"Glug... glug..."
Icy seawater roared past his ears. Nishikawa Tetsu was moving so fast that the flow had formed a white layer of vacuum cavitation bubbles around his body.
With Sage Mode's extraordinary perception and physical enhancements, Nishikawa Tetsu was like a torpedo cruising through the deep sea, doggedly pursuing the enormous, translucent figure ahead.
And yet.
"What the hell kind of monster is this?!"
Watching the Giant Sea Hare rocket through the depths like an arrow loosed from a bow, Nishikawa Tetsu could have wept.
He had thought that with Sage Mode active and his attributes boosted across the board, catching a soft-looking, herbivorous sea hare would be a piece of cake.
Reality had dealt him a vicious slap in the face.
The sea hare looked cumbersome on land or in the shallows, but once it plunged into the deep sea, its streamlined, translucent body was practically a perfect model of hydrodynamics.
Every beat of its two enormous fleshy wings stirred up terrifying underwater currents, instantly widening the gap.
Nishikawa Tetsu gave it everything he had, senjutsu chakra surging wildly through his body, yet he could barely keep from being shaken off. All he could do was watch that enormous, jelly-like rear bob ahead of him, with no hope of closing the distance.
"I screwed up!"
Nishikawa Tetsu gritted his teeth.
"If I'd known this thing was a turbocharged supercar underwater, I would've sneaked up on it in the shallows and pinned it down with Five Elements Sealing first!"
"Now look where I am. Sage Mode has a time limit, and chakra consumption multiplies under this kind of deep-sea pressure. If I keep chasing it until my senjutsu chakra runs out, I'll be thousands of meters underwater. Even if I don't drown, the water pressure will crush me into