Kiyohara had only used his Steel Release to harden his right forearm and his torso, specifically protecting the densest and most critical meridian systems within his chest cavity. He chose not to harden his legs, as full-body coverage would drain his chakra reserves exponentially.
The ear-piercing sound of metal clashing echoed through the dark forest.
Yamagami Haku's pupils shrank to pinpricks. The massive, chakra-infused greatsword he swung with all his might had actually been caught by a bare hand.
That's right, caught!
How is this physically possible?! Is it the Earth Spear jutsu?!
In the microsecond of Yamagami's absolute shock, Kiyohara stepped into his guard. The pitch-black Tachi in his left hand slid effortlessly between the Jonin's ribs.
Cough!
The Kirigakure Jonin staggered back, his greatsword slipping from his numb hands and hitting the mud.
Kiyohara didn't even look at the falling weapon. Any ninja tool he touched could be instantly magnetized, unless the enemy constantly flooded it with their own chakra to wash away his magnetic signature.
With a subtle pull of his left hand, the broad-bladed greatsword suddenly spun backward. It flew rapidly through the air like a massive boomerang, crossing paths with Kiyohara's black Tachi.
Two Mist Chunin attempting to flank him from behind were cleanly sliced in half at the waist by their own captain's greatsword.
From the initial supersonic charge to the complete crushing of the three vanguard squads, the entire tactical process took no more than fifteen seconds.
Kiyohara stopped and panted slightly.
Continuous, high-speed supersonic movement and lethal combat had taken a significant toll on his stamina. But it was mathematically worth it.
His sensory network detected dozens of Kirigakure ninja rapidly closing in on his position. Kiyohara knew his goal had been achieved; he had successfully drawn the aggro of the flanking units away from the retreating Konoha caravan.
But it wasn't enough. He needed to create even greater chaos and harvest more military merit.
While there were a massive number of enemies closing in, he had to farm as many points as possible before he exhausted himself.
With his current supersonic speed, lethal swordsmanship, and the absolute margin for error provided by his Steel Release armor, he was essentially a humanoid weapon.
This meant a high-speed harvest.
The vast majority of ninja were glass cannons. It was like two raw eggs fighting with sledgehammers; no matter who got hit first, they would shatter into pieces.
These Mist ninja were the same.
Now, he just needed to maximize his killing efficiency.
"Alright. Let's start the next round," Kiyohara smiled behind his mask.
Under the furious gazes of the arriving Kirigakure reinforcements, Kiyohara bit his right index finger, dropped to a knee, and slammed his bloody palm onto the dirt.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Poof!
A massive cloud of white smoke exploded. As it cleared, there was a subtle, optical squirming sensation that almost perfectly blended into the burning environment. If Kiyohara didn't have a direct chakra tether to the beast, he might have found it difficult to instantly lock onto its exact coordinates.
The massive, fifteen-foot-long Chameleon appeared at his feet. The colors and patterns on its scaly skin shifted like flowing water, rapidly rendering the surrounding scene of scorched earth, dead wood, and pooling blood to achieve near-perfect optical invisibility.
The feral wildness in its reptilian eyes had completely faded, replaced by absolute, traumatic fear honed through brutal discipline.
Spare the rod, spoil the child! Naturally, the rod could also produce a highly compliant, tactical Summoned Beast.
"Spread this powder as evenly as possible. Once you see the mist thinning out, replenish it immediately," Kiyohara ordered coldly.
He quickly unsealed several thick, heavy canvas bags from his hip scroll. Inside was pure, industrial quicklime powder. The amount was massive, costing Kiyohara a significant portion of his cash reserves.
Kiyohara pulled down his specialized, filtered black mask to avoid inhaling the lime powder himself.
The Invisible Chameleon nodded silently. Its huge maw bit down on the heavy canvas bags as it began to move silently through the trees. A giant Summoned Beast's physical constitution was vastly superior to a human's; although the quicklime powder caused a stinging sensation on its gums, it was within acceptable limits.
Almost simultaneously, two more Kirigakure squads flanked him from the left and right. Over a dozen ninja, led by at least two elite Jonin, rushed into the clearing. Seeing Kiyohara alone, absolute killing intent flashed in their eyes.
"Surround and execute him! Don't let his Summoned Beast—!"
Before the Jonin could finish his order, a massive cloud of blinding white dust suddenly exploded in the air directly to their left!
"Cough! What the hell is this?!"
"My eyes! Agh, my eyes are burning!"
Under the Chameleon's precise, invisible spitting, the highly corrosive quicklime powder completely enveloped the three ninja on the left flank.
Quicklime violently boils upon contact with water. The faces of ninja in intense combat inevitably produce sweat, and their eyes produce tears. The chemical reaction was instantaneous and agonizing.
"It's quicklime powder! Watch out for the invisible Summon! It's blinding us!"
The Jonin on the right flank reacted flawlessly, immediately weaving seals. "Wind Release—!"
A violent gale blew away a portion of the concentrated lime mist, but the chaotic air currents only caused the fine dust to spread further across the clearing. Dozens of Mist ninja were forced to tightly shut their eyes or cover their faces with their cloaks to avoid chemical burns.
Kiyohara moved exactly at this moment, cutting silently into the chaotic, blinded crowd on the left.
A flash of a black blade. A bright red line bloomed across the throat of a Chunin desperately rubbing his burning eyes.
With a fluid backhand strike, the chest of a ninja frantically waving a kunai blindly in the air was pierced completely through.
Kiyohara didn't linger in the pocket. Once a lethal strike landed, he immediately utilized magnetic repulsion to retreat far away, disappearing back into the white mist.
Before falling back, he also quickly stripped the corpses, rapidly stuffing their tactical vests and encoded scrolls into his high-capacity sealing scroll.
The Invisible Chameleon spat out another heavy bag of lime in a different direction. Another massive cloud of corrosive white mist exploded.
"Over there!"
"Water Release: Water Encampment Wall!"
The Kirigakure ninja began to deploy defensive jutsu frantically, but the lime powder was omnipresent. Even more terrifyingly, completely blinded, they had absolutely no idea which direction the next supersonic attack would come from.
Only Sensor-type ninja, relying entirely on their chakra perception with their eyes closed, could track Kiyohara's movements through the mist. But even if they sensed him, their physical neural reflexes simply didn't have the time to stop him!
Under the absolute cover of the chemical mist, Kiyohara specifically, ruthlessly targeted the Chunin and Genin in the chaos.
A Kirigakure Chunin who had just finished flushing his eyes with water from his canteen looked up, only to see a pitch-black blade tip enlarging rapidly in his pupils.
Blood flowers bloomed one after another in the white fog.
Kiyohara's speed formed an absolute, suffocating suppression on the battlefield. He was like a ghost swimming in a sea of mist, every flick of his blade bringing a splash of crimson.
"Damn it! This cowardly bastard is specifically targeting the weak!"
"Form a tight defensive perimeter! Do not scatter!"
"Find that invisible lizard and kill it!"
The Kirigakure command voices began to break with panic.
They had already lost over fifteen men, yet they hadn't even touched the hem of Kiyohara's flak jacket. What frustrated them to the point of madness was that Kiyohara absolutely refused to fight the Jonin head-on.
Once he sensed a massive, Jonin-level chakra signature approaching, he immediately turned and violently pounced on the "soft persimmons" on the opposite side of the formation.
"Coward! If you have the guts, fight us head-on!" a Kirigakure Jonin roared in fury, weaving rapid seals. "Water Release: Twin Water Dragons!"
Two massive, roaring water dragons intertwined and lunged directly at Kiyohara's position in the mist.
Kiyohara didn't even look at the dragons. Magnetic force erupted under his boots, his figure violently dodging the hydro-impact while his left hand flicked, shooting three kunai rigged with explosive tags toward a Chunin squad attempting to form defensive seals on the other side.
BOOM! BOOM!
Screams rose again.
"Keep pressing him! His chakra reserves can't possibly be infinite!" another Jonin gritted his teeth, tracking Kiyohara's fading chakra signature.
Indeed, Kiyohara was beginning to feel the agonizing burn of chakra exhaustion.
High-speed supersonic movement, maintaining Steel Release armor, magnetic field manipulation, and applying Wind and Lightning enhancements to his blade—the compounding chakra drain for these high-level techniques was terrifying.
If he didn't currently possess three times the chakra capacity of an elite Jonin, he would have collapsed from exhaustion ten minutes ago.
As it stood, less than a quarter of his reserves remained.
'That's about enough...'
Kiyohara's eyes narrowed. He suddenly engaged the Body Flicker, leaping back over fifty meters and temporarily disengaging from the active combat zone.
He dropped behind a thick boulder. He immediately grabbed several military soldier pills and three blocks of highly compressed, calorie-dense beef jerky from his pouch, wolfing them down dry and chasing them with half a canteen of water.
Then, he sank his consciousness directly into his mental space.
Right now, the interior of Kiyohara's mind was almost like a crowded ancestral hall. Anyone who didn't know better would think his entire family lineage was gathered here.
Kiyohara found the stone urn of the Iwa Spirit and tapped it violently with his mind.
'Wake up, old man. Time to work!'
As soon as the Iwa Spirit drifted out of the Urn, he saw his past self gorging on dry rations behind a rock, his stomach visibly bulging.
"?"
The Iwa Spirit looked at Kiyohara, then looked at the dozens of furious Kirigakure ninja continuously swarming their position, thoroughly confused.
Corpses were scattered across the mud, blood pooling in the craters. The air was thick with the deafening roar of Tailed Beast artillery and the screams of dying men.
His past self, at this very moment of apocalyptic combat, was... eating a snack?
The Iwa Spirit looked at Kiyohara with an expression that clearly said, 'You must be joking.'
"What exactly are you doing?" the Iwa Spirit asked, floating behind him.
'Replenishing physical calories and refining chakra,' Kiyohara responded mentally while chewing aggressively. 'Just like the Nine-Tails helping Naruto, I need you to hijack my biological systems and speed up this metabolic process.'
The Iwa Spirit was silent for a moment, instantly understanding Kiyohara's tactical intent.
When the spiritual body possessed him, it could exert 100% of the physical body's genetic potential—including artificially boosting the digestive system and cellular metabolism to their absolute, theoretical limits.
"Are you sure? Forcing hyper-metabolism will put a massive, agonizing strain on your internal organs."
'It's infinitely better than running out of chakra and getting my head chopped off,' Kiyohara swallowed the last piece of beef jerky.
If the Iwa Spirit refused to help, Kiyohara would have to abort the mission and retreat to the inland base now. If he helped, Kiyohara could continue to reap more military merits.
"They're about to surround our position," the Iwa Spirit noted. "Fine. As you wish."
The Iwa Spirit said no more. The translucent spiritual body slowly sank into Kiyohara's physical vessel.
In an instant, Kiyohara felt a world-shaking, agonizing change occur within his biology.
The speed of his stomach's peristalsis increased exponentially. The dense, high-calorie food he had just ingested was violently broken down and absorbed into his bloodstream at an impossible, terrifying speed.
The raw nutrients were instantly converted into physical energy. That energy flooded into his cells, violently combining with his massive spiritual energy to forge new chakra, continuously replenishing his almost dried-up meridian system.
The heavy, dragging feeling of muscular fatigue was instantly washed away.
His chakra reserves were rapidly, impossibly recovering.
'My chakra is back online...' Kiyohara felt the surging, violent power fill his body once again.
Immediately, his magnetic chakra erupted. This time, fully replenished, his acceleration was even faster than before!
'Let's go, old man!' Kiyohara yelled internally, acting much like a Jinchuriki syncing with their Tailed Beast. Except his passenger was merely a hyper-lethal version of himself.
"How is this biologically possible?!" a Kirigakure Jonin exclaimed in utter shock, watching the black blur explode from behind the boulder.
"He was clearly about to collapse from exhaustion just now!"
"Even if he ingested soldier pills, the human body requires time to digest them!"
"It has to be some kind of forbidden Konoha technique! Do not let him recover any further!"
"KILL HIM!"
The remaining Kirigakure elites on the flank finally abandoned all protocol of capturing the boy alive. A torrential rain of lethal ninjutsu poured down on the forest. The deafening commotion of the slaughter even attracted the attention of several Mist platoons from the main defensive line.
Kiyohara, however, was like a black dragon dancing through a hurricane. He wove flawlessly through the microscopic gaps in the elemental bombardment.
He no longer simply dodged and harassed. He actively, violently assaulted their formations.
His blade light flashed like black silk. The blood rained down like a monsoon.
Avoid the strong. Slaughter the weak.
The Kirigakure Jonin watched with twitching eyelids. This Konoha demon was practically waltzing through their ranks! With sickening ease and fluidity, he struck precisely at their most tactically uncomfortable blind spots, taking three or four lives with every passing strike.
"Damn it! Why is there a monster of this caliber deployed on the flank?!"
"This speed, these hit-and-run tactics... who exactly is he?!"
"Kiyohara! His name is Kiyohara!" a Mist intelligence officer finally recognized the boy's combat profile. "He's Konoha's newly designated Magnet Release genius!"
"Genius?! This is a damn monster!"
At the edge of the battlefield, standing far in the distance near the main frontline.
Atop Manda's massive, scaly head, Orochimaru suddenly tilted his pale face slightly. His golden, vertical pupils seemingly pierced through the miles of smoke and mist to look directly at the flank battlefield.
He saw Kiyohara's black figure weaving through the enemy formations like a scythe. And more importantly, he saw that the boy's chakra recovery speed almost entirely defied common human biology.
"Hehe... did he already inject the White Snake serum I gave him?" a deeply playful, fascinated smile curled at the corner of Orochimaru's mouth. His long, pale tongue slid out to lick his lips.
"This is... getting more and more interesting."
"This little wind... it seems it can blow a very, very long way."
Orochimaru's gaze reluctantly turned back to the main battlefield. The Six-Tails' apocalyptic roaring was weakening, and another massive, powerful chakra signature was whistling in from the sky; Jiraiya had finally arrived with the Toad summons.
They only needed to cooperate with Jiraiya to stall the slug, allowing the majority of the Konoha forces to retreat smoothly, and their defensive mission would be complete.
But a large part of Orochimaru's dark thoughts had already drifted toward the distant flank.
Watching that ruthless, pragmatic young man dancing through the slaughter gave Orochimaru vastly more... pleasure... than the cataclysmic battle between Tailed Beasts and Kage-level fighters before him.
It made Orochimaru see the reflection of his own former self. He, too, was once young, cold, and hailed as a peerless genius.
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