Chapter 58: Lightning Style: False Darkness!
"An opponent of this caliber... and that waste of space, Saiki, actually had to request support from Lord Danzo. Pathetic," the wolf-masked Root ninja thought with utter contempt. Watching Watanabe Musashi flee in disarray from their four-man assault, he felt a sense of complete control.
Watanabe Musashi ducked behind a large tree, his face pale and his breathing heavy. The battlefield around him was already unrecognizable. The ground was scarred with craters and fissures, and chunks of upturned earth bore the marks of scorching flames and cutting blades.
Aren't Konoha's Wind Style users supposed to be rare? So why did two of them just show up here? Watanabe thought, realizing he was in trouble. He didn't stop to consider that Root operatives were "geniuses," hand-picked and cultivated by Danzo from a young age. Encountering a few Wind Style users among them was perfectly normal.
As everyone knows, Lightning Style is weak against Wind Style. This is especially true at long range, where Wind Style completely neutralizes Lightning's effectiveness. Wind Style combines destructive power, lethality, and control, making it exceptionally versatile at all ranges. While Lightning Style's power can rival Wind's, it is almost exclusively effective at close-to-mid range. Once an opponent created distance, Watanabe was stuck in a situation where he could only passively defend, unable to get close.
His entire arsenal—his swordsmanship and his Lightning Style—required close proximity to be effective. As the distance grew, his Lightning Style's destructive power plummeted, and its paralysis-inducing secondary effect became useless, as both its intensity and accuracy decayed rapidly. If he continued to be kited like this, his stamina would drain, and his situation would become critical.
He was out of options.
WHOOSH!
Dodging another barrage of long-range ninjutsu, Watanabe Musashi charged, breaking cover and rushing the wolf-masked Jonin. But the moment his target was clear, the Root operatives predicted his path.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!"
"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
The four Root ninja, including their Jonin leader, formed seals in perfect sync, unleashing another combination jutsu without a single word. While not as powerful as the previous twelve-man jutsu, it was more than enough to incinerate the ten-meter radius around him.
BOOM!
The inferno, fueled by the wind, roared toward him. A trace of helplessness flashed in Watanabe's eyes. It was impossible to dodge an attack of this scale with speed alone, and even trying risked being caught in the blast's periphery.
Body Flicker Technique!
The instant before the flames consumed him, he formed the seal and vanished. He reappeared twenty meters in front of the wolf-masked ninja but didn't continue his charge. He knew the Root operatives would react instantly and intercept him with more ninjutsu.
Is this the best I can do... he thought, disappointed. But his feet didn't stop, moving in an erratic pattern to throw off his enemies' aim. The Root operatives were elite. He knew the moment he reappeared, the others would have his position.
Violent explosions erupted right behind him, the light of the flames silhouetting him against the chaos. Debris rained down around him, painting him as a lone hero charging into the fray.
His hands began to fly through seals. He knew he only had one chance.
Blue arcs of electricity began to crackle around him, like thousands of fireflies in the night, banishing the darkness. Chakra from his entire body surged into his hands, forming two orbs of lightning so dense they glowed a stark white. A shimmering, unstable halo surrounded the orbs—a vacuum created as the sheer density of the chakra tore at the air itself. The world seemed to fall silent, the only sound the faint, sharp crackle of electricity.
The Root operatives' eyes widened in alarm at the sight of this ultimate jutsu. They instantly halted their pursuit and began to fall back, including the wolf-masked Jonin, who wanted no part of such a powerful attack.
Watanabe pushed his palms forward. The compressed torrent of lightning found its release. Two massive, purplish-black spears of electricity erupted from his hands, spreading across the land like divine judgment.
"Lightning Style: False Darkness!" he roared, unleashing the full-power attack at the wolf-masked Jonin.
A world-illuminating flash!
A brilliant light, infinitely brighter than the Root's fire jutsus, exploded outward. Everyone for miles around instinctively squeezed their eyes shut, but it was no use. The intensity was so great it felt like staring directly into the sun, a searing pain burning their eyelids.
CRACK-THOOOM!
Only after the flash did the sound of a massive thunderclap arrive. The lightning had moved faster than sound.
The world was lit like day for two long seconds. Then, the forest and earth at the point of impact detonated. A rumbling explosion echoed to the heavens. A cloud of dust dozens of meters high rose up, pushed outward by the shockwave like a tidal wave, rapidly enveloping the entire battlefield.
All other fighting in the area stopped, paused by the sheer power of Watanabe Musashi's single attack.
In their own separate battles, the heavily wounded Tanabe Kaze and Watanabe Toneri exchanged a glance and immediately turned to flee. They had been smart enough to turn and shut their eyes at the first flash, so they were neither blinded by the light nor paralyzed by the stray electricity arcing through the air.
A massive area of the battlefield was now just scorched earth, littered with splintered wood and pulverized rock. The acrid smell of ozone and ash filled the air, and small fires flickered everywhere.
"Cough... cough!"
At the very edge of the blast radius, the wolf-masked Jonin struggled to his feet, pushing himself up from his knees. His arms hung limply at his sides. His uniform was in tatters and his mask was gone, revealing the cold face of a man in his thirties. He was covered in dirt and grime, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, looking utterly wretched.
His exposed skin was a mass of raw, bleeding wounds. The arms he had used to shield his head were charred beyond recognition. And this was after he had managed to avoid the direct center of the blast.
"What terrifying Lightning Style," the Root Jonin thought, his heart still pounding. "If that had hit me directly, I would have been vaporized..."
For the first time, his cold, indifferent eyes showed a flicker of genuine fear. No one is truly fearless, not even a member of the soulless Root.