gently atop Sunae's head, allowing her to pour out every drop of pent-up emotion in the safety of his embrace.
The silence of the corridor was broken only by the young girl's sobs and the distant hum of the colosseum. Several minutes passed before Sunae's breathing began to stabilize, settling into a tired, steady rhythm.
Only then did Kimimaro gently loosen his hold. He reached down to one of the leather pouches at his waist and retrieved a small storage scroll. With a faint spark of chakra, he unsealed a square of clean, soft cloth. With a tenderness that starkly contrasted with the deadly nature of his Kekkei Genkai, Kimimaro began wiping the tears from his sister's face, clearing the traces of dust and soot from her cheeks.
A faint, warm smile—almost imperceptible, yet deeply genuine—appeared on his lips.
"Do you feel better now, Sunae?" Kimimaro asked in a soft, gentle voice.
Sunae drew a deep breath, sniffling as she took the cloth to wipe her eyes. She nodded weakly, though a faint frown returned to her brow.
"A little..." Sunae muttered, looking down at the stone floor. "But I'm still really mad at Dad. He didn't have to do that in front of everyone. I could still fight. I wasn't beaten."
Kimimaro looked at her expression and let out a quiet sigh, shaking his head gently.
"I know how you feel," Kimimaro replied, maintaining his serene tone. "I would have loved to see you win this match, advance to the final, and face Daiku. You are my sister, and I know how much effort you put into your training. However... what Dad did was right."
Sunae snapped her head up, looking at her brother with wide eyes, caught between surprise and hurt at his words.
"Are you taking his side too?" Sunae asked with a touch of bitterness. "Why do you think that, Kimi? I was giving everything for the village!"
Kimimaro stepped closer, placing a hand reassuringly on her shoulder, measuring his words to ensure his message reached her heart.
"Because this is a Chūnin Exam, Sunae, not a fight to the death on the border," Kimimaro explained patiently. "Dad told you the truth. The goal of this exam isn't simply to destroy your opponent at any cost or prove who has the most devastating attack. In fact, you don't even need to win a match to be promoted to Chūnin. What the Kage are evaluating is tactical judgment, leadership, and the ability to make sound decisions under extreme pressure."
Kimimaro paused briefly to let his words sink in before continuing.
"Look at Karin," he said. "Even though she lost her match against me in the first round, she displayed brilliant analytical reading, flawless use of the terrain, and enviable composure. Rest assured she will become a Chūnin at the end of this tournament, regardless of that defeat. And in your case... if you had stayed within the boundaries of tactical combat without resorting to the destructive power of a Bijūdama, you might have earned your promotion today, even if you had eventually collapsed from fatigue against Naruto."
Sunae remained silent. Her older brother's words settled into her mind with a weight very different from her father's public reprimand. Although Daigo had conveyed the exact same core message, Kimimaro's perspective—offered with empathy and brotherhood—allowed her to see the situation without the veil of wounded pride.
She took a deep breath of the cold corridor air and let out a long sigh. The anger didn't vanish entirely—stubbornness ran deep in their bloodline—but the blind frustration yielded to a mature, albeit bitter, understanding.
"I guess... looking at it that way, you two are right," Sunae admitted softly, adjusting the band on her forearm. "I escalated things too fast because I didn't want to lose. But still... it's going to take me a while to stop being mad at him."
Kimimaro smiled again, feeling the quiet satisfaction of having fulfilled his role as an older brother. He reached out and gently patted Sunae's head, ruffling her hair just as he used to when they were younger.
"That's understandable. Take your time to process it," Kimimaro said, returning to his upright, professional posture. "Now, go up to the stands with the others. You need the medical team to check those burns on your arms. Besides... it's time for me to step into the arena."
Sunae nodded, her expression much more relaxed and composed.
"Good luck, Kimi," Sunae said, taking a couple of steps back. "Show everyone what we're made of."
"I will."
With a final gesture of farewell, Sunae took the side passage ascending toward the spectator stands reserved for participants, leaving Kimimaro alone in the dim light of the tunnel.
The pale-haired youth stood still for a few moments. He adjusted the straps of his gear, took a steady breath to center his chakra flow, and walked toward the northern exit. As he crossed the threshold of the tunnel, the blinding desert sunlight engulfed him, accompanied by the thunderous roar of thousands of voices filling the Great Colosseum.
The arena floor had been fully restored during the one-hour break. Sunagakure ninjas specializing in Doton had leveled the ground, clearing away the remains of magma, glass, and pulverized stone, leaving a smooth surface of compacted sand and reinforced stone slabs.
At the far end of the ring, Gaara was already waiting.
The young man with deep red hair stood with his arms crossed over his chest. His clear eyes fixed a serious, analytical gaze on his opponent. Between Gaara and Kimimaro, there was no room for taunts or grandstanding; both knew each other intimately, having trained under the same sensei. The mutual respect between them was absolute.
The supervising Jonin walked to the center of the battlefield. He evaluated both combatants, confirming they were ready for the duel that would decide the first finalist of the Chūnin Tournament.
Without wasting a second on speeches, the referee raised his right arm and brought it down sharply.
"The first semifinal begins now! Start!"
The judge vanished instantly using Shunshin, taking up a position atop the perimeter wall.
The combatants reacted immediately. Gaara did not wait for Kimimaro to make the first move. With a fluid flow of his chakra, the sand from the ground rose under his command, moving as if it were an extension of his own body.
However, unlike his previous match against Deidara, Gaara did not start with standard sand; he utilized crystal sand from the outset. The grains flowing around him gleamed with a translucent, glassy sheen under the sunlight—it was crystal sand, vastly denser, heavier, and sharper than normal desert grain.
"Suna no Tsunami!"
Gaara extended both palms forward, launching a colossal wave of crystal sand over eight meters high, sweeping across the arena floor toward Kimimaro with the grinding roar of an avalanche of crushed glass.
Kimimaro showed no hesitation. He gave a slight nod, recognizing the lethal threat of his rival's opening move.
'Gaara's attack covers too much ground to avoid with a simple dodge,' Kimimaro analyzed in a microsecond. 'I must ensure I can endure it.'
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
In a fraction of a second, dozens of hyper-dense bone plates sprouted through Kimimaro's skin. His Shikotsumyaku deployed at maximum defensive capacity: a complete armor of compact bone, white as quartz and hard as reinforced steel, encased his torso, limbs, shoulders, and neck, leaving only narrow slits for vision.
Simultaneously, Kimimaro adjusted his breathing pattern, drawing a deep breath that elevated his heart rate and maximized his metabolic pathway efficiency.
"Seven Heavens Breathing: First Phase!"
An aura of compressed chakra erupted around his bone armor. Kimimaro set his stance firmly on the stone floor and crossed his bone-plated arms in front of his face, bracing for the direct impact of the crystal tide.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The wave of crystal sand buried Kimimaro entirely. The grinding screech of quartz particles scraping against bone armor echoed like thousands of blades striking a steel plate. The sheer weight of the assault dragged Kimimaro's armored form back several meters, pulverizing the stone under his feet and threatening to crush him under tons of sand and crystal.
Yet, the combination of Shikotsumyaku and the power of the First Phase proved to be an unyielding fortress.
SWOOSH!
With a burst of raw chakra and physical strength, Kimimaro's armored form burst through the mass of crystal. The bone structure showed deep gouges and wear from the extreme friction of the glass particles, but it had not fractured. Without losing a single millisecond, Kimimaro launched himself forward, breaking through the remaining sand barrier with his chest and accelerating toward Gaara at blinding speed.
"Yanagi no Mai!" (Desert Dance)
Long, razor-sharp bone blades sprouted from Kimimaro's palms and elbows. Transformed into an agile white blur, Kimimaro began slicing through every stream of crystal sand Gaara sent to check his advance. The bone blades carved through the sand structures like soft clay as he closed the distance relentlessly.
Gaara, seeing that his conventional crystal tide failed to stop or break his opponent's armor, narrowed his eyes slightly. He recognized immediately that Kimimaro's defense was too solid for broad-area pressure attacks.
'I need to concentrate the cutting force,' Gaara thought, altering the molecular structure of his sand in mid-air.
Gaara snapped his hands into a seal. The crystal sand surrounding him shifted behavior: instead of flowing like a wave, the quartz particles grouped and molded into thousands of sharp spikes, needles, and flying discs that spun at high speeds around Kimimaro, resembling a swarm of circular glass saws.
"Suna no Shuriken: Keshō!" (Sand Shuriken: Crystal)
Hundreds of sharp crystal projectiles rained down from multiple angles simultaneously, targeting the joints and weak points in Kimimaro's bone armor.
The match devolved into a fierce battle of attrition between distance control and frontal assault.
Kimimaro pressed forward relentlessly, weaving a dance of thrusts and slashes with his Yanagi no Mai. Every time he closed the distance to under three meters, he launched a direct strike at Gaara. However, the red-haired ninja utilized his Suna no Tate (Shield of Sand and Crystal) to intercept the bone blades at the very last millisecond.
CLANG! CLANG! CRACK!
The collisions between bone blades and crystal shielding echoed through the colosseum like striking metal. Kimimaro cracked Gaara's shield with every blow powered by his Breathing technique, forcing Gaara to expend massive amounts of chakra to continually repair his defense.
For his part, Gaara didn't merely defend. He maintained constant mobility on floating sand platforms, firing crystal discs that struck Kimimaro's armor from his blind spots. Several glass spikes managed to pierce the joints of the bone armor, inflicting minor cuts and fractures that began to bleed.
Ten minutes of relentless, high-intensity combat passed.
Despite the solidity of his Suna no Tate and maintaining his distance advantage, Gaara was beginning to feel the heavy drain on his chakra reserves. The continuous manipulation of crystal sand—significantly denser and heavier than ordinary sand—combined with the constant need to rebuild his defenses against Kimimaro's brutal impacts, was wearing him down rapidly. Sweat dripped from his temples, and his breathing grew heavy.
He looked at Kimimaro. The Shikotsumyaku user advanced without hesitation, his armor covered in cracks and bloodstains, yet his eyes burned with unyielding resolve. Gaara knew full well that Kimimaro would never surrender as long as he had a single functional bone left in his body.
'If I let this turn into a battle of endurance, my chakra will run out before I can break his defense,' Gaara analyzed with absolute tactical clarity. 'I have to decide this match with one final attack using everything I have left.'
Gaara descended from his sand platform and planted both feet firmly on the ground. He raised his arms to the sky and began molding the last remaining reserves of his chakra, making the entire ring tremble.
The crystal sand across the entire arena floor rose en masse, condensing in the air above Kimimaro into an inverted pyramid of crystal and sand over twenty meters tall. The mass of quartz gleamed under the sun with a blinding, menacing light.
"Keshō: Gokusa Burai!" (Crystal Funeral: Sand Binding Prison)
Gaara brought his arms down sharply. The massive crystal pyramid plummeted like a meteor directly toward Kimimaro's position, intending to trap and crush him under hundreds of tons of pressure per square meter.
However, Kimimaro made no attempt to dodge the impact zone. He had already anticipated that Gaara would resort to his ultimate crushing technique to end the fight.
'I was waiting for this,' Kimimaro thought, coming to a halt in the center of the crater.
Kimimaro closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. He exhaled a burst of hot air and altered his lung capacity to a higher frequency, pushing the Sunagakure breathing technique to its absolute limit.
"Seven Heavens Breathing: Fourth Phase!"
A devastating aura of atmospheric pressure and dense chakra erupted from within Kimimaro. His muscles surged with power, and the cracks along his bone armor glowed with an intense white light.
Simultaneously, Kimimaro activated the most destructive variant of his Kekkei Genkai. Massive layers of super-dense bone erupted from his right shoulder and spine, molding and intertwining along his right arm, transforming it into a gigantic, spiraling bone drill extending from his shoulder past his knuckles.
"Yanagi no Mai: Piercing Drill!" (Desert Dance: Piercing Drill)
Gaara's massive crystal structure crashed down upon Kimimaro at the exact moment the pale-haired ninja drove his transformed arm upward in a powerful ascending strike aimed directly at the apex of the pyramid.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The explosion was deafening. The shockwave produced by the collision shattered the sound barrier and sent a violent gale sweeping through the lower stands, forcing spectators to cover their faces.
From deep within the crystal structure, Kimimaro's bone drill spun at thousands of revolutions per second, driven by the superhuman strength of the Fourth Phase. The extreme vibration and raw physical force began fracturing the dense quartz from the inside out.
CRACK! CRACK! BANG!
Gigantic fault lines spread across the entire crystal pyramid. With a final, shattering roar that shook the foundations of the colosseum, the twenty-meter structure exploded, desintegrating into millions of sparkling glass fragments that rained down over the arena floor like diamonds.
As the curtain of crystal dust settled, the scene left the audience breathless.
Kimimaro stood in the center of the crater created by the detonation. However, the maneuver had come at a heavy cost. The brutal pressure of the impact and the recoil of the Fourth Phase had completely shattered his bone armor; fragments of ivory lay scattered across the ground like broken shells.
His uniform was torn, and he bled from multiple wounds along his torso and limbs. His right arm, though still maintaining the shape of the bone drill, showed deep structural cracks and looked ready to collapse. His breathing was ragged, and heavy fatigue weighed on his shoulders.
Yet despite all the damage, Kimimaro did not fall. He remained standing, fixing his green eyes on Gaara and taking a slow, steady step forward.
Gaara, standing fifteen meters away, stared at the scene with wide eyes.
He tried to raise his hands to gather what little sand remained, but his arms trembled violently and refused to obey. Gaara's chakra was completely depleted; creating and collapsing the Crystal Funeral had consumed the last of his energy. Sweat stung his eyes, and his legs threatened to give way under his weight.
Seeing Kimimaro continue his relentless advance—having overcome a massive attack that would have destroyed any ordinary shinobi—Gaara let his arms fall to his sides.
He realized he had no cards left to play.
"That's enough..." Gaara murmured in a low, calm voice, letting out a quiet sigh of resignation and respect.
Gaara looked at the supervising Jonin and raised his right hand slightly.
"I forfeit," Gaara announced clearly, his voice carrying across the quiet arena. "I have no chakra left to continue."
The Jonin referee took a second to process the declaration before leaping into the center of the ring and raising his arm toward Kimimaro.
"Participant Gaara has surrendered!" the referee proclaimed at the top of his lungs. "Therefore, the winner of this match and the first official finalist of the Chūnin Tournament is... Kimimaro of Sunagakure!"
The Great Colosseum erupted into a thunderous ovation. Cheers echoed off the stone walls, celebrating the display of technique, endurance, and sheer power both Sand ninjas had brought to the stage.
Gaara walked over to Kimimaro, offering a respectful nod.
"Great match, Kimimaro," Gaara said sincerely. "Your defense and your willpower exceeded my limits."
Kimimaro dissolved the bone transformation on his arm, allowing the fractured ivory to reabsorb and fall away. He returned Gaara's gesture with a bow.
"It was an honor to fight you, Gaara," Kimimaro replied. "Your control over crystal sand is formidable."