Guy's mind went blank with a boom.
Two thousand men!
Iwagakure!
This was not a probe, nor was it a sneak attack.
It was an all-out assault.
He instinctively tightened his grip on his sword hilt, his knuckles turning white.
Something was wrong.
Wasn't the Battle of Kikyo Mountain supposed to be against Sunagakure?
How had it become Iwagakure?
"Could killing Iwami Shigezo have caused a butterfly effect?"
"Or had this attack always been planned, just never mentioned?"
Guy did not know.
But he understood one thing.
A real war was about to break out.
Yet Nara Shikaku, standing on the platform, said nothing more and merely waved a hand.
"All divisions, move out according to your formations."
The people below began to move.
Not chaotically.
They spread out in an orderly fashion, gathering around their respective captains.
Guy swept his gaze around and counted.
Eight formations.
Each had around one hundred and eighty men.
That was all the manpower they had.
The enemy had two thousand.
They were short by five hundred men!
Under normal circumstances, that was not much.
But on a defensive line, five hundred men meant several gaps.
Choza had already taken his place at the very front of the 7th Division.
As one of the few jonin in the camp, he commanded one of the divisions.
Choza was huge. He stood out from the crowd at a glance.
Guy and the other two squeezed their way over.
"Captain."
Choza lowered his head, glanced at him, then looked at his leg.
"Can you keep up?"
"I can."
Choza asked no further questions. He turned to face the one hundred and eighty men under his command.
"Move out."
There were no unnecessary words.
Everyone set off at once, heading out of the camp.
Once they left camp, the people ahead began to speed up.
Walking turned into a jog.
Jogging turned into a sprint.
The one hundred and eighty men shot toward the front lines along the foot of the mountain like a snake.
Guy kept pace with the group, never falling behind by a step.
Forty minutes.
After running for forty minutes, the people ahead slowed down.
They had reached the front line.
Guy looked up.
Ahead was a low ridge. It was not high, but it offered an excellent view.
It stretched for more than three thousand meters.
Below the ridge was an open field. The grass had been trampled flat, exposing yellow earth.
Further west lay the direction of the Land of Grass.
Nothing could be seen there.
But Guy knew that two thousand enemy troops were heading this way.
The open field below.
That was their battlefield!
This three-thousand-meter ridge was their final defensive line!
Nara Shikaku stood atop the ridge, surrounded by the eight division captains.
Choza was among them as well.
He stood a head taller than everyone beside him, yet somehow did not stand out.
Nara Shikaku said something. The captains nodded, then dispersed.
Choza returned with an awful expression.
Guy had never seen that look on his face before.
Over the past three months, Choza had only worn two expressions.
One was, "Not bad."
The other was, "Have you eaten?"
This was a third one.
It was ugly.
"Captain, what's going on?" Ebisu asked as he leaned closer.
Choza squatted down, picked up a branch, and drew on the ground.
A curved line represented the ridge.
In front of it, he drew an arrow pointing east from the west.
"The enemy has two thousand men. Higashi Shito is leading them."
Guy's eyelid twitched when he heard that name.
Higashi Shito.
Iwagakure's General of Bedrock.
A relative of the Third Tsuchikage, a jonin among jonin.
Since the war began, he had fought four major battles.
He had won every one.
And left no survivors in any of them.
Choza continued drawing on the ground.
"Their objective is clear. They want to break through Kikyo Mountain and drive straight into the heart of the Land of Fire."
The branch drew several lines behind the arrow, representing troop deployments.
"Higashi Shito has fought us before. His style is straightforward—he crushes you head-on."
He paused.
"No tricks, no feints. He just pushes forward."
Guy stared at the line on the ground.
Straightforward.
That was the hardest kind of opponent.
Tricks could be countered. Feints could be defended against.
But when the enemy simply crushed forward, all you could do was withstand it.
If you held, you lived.
If you did not, you died.
Choza tossed the branch aside and stood.
"But our mission is not to drive them back. It is to hold the line."
He pointed at the open ground below the ridge.
"Hold until reinforcements arrive. A mobile squad has departed from Konoha. At the earliest, they'll arrive at dawn tomorrow."
Guy looked at the clearing below and the defensive line before them.
One thousand five hundred men against two thousand.
They had to defend for at least a full day and night.
This battle was not unwinnable.
But it would be difficult!
Guy clenched his sword hilt, his palm drenched in sweat.
"Where is our position?" he asked.
Choza pointed to a section slightly left of the ridge's center.
Choza looked at the three of them and fell silent for two seconds.
"When the time comes, stay close to me."
Just six words.
But his tone was different from usual.
Ebisu adjusted his sunglasses and said nothing.
Genma took the toothpick out of his mouth, then put it back in.
Guy nodded.
Choza turned and headed up the ridge.
"Come on. Eat first."
The three followed behind him.
Several temporary sheds had been erected behind the ridge. The Cooking Squad had already set up their pots.
The rice was cold, and so were the dishes.
But there was plenty of it.
No one complained.
Guy held his bowl and squatted on the ground, shoveling rice into his mouth.
He ate every last bite, leaving not a single grain of rice at the bottom of the bowl.
A hard battle lay ahead. There would be no time to eat again, so he had to fill himself up now.
As he set down his bowl, he saw Ebisu eating too.
He ate quickly, his cheeks puffed out.
Genma had already finished. With a toothpick in his mouth, he stared into the distance.
After finishing their last bowls of rice, the three turned their bowls upside down in a basket.
They stood and headed up the ridge.
The ridge was already packed with people.
One thousand five hundred men were spread along the ridge line.
There were no flags and no slogans.
Everyone was occupied with their own tasks.
They checked their ninja tool pouches, adjusted their forehead protectors, pulled kunai from their straps, then slid them back in.
Some crouched on the ground, drawing symbols and pouring chakra into Explosive Tags.
Some closed their eyes, their lips moving faintly as they silently memorized something.
Others quietly arranged something across the battlefield.
Guy and the others belonged to the Assault Squad.
They took their positions with the 7th Division and looked down.
Below the ridge, there was nothing at the end of the open field, nothing on the horizon.
But the air felt wrong.
The wind had stopped. The grass no longer swayed. Even the birds had fallen silent.
Ebisu stood to Guy's right, gripping a kunai with a stiff expression.
"Guy."
"Yeah."
"When do you think they'll come?"
Guy did not answer. He stared at the horizon.
It was too quiet there.
Like the few seconds before water boiled.
The lid rattled, steam rose, but the water had not yet begun to roll.
And when it finally did...
"They're here."
Guy's voice was soft, but his expression was extremely serious.
Ebisu hadn't heard clearly. "What?"
Guy lifted his chin.
Everyone on the ridge began turning their eyes in that direction.
A reddish-brown line appeared on the horizon.
It didn't gradually widen—it appeared in an instant.
Two thousand people stood in formation after formation.
From south to north, they filled the entire horizon.
The spacing between every formation was identical, as was the distance between every row of people.
Likewise, there were no flags and no slogans.
There were only people.
Two thousand people marched forward in silence.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The ground trembled.
Two thousand people, two thousand pairs of feet—the sound of them striking the ground merged into one.
Ebisu nearly dropped his kunai.
"Th-... there are way too many..."
Guy stared at that gray line.
The enemy hadn't split into multiple routes, held back reserves, or set up a feint.
It was simply a line of formations, stretched out like a single-file snake.
It rolled toward the ridge.
There were no weak points, no openings to exploit.
Every point was hard as bone.
Nara Shikaku stood at the highest point of the ridge, narrowing his eyes as he watched for several seconds.
"All units, attention."
"First line, Earth Release squads, prepare."
"Second line, Fire Release squads, prepare."
"Third line, Explosive Tag squads, prepare."
"Await my command."
There was no impassioned rally.
There was no slogan of the "Will of Fire."
There were only simple orders.
And, as the commander, absolute calm.