"Wood Release: Hellish Rampage!"
Several twisted trees bristling with thorns spiraled upward, intent on wrapping around Souya and crushing him.
Whoosh!
Inside the blood-red barrier, a small, green-and-gold Shukaku stood atop a golden cloud. Souya had used Senjutsu Chakra to undergo Tailed Beast Transformation.
Below the golden cloud, thick branches packed tightly together coiled toward Souya, weaving into a thorny net.
"Sage Art: Refining Air Cannon!"
The little Shukaku Souya had transformed into suddenly sucked in his belly, then fiercely spat out a barrage of green-blue wind bullets.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
The green-blue wind bullets, each as large as a human head, screeched through the air and slammed into the thorny branches reaching toward them.
The moment the wind bullets struck the trunks, they exploded like storm cannons.
Boom!
A violent gale swept outward. Countless fine, razor-sharp blades of wind burst forth, slicing and snapping the thorny trunks as they climbed.
But Souya's cross-shaped eyes narrowed slightly. He'd noticed that the Masked Man's Wood Release had a quality like Hashirama's, absorbing Chakra!
If this had been Wood Release at the level of Yamato, who could only plant trees, one Refining Air Cannon from Souya would have blown his three-room apartment into a cloud of splinters.
But the Wood Release the Masked Man had just used had withstood more than a dozen storm cannons, and the wind blades were cutting through the trunks remarkably slowly.
If Souya's Refining Air Cannons hadn't been infused with Senjutsu Chakra, attacks released with ordinary Tailed Beast Chakra alone might even have been absorbed by the trees and neutralized!
Clang!
As the fine wind blades and thorny trunks wore each other down, a crisp metallic clang reached Souya's ears.
The Masked Man had clasped a black chain between both hands. He sprang upward and swung it around.