Overexerted

"Rumble..."

Amid deafening roars, an over-the-top battle was underway in the southern territory of the Land of Fire.

On one side was Wood Release, which had not appeared in the world for decades. On the other was the most astonishing Human Puppet Technique since the invention of puppet arts. Either one, if revealed to the outside world, would be enough to terrify people.

Assessing the rank of a ninjutsu was an extremely difficult matter. It was inherently a highly complex composition of power, making it hard to establish any unified standard.

Some judged it by the extent of knowledge it contained, while others judged it by its direct combat effectiveness. There was simply no way to reach a consensus.

In truth, ninjutsu was far from being used solely for combat. There were also many civilian ninjutsu, and these techniques used outside of battle played an even more important role in the development of the Hokage world than combat techniques did.

In this era, where ninja had been divided into warriors and craftsmen, the range of ninjutsu's applications had expanded tremendously, and the profession itself had gained far broader prospects.

But the two fighting fiercely in the southern territory of the Land of Fire were unquestionably still of the traditional sort, because what they excelled at was destruction.

Under Sasori of the Red Sands's single will, his Human Puppet army displayed combat power that completely surpassed a ninja army of the same scale. This was true coordinated combat. The coordination problems that commonly arose in ordinary ninja armies simply did not exist here.

Above the crystalline white sea of trees, squads of puppets whistled through the air. At the same time, Release techniques of every kind rained down like raindrops, carrying the flavor of carpet bombing in an age of modern