He grinned, his smile carrying an almost crazed excitement. "But how long can you dodge?"
He drew in a sharp breath, then abruptly opened his mouth.
"ROAR!!!!"
A deafening roar erupted from his throat, but it was no ordinary sound! Chakra mingled within that roar, along with purple energy and some ancient, primal frequency.
Wherever the sound waves passed, the air warped and compressed, forming concentric ripples visible to the naked eye that spread in every direction!
The sandy ground looked as though an invisible, gigantic wheel had rolled over it. Sand grains were blown away and hurled upward, forming a wall of sand dozens of meters high that surged toward Sōkyū Hatake like a tsunami!
Behind the sand wall, the purple roots activated by the sound waves burst wildly from deep beneath the sand. Like an enormous army made of roots, they swept around Sōkyū Hatake to encircle him!
"A sonic attack combined with a root encirclement." A trace of appreciation flashed in Sōkyū Hatake's eyes. "Your combat intelligence really is quite good."
He did not dodge. He raised his right hand, palm forward, and gently pushed.
"Electromagnetic field: repulsion."
An invisible force field erupted from his palm, spreading straight ahead at supersonic speed. That force field was not a barrier, but a pushing force! What it pushed aside was not the air, not the sand grains, or even the roots themselves, but the space between them and Sōkyū Hatake.
Within the area swept by the force field, every object-whether sand grains, roots, or even sound waves-was forcibly pushed away from Sōkyū Hatake, deflecting toward either side along curved trajectories. It was as though an invisible, gigantic blade had cleaved everything coming toward him down the middle, diverting it.
The sand wall split in two ten meters in front