"Cough, cough! Cough!"
Then, the scorched earth bulged outward, and a figure slowly rose from beneath the ground.
The blackened, carbonized skin clinging to his body flaked away in sparse pieces, revealing nauseating, bloody muscles and veins.
"It hurts, it hurts so much!"
The stinging pain and itching all over his body made Setsugetsu groan uncontrollably. His mangled, bloodied face was twisted into something terrifying.
When he struggled to raise his head and look around, he could only see that the force of nearly a thousand men had been reduced by half, with only half still capable of the most basic movement.
Throughout the forest burned to charcoal, cries and groans echoed without end.
The swirling dust enveloped them all. The air they breathed was filled with ash that clogged their lungs, making Setsugetsu feel dizzy and suffocated, as though dark clouds had settled over him and stretched all the way into his chest.
This had never been a fair battle.
It had never been, from the very beginning!
But he had never imagined he would be tricked this badly!
He was just a brat skilled with a blade, one who had managed to deceive them.
There were nearly a thousand of them. Even if they stood still and let him kill them, could he really slaughter them all?
But he had not expected a dozen or so suicidal old men to emerge, using terrifying Chakra to turn them into fish in a barrel. They had even been willing to blow themselves up just to kill every last one of them!
And that brat's strange ability to "control the wind" had turned the flames of the explosion into a living hell.
This was practically... an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?
"Cough, cough! That damn brat!"
Blood