"Captain, are we really going to attack Konoha? Fight someone like Taki Chiba?"
Beneath the dense canopy, a three-man Sunagakure squad lay quietly hidden in the relatively relaxed posture their superiors had instructed them to maintain.
Suddenly, perhaps because Konoha had remained silent for so long, someone finally could not hold back any longer.
Yet his question was not about Konoha's lack of movement, but concern over the battle to come.
"Mm..."
Hearing this, the captain being addressed—the ninja currently keeping watch through the thick foliage—spoke up.
His words were filled with gravity and a faint lack of confidence.
To be honest, he—no, they—had seen that man descend like some god or demon, then immediately use an unbelievable Earth Style Jutsu that seemed to control the earth itself, suppressing everyone present. The battle in which they had held the advantage had instantly fallen completely into a disadvantage.
No! It had become a desperate situation.
Yes, the moment that man stood on the battlefield, they had gone from holding the advantage to utter desperation, without even the slightest transition.
Honestly, at the time, they had all thought they were doomed. It had been such an overwhelming display; the massive boulder had nearly crushed them, about to grind them into pulp.
Yet in the end, they had somehow survived. That huge boulder had been propped up by rocks behind them, forced upward by the immense pressure crushing the earth, forming a triangular space barely large enough to contain them.
And honestly, compared to the overwhelming joy of survival they had felt then, they now truly wished they had been crushed to pieces and died then and there.
The reason was simple: they had seen it.
In the wild elation of surviving, they had crawled out from that narrow crack that had barely