Territory of a Giant Summoned Beast

The hollow was far larger than it had looked from outside.

Shinichi walked less than twenty paces inward with a kunai in hand when the roots above suddenly opened up—not because the hollow had widened, but because the entire underground space abruptly spread out, like a massive dome gouged from beneath the earth by a giant hand. Countless roots of varying thickness dangled from the ceiling, their tips emitting a faint blue glow that lit the cavern like the seafloor before dawn. The warm herbal fragrance in the air was so concentrated here that it felt almost tangible; every breath was like drinking a bowl of freshly simmered tonic soup. Thick silver-white moss carpeted the ground, and its texture had gone from "soft as cream" to "soft as stepping on clouds." Every footstep was completely silent.

The Slug Sage's split body's chakra was right in the center of the cavern. Shinichi could feel it—Yang Release, pure and gentle, like a luminous pearl buried in cotton. Its fluctuations were stable and slow. It was asleep.

Then another fluctuation appeared beside that chakra. Not Yang Release. It was Earth Release mixed with something cold and murky, something that felt neither animal nor mineral. The disturbance came from directly above the dome, rapidly drawing near with a faint rustling sound, like ten thousand fingernails scraping across a rock wall at once. Shinichi looked up. Through the gaps between the glowing roots, a pair of scarlet compound eyes slowly emerged from the darkness.

He shifted three steps to the left. He did not retreat; he changed his position. Whatever was coming down from above, staying where he was would result in being flattened into paste. This was one of the greatest lessons he had learned from fighting Tiger Mask—the cost of hesitating in place was higher than choosing any wrong direction to dodge.

The giant summoned beast fully emerged from the darkness above the dome. A centipede. It was over fifteen meters long by estimation, its body made up of hundreds of segments covered in dark purple carapace. Each segment had a pair of hooked legs on either side, their tips glinting an eerie green beneath the fluorescence—poisonous. The curved mandibles on its head were unpleasant enough, but what concerned Shinichi most were the scars left on its back: a long, deep old wound, with traces of pale golden mucus still clinging to its surface. That was slug mucus. This centipede had not merely passed through—it had fought a fierce battle with the Slug Sage's split body when it forcibly invaded this territory. Though it had ultimately occupied the cavern, the scar on its back showed that victory had not come easily.

The centipede was clearly not welcoming toward this new intruder. As it descended from the dome, its entire front half suddenly slammed down toward the ground. Its hundred legs exerted force at once, driving its massive body into a vicious spin in midair. The sharp tearing sound of its feet slicing through the air made Shinichi's eardrums ache. Shinichi had no intention of taking that blow head-on. Gale Body Flicker activated, and his body vanished from its spot a second before the legs struck, leaving behind a faint blue afterimage as he appeared more than ten meters away at the centipede's side. The moss beneath his feet cooperatively made no sound, making his landing as light as a leaf touching water.

The place where he had stood moments ago had been split into a deep trench several meters long. The moss along its edges had been burned black and curled up by venom, hissing as it released a pungent scorched stench.

So fast. Faster than Tiger Mask's Vacuum Blade.

Its body length of over ten meters made it difficult to fully spread out within the domed space, but the centipede used the advantage of its many segments to turn itself into a moving encirclement. Its front half relentlessly pursued Shinichi, while its rear half clung to the rock wall and circled back to cut him off. Its carapace scraped against stone, throwing up showers of sparks that shredded the pale blue shadows cast by the glowing roots. Shinichi noticed that the gaps between its segments were where the carapace was narrowest. The joints connecting its legs to its torso had no armor plating, only a thin layer of milky-white soft skin. Only the hardened shell itself had sufficient resistance to impacts; the joints and leg roots were natural weak points.

His left hand slipped into his ninja tool pouch, three shuriken pinched between his fingers. Wind Release chakra flowed into them. He twisted his wrist inward, coating their edges with the cutting force of Vacuum Blade, then flicked them out. The shuriken traced three arcs and precisely embedded themselves in gaps between three separate segments of the centipede's body. One lodged perfectly in an angle formed by overlapping carapace plates. The centipede's body trembled, and its movements paused slightly—then it charged onward. The wounds were too small; the damage was almost negligible. Its carapace was too thick. The shuriken embedded in the gaps looked like a few nails. They might have been deadly to an ant, but to a giant centipede, it was no more than a toothpick prick.

Shinichi leaped backward to avoid another crushing tail strike. While airborne, his mind had already run through all the battle data he had accumulated from enrollment to the Chunin Exams—Vacuum Blade was too ineffective against the carapace, kunai could not pierce the outer shell, and shuriken could not reach vital points. Any method capable of harming an enemy of this size needed both sufficient cutting depth and a wide enough area of effect. Aside from Vacuum Blade, he currently had only one move that met both conditions. A move he was not very proficient with. A half-finished technique. But there were no spectators around, and no teammates who might get caught in it by accident.

Then I'll give it a try.

After landing, he rapidly formed hand seals. Five seals. Chakra surged from his core into his arms—Water Release and Earth Release fused in his palms, then his Senju bloodline gave birth to a third power. The life force of Yang Release flowed into the mixed chakra like a stream, and the three natures intertwined as his chakra pathways trembled faintly. He slammed one palm against the ground.

"Wood Release: Vine Entanglement."

The ground split apart. Not in a single crack, but across a small area. More than a dozen dark green vines as thick as fingers burst from beneath the moss, pouncing at the centipede like a pack of snakes that had smelled blood. The first vines wrapped around four pairs of legs in its middle section, their tiny thorns hooking into the patterns of the soft skin between its segments. The centipede violently twisted its body, making the vines crackle as it tried to tear them apart. But the vines were far tougher than it had expected from a plant—thick sap flowed from the broken ends, and within seconds, new branches sprouted and wound back around it. This was a Wood Release vine. Not mere vines binding a target, but living restraints infused with vitality. Break one, and two grew back. The more it struggled, the tighter they wrapped.

Shinichi did not stop. His left hand continued pouring chakra into the vines, maintaining their relentless regeneration and tightening grip. At the same time, his right hand drew a kunai and infused its blade with Wind Release chakra, forming a thin edge of rapidly flowing air. Gale Body Flicker propelled him forward. The centipede's mandibles snapped down at him, but he used the vines for leverage in midair and shifted sideways to evade. After two consecutive leaps, he landed on the pale golden old scar—the wound left by the slug. The carapace there had not healed after all these years, and was far softer than the rest. He gripped the kunai in both hands, compressed Vacuum Blade to within three inches of the tip, and viciously drove it into the old wound.

The blade pierced the aged carapace, and the wind blade exploded inside the centipede's body. The centipede let out its first true scream of the day—not the previous hissing breaths, but a deep, agonized cry that shook the entire dome. Its rear half whipped wildly toward him, but the vines tightly restrained its middle section. Its legs flailed chaotically, and the airflow kicked up by its fore-mandibles sweeping over Shinichi's head severed a thick root nearby. Fluorescent fragments drifted down from the break in a soft shower.

Shinichi pulled out the kunai and jumped back, widening the distance as nearly a hundred legs gradually stopped struggling. The light in its compound eyes dimmed until only a faint scarlet glow flickered intermittently. It was not a fatal blow. The intense pain of having its old wound torn open again had made the old centipede surrender. It lay sprawled across the moss, breathing heavily as white steam poured from two rows of spiracles along its body. Shinichi crouched beside its head and placed a hand against its carapace, confirming that its heartbeat had slowed. The giant centipede's compound eyes weakly shifted, then slowly closed. It had remained here because the scent of slugs eased the pain of its old wound. It had driven away intruders so it could recover in peace. Now that it could neither win nor flee, it simply stopped fighting.

After confirming that the centipede would no longer attack, Shinichi quickly crossed over its body and headed toward the dense cluster of roots at the center of the cavern. When he had summoned the vines earlier, he had felt another chakra resonating with his own. It was not a response on the chakra level, but the Hashirama Cells in his body from the system's bloodline repository had stirred faintly. The First Hokage's cells he had obtained from Kinoe had already passed through their initial adaptation period with him. Now, they had been completely awakened by the Wood Release unleashed by a descendant of the Senju Clan. Unlike the awkward feeling of sprouting buds from a dead stump before, the speed, power, and regenerative ability of this Vine Entanglement far exceeded what it had shown during practice. Actual combat truly was the best—and cruelest—measure of Wood Release.

At the center of the cavern, beneath an ancient wall of roots, lay a faintly glowing white silhouette in peaceful repose. The Slug Sage's split body was unharmed, still asleep.