Focusing solely on Taijutsu and achieving the ultimate form of physical combat seems like a natural progression of hard work, but in reality, it is anything but simple.
Take Guy's weight-training regimen, for example. It is a state of constant overload. He is training every single second of the day, turning self-torture into a daily routine. Hagoromo simply couldn't do that.
Sure, Hagoromo had been carrying around a giant iron gourd these past few days, filled with the Third Kazekage's specialized iron sand. In terms of absolute weight, the thing was monstrously heavy.
Wasn't that a form of training? Actually, no.
First of all, the iron sand was constantly magnetized; otherwise, it wouldn't hold its shape. Secondly, it was precisely because he was manipulating that magnetism that Hagoromo could casually carry such a massive object. If he turned the magnetism off... well, he wouldn't be able to lift the damn thing.
To face Guy's Eight Inner Gates, Hagoromo decided to restrict himself strictly to Nintaijutsu (Ninja-Taijutsu) augmented by his electromagnetic defense. He abandoned his standard Lightning Style and Fire Style attacks.
This wasn't because he was holding back out of arrogance; it was because using long-range elemental bombardment against Guy in a spar was meaningless.
Suppressing his own jutsu to ensure a relatively even match of physical prowess—that was Hagoromo's approach. This wasn't a fight to the death, after all.
Hagoromo gently closed his hands in front of him. The black sand swirled and coalesced, forming a three-meter-long iron spear in his grasp.
Then, he struck a pose... and only a pose.
He had exactly zero skill points invested in polearms. He wasn't comfortable with any bladed weapon longer than fifty centimeters, and anything over a meter was completely foreign to him.
No matter how high a person's learning aptitude is, they can't be an master of everything. Some skills require years of dedicated, repetitive training to bear fruit, and Hagoromo had never practiced with a spear.
Meanwhile, Might Guy had opened four gates, forcibly shattering the body's natural limits on chakra flow, granting him access to extreme speed and power.
Hagoromo was on high alert. He needed to gauge exactly how fast this version of Guy was.
With his Lightning Style, Hagoromo was undoubtedly fast. But fundamentally, his speed was the speed of moving from Point A to Point B. His attack frequency in close combat was good, but not absurdly so.
Other ninjas were different. Their hands and feet moved with blinding speed, unleashing flurries of attacks that dazzled the eye—like Killer Bee, the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki, who could use several slender swords simultaneously to turn a perfectly good Sasuke into a human honeycomb.
With the Eight Inner Gates, Guy could achieve both extreme travel speed and extreme attack frequency.
Guy's skin had turned red. Not a fiery crimson, but the dull, baked red of dry earth. One look was enough to tell he was in a highly volatile state.
Does the Eight Inner Gates require talent? Absolutely.
Can someone achieve their goals relying on hard work alone? No world is that purely meritocratic. Can anyone open the gates just by pushing themselves to their absolute physical limits? Of course not.
If you gave a random ninja the exact same training regimen as Guy, would they master the Eight Inner Gates? Not a chance.
Taijutsu requires talent. High-level Taijutsu, just like high-level Ninjutsu, requires a very specific kind of physical and mental genius.
Guy looked utterly ordinary, but in truth... he was a genius. In the ninja world, some geniuses are highly valued by society, while others are overlooked. But in terms of sheer capability, calling Guy a genius is entirely accurate.
The Eight Inner Gates was a realm Hagoromo could never touch.
Lightning flickered across the black spear. The two stood less than ten meters apart.
Hagoromo loosened his grip on the iron spear, then tightened it. He leveled it! He spun! He threw it!
The black spear, trailing a beam of blue-white light, instantly pierced the distance between them. Because of its mass and the limits of his physical throw, this thick, heavy rod couldn't achieve the hypersonic speed of his Railgun, but it was by no means slow.
Hagoromo wasn't worried about impaling Guy. This was not a death match; he had severely throttled the lethal force of the attack.
Flash! The iron spear indeed made contact with Guy, but not in the way an attack should.
As the spear arrived in the blink of an eye, Guy's body shifted slightly to the right. His left arm bent, his hand hooking like an iron claw, and he snatched the high-speed spear right out of the air!
Hagoromo hadn't thrown the spear using just raw muscle; it carried significant kinetic energy and momentum. Guy realized this the moment he made contact.
His bandage-wrapped left hand gripped the middle of the spear, while he clamped the front half tightly between his arm and his torso!
Guy's physique was currently quite lean, but his arm was like a steel vice. With just those two points of contact, he completely neutralized Hagoromo's attack.
His feet slid backward to absorb the shock! The immense momentum pushed Guy back more than ten meters before he finally came to a halt.
Sparks of Hagoromo's residual lightning flickered across half of Guy's body. Yet, Guy seemed to feel nothing.
Opening four gates meant Guy's body was constantly being assaulted by bone-deep pain. He had to fight through that agony while simultaneously launching his own attacks.
Years of extreme overload training hadn't just given Guy a physique unmatched by ordinary ninjas; more importantly, it had forged his mind into something incredibly resilient. This is what it means to be a shinobi.
"Fast!" "And heavy!"
Despite calling it heavy, Guy easily hefted the iron spear and gave it a few experimental swings. To him, it seemed weightless.
"You can have it back!"
Before the eye could track it, the iron spear was hurled back at Hagoromo with nearly the exact same speed.
What the hell, did you just walk off the set of Seven Deadly Sins? Hagoromo thought.
With a wave of his hand, a sheet of iron sand formed in front of him just as the spear arrived. The spear pierced the thin defense, but Hagoromo immediately destabilized its magnetic structure, causing it to disintegrate and seamlessly merge back into his defensive wall.
The distance between them had widened slightly.
"Here I come!"
Guy's body sank slightly, and then he launched himself at Hagoromo!
The externalized chakra was clearly visible. Guy's body was like an erupting volcano; the intense heat radiating from his skin visibly distorted the green chakra aura around him. Like a figure moving through dense steam, his form became blurred.
It was obvious that this was one of Guy's first times fighting in this state. His control over the explosive surge in power was far from perfect.
But that lack of perfect control only made him look more explosive!
Every time his foot hit the ground, the earth—whether dirt or solid stone—shattered in a spiderweb pattern. With every step, his form blurred further, and his speed increased.
While both sought ultimate speed, Guy's approach was different from Hagoromo's Lightning Style. Hagoromo relied on technique and physics; Guy's Eight Gates relied on sheer, unadulterated violence.
It was the feeling of forcibly tearing through the human body's limits by brute force.
If his base strength was 10, perhaps 100,000 reps could raise it to 20. If 1,000,000 reps could raise it to 21, then he would do 1,000,000 reps. And beyond.
This stubborn, tenacious, entirely logical yet utterly illogical method—this was Might Guy's path to strength. In theory, anyone could do it. In reality, no one else could.
That brief counterattack gave Hagoromo an estimate of Guy's strength, but it wasn't enough. So, he chose not to engage in close combat just yet. He chose to retreat.
Hagoromo's current Gaara-style combat method should theoretically be highly disadvantageous against a pure Taijutsu specialist who excels at close quarters.
But "disadvantageous" depends entirely on the level of Taijutsu. If you shaved Guy's head right now, he could probably become a "hero for fun" and one-punch anything standing in his way.
The iron sand behind Hagoromo suddenly flared outwards. Electricity sparked wildly across the black mass as it formed into countless shuriken and kunai of varying sizes, firing them in a dense barrage at the advancing Might Guy!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Dust plumed into the air as Guy's silhouette flickered in and out of the explosions!
This could technically be called a "bullet hell" barrage. But in reality, it was just another cosplay.u
"Steel is my body, and fire is my blood." "This body is made of infinite swords."
This would probably be the perfect time to chant an incantation. Because Hagoromo was executing the cheapest, most copyright-infringing imitation of certain famous characters. Including Gilgamesh, Emiya Shirou, and Senjougahara Hitagi.
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