At that moment.
Orochimaru was on his way, riding a snake...
Rumble—
One fire dragon after another was "born" from the fireballs, unleashing an endless barrage on Han!
Ruohuo forcibly drew out the chakra contained in his Seventyfold Great Fireballs once more. He wasted not a drop, hurling it all at Han!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
One fire dragon after another charged at Han.
Han had forcibly regained consciousness when the first barrage struck.
But he had no room to dodge. He could only curl up and do his best to summon the Tailed Beast Chakra to defend himself, but it was like trying to put out a fire with a cup of water.
The Tailed Beast Chakra Cloak did have formidable defensive capabilities.
But under a Fire Style barrage on this scale, Han, who was only in Two-Tails Mode, couldn't hold out!
Boom!!!!!
Ruohuo controlled the remaining flames, shaping them into two enormous fire dragons for one final barrage!
After the barrage, he once again rode the fire dragons' lingering force to unleash a jutsu, forming a High-Temperature Fire Prison!
This C-rank Water Release: Water Prison Technique, after mutating into Fire Release Ninjutsu, was no longer a technique for trapping enemies.
It had become an offensive jutsu, like an incinerator!
"A little weak..."
Ruohuo looked at Han, suspended in midair and engulfed in flames.
Breathing slightly hard, he popped a Military Ration Pill into his mouth.
Orochimaru had supplied the pills. They weren't poisonous, and they worked quite well. Once fully digested, each one restored roughly twenty percent of his chakra.
"So that so-called 'Steam Ninja' is just a little weakling who can only enter Two-Tails Mode at this point in time?"
"If I take him back to Konoha like this... he should qualify to join the Anbu, right?"
Han wasn't a Perfect Jinchuriki.
At this point in time, he seemed capable of drawing on only a limited amount of his Tailed Beast's power.
Even Ruohuo hadn't expected it to be this easy to subdue a Jinchuriki.
The Uchiha really were the bane of ordinary Jinchuriki and Tailed Beasts...
So this was the Sage Eye's suppressive power over Tailed Beasts?
He was already starting to wonder what his Mangekyo would do...
The original plan had just been to become a war hero. After all, he'd traveled a thousand miles to support White Fang and completed the S-rank mission White Fang hadn't managed to finish.
All the credit belonged to him. At most, Orochimaru had served as support, drawing enemy fire...
But now he'd taken down a hidden boss and captured a Five-Tails Jinchuriki...
With Ruohuo's political insight,
if he were a leader like the Third or Danzo, he'd be considering whether this Uchiha posed a threat to Konoha.
They'd most likely grow wary of him. Assigning him to the Anbu would probably be the bare minimum.
"Man, I was hoping to grind some more experience on the battlefield."
"Am I really about to awaken the Mangekyo this soon?"
"These aren't the kinds of worries someone my age should have..."
Ruohuo rubbed his chin. "Come to think of it... should I find a way to hide this guy?"
"If an Uchiha becomes a Jinchuriki, would the system count the Tailed Beast's strength as part of the clan's power?"
Ruohuo raised an eyebrow.
Actually, that might be how it worked.
But there was no way he could do that this time.
He couldn't extract Tailed Beast Chakra, and going to the Land of Rain to find Nagato right now wasn't realistic either.
He could release the Five-Tails, but he didn't know how to undo the seal or anything like that...
"For now, I'll just trade this in for war credit. Maybe I'll have the Mangekyo soon... huh?"
Ruohuo blinked.
He noticed white smoke beginning to rise from the Fire Prison.
Wait, no, it wasn't smoke. It looked more like steam.
"This berserk transformation bar takes way too long to fill..."
Ruohuo muttered, controlling the Fire Dragon Bullet to retreat quickly.
Just as Ruohuo had expected,
Han had lost consciousness inside the Fire Prison. But the Five-Tails, Kokuō, had sensed the danger and clearly didn't want to die alongside its Jinchuriki, so it struck back in Han's place!
Boom!!!
Scalding steam burst through the Fire Prison. The Five-Tails Jinchuriki Han entered Three-Tails Mode while unconscious, and his body began plummeting!
Boom!!!
Han in Three-Tails Mode crashed into the water, sending up a huge spray. But the rushing current didn't carry him away. He stood atop the water and roared at Ruohuo in midair!
"ROAR!!!!!"
The roar shook the heavens!
"..." Ruohuo kept a blank expression, but suddenly found himself missing his little underling, Obito.
If Obito were here, he wondered whether he'd be scared into tears or roar back...
"So what if you're loud..."
Ruohuo's Three Tomoe locked onto Han in Three-Tails Mode—or, more accurately, onto Kokuō in Three-Tails Mode. Kokuō was now temporarily in control of Han's body!
Tailed Beasts were powerful.
The great villages treated them as weapons of war, and their destructive power was unmatched.
At the same time, Tailed Beasts were weak.
Ruohuo had heard a theory in his previous life.
Tailed Beasts were fragments of the Ten-Tails' chakra. They had wills, but no souls.
That was why Sharingan Genjutsu always worked on them.
"Come to think of it, I have Indra's power supporting me. Can these Tailed Beasts tell?"
Ruohuo suddenly wondered.
But the next second—
"ROAR!!!"
Kokuō in Three-Tails Mode roared again. Facing an airborne opponent like Ruohuo, it immediately came up with the best battle plan by instinct.
It opened its mouth and gathered power. With a chakra ratio of three to seven, the Tailed Beast Bomb began charging!
But Ruohuo wasn't worried in the slightest. No matter how powerful a Tailed Beast Bomb was, it was useless if it missed.
He swooped in, closing the distance while the Tailed Beast Bomb was still forming so he could cast Genjutsu. At the same time, he shouted:
"Take a good look at who I am!"
The other side didn't respond. It fired a Tailed Beast Bomb instead!
"You've got to be kidding me!"
Ruohuo hurriedly adjusted the Fire Dragon's flight path and narrowly dodged the blast.
Boom!!!!
The Tailed Beast Bomb struck the mountainside behind Ruohuo, setting off a massive explosion. Countless rocks began tumbling down.
Ruohuo glanced back, but his alarm bells suddenly started ringing again.
He whipped around and saw Kokuō in Three-Tails Mode charging at him, coiling itself up and leaping into the air!
Ruohuo hurriedly pulled the Fire Dragon higher!
Kokuō, with its three tails, missed and crashed back to the ground. Then it raised its head and began charging another Tailed Beast Bomb!
"Is it because it's running on nothing but animal instinct, with no reason left to guide it?"
Ruohuo thought it over briefly, then decisively pulled away and began browsing through his stock of B-rank jutsu.
He'd originally planned to save up more jutsu and then choose the most suitable B-rank main skill for each situation.
But this Five-Tails was a little too rowdy.
If he got close to cast Genjutsu, he couldn't afford to get hit.
So, to help Kokuō calm down and get a better look at his chakra logo,
Ruohuo felt...
To complete his experiment here,
he needed to choose his B-rank main skill ahead of time.
Before you continue