A gigantic toad dropped from the sky. Its enormous size and weight slammed into the ground in an instant, sending the surrounding ninja tumbling in every direction.
"Am I late? Looks like I made it just in time." The white-haired man standing atop the toad shouted, but no one was paying him any attention.
A summoning beast that huge, with a look like that—you could tell at a glance who had summoned it... The Konoha trio of Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and Tsunade had finally arrived at the battlefield.
For ordinary ninja, a summoning beast that size was no less deadly than a Tailed Beast. Its attacks were always devastatingly overpowered, and even a glancing blow could prove fatal... Of course, although summoning beasts were "of one mind" with the ninja who summoned them and "fought in unison," the beasts would voluntarily undo the summoning once they took a certain amount of damage.
Large summoning beasts were good at fighting, and even better at running away.
The giant summoned toad gripped its "short sword" once more. Then it drew the blade and swung, carving a deep trench into the ground in an instant and burying many Iwagakure ninja caught in its path... That wasn't a slash from a sharp weapon; it was a blunt-force strike.
At last, Yuzuru struggled to his feet. Bracing one hand against his side, he sank to one knee with some difficulty and tried to get a better look at the battlefield.
For the reinforcements just arriving on the battlefield, Konoha's smaller numbers had one advantage: they could quickly assess the condition of every Konoha ninja. So, seeing Yuzuru in such a sorry state, a Katsuyu soon climbed up his leg and onto his back.
Then a chakra brimming with vitality radiated from Katsuyu. As it seeped into Yuzuru, the intense pain in his side quickly eased, and his internal and external injuries began healing rapidly.
With a top-tier medic's help, Yuzuru's condition stabilized in an instant.
The trio's arrival made Yuzuru breathe a sigh of relief. At least now he didn't have to worry so much about his safety... Well, he'd celebrated a little too soon.
The trio fought in a simple, straightforward manner, intent on eliminating the enemy without going out of their way to protect their allies. Or rather, as long as they wiped out all the enemies as quickly as possible, their comrades would be safe.
Still, the task of eliminating the enemy had fallen entirely to the trio, as the capable were expected to shoulder more. Yuzuru couldn't keep up with the pace just yet. If he got too close, he risked getting caught up in the giant summoning beast's attacks.
The toads of Mount Myōboku were allies, but Yuzuru couldn't help wondering whether the thing had something wrong with its eyes.
If the battle continued as it had so far, it seemed the Konoha ninja would win decisively.
But war was always in flux, and the conclusions drawn by those caught up in it were usually isolated and one-sided... Put simply, there was no way Iwagakure, which had kept up the pressure and stayed on the offensive, would accept defeat so easily.
Iwagakure's reinforcements arrived too. More Iwagakure ninja appeared on the battlefield and began using combination Earth Release techniques to restrain and attack the giant summoning beast.
The Konoha ninja were surrounded once more, unable to withdraw at their leisure... People like Torifu Akimichi and the Third Hokage's personal disciple couldn't be treated as "sunk costs." Left with no choice, Konoha had to send in more troops as well.
And so, what had begun as a skirmish between twenty or thirty people quickly grew into a medium-sized battle involving thousands. Soon, Konoha and Iwagakure had each committed around five hundred ninja to the battlefield in the Land of Grass... At this stage of the war, a battle of this scale was already quite extraordinary.
The organization of the battle was appalling on both sides, Konoha and Iwagakure alike. Their lines were hopelessly tangled, and the fighting was difficult to watch... The twenty years of peace hadn't necessarily robbed the Great Shinobi Villages of their ability to organize large-scale battles, but they certainly needed time to relearn and rebuild that capability.
The Shinobi World War was brutal, but the worst was yet to come. This chaotic fight was a costly lesson.
As more ninja joined the battle, fighters like Yuzuru became increasingly irrelevant.
"Earth Release: Moving Earth Core!"
"Earth Style: Earth and Rock Barrage!"
The Iwagakure ninja used combined Earth Release techniques to wreak havoc on the battlefield's terrain. After changing the slope of the ground, they unleashed a wide-area Earth Release attack, washing over the battlefield like a mudslide.
Yuzuru darted repeatedly from side to side, barely dodging the attack. By then, though, he had only one question... Where are my teammates?
He couldn't find his teammates, and the Katsuyu on his body had already been unsummoned.
There were still some Konoha ninja nearby, but they belonged to different squads, and their original formations had mostly fallen apart. They could barely manage to fight on their own... The bad news was that things were going terribly for Konoha. The good news was that Iwagakure was in just as bad a state, no better off than Konoha.
Yuzuru panted heavily, feeling himself nearing his limit. A single ninja was so insignificant on a battlefield; he couldn't change anything in his current state... Didn't the effort it took him to draw every breath say it all? He was literally struggling to stay alive.
Just then, another Iwagakure ninja charged toward him.
"Will this never end?!"
Yuzuru turned and ran, fighting as he retreated.
For a ninja war to turn into a piecemeal commitment of troops, with the effect of calabash dolls rescuing their grandpa one after another, was truly something else... The battle had begun at noon. Now dusk was near, and darkness had completely fallen.
Yuzuru had no chakra left to squeeze out. He fought as he retreated, occasionally turning to deflect the enemy's thrown weapons... All in all, he was starting to panic and lose his way. Without realizing it, he'd passed from sparse woodland into thick forest, where towering trees blocked out the sky.
Once again, the sound of falling rain filled Yuzuru's ears.
He seemed to have wandered far from the battlefield, with only one relentless enemy still at his heels.
"Damn it, there's nowhere left to run!"
"Stop struggling. How much chakra do you even have left?"
Hmm? The Iwagakure ninja behind him was getting obnoxious and seemed increasingly agitated. He didn't seem like a particularly experienced ninja.
Yuzuru really was almost out of chakra. He couldn't keep this up forever.
A thought struck him. He darted into the shadow of a thick tree ahead. Just as the Iwagakure ninja lost sight of him and rushed past, Yuzuru suddenly attacked!
He planted his left foot squarely on the enemy's instep and grabbed his collar with his right hand. Then, channeling the last sliver of chakra he could muster into his arm, Yuzuru pulled the man's head down and slammed it down like a snapper toy. At the same time, he drove his right knee upward!
Thud!
The enemy's forehead smashed into Yuzuru's knee. The sudden impact and jolt made his consciousness slip away for an instant.
That wasn't all. Yuzuru lightly slapped the man's chest with his left hand, then used his wrist to shove the man's body around halfway, turning his back toward him.
Yuzuru did nothing more. He ducked behind the tree as quickly as he could... He'd just stuck the last Exploding Tag he had on the enemy.
Boom!
A firework of blood and flesh burst across the forest, and the enemy made no further move.
Soon, the forest in the rainy night returned to its original "stillness," as the chaotic yet strangely rhythmic ambient noise swallowed every other sound.
Night had fallen completely.
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