"Ino!"
The turn came too fast for anyone to catch. The Twelve who came to the Land of Gods were far stronger than they'd been back in the Leaf—yet here they were.
How could Ino–Shika–Cho with Lee and Kiba fail to take one Suigetsu? First, because Suigetsu was stronger than Kaede had expected—he and Mangetsu had clearly endured brutal training under Danzo. Like Sasuke, Suigetsu's ceiling was higher than imagined—just under Mangetsu's, and close to Sasuke's. With physical attacks meaningless against him, Lee, Choji, and Kiba were hard-countered.
It felt like fighting someone with invincibility toggled on—every blow passing harmlessly through.
Under those terms, five-on-one looking bad made perfect sense.
Shikamaru's mind spun. He was already simulating dozens of kill-lines on Suigetsu and calculating each outcome to the end. Only a Nara could do that mid-battle.
Across the arena, Gaara and Mangetsu were hammering each other—destructive techniques cracking the sky, detonations shuddering the stone.
Eyes drifted toward that duel. A few in the stands even started a betting pool on the winner.
More chips stacked on Gaara than on Mangetsu. Mangetsu's fame ran deep in the Water and among the Seven Swordsmen, but few knew his true limits. A jinchuriki, though—that was a top-tier force anywhere.
Some nations even treated tailed beasts as their ultimate weapons.
But this was no longer the old balance of five nations. The Land of Gods existed. Kaede had altered the Uchiha's fate—and the board shifted with it.
More dangerous than any tailed beast here was Kaede himself—this world's strongest. No one knew his full range. Not even Kaede. The longer he stayed in this world, the more skills he learned—many from beyond this world, spending no chakra at all. To shinobi, it looked like a man with endless secret arts and bottomless reserves.
A walking bug.
While the crowd fixed on Gaara and Mangetsu, everything changed again on the other front.
By sheer will, Neji had shaken off the Wedge's control and reclaimed himself. And, without notice, Shino's swarm had begun cultivating a strain capable of siphoning the chakra stored inside Mangetsu's Twin Flounder Blades. Their number was climbing by orders of magnitude; they only needed a little more time to breed to critical mass and suppress the blades' charge-release cycle.
Neji's eyes churned.
Pressure built behind his gaze; he shut them and sat, settling into a seated stance. Inside, two clashing chakras twisted and ground. He coaxed them into orbit—black and white, yin and yang—taught them to turn, to meet, to merge.
On the sand-scarred floor, Gaara's tail swept wide; in the spray and steam, Mangetsu's blades pulsed again—blue light breathing in and out like a second heartbeat.
Near the shattered pillars, Suigetsu held Ino in a prison of water and cocked his head at Shikamaru's team, utterly unbothered by claws, fists, or spin.
"Any smarter moves?" he drawled.
Shikamaru's eyes narrowed. A plan clicked into place—and for the first time since noon, the angle of the shadows began to matter.
(End of Chapter)
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