"You have five seconds to drop your weapons and squat down with your hands on your heads. Otherwise, no mercy."
Amber's voice boomed through the speakers embedded in his armor, reaching every corner of the battlefield. The Allied forces stared into his scarlet eyes, their movements becoming incomparably stiff as sweat beaded across their foreheads.
"Five, four..."
Amber's gaze lowered, fixing on Kurotsuchi, who stood closest to him.
Kurotsuchi was Iwagakure's little princess. She had trained in many ninjutsu and carried out numerous missions.
But those missions had all been carefully selected by the village to suit her abilities, with fully equipped teams assigned accordingly. It could be said that every one of them had passed without real danger.
Who was Amber?
The founder of the Extermination Army, commander of the legion, a man who had fought on the front lines for years. If he was not killing people, he was on his way to kill people. Countless powerful foes had died by his hand.
How could Kurotsuchi ever have experienced such a terrifying presence? She instinctively took half a step back, wanting to lower the ninja blade in her hand as he had ordered.
But then her father's kindly smiling face surfaced in her mind.
Her retreating step came to a halt.
"...Three, two, one!"
The countdown ended.
The forty black-armored warriors who had descended from the sky raised their weapons.
Clang!
Akatsuchi appeared, blocking the greatsword Amber had brought down upon Kurotsuchi.
Akatsuchi was already tall and powerfully built, standing two meters tall when upright. Yet before the three-meter-tall Amber, he was more than a head shorter. The immense force amplified by the armor pressed him into an even deeper hunch.
Kurotsuchi's support arrived at just the right moment.
She leaped into the air, her ninja blade gleaming