The bloody mist was thick. Its sweet, metallic stench filled the air.
Blue lightning crackled around the Third Raikage, glaring white against the red mist.
He stared hard at the trench five hundred meters away.
It was empty. No one stepped out to form hand seals.
A thousand Kumogakure vanguard troops. Elite shinobi he had personally led into battle.
Before they could even get a clear look at the Konoha Ninja, they had been reduced to a field of steaming, mangled flesh.
Intestines hung from the dead grass. Blood had soaked the ground into a red swamp.
Four thousand Kumogakure troops remained in the rear, all packed together.
Those at the front stepped on their comrades' severed limbs as they desperately halted, afraid to advance.
The rumbling war drums had fallen silent. Only the wind and the wails of the dying remained on the plain.
The Raikage's eyelid twitched furiously.
Two streams of white vapor burst from his flared nostrils, blue sparks crackling within them.
He spun around.
His thick right arm shot out, and he seized his strategist Dodai by the collar.
Dodai was staring blankly at the scraps of flesh on the ground, his single eye vacant.
His collar tightened, and his hundred-plus-pound body was lifted clear off the ground with one hand.
"Cough..."
Dodai's eyes rolled back as he was strangled. He clawed desperately at the Raikage's thick fingers, trying to pry them apart.
"What was that?!"
The Raikage roared, spraying spittle all over Dodai's face.
"Those damn fire-spitting iron tubes! What kind of hidden weapons were they?!"
Dodai kicked wildly in midair, and the straw sandal on his left foot fell into a muddy puddle.
"I... I don't know." Dodai's face and neck had turned red from the pressure.
"There was... nothing about them in the intelligence."
"The scouts said Konoha was forging iron... building houses... They didn't say anything about ninja tools like these..."
"Useless!"
The Raikage swung his arm and slammed Dodai into the mud.
Dodai rolled twice before coming to a stop against a headless corpse.
Blood was still seeping from the corpse's neck, staining half of Dodai's sleeve.
He clutched his throat and coughed violently, spitting up a little blood-flecked phlegm.
The Raikage turned back.
He looked at the trench, where blue flames were still flickering.
The heavy machine guns' muzzle flashes lit the sky blue.
The dense gunfire sounded like hundreds of broken drums beating at once, making his chest go numb.
He refused to believe it.
When the Eight-Tails had gone berserk years ago, its eight tails had smashed half a mountain.
He had pinned the beast to the ground with his bare hands and broken its horn.
No one knew the limits of flesh and blood better than he did.
A few rusty iron tubes, firing hidden weapons from a mud pit.
And they thought they could drive Kumogakure back?
The Raikage's teeth ground together, and the flesh of his cheeks bulged into two hard lumps.
He slammed his hands together in front of his chest.
"Smack!"
A deafening sonic boom rang out.
Blue lightning erupted across his dark skin.
He pushed his Lightning Release Armor to its limit.
Thumb-thick arcs of electricity raced wildly around his body.
The dead grass beneath his feet was instantly scorched into black ash.
"Lord Raikage! It's dangerous!" Dodai scrambled up from the ground and reached for the Raikage's leg.
He missed, grabbing a handful of dry mud instead.
"How much damage can scrap metal with no Chakra fluctuations do?"
The Raikage glanced down at him.
"I'll go tear them apart. The army will follow!"
The moment he finished speaking, he moved.
The Raikage bent his knees, and the dry earth beneath his feet exploded into a pit half a meter deep.
Clods of dirt flew backward like buckshot, clattering against the bamboo armor of several Kumogakure shinobi.
He shot forward like a blue cannonball.
The air was forced aside, giving a piercing shriek.
In Konoha's trench.
Kagami Uchiha crouched behind the sandbags, the Sharingan in his left eye spinning furiously.
A trace of blood seeped from the corner of his eye from overusing his ocular power.
His large hand was slick with sweat as he gripped the radio, its plastic casing slippery.
"Eleven o'clock! The big guy covered in lightning!"
Kagami shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Concentrate fire! Blast him to pieces!"
In the trench.
Dozens of machine gunners immediately swung their barrels around.
The thick cast-iron barrels scraped against the sandbags with a grating screech.
The dark muzzles all pointed at the blue lightning racing toward them.
Triggers were pressed all the way down.
"Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!"
The machine guns roared again.
Dense blue lines of fire crisscrossed in midair, weaving a great net with no gaps.
It swept down toward the Raikage.
The Raikage did not dodge.
He was extremely fast, but the bullets were faster.
Three hundred meters from the trench.
The first Chakra armor-piercing round struck his Lightning Release Armor.
"Clang!"
A sharp metallic impact rang out.
Ripples spread through the blue light over the Raikage's chest, and sparks flew.
The bullet's terrifying kinetic force made his chest tighten.
His charging stride faltered almost imperceptibly.
These were no ordinary Kunai.
Every bullet struck with power no less than a direct hit from a C-rank Ninjutsu.
The Raikage's eyelid twitched.
Immediately afterward.
The second round. The tenth. The hundredth.
Bullets poured down on him like a rainstorm.
"Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang!"
The rapid impacts merged into one continuous sound.
The Raikage's entire body was engulfed in a dazzling ball of sparks.
The bullets battered deep dents into his Lightning Release Armor, its blue light flickering wildly.
The machine gunner was a civilian who had just received an injection of the enhancement drug.
His arms were thicker than before, but the gun barrel's vibrations still split the skin between his thumb and forefinger.
Blood ran down the wooden grip.
He braced the stock firmly and gritted his teeth, refusing to let go.
The Raikage pressed on through the hail of bullets.
Every bullet that struck his armor felt like a sledgehammer smashing into his chest.
His skin remained unbroken, but his internal organs churned from the impacts.
A sweet, bloody taste rose in his throat. He forcibly swallowed it back down.
"Get out of my way!"
The Raikage roared.
He pushed his Lightning Release Chakra to its limit. The lightning flared again, forcibly deflecting the bullets that came near him.
He plowed a deep furrow through the mud.
Still forcing his way forward.
Two hundred meters. One hundred meters.
The bullets' impact grew stronger and stronger.
The Raikage felt as though hundreds of sledgehammers were pounding his bones at once.
He breathed like a bull, white vapor streaked with blood bursting from his nostrils.
Fifty meters.
He could already make out the terrified faces of the machine gunners behind the sandbags.
He could smell the burnt stench of the gun barrels glowing red-hot.
The corners of the Raikage's mouth stretched into a ferocious grin.
He raised his right hand.
Four fingers pressed together, lightning gathering wildly at their tips.
Lightning Release Chakra was compressed to its limit, becoming a blinding white light.
The Strongest Spear. One-Finger Nukite.
"Just a few iron tubes!"
The Raikage drove off with both legs and leaped into the air.
Like a blue meteor falling from the sky, he hurtled toward Konoha's trench with the force to destroy everything.
"Watch me smash them all with my One-Finger Nukite!"
His roar drowned out the thunder of the heavy machine guns.
In Konoha's trench, several machine gunners released their triggers in fright and fell back into the mud.
Just then.
Without warning, the ground suddenly jolted upward.
"Boom!"
A deep, muffled crash rang out.
It was not the sound of the Raikage landing. It had come from far behind the trench.
The vibrations traveled through the earth.
Half the sandbags at the edge of the trench collapsed, spilling fine sand across the ground.
The Raikage's body faltered in midair.
The ground trembled at an ever-increasing frequency.
Even the heavy machine gun fire was drowned out.
In the windbreak forest behind the trench.
Several thigh-thick evergreens were brutally pushed over, the snapping wood cracking sharply.
Ten enormous shadows pushed the trees aside.
They slowly rose from behind the position.
Blue-gray steel bodies, five meters tall.
Their surfaces were covered in rough fish-scale weld seams and oversized rivets.
Massive tracks crushed the rubble on the ground, making a grating metallic screech.
Gears meshed within the machines, their clattering mechanical sounds making scalps tingle.
Ten Chakra Mechas.
The Four Symbols reactors in their chests gave off a low hum from the excessive power output, casting an eerie blue glow.
Their square steel heads dipped slightly.
"Hiss-"
Exhaust valves on their shoulders released scalding high-pressure steam, filling the air with white mist.
Twenty red electronic eyes of explosion-proof glass.
They lit up at once in the mist.
Through the gun smoke in the air.
They locked firmly onto the Raikage, who was still airborne with his right hand raised.