The tremor from deep within the earth was no longer a warning. It was the opening notes of destruction, already upon them.
"Vmmm—vmmm..."
The metal framework of the entire Energy Hub groaned under the strain. The beam beneath Mizuki Han shook violently, as if it would snap in two the very next second. Gravel and dust sifted down from the rock walls, and the air filled with the foul stench of ancient layers of stone stirred from their slumber.
This wasn't an ordinary tremor.
Mizuki Han's icy gaze fixed on the jōnin clad in a rock armor. He saw the ground beneath the jōnin's feet—the solid rock—churning and writhing like boiling porridge, defying the laws of physics.
An overwhelming pressure bore down from every direction—from beneath, from the walls, from the ceiling—crushing in with wild force.
"Earth Release: Moving Earth Core!"
The jōnin's hoarse voice rang clearly through the rumbling, like a god pronouncing judgment.
The instant the words left his mouth, the shape of the entire space began to twist before their eyes, horribly and unmistakably!
"Rumble—crack!"
The rock wall on the left bulged inward, crushing a row of massive metal pipes with a shrill screech of bending metal. The support Mizuki Han had just used as a foothold was squeezed into a U-shape like a flimsy toothpick.
The complex terrain he relied on to dart around was being erased at its very foundation by an unreasonable force!
This was no longer a "Ninjutsu attack." It was the strangling of space itself!
Mizuki Han's pupils contracted to pinpricks. His mind raced through calculations, but every optimal solution was ruled out one by one as the battlefield continued to shift and shrink.
His ice traps were a joke against the writhing ground. His speed advantage vanished in this desperate place with nowhere to stand.
The jōnin remained where he was, the center of this storm of destruction, the only "fixed point." He didn't even look at Mizuki Han again. He simply maintained his ancient hand seal and coldly controlled the earth, intent on crushing the annoying "rat"—and the space around him—into a pulp.
"Boom!"
Another deafening crash. The beam beneath Mizuki Han was launched skyward by a bulge of rock. In midair, he forced his body to twist. Just before he hit the ceiling, he kicked off the crushed and twisted wall, using the force to land on the other side.
But the spot he'd chosen—a stretch of ground that had been flat moments earlier—caved in just as he was about to touch down, forming a vicious pit.
There was nowhere to run!
The entire Energy Hub was turning into a shrinking meat grinder made of rock.
Mizuki Han's breathing grew ragged, not from fear but from the violent exertion and intense concentration rapidly draining his strength.
The thirty percent of his chakra he'd used to probe his opponent had run dry.
Deep in his core, the forty percent reserved as his trump card for a decisive strike and the thirty percent kept for emergencies flowed quietly, like two streams kept apart.
Should he use them?
The thought flickered through his mind, then he crushed it at once.
Use the chakra meant for a killing blow to attack? Against rock armor connected to the earth, that would be like throwing an egg at a stone. Use the chakra meant to keep him alive to escape? In a space sealed off and steadily shrinking, where could he possibly run?
A dead end.
A purer, more hopeless dead end than the one he'd faced against Kisame.
The grinding of the rock walls grew louder and closer. The space left to him was less than ten square meters.
A note of crazed resolve flashed in Mizuki Han's eyes.
If he couldn't find a way out, then he would... force a bloody path through from within!
He stopped dodging and chose a relatively stable, narrow corner that was about to be closed off by the walls on either side. He dropped to one knee, lowering his center of gravity as far as he could.
Then he made a decision that even the jōnin hadn't expected.
He poured the forty percent of his pure chakra reserved for a decisive strike into the meridians of his left arm, unleashing it like floodwater from a breached dam, without holding anything back!
"Gah—!"
An indescribable agony exploded from his left shoulder and swept through his entire body!
It wasn't the pain of a blade or a burn. It was the tearing agony of structural collapse, rising from the cellular level and the deepest reaches of his meridians!
Before, fine control over Ice Release had been like guiding a stream down its channel. Now he was forcing an entire ocean through a fragile capillary!
His left arm's meridians wailed under the onslaught of the chakra torrent, far beyond what they could withstand. Veins bulged beneath his skin, twisting like countless writhing earthworms.
Then the change began!
A terrible cold, not from the world outside but from the depths of his bloodline, started at his left hand and spread inward at a frenzied pace!
"Crack... crack..."
A faint sound, like glass breaking, came from his fingertips.
Mizuki Han looked down. The skin on his left fingertips was rapidly losing its color, turning pale and translucent, like jade sealed in ice for a thousand years.
The crystallization spread upward at a visible speed!
His palm, his wrist, his forearm...
The texture of his skin changed, and the structure of his flesh and blood rearranged itself. His arm was no longer warm and human. It was transforming into something cold, inorganic, and lifeless!
This was the backlash of pushing his Kekkei Genkai beyond its limits!
The price of power was laid bare before him in the cruelest, most tangible way!
The pain made his vision darken in waves, but he clenched his teeth, veins standing out on his forehead. There wasn't a hint of wavering in his cold, rational gaze. He could feel control over his left arm slipping away, could feel that part of his body "dying."
But he didn't care.
As long as he survived, he could pay with an arm—or even this entire body. Either could be sacrificed!
"Ice Release... Overload: Crystal Defense!"
He forced the words out through clenched teeth. His left hand, already half crystallized and glowing with a faint blue light, slammed into the ground beneath him!
"Boom—!!!"
An unprecedented frigid storm, carrying both destruction and rebirth, erupted from his palm!
This time, it wasn't a thin layer of frost or tiny Ice Shards.
Countless jagged, massive ice crystals gleamed with a bone-chilling light. Like a thornbush bursting from the depths of hell, they grew with savage force, spreading, piercing, and expanding in every direction!
They slammed into the advancing rock walls with a deafening crash!
They braced the collapsing ceiling, sending gravel and ice splinters spraying everywhere!
In just two seconds, a massive blue-white hemisphere, more than five meters in diameter and made of countless high-density ice crystals, forced open a domain of Mizuki Han's own in the space being crushed around him!
The rock's compression and the ice crystals' expansion—two entirely different forces—clashed in the narrow space with primitive, brutal intensity. The shriek of grinding and the sound of shattering rang without pause, as if they would tear the eardrums right out of anyone who heard them.
At the heart of the storm, the jōnin in rock armor finally stopped his technique.
His rock-encased head turned slightly. Surprise in his gaze, he looked through layer upon layer of ice at Mizuki Han, kneeling at the center of the sphere.
He wasn't surprised by the strength of this power, but by the madness and ruthlessness behind it—the willingness to destroy his own foundation.
"Burning away your life just to buy a moment to breathe..." Beneath his stone mask, the jōnin's lips curled into a cruel smile. "What a... foolish, yet valiant struggle."
Far from backing down, he increased his chakra output!
"If you want to die so badly, then I'll grant your wish!"
"Earth Core Movement: Final Compression!"
"Rumble—"
The space began shrinking twice as fast.
The ice-crystal hemisphere Mizuki Han had raised was instantly subjected to several times the pressure it had endured before.
"Crack! Crack-crack!"
Sharp snapping sounds came from all around the sphere. Jagged cracks spread rapidly across the sparkling ice like a spiderweb.
The refuge he'd bought with the "life" of half his arm was about to collapse!
"Pfft—"
Mizuki Han could no longer hold back. He spat out a mouthful of blood, splattering the ice before him like red plum blossoms blooming in snow, a horrifying sight.
He raised his left arm.
His entire forearm had lost all feeling. It had taken on the strange texture of blue crystal. Through its translucent surface, he could even see his meridians and bones, frozen into ice crystals within.
The arm was ruined.
Pain crashed over his taut nerves like a tide, nearly swallowing his consciousness whole.
Outside, the ice sphere shattered more and more rapidly. The rock walls, harbingers of death, crept closer inch by merciless inch.
With his left arm about to be ruined and his refuge about to crumble, could he still turn the tables?
Before you continue