Ten five-meter-tall blue-gray mechs straightened up at once.
They looked like ten iron towers pulled from the mud.
Their massive steel bodies blocked out the light, casting a broad, heavy shadow in front of the trench.
It fell right over the Third Raikage in midair.
The Raikage's vision darkened.
Twenty red electronic eyes stared fixedly at him through the white mist. There was no killing intent, only the coldness of a mechanical scan.
The gaze, utterly devoid of life, made his scalp tingle.
His charge through the air faltered for half a beat.
What the hell are these things?
The corner of the Raikage's eye twitched violently. Kumogakure's blacksmiths had been working iron for thirty years, yet the best they could make were Ninja Blades two feet long.
These five-meter-tall lumps of iron, with fist-sized rivets on their surfaces, were completely beyond anything he had known in his decades of life.
But he was in midair, with nowhere to plant his feet.
The arrow was already on the string. There was no turning back.
The Raikage ground his teeth and swallowed the taste of blood in his mouth.
"I don't care what kind of scrap metal you are!"
The Raikage roared, his voice exploding beneath the overcast sky.
He poured all the Chakra in his body into his right index finger, heedless of his life.
The blue lightning was compressed to its limit. A blinding white light shone at his fingertip. The surrounding air was ionized by the high voltage, giving off a strong smell of ozone.
Strongest Spear. One-Finger Nukite.
He put his waist into it, forcibly twisting his body in midair.
His fingertip let out a piercing whistle as it tore through the air and stabbed hard at the shin armor on the nearest mech's right leg.
"Clang-!!!"
A colossal metallic blast rang out.
It was like a massive iron hammer weighing hundreds of pounds smashing into a hollow bronze bell.
The sound waves spread out like tangible ripples. A Konoha Genin in the nearby trench felt a stabbing pain in his ears. He hurriedly dropped the ammunition belt in his hands and fell into the mud, clutching his ears.
Sparks flew.
Blinding orange-red sparks sprayed in every direction like a waterfall, lighting the Raikage's rugged face in flickering flashes.
The Raikage's finger pressed hard against the blue-gray steel armor.
He felt as though he had struck a solid mountain.
An excruciating pain shot through his knuckle. His fingernail split apart, and blood dripped from his fingertip, only to be vaporized into white smoke by the heat of Lightning Release before it hit the ground.
His prized Strongest Spear-that finger had once pierced the Eight-Tails' horn.
Now,
it had only left a fist-deep dent in the mech's special steel armor, which was two fingers thick.
The steel plate around the dent glowed red from the heat and even showed signs of melting.
But it hadn't been pierced.
Not a single hydraulic line behind the armor had been damaged.
The Raikage's eyes widened.
His breath stopped, and his broad nostrils ceased to vent air.
Impossible. How could there be iron in the Shinobi World that I can't pierce? I could even kick down the daimyo's treasury doors!
Inside the mech's cockpit,
the civilian Chunin was thrown against the back of his seat by the impact. His chest tightened, and he nearly brought up a mouthful of acid.
He glanced in panic at the damage indicator on the control panel. The red light wasn't on.
He swallowed and gripped the pig-iron control lever tightly with both hands.
He yanked it hard to the left.
The exhaust valve on the mech's right shoulder-
"Hiss!"
A jet of scalding, high-pressure steam burst out. It shot into the sky, scattering a few circling crows.
The massive mechanical arm swung in a wide arc.
Gears meshed, and the hydraulic piston let out a piercing scrape.
The giant steel fist, weighing several tons, swept across with violent momentum like a battering ram. The pressure of the wind flattened the dead grass on the ground.
The Raikage was still in midair, his previous burst of strength spent and his next yet to come. He had no way to push off and dodge.
He could only grit his teeth and raise his left arm to block.
"Bang!"
The steel fist struck the Raikage squarely.
The blue glow of his Lightning Release Armor dimmed sharply, like a candle flickering in the wind.
The Raikage felt as though a mountain had flown into him.
The ulna in his left arm gave a pained groan.
His whole body flew backward like a batted baseball.
He sailed over the muddy ditch and over the trench.
Then he slammed into the plain fifty meters away.
"Boom."
The impact blasted a large crater into the ground and sent dirt flying.
The Raikage tumbled more than a dozen times across the hard, dry earth.
His body plowed a trench half a meter deep.
He snapped two dead tree stumps and tore up a broad patch of turf before finally coming to a stop.
Behind the trench,
a modified jeep was parked beside the windbreak.
Orochimaru stood on its hood, his white coat covered in black engine-oil stains.
He held up a large tin megaphone.
As he watched the Raikage get sent flying by a single punch,
a dry, raspy laugh rolled out of Orochimaru's throat.
"Heh heh heh..."
His laughter grew louder, carrying a twisted frenzy born of having his worldview overturned.
He pressed the tin megaphone tightly to his mouth.
Then he switched on the amplifier.
"The times have changed, Lord Raikage!"
Orochimaru's voice was amplified through the loudspeaker.
Accompanied by rough electrical static, it echoed across the open plain.
It drowned out the distant wind and the screams from the Kumogakure camp.
"Where's that Taijutsu you're so proud of?"
Orochimaru's hand trembled around the megaphone. He gripped it so hard that his knuckles turned white.
"What good is all your Chakra training? How hard are your bones?"
He bellowed toward the battlefield.
"How can flesh and blood stand up to industrial machinery?!"
On the plain,
the Raikage lay at the end of the gouge.
He coughed twice, and a mouthful of dark blood welled up in his mouth. Bloody foam clung to his chin.
His left arm was swollen as thick as his thigh. It hung limply in the mud, and he couldn't lift it.
He braced his right hand against the ground. His palm scraped through the mud twice as he struggled to get up.
The Lightning Release Armor around him flickered, its electric sparks making a faint crackling sound.
He stared fixedly at the ten steel behemoths lined up in the distance.
Orochimaru's taunts over the loudspeaker were like a series of resounding slaps across his face.
They stung.
He refused to believe it.
He stomped hard with both feet, driving Chakra deep into the ground.
Blue electricity spread rapidly through the soil like hundreds of glowing venomous snakes and crawled up the tracks of the lead mech.
The current raced up the steel, attempting to disrupt the machinery inside.
The mech didn't react.
Its red electronic eyes didn't even flicker. Its mechanical arm rose as before, taking a defensive posture.
When Orochimaru had built these things, he had already fitted them with thick layers of insulation.
The chassis was connected to a grounding wire. As soon as the paralyzing Lightning Release current reached it, it was conducted into the earth through the wire, leaving only a few scorched black marks in the mud.
The Raikage bit through his lip. The taste of blood spread through his mouth.
Lightning Release was useless.
The speed he took pride in had become a joke before these tracked monsters weighing dozens of tons.
Charge in and fight them hand-to-hand?
That last strike had already broken his right index finger. The pain was excruciating.
This deep frustration was worse than taking a blade to the chest.
Decades of combat experience had been rendered useless against these unreasonable lumps of iron.
All that ninja honor, all that mastery of Lightning Release-
it had all been crushed into the mud beneath steel tracks.
The Raikage breathed heavily and clenched his right fist.
Since he couldn't break through their defenses, he would throw his life at them. He was the king of Kumogakure; he absolutely could not retreat before this pile of junk.
He prepared to squeeze out the last of his Chakra and charge once more.
Just as he lowered his center of gravity, ready to risk his life,
high in the sky overhead,
a tremendous blast of air suddenly sounded.
"Boom!"
It was as though a meteor had ripped through the air. The piercing sonic boom shook the dead grass on the ground flat against the mud.
A dark figure, trailing a suffocatingly violent blast of wind,
crashed into the center of the battlefield like a meteorite.