Dragon looked at the giant square shaped hole with molten lava clinging to the edges. 'That was one hell of a jutsu. Too bad I couldn't see it for myself.'
He shook his head and headed for the lab that held his teachers captive. 'They were in a hurry. So they might have missed something. I need to make sure no one gets anything valuable from here.'
Dragon found the entrance. Just as he took a step forward to enter it, he got a system notification and his senses sent him danger signals.
[You have sensed killing intent]
Without wasting an instant, he disappeared and reappeared several meters away. He saw that Obito was standing where he stood with a sword thrust where his head was a moment ago.
Obito slowly lowered the blade and turned towards Dragon. "I had a suspicion but now you just confirmed it." His tone contained no emotion other than pure hostility. "You have a strong danger perception sense. And you can use the fourth Hokage's teleportation jutsu, can't you?"
Dragon had a frown behind his mask. "You guys are really starting to annoy me."
The masked man spoke, voice low. "Killing Hidan and Kakuzu. You've made quite a spectacle."
Dragon knew that Obito came for a battle this time but he had a mission to complete. "Get lost before I lose my temper."
Behind the mask, Obito's Sharingan narrowed and his relaxed stance showed a flicker of irritation. "Such insolence. If you knew my identity, you'd show fear, not bravado."
Dragon's lips curved into a tight smirk behind the red dragon mask. "I doubt it." Dragon's eyes held contempt as he looked at Obito. "You're just a nobody pretending to be a somebody."
A brief silence followed, broken only by the faint sound of debris settling around them. Obito tilted his head slightly and his visible eye narrowed. "You're more resourceful than I anticipated. It seems I was right afterall… You're a nuisance I need to get rid of." He spoke calmly but his tone held a cold edge. A moment later, killing intent immediately spiked from Obito.
Dragon looked at the masked enemy and recalled the night Obito killed his friend in the Uchiha clan. The second those memories came to the forefront of his mind, the air around him changed and shimmered with unconcealed rage and murderous intent.
But that killing intent was also a mask Dragon used to buy time. "Boss. I gotta problem!" He immediately contacted his creator.
"What?"
"Obito is here. And he's looking for a fight. I don't have much chakra left. I won't be able to get to the intelligence minister. Should I place a Mana tracker or our teleportation seal on him?"
Daichi meanwhile thought about what to do. He quickly came to a decision. "No. Too risky… Hmm… Forget about the minister. Just destroy the base and dispel. Once I'm done healing sensei, I'll get to him myself."
"Understood."
Just then without warning, Obito blurred forward with incredible speed and aimed a punch straight at his enemy's throat.
Dragon reacted instantly, channeling the last shreds of energy into his limbs and raised his hand to block the lethal strike. His Mana Armor skill flared to life and created an invisible barrier around his skin.
The masked Uchiha's fist slammed into Dragon's palm with explosive force and it sent shockwaves rippling outward. Thanks to the Mana Armor skill, Dragon was able to stop himself from being dispelled. But the force of the punch made him skid backward, feet digging deep trenches in the scorched earth.
'Just as I thought. He has considerable strength. Far more than even some elite ninjas who specialize in Taijutsu.' Dragon quickly reassessed. 'My chakra and Mana won't last long. I'll need to fight smarter.'
Dragon weaved seals and swiftly counterattacked. "Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!" He inhaled deeply and super heated his chakra before exhaling a giant searing fireball directly toward Obito.
The masked shinobi's Sharingan calmly analyzed the incoming blaze. He phased intangible at the last instant and let the scorching flames pass harmlessly through his body.
Dragon watched carefully. His eyes narrowed as he analyzed that peculiar jutsu. 'I can't beat him in my current state. Especially since he knows that I can teleport. And I don't have chakra to waste probing his phasing ability… Guess the best thing to do is send him on a wild goose chase.'
Dragon's hands flew through a set of seals and conjured up a sequence of Fire Jutsu that belonged exclusively to the Uchiha clan. 'Ren, I know you left these with me for Reo… But I'll have to put them to use right now. I hope you don't mind.'
"Fire Style: Crimson Barrage!" In an instant, multiple arcs of roaring flames shot outward in a sweeping wave. Heat rippled across the shattered land, turning the already-scorched earth into a molten hellscape.
Obito responded smoothly. He vanished into the swirling space for a moment, unaffected by the lethal flames. He reappeared behind Dragon with a hand extended in a vicious palm strike aimed at the clone's spine.
Dragon spun, raising an arm to block. The blow connected with a dull thud, sending a small shockwave that rattled Dragon's bones, but the Mana armor mitigated most of the damage.
'Damn it. My energy is getting low. I can't take much more like that without dispelling.' Despite what he was thinking, Dragon didn't show any weakness to his enemy.
Without further preamble, the two shinobi sprang into action, closing the distance between them in the blink of an eye. Their clash was a blur of motion. Fists and feet collided with bone-jarring force. Dragon's mana armor absorbed the brunt of the masked man's strikes, but he could feel the power behind each blow. But his own attacks phased through his opponent at critical times.
'His ability to become intangible is a real pain in the ass. Seeing it on TV was one thing but fighting this guy for real. What an annoying power. In my current state, I can't put too much pressure on this guy, let alone win. I'll have to use that jutsu as soon as possible.'
Dragon leapt back and broke away from the taijutsu exchange, forming rapid hand seals. Drawing upon the remnants of his chakra, he unleashed a series of Fire Release techniques inherited from the Uchiha clan's scrolls.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball jutsu!" he declared, expelling a massive sphere of roaring flames toward his adversary. The searing heat distorted the air, casting wavering mirages across the battlefield.
The masked man stood his ground, allowing the fireball to pass through his form harmlessly. As the flames dissipated behind him, he tilted his head slightly. "Is that all?" he inquired, almost mockingly. "It's useless."
"Huh, intangible ninjutsu… that's quite the trick," Dragon remarked, voice tight. 'He's better at close-range infiltration. I'll have to keep him at a distance.'
As the skirmish continued, Dragon felt the weight of exhaustion pressing upon him. His chakra reserves were nearly depleted from the earlier battles.
Obito, noticing Dragon's weakening state, stepped back, seemingly unhurried. "Your chakra is nearly exhausted. Give up, and I'll grant you a quick end."
Dragon scoffed defiantly, his chest heaving slightly. "The only thing I want from you is your life. And I'm gonna take it." With those words he immediately changed his tactics. Several smoke bombs immediately dropped around him. They exploded covering the whole area.
Obito was on guard seeing the change in the battle style. He suddenly sensed his enemy gathering a large amount of chakra. 'That's… There's no mistaking it. That's lightning nature chakra. Is he trying to counter my Kamui with lightning jutsu?'
Suddenly he saw dozens of rocks flying towards him from the smoke. 'Rocks? What is he doing?'
The masked Uchiha dodged with ease and kicked one of the rocks back towards its origin. The speed and force of the large object dispersed the smoke. The Uchiha looked ahead and saw that the area was empty.
His senses immediately alerted him that the enemy was far above in the air. Obito looked up and saw Dragon high in the sky sending a lightning bolt towards the clouds. 'He must have thrown a kunai and teleported… What exactly is he doing?'
The sky rumbled with harsh thunder and lightning.
Electricity crackled around Dragon's hand as he condensed his lightning chakra into a compact, spinning sphere. The ball of lightning pulsed with immense power, illuminating his body with a faint white halo.
'Such energy. What is that?' Obito's Sharingan focused on the small orb in Dragon's hand. It was a white orb the size of a palm with two small cores revolving inside. 'That jutsu… Why does it resemble Minato sensei's jutsu?' The masked Uchiha puzzled over the similarity.
High up in the air, Dragon raised his right hand and kept pouring every ounce of chakra he could muster into his palm. Stray bolts of electricity danced across the orb's surface. The two inner orbs revolved faster and faster around each other inside the bigger one and it made the sphere vibrate violently. Dragon's jutsu generated faint sonic booms with every pulse of those charged particles.
"That jutsu…" Obito's single visible eye widened slightly, sensing the dangerous magnitude of chakra building within Dragon's palm. 'It's almost like a tailed beast bomb.'
Even from a distance of nearly two hundred meters, Obito could feel the air around him hiss and crackle. 'That Jutsu has enough power to wipe out everything within several kilometers.'
Obito saw the lightning jutsu slightly expand in Dragon's palm. It seemingly pulled in static electricity from the clouds above and intensified the swirling black thunderheads.
Dragon looked down at Obito as he fell from the sky. 'If it were anyone else, this jutsu would have worked. But he can evade this with his Kamui… Still, this isn't about killing him. It's about sending a message.'
'Once released, this jutsu will reach its target within a fraction of a second. It's even faster than Sasuke's Kirin.' Dragon's palm glowed, the Rasengan whirling into a brighter, electric sphere. "You want to see it up close?" came Dragon's taunt. "Here! Take it!"
Obito recognized that the jutsu's point of impact was his head. 'Once it detonates, it'll blow the whole area sky-high.'
"Lightning Style…" Dragon murmured, his voice tinged with both exhaustion and fierce determination, "Divine Particle!"
Without hesitation, Dragon thrust his palm directly at the masked Uchiha. The concentrated lightning sphere erupted with power and it ejected instantly with a huge force, sending the falling Dragon in the opposite direction.
The small orb rocketed toward Obito at lightning speed. Small sonic booms shattered the quiet night as the projectile cut its path, crackling dangerously.
In a fraction of a second after its release, it struck the ground Obito was standing on. The masked Akatsuki member had made himself intangible the moment Dragon was about to launch his attack.
Arcs of electrical energy screamed through the air. It detonated instantly, erupting into a wave of destructive electricity.
The jutsu auto-expanded for dozens of meters, forming a large swirling barrier of lightning that swallowed everything in that zone. Rocks vaporized on contact and the air sizzled from intense heat and raw energy.
A thunderous boom shook the sky. Lightning roared upward in a massive pillar that extended to the heavens, an unstoppable pillar of white-blue electricity. The clouds above flashed, feeding even more lightning into the chaos.
Obito, who was in the dead center of the lightning cataclysm, had wide eyes and felt goosebumps on his body. His Sharingan recorded the terrifying energy that was being unleashed and it stunned him. 'It's as if a living storm had come to earth.'
Debris was launched for kilometers in every direction. The ground split wide, forming a crater so deep it revealed layers of bedrock. It was as if an enormous meteor had struck, or some cataclysmic quake had sundered the terrain. Sonic booms hammered the air, tearing at the environment.
The large energy of the Divine Particle Rasengan suddenly stopped expanding and began to compress. In seconds it became the size of a golf ball.
Obito looked at the small glowing orb of pure white energy in wonder.
Dragon, who landed on the ground hundreds of meters away, saw the scene and recalled the effects of the jutsu. 'Here comes the second detonation. No going back now.'
FLASH—BOOM!
In a flash of near-blinding brilliance, the small Rasengan exploded with power beyond imagination.
Boulders disintegrated into dust. The earth liquefied under intense electrical fields. An azure dome of raw power erupted and flared upward in a shape similar to a nuclear explosion's mushroom cloud.
The lightning instantly vanished after causing large scale destruction. But then suddenly a large shockwave expanded outward from the epicenter and began destroying everything in its path. The power of the shockwave alone destroyed nearby mountains and hills and brought them crumbling to the ground.
Dragon who didn't have any energy got dispelled in the aftermath, sending his memories to his creator and his shadow clone counterpart in the Land of Rice Paddies.
Obito meanwhile remained in his phased intangible state throughout the whole explosion. 'What an extraordinary jutsu. For a moment, I thought I would have to resort to Izanagi…'
He looked around and couldn't see any signs of Dragon. 'To think he possessed such a powerful destructive technique. It seems only Nagato or I can deal with him. He must have escaped the blast radius with his Teleportation jutsu... He'll be a tricky opponent to deal with.'
Obito stood silently amidst the aftermath, glancing briefly at the smoldering crater before turning away. " I underestimated you, Dragon…" 'I won't make that mistake again.'
He activated his Kamui and vanished into his private space, leaving only a devastated battlefield behind.
In the aftermath, the Hidden Stone sensor ninjas felt the overwhelming chakra explosion.
For the third time that night, they sensed the presence of powerful jutsus coming from two locations.
Alarms rang across the village and panic began spreading among the ranks of the ninjas in the know how.
—-----------
Author's Note:-
With this, the Land of Earth arc comes to an end. Now we follow Daichi and Tsunade in the Leaf. Mainly.
If you like my story and want to read ahead, then check out my P.a.T.R.E.0.N page. I've uploaded up to 30 additional chapters there.
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