104 - The Resolve of a Future Raikage

---Third POV---

Yugito's instincts were extremely sharp, though it could also be that Ryouma's wind-up was just too obvious.

In any case, before the blazing ring of fire reached her, she reacted in advance and, without hesitation, entered full Tailed Beast Mode, grabbing Darui and C in her blue cat claws that hadn't ignited in flames.

At the same time, she leapt into the sky, dodging the attack at the cost of having her body sliced in half.

Thud~

The massive body of the Two-Tails, now missing its lower half, crashed to the ground. In her desperation, the only thing she could do was save the two people closest to her.

"This is insane." Darui looked at the destruction caused by Ryouma with disbelief in his eyes.

Could ninjutsu really cause this level of destruction?

If a Tailed Beast Ball had caused it, he might not be this shocked, but this was genuine, authentic ninjutsu.

"Yugito, are you okay?" he asked with concern.

"I can still hold on." Yugito activated the chakra of the Two-Tails inside her and regenerated the lower half of her tailed beast form.

A burst of lightning cloaked A's body as he leapt from the smoke into the air, aiming a kick at Ryouma's head. Just as he was about to reach him, he quickly pulled back the lightning chakra from his leg, relying solely on his physical strength to execute the second half of this nintaijutsu technique.

But Ryouma had already anticipated this. With a Flying Thunder God Technique, he dodged the ambush. Teleporting to a pre-set marker, he suddenly found himself surrounded by blue fireballs.

In the next second, under Yugito's control, all those fireballs began to glow red, and exploded simultaneously.

"Fire Rat!"

Boom~!

A deafening explosion rang out as red flames burst outward from Ryouma's position.

But as the smoke cleared, he stood completely unharmed in the same spot.

Yugito furrowed her brow. Recalling how A was mysteriously repelled earlier when attacking in Lightning Release Chakra Mode, she seemed to understand something.

"Storm Release: Laser Circus!" Seeing Yugito's attack fail, Darui immediately followed up with his own ninjutsu. Countless azure beams, like lasers, shot toward Ryouma's body at extreme speed and various angles.

Yugito quickly shouted: "Wait, Darui!"

But given the speed of the Laser Circus, her warning was destined to be too late.

Ryouma simply waved Lostvayne and used Full Counter.

The dozens of beams were instantly deflected, sent back at even greater speed along their original trajectories!

Darui tried to redirect his technique, only to realize he had completely lost control.

What is this?

It's important to note that Storm Release was a fusion of water and lightning chakra, with one of its main features being strong shape manipulation, it should be easily steerable.

Now, all he could do was hastily stop releasing the Laser Circus, while rolling to the side in an attempt to dodge the counterattack. But it seemed too late.

The lasers were incredibly fast. In the entire shinobi world, there were only a handful of people who could save Darui from this kind of attack, and luckily, one of them happened to be present at the scene.

A streak of blue lightning tore through the air, A charged forward and body-slammed Darui out of the way.

The redirected lasers from Ryouma missed their target and blasted into the ground instead, creating a honeycomb of holes that would send anyone with trypophobia into a coma on the spot.

"Cough cough~" Darui, having been elbowed and sent flying by A, felt like several of his ribs must've cracked.

A didn't really have a choice. He didn't want to smash his own teammate, but if he had been even a moment slower, the one turned into a honeycomb wouldn't have been the ground, but Darui himself.

"C, take Darui and the remaining ninjas and return to the village." He faced Ryouma warily, calling out to C with his back turned while C was still using medical ninjutsu to save Darui.

C understood that this level of battle wasn't something they could be a part of. Rather than stay here and drag things down, it was better to retreat with the injured.

He wasn't among the Kumo ninja squad that had once been shielded by the Third Raikage sacrificing himself. But now, with history seemingly repeating itself, he could truly understand how those people must've felt back then.

"Understood." Fighting back the burning sensation rising in his nose, he quickly carried Darui on his back and led the remaining Kumo ninja toward the direction of the Valley of Clouds and Lightning.

"Trying to run, are you?" Ryouma Lostvayne in the direction C and Darui were fleeing.

Flames surged from his blaze chakra, forming two massive flaming cross-shaped sword slashes that shot out one after the other.

Yugito, in her Two-Tails form, leapt in from the other direction, pouncing on all fours and using her claws to intercept the flaming sword slashes. The dark purple blaze chakra clung to her paws like maggots to flesh, burning intensely.

But this cat was a master of playing with fire. Within a few seconds, the depleted blaze chakra was dispelled by the blue flames on the Two-Tails.

Seeing this, Ryouma didn't bother chasing the fleeing Kumo ninjas any further. After all, Shiori and Shisui were stationed in that direction, ready to cut off any escape. If anyone managed to get away, they'd deserve it.

As long as the real big fish was still here, that was all that mattered.

---

Meanwhile, deeper within the Valley of Clouds and Lightning, Minato was leading the Konoha forces, securing all passable retreat routes through the mountains.

This was part of the agreed-upon strategy.

This time, he had decided to press the advantage and completely knock Kumo off the board in the Third Great Ninja War. There had been no signal yet from Ryouma's side, meaning the battle over there was still under control.

That meant he couldn't afford to fall behind.

As a wave of blistering heat surged through the canyon, a few minutes later, after a string of devastating attacks, only about 30% of the original Kumo forces remained, retreating toward the rear.

Seeing the numb, defeated looks on the faces of the Kumo ninjas, he couldn't help but wonder just what Ryouma had done to them.

But those questions could wait until after the war.

Once he saw that the Kumo ninjas had entered the prearranged encirclement, he gave the order to launch the attack without hesitation.

Facing the Konoha forces, who had long been prepared and well-rested, the Kumo ninjas, whose morale had been shattered by Ryouma, were naturally beaten into a panicked retreat.

For the Konoha ninjas, who had long suffered from Kumo's Tailed Beast Ball tactics, this was essentially a battle of revenge.

After being suppressed for such a long time, the Konoha ninjas on this battlefield had been holding in a lot of frustration. Now, taking advantage of Kumo's lack of intel on Ryouma's abilities, they struck back with a brilliant counterattack.

That moment when dozens of Tailed Beast Balls were deflected with a single sword slash, anyone who saw it couldn't help but praise him as the second coming of the God of Shinobi.

Only the Uchiha clan, currently embedded in the Konoha forces, were trembling with unease.

Especially a few Uchiha jonin who had mocked Ryouma at their previous clan meeting, now their only wish was that he would keep slashing Kumo ninjas and not turn on them afterward.

---

A roared as he charged at Ryouma once again, for what must have been the umpteenth time. The result was no surprise, Ryouma easily evaded using the Flying Thunder God Technique.

But unlike previous opponents, A was stubborn. As long as Ryouma was in his line of sight, he would immediately follow up with another attack aimed straight at him.

Ryouma resembled a matador, flashing between Flying Thunder God markers placed around the battlefield.

Due to the effects of the Shadow Seal Manipulation Jutsu, the locations he teleported to varied each time, making A's plan to memorize all potential points of arrival completely unworkable.

In this hundred-meter space, white and blue flashes of light continuously streaked and interwove. Even though Yugito was in Tailed Beast Mode, she simply couldn't get involved in such a high-speed battle.

From her perspective, it seemed Ryouma possessed a special ninjutsu that could reflect chakra attacks. And its strength was terrifying. The scattering Tailed Beast Ball from earlier, which had been reflected, must have been his doing as well.

Realizing this, she withdrew the flames burning around her transformed tailed-beast body, revealing the blue-and-black striped form of the Two-Tails.

Clang~

The Two-Tails extended five sharp claws from each of its front paws, gleaming with a metallic shine under the harsh plateau sun.

Yugito locked her eyes on the battlefield between A and Ryouma, waiting for a chance to strike.

Ryouma swung Lostvayne, launching a sweeping arc of flame to throw off A's charge. At the same time, he formed a one-handed seal and summoned nine Rasengan Spheres, shooting them in all directions.

Yugito's eyes lit up as she seized the opportunity and leapt in, slashing a claw toward him.

Five icy claws sliced through the air, trailing a gust of wind.

On Ryouma's shoulder, Shukaku clasped his hands together in a seal.

Chakra surged wildly, transforming the surrounding ground within hundreds of meters into a sea of sand.

Yugito stepped into the quicksand and lost her balance, her once-certain strike swiped through empty air.

Ryouma's prepared jutsu was complete!

BZZZZZZZ~

The deafening buzzing filled the entire canyon as Ryouma released nine massive Rasenshuriken around him, each one using a Rasengan Spheres as its core!

"He's gone insane... completely insane."

Yugito hadn't expected Ryouma to be this reckless, even including himself within the range of the jutsu.

The next second, an intense azure light illuminated everything within a kilometer radius, and the screeching sound, like hundreds of industrial saws operating at once, echoed into the sky.

Nine overlapping blue cyclones, formed by wild and raging gales, shredded even the ever-present clear clouds above the canyon peaks. Countless razor-sharp wind blades sliced through the body of Yugito's tailed beast transformation layer by layer.

Crack-crack—

As the wind's force kept intensifying, even the surrounding rocks were ground into powder.

As for Ryouma, he used the Flying Thunder God Technique to teleport out of the attack's radius.

If Yugito weren't struggling to keep herself alive, she would've definitely cursed Ryouma for being dishonorable, he had just challenged her to see who was tougher and then fled the scene.

Through the insight of his Rikugan, he observed that A was truly durable, this attack only left small cuts on his body, unable to do any deeper damage.

A was pushing forward through the violent wind, heading toward Yugito's position.

Yugito herself was in dire straits. Her transformed beast limbs had been completely shredded, and her once-proud claws had cracked and vanished under the intense buzzing assault.

Inside her body, Two-Tails was doing its utmost to channel chakra into maintaining the tailed beast transformation of her remaining torso. Without it, given her physical resilience, she wouldn't last even a second in that storm before disintegrating into dust like the surrounding earth and rocks.

If the Rasenshuriken couldn't kill them, then he'd just add more firepower. Ryouma formed a one-handed seal, guiding Shukaku's chakra inside him to create a massive wave of blaze flames.

Concentration, control, nature transformation, form transformation, in under a second, he launched a massive dark-purple flame arrow over thirty meters in length.

"Ultra Great Flaming Annihilation Arrow!"

The arrow struck the blue cyclone sphere and instantly expanded, forming a fiery tornado taller than the nearby mountains.

The entire canyon turned into a natural oven.

The volcanic eruption-like scene lasted for several minutes before slowly dissipating, leaving behind a massive crater over a kilometer wide.

Tap-tap—

Ryouma walked across the ground, now scorched and brittle like shattered glass from the intense heat, and remarked with some surprise:

"So this... is the resolve of a future Raikage, huh?"

Before him stood A, body covered in carbonized burn marks, and Yugito, who was mostly unharmed, except for her severely burned back.

When the blaze flames entered the windstorm, her transformation had already weakened to the point where only her cat-like head remained in its fully tailed beast form, barely hanging on. It seemed as if it would break completely any second, exposing her directly to the deadly storm of wind blades.

Fortunately, A arrived just in time, diving in front of her and shielding her with his burly body.

Meanwhile, the Two-Tails focused all its chakra on protecting Yugito's back.

In the end, the two ninjas and one beast barely survived the attack.

The cost, however, was steep, A's entire body was covered in charred, crisscrossed wounds. Some of the exposed gashes still twitched under the stimulation of lightning chakra. But since his skin was already very dark, his appearance wasn't all that affected.

It was clear now: A's lightning armor was still inferior to that of the Third Raikage.

As for Yugito, her condition was much worse. Though her life was saved, the overwhelming firepower left severe burns across her back.

Repeatedly having her full tailed beast form forcibly broken had drained even her to the brink of collapse.

At this point, she could only lie weakly over A's right shoulder.