With the Sharingan's dynamic vision, Kakashi darted left and right through the barrage. But just as he closed to within five meters, an enormous Great Fireball came roaring straight at him.
With no other choice, Kakashi had to forcibly break off his advance and throw himself into a sideways roll to avoid it.
The huge fireball screamed past the hem of his clothes and shot toward Akira and the others behind him.
They reacted instantly, scattering in all directions as they watched the flames swallow the trees at their backs whole.
Kakashi abandoned the idea of matching ninjutsu head-on, drew a kunai, and plunged into a dangerous close-quarters exchange with Itachi.
Their taijutsu skill was nearly even. Every strike was ruthless, every move aimed at a vital point, and the genjutsu threaded into the cracks between blows made the fight even more treacherous.
In the end, Kakashi lagged just a fraction behind in illusion skill. All it took was a single lapse, a split second of mental disorientation, and he exposed a fatal opening.
The instant Itachi's kunai was about to drive into Kakashi's heart, a dazzling bolt of lightning tore through the air.
Chiyo didn't even have time to see what had happened before Akira appeared between the two men like a phantom.
With a crisp metallic ring, sparks flew. Akira's short blade caught Itachi's killing blow dead in its tracks.
Then Akira's free hand gave Kakashi's shoulder the lightest tap, and a surge of pure chakra instantly blew away the illusion's interference.
Kakashi snapped back to himself. Cold sweat drenched his back as he immediately sprang several meters away to create distance.
Seeing Akira step in, Itachi's gaze sharpened slightly. Using the recoil, he vaulted backward into the air and flicked both hands.
A storm of shuriken and kunai rained down like a metal downpour.
It was throwing jutsu at an almost absurd level. The angles were vicious and unnatural, and after colliding in midair, the weapons changed course again, making them nearly impossible to predict.
An ordinary jonin caught in that kind of barrage would have been turned into a pincushion in seconds.
But Akira merely flicked his blade a few times, and with a series of clear metallic clashes, every one of those projectiles was knocked away.
The next second, his figure turned into a streak of blinding lightning and vanished from where he stood.
Itachi's pupils tightened sharply in midair. Even his Sharingan was struggling to keep up with that terrifying speed.
Before he could respond, a suffocating pressure descended from above.
Akira raised one hand high. In his palm, a blue chakra sphere spun wildly, humming with a sharp, grating whine.
Wrapped in crushing force, the Rasengan slammed mercilessly into Itachi's back.
A deafening boom followed, and the ground itself seemed to shudder. Uchiha Itachi fell like a meteor, smashing a massive crater straight into the earth.
When the dust settled, Itachi was nowhere to be seen at the bottom of the pit. All that remained was the mangled corpse of an unfamiliar man.
Still wreathed in lightning, Akira landed at the edge of the crater, looked down at the body, and frowned slightly. The clothing marked it as a shinobi from Sunagakure.
Kakashi stepped forward, awe written all over his face. What Akira had just done had felt less like a fight and more like a performance, every motion so fluid it already carried the bearing of a true master.
Chiyo's expression darkened as she recognized the body as one of Sunagakure's missing jonin.
Akira cut straight to the point. This had been a sacrifice-body for a transformation technique. Since it had needed to carry thirty percent of Itachi's power, the vessel itself had to be strong enough to withstand it.
Chiyo understood immediately.
Sunagakure had a traitor within its own walls.
That also explained how the Akatsuki had managed to infiltrate the village so easily and snatch away the Kazekage.
However shameful it was to expose the village's own rot, Chiyo felt a chill settle into her bones. The moment she returned, she swore to herself, she would investigate the matter from top to bottom.
Far away, inside the distant cave, Itachi slowly opened his eyes as the transformed body dispersed.
Even Pain looked somewhat surprised. He hadn't expected Itachi to lose that quickly.
Deidara shut his mouth at last. If even Itachi had failed in such a short span of time, then that Akira really was an out-and-out monster.
Sasori frowned and asked for the details of the clash. Itachi stayed silent for a long moment before giving a single assessment.
"Unfathomable."
He admitted that in that brief exchange, Akira had likely shown not even a tenth of his real strength.
And worse still, Akira seemed to have an innate resistance to Sharingan genjutsu.
The entire room drew in a sharp breath.
A shinobi who could shrug off Sharingan illusions and whose power far exceeded even thirty percent of Itachi's was a major threat to any organization.
Deidara clenched his fists, a thin sheen of sweat appearing at his temples. He realized then that if Akira truly stormed into the cave, he and Sasori, in their current condition, might not walk away from it.
Pain's gaze turned colder and colder. For a sixteen-year-old boy to have reached this level already... that kind of talent inspired a threat unlike anything he had felt before.
Elsewhere in the ninja world, the so-called Immortal Duo were currently staring blankly at a bounty book.
Kakuzu looked at Akira's bounty, a mere fifty million ryo, and was so furious he nearly tore the book in half. It was an insult to power, and an insult to him as a bounty hunter.
For a monster like that, the starting price should have been a hundred million at minimum. Risking his life for fifty million would have been daylight robbery.
Hidan, naturally, was delighted to see Kakuzu so annoyed. He mocked him for having money in his veins instead of blood and said that one day greed was going to get him killed.
But Kakuzu knew perfectly well why Akira's price was so low. Despite his terrifying reputation, the boy still left people room to breathe. He hadn't made mortal enemies of every major village.
Back in the forest, Akira and the others finally met up with Team Guy.
As always, Might Guy's signature bowl cut and gleaming white teeth were impossible to miss. The instant he saw Akira, he strode up and gave him a warm, enthusiastic hug.
Guy genuinely admired Akira, not just because he was Kakashi's prized student, but because the young man carried a natural grace that made even his power feel reassuring rather than oppressive.
When the conversation turned to the fight just now, Guy scratched his head and tried hard to remember the enemy who had forced him to open the Sixth Gate before he won.
After thinking for a while, all he came up with was:
"That shark guy."
Neji and Tenten rolled their eyes beside him, though they had to admit it was a surprisingly accurate description.
Looking at Akira, Neji couldn't help feeling a rush of complicated emotion. Even the Hokage had sent out this trump card in person, which showed just how dangerous this mission really was.
By now, Akira was universally acknowledged as one of Konoha's top combat forces. In his normal state, his raw physical power already rivaled Guy with the Seventh Gate open.
If he had learned the Eight Gates, if he'd chosen to walk that path of burning away one's own life, then in pure destructive output he might have reached even the apocalyptic level of the Eighth Gate.
But Akira felt no regret over that.
As he saw it, when someone already had limitless potential and a brilliant future ahead of them, why chase a fleeting blaze that consumed everything in exchange for a single moment?
The path of the Eight Gates was, at its core, a prolonged torture of the body.
That forbidden art didn't raise your base physical strength. What it tested was how long your flesh could endure hell itself.
Even for a monster like Akira, with his absurdly resilient body, forcing open the Gate of Death would still reduce him to a shattered shell.
And without refining one's taijutsu fundamentals to the absolute peak, the Eight Gates wouldn't open more than a crack anyway.
This was not something you could shortcut just because you were physically gifted. Learning the activation method might take only a glance. But whether your body could survive that level of tearing strain was an entirely different matter.
If sheer constitution were enough, then the shinobi world would already be overflowing with taijutsu specialists. There were plenty of people born with stronger natural physiques than Might Guy and Rock Lee. Madara Uchiha certainly hadn't been ignorant of how terrifying that art was.
In the end, the Eight Gates had nothing to do with innate genius. What it demanded was endless, brutal, self-destructive training, day after day, until every muscle in the body was honed beyond human limits.
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