Having made preparations in advance, Shikamaru, Naruto Uzumaki, and the rest of their eight-person party crossed the sea smoothly and reached land.
Unexpectedly, they had not encountered a single enemy along the way.
Shikamaru had thought Otsutsuki Toneri would seize this opportunity to send large numbers of puppets to intercept them at sea.
He had not expected their opponent to pass up the opportunity and allow them to reach land unopposed.
That was strange!
But he could not figure out the other party's thinking just then, so he could only continue according to plan.
The group walked through the lush forest.
"Found anything?"
"This forest just feels a little too eerily quiet."
At Shikamaru's question, Hōmon Hyuga scanned their surroundings with his Byakugan.
In an instant, he spotted large numbers of puppets hidden in the forest.
Strangely, however, these puppets showed no intention of attacking them.
Hōmon told everyone about this strange phenomenon.
"Let's change direction and go straight to them!" After a moment's consideration, Shikamaru immediately changed the plan.
Hearing this, the others immediately followed Hōmon's directions and rushed toward the puppets at high speed.
"Wait... the puppets are retreating. They're moving away from us!" Noticing something was wrong, Hōmon immediately explained the situation.
Naruto looked at Shikamaru. "Should we keep chasing?"
These puppets were not slow, but if Naruto got serious, not one of them would be able to escape his tracking range.
Now it was up to Shikamaru to decide what to do.
"There's no need." Shikamaru shook his head.
He could now see what Toneri intended: he was not planning to use the puppets to stop them.
Since that was the case, there was no need for them to waste time here either.
With Naruto around, these puppets could not really do them much harm.
But