"Kill them all!"
A wall of mist rolled in, blurring everyone's vision. It was the Mist's standard battlefield ninjutsu.
Gengetsu casually snapped the neck of a Stone grunt, then pointed at the Stone force rushing in to intercept them. Behind him, every member of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist wore an excited grin.
Today was the day they would make their names shake the ninja world.
The Mist Village sat overseas and had always followed a closed policy toward the outside world, while using brutal high-pressure methods internally. Their ninja were raised through harsh and cruel means, and the Seven Ninja Swordsmen were a pack of bloodthirsty monsters.
Today, that pack had been unleashed all at once.
"Hahaha! This time, the Stone has nowhere to run!"
Gengetsu's face twisted into a savage smile. He personally did not have much of a grudge against the Leaf. His attack on the Leaf had been more about strategy than hatred.
The one he truly hated to the bone was Mu.
This time, old debts and new ones could all be settled together.
"You brats, stop playing cat-and-mouse. End this fast!"
Gengetsu barked a warning at the Seven Ninja Swordsmen. Those unruly little punks were falling back into their usual bad habit again. They clearly had the ability to kill quickly, yet insisted on toying with their prey before finishing them off.
More and more Stone reinforcements were arriving.
They had to break through immediately and strike the Stone's rear. Once their back line was severed, that Stone force would be trapped between the Mist and the Leaf and ultimately wiped out from both sides.
Realizing the situation was going bad, the captain of a Stone squad quickly pulled out a flare from his pack and fired it into the sky. As the signal went up, a strange pulse of chakra spread outward.
Not much time passed.
Gengetsu, who was still cutting down enemies, suddenly froze mid-motion.
His sensory ability was excellent, and at that instant he felt a chakra presence so overwhelming it made his heart lurch.
That amount of chakra was monstrous.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Several massive magma bombs rained down from the sky, blasting the accompanying Mist squads into chaos.
Gengetsu dodged the splashing molten rock and saw a small red-haired ninja ahead of him, his body radiating chakra so dense it looked almost tangible.
A tailed beast jinchuriki?
Gengetsu had only ever felt chakra on this level from a tailed beast itself.
The Stone had actually managed to develop a tailed beast jinchuriki?
In the past, there had only been one village in the ninja world capable of fielding a jinchuriki like this.
The Leaf.
To seal a tailed beast into a human body, two conditions had to be met.
First, the vessel had to be durable enough to withstand the tailed beast's backlash.
Second, they needed the proper sealing technique.
And the most important part was the sealing technique. Without that, no amount of physical toughness meant anything. No matter how powerful a human body was, it could never outmatch a tailed beast.
Sealing arts were complex, high-level ninjutsu, and only a tiny handful of people in the ninja world could truly master them.
Most of them came from the Uzumaki Clan.
He had not expected the Stone to have a sealing master of this level in their village.
That had been a serious miscalculation.
To the ninja villages of this era, tailed beasts were weapons on the level of a living catastrophe. Using one came at an enormous cost. Once released, a sealed tailed beast attacked everything indiscriminately. They did not care who was friend and who was foe. In their eyes, all humans deserved to die.
And even if you let one out, recovering it was another nightmare entirely.
Who knew how many people would have to die to subdue a berserk tailed beast again?
Weapons like that were things you only used if there was absolutely no other option.
The Mist had also taken two tailed beasts from the Leaf, the Three-Tails and the Six-Tails.
But Gengetsu had not brought them.
A creature as dangerous as a tailed beast was too risky to transport. If the seal were damaged on the way and it broke free, then this invasion would have been over before it even truly began.
"Fall back! That brat's a tailed beast jinchuriki!"
"Volcanic Hell!"
"Lava Release..."
Roshi was one of the lucky ones, a successful test subject in the Stone's jinchuriki experiments.
Whether it was because the Stone's half-baked sealing techniques had somehow worked, or because the Four-Tails, Son Goku, had been sealed away for so long that it wanted someone to talk to, no one knew. Maybe it had simply seen that Roshi looked a bit like a monkey and even had the same kind of reddish coloring, so it had obediently stayed inside him.
Roshi charged straight into the middle of the Mist forces and began mowing through them like a one-man army.
In his Four-Tails chakra mode, molten lava coated his entire body. A brush against him meant injury. Direct contact meant death.
Still just a kid, Roshi darted through the Mist forces at high speed, harvesting lives one after another. The Seven Ninja Swordsmen tried attacking him several times, but every attempt was driven back by that body of living magma chakra.
At that moment, Roshi was practically a humanoid volcano.
Touch him, and you burned to ash.
On top of that, this form gave him frightening defense.
"Damn it..."
Gengetsu ground his teeth.
Who would have thought the Stone could still pull out a jinchuriki at a moment like this and completely reverse the momentum? If this dragged on any longer and Mu arrived, then the situation would become much harder to control.
"Get behind me."
"I'll handle this brat myself!"
Gengetsu gave the order. Scattering in all directions would not help. No one could outrun Roshi in this state. Gengetsu had to deal with him personally.
"Water Release: Water Gun Technique!"
Gengetsu opened with Water Release.
Against a fire-type user, water was obviously the right answer.
"Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique!"
"Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!"
"..."
Gengetsu unleashed one water technique after another. In an instant, the surrounding ground turned into a churning floodplain. Under the pressure of his relentless Water Release assault, steam began hissing from Roshi's lava chakra cloak, and the heat radiating from his body started to weaken.
"It's working!"
A look of delight flashed across Gengetsu's face. He prepared to intensify the attack.
He could tell the brat in front of him was close to reaching his limit.
He had to capture him alive.
This brat absolutely had to be taken alive.
If the sealing method on his body could be studied and understood, then the two tailed beasts sitting unused in the Mist Village would no longer have to gather dust at home.
Roshi's small frame struggled wildly in the flood. The giant waves Gengetsu had created crashed into him one after another, leaving him dizzy and making him choke down mouthful after mouthful of water. His stamina was draining fast.
"Earth Release: Light-Weight Rock Technique!"
Roshi, who had been thrashing about in the water, suddenly felt his body grow lighter.
He rose to the surface, and a slab of rock formed beneath his feet, lifting him clear out of the attack zone that was practically a sea in all but name.
"Cough, cough, cough..."
"Thanks, Ohnoki."
Roshi kept spitting water from his stomach as he thanked Ohnoki for arriving to save him. That Earth Release technique just now had been one of the Second Tsuchikage Mu's signature moves. He had not expected Lord Mu to value Ohnoki enough to teach him that technique as well.
"You're welcome. Leave the rest to me!"
Ohnoki floated in the air, chakra gathering in his hand and condensing into a cone-shaped light.
Particle Style?
Young Roshi stared in shock.
He had learned even that?
"Particle Style: Atomic Dismantling Technique!"
The cone-shaped glow instantly expanded into a cylindrical beam and swept toward Gengetsu.
Anything touched by that white light was disintegrated down to the atomic level.
"Damn it, damn it!"
"Spread out and dodge! Don't let that hit you!"
Gengetsu hurriedly evaded, his eyes turning cold as he stared at Ohnoki floating high above.
Particle Style and Light-Weight Rock Technique.
This little squat brat had mastered both.
He had to be Mu's chosen successor.
Gengetsu escaped, but the Mist forces under him were not so lucky. Even with his warning, plenty of unlucky men were still caught in the attack. Half their bodies were shaved away in an instant.
Kill them.
Gengetsu no longer intended to hold back.
Whether it was that squat little jinchuriki or that little runt Ohnoki, both were far too dangerous. Capturing them alive was clearly no longer realistic.
"Hahahaha! Gengetsu, you bastard, you've really gone downhill!"
Just as Gengetsu was about to move, a grating voice of mockery rang in his ear, making the veins on his forehead bulge. He knew from the sound alone that the mummy had arrived.
Mu floated in the air and gave Ohnoki an approving nod.
The boy had not disappointed him.
Ohnoki was already strong enough to qualify as the next Tsuchikage. Mu had already passed all his techniques on to him. What remained now was the tempering of the battlefield.
And over this past month of attrition warfare, Ohnoki had clearly grown fast. He was already capable of standing on his own.
Seeing Gengetsu looking a bit disheveled, Mu immediately mocked him. His arch-enemy being forced into such a sorry state by his own student was a beautiful sight to behold.
"Hmph. Even the two of you together still aren't my match!"
"Summoning Technique!"
Gengetsu bit his finger and used a summoning technique to call forth his giant clam.
"Mirage: Vapor Hall!"
The moment the giant clam appeared, huge amounts of mist billowed out. The water vapor that had just been cleared away once again spread across the entire battlefield.
"Fall back! Everyone fall back!"
"Run as far as you can!"
Mu shouted as he signaled the remaining Stone ninja to retreat. This was no longer a fight they could participate in.
The fog was everywhere, and nothing in sight was real.
It was all a mirage.
If their own men stayed in this zone, they would only be slaughtered one by one.
Ohnoki floated in the air, but the ground below was wrapped in water vapor so thick that he could not see anything clearly. Human shapes flickered in and out through the mist.
"Master, what do we do?"
Mu let out a cold laugh.
He had fought Gengetsu far too many times.
Still trying to use this trick on him?
He might not be able to tell which figure in the mist was the real one, but that did not matter.
He could simply destroy everything.
Particle Style was the perfect ninjutsu for clearing away obstacles on a large scale.
"Particle Style: Atomic Dismantling Technique!"
Mu used Particle Style.
A white cylindrical beam several meters wide swept wildly through the mist, erasing everything in its path. Wherever it passed, the fog vanished, and everything around it was reduced to nothingness.
Gengetsu kept dodging, already cursing Mu ten thousand times in his heart.
A shameless mass-destruction technique like Particle Style should never have existed in this world.
"Steaming Danger Tyranny!"
Gengetsu created a clone roughly the same size as himself, and his breathing immediately turned ragged.
This technique consumed a tremendous amount of stamina and could not be used lightly.
The clone leaped high into the air and fired several water shots from its hand to propel itself toward Mu, who was still airborne.
"Move!"
Mu sensed that something was wrong and immediately shoved Ohnoki and Roshi aside.
In the next instant, the clone exploded.
The mixture of oil and water created a violent blast and a massive cloud of superheated steam, scalding Mu, who had been just a fraction too slow.
"Damn it. That old bastard Gengetsu is as dirty as ever."
Mu endured the pain of the steam burning his skin, activated a sensing technique specifically to locate Gengetsu, and at the same time ordered Ohnoki and Roshi to keep the Stone troops back.
This time, he was going to settle things with Gengetsu once and for all.
After the explosion faded, hail began to fall from the sky. The clone, which had originally been about the same height as Gengetsu, rapidly shrank, gathering power for another detonation. Its right arm turned into a sickle, and it charged toward the main Stone force.
Mu could fly.
Once the clone shrank down, it became far too easy to identify.
That last trick could only be used once.
He had to find a way to draw Mu down.
The clone Gengetsu controlled rapidly rushed toward the Stone forces. In its smaller form, it was even faster than Gengetsu himself. In just a few breaths, it caught up to the Stone troops.
Then it went right back to mowing them down.
The clone tore through them like it owned the field. Everywhere it passed, blood splashed across the ground. As it kept charging and killing, the clone gradually began growing larger again.
Its next explosion was almost ready.
Even if it could not kill Mu, it could still blow half the Stone forces to hell.
Gengetsu happily threw himself into the slaughter, but in one careless moment he realized Mu was flying straight toward his real body.
"Got you!"
Mu was now certain of Gengetsu's position and shot toward him at high speed.
Gengetsu was badly drained now.
There was no way he could beat Mu in that state.
As Gengetsu hid and fled, he called for his clone to return at full speed.
"Still trying to run?"
"Be a good little corpse and surrender!"
Mu sped up and dropped lower, closing the distance with Gengetsu. White light gathered in his hand.
At this range, it was more than enough to erase Gengetsu.
This battle was his after all.
Mu's heart surged with excitement.
The reason he had been turned into this miserable state was Gengetsu.
And now, finally, the time had come for revenge.
Gengetsu glanced back at the white glow almost fully formed in Mu's hand.
His stamina was nearly gone.
This time, he really was going to die here.
Realizing escape was impossible, Gengetsu hardened his resolve.
If he had to die, he would drag someone down with him.
He stopped running, turned around, and used the last of his strength to fire two water bullets to buy himself a little time.
Mu dodged them easily.
The light in his hand only grew brighter.
"Not running anymore?"
"So you've accepted your fate?"
Seeing Gengetsu panting hard and nearly collapsing from exhaustion, Mu felt exhilarated beyond words. His lifelong enemy was about to die by his own hand. The thought made his whole body tremble with excitement.
At a moment like this, he should really say something memorable.
This was an enemy who had tangled with him for most of his life.
He needed some proper final words.
Mu's thoughts stalled for a few seconds.
And just as he was about to say something, he saw Gengetsu reveal a vicious grin.
"You really think you've won, mummy?"
"Let's go to hell together!"
Only then did Mu realize Gengetsu's clone had already returned.
Mu instantly dropped the nearly completed Particle Style in his hand and prepared to gain altitude.
Gengetsu used the last scrap of strength in his body to leap upward and grab Mu, who was only ten or twelve feet above the ground.
Boom!
A tremendous explosion erupted as Gengetsu's clone detonated.
The violent blast of superheated steam instantly took both their lives.
Two arch-enemies who had only ever wanted to kill each other went hand in hand to the underworld.
The huge explosion drew the attention of both the Mist and the Stone. Both sides sent ninja racing over to investigate.
The final result, naturally, was another bloody clash between the two sides. The fighting was savage, and only after it drew the Leaf's attention did both armies have no choice but to pull back.
The First Great Ninja War was nearing its end.
Without a single exception, every Second Kage of the Five Great Ninja Villages was now dead.
Far away in the Leaf Village, Haru received the news that very same day and was overjoyed. He immediately passed the information on to Shikato.
At the same time, he sent Leaf ninja to maintain order in the futures hall.
They absolutely could not let the idiots who had lost their shirts smash the place to pieces.
This damned war was finally about to end!
Just thinking about the profits from this futures operation made Haru feel refreshed all over.
Mito had been giving him dirty looks for so long.
This time, he was going to rub her face in it with stacks of cash.
(End of Chapter)
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