When the battered fleet narrowly made it through the tsunami's wall of water.
Only then did they discover, to their horror, that despite paying such a devastating price, the fleet had advanced less than three hundred meters. At least two thousand meters of deadly waters still lay between them and the landing point.
Looking back, they saw that the once-vast fleet had already lost a quarter of its ships.
Broken planks and bobbing corpses littered the sea, staining the water scarlet in an instant.
Gaara's gaze flickered, and a chill unlike anything he had ever felt shot from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.
If the fighting continued like this, more than half the allied forces would probably die before they even touched a brick of Kirigakure!
Watching this, Gekkō Raito nodded slightly. "Quick reactions. You managed to weather the first wave. Now, how about the next appetizer?"
A cruel smile curled his lips.
In an instant, the surging waters directly ahead stirred again. Towering columns of water shot skyward, like tentacles reaching up from a giant beast beneath the sea.
With a piercing freezing sound, those rising columns solidified in an instant under the bitterly cold chakra.
In the blink of an eye, countless sharp ice spikes filled the waters like a forest of thorns, completely sealing off the once-open shipping lane.
Trying to force a ship through... was nothing but a pipe dream.
The Kage aboard the ships looked utterly grim as they stared at the Ice Crystal Forest ahead.
By conventional tactics, this battle was already impossible to fight. This was an insurmountable natural barrier.
Never mind conquering Kirigakure; whether they could even breach these overlapping defensive lines was in question.
Fortunately, they had mustered the strength of the entire shinobi world