"BOOM!"
The ground shook as Akita stumbled backward in a series of frantic jumps, shock written all over his face.
Only now did Samui truly understand how terrifying Akira was.
"An instant-cast B-rank jutsu that still overpowers the enemy... what kind of monster is this guy's chakra?"
Strike while he's hurting.
Akira flicked out two specially made shuriken, his fingers flashing through seals.
"Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
Two became four, four became sixteen, and in an instant they multiplied into a storm of steel, sweeping the battlefield like a metal hurricane.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
The area around Akita was blasted into ruins at once, dust rolling skyward and broken stone flying everywhere.
It was the Third Hokage's signature jutsu, a difficult A-rank killing move, and this boy was throwing it around as casually as breathing.
When the dust finally started to clear, the ground was pocked with crater after crater.
Akita crouched behind the remains of a shattered earth wall, covered in blood and gasping for air.
"Damn it! How does this brat have that much chakra? He's throwing around jutsu at this level one after another, and he's not even breathing hard!"
He had been cornered completely.
Samui glanced toward Akira, concern in her eyes.
"You all right?"
Akira looked perfectly normal, his breathing steady and unbroken.
"I'm fine. Just be careful. Even a cornered dog will still jump the wall."
Akita stared at Akira, and something desperate flashed through his eyes.
"You forced this!"
He slammed a hand against the cursed seal at his neck, his face twisting.
"Curse Mark, release!"
Black markings raced across his entire body. His skin turned a sickly gray, and his muscles bulged into grotesque, unnatural shapes until he looked more monster than man.
The chakra pouring off him was nauseatingly foul, but its intensity had undeniably surged to Kage level.
Feeling that pressure, Samui instinctively tightened her grip on her sword.
Akira, meanwhile, continued in the same calm tone, like he was giving a lesson.
"That's Stage Two of the curse mark. It forcefully draws in natural energy. Makes you a real man for about ten minutes, then leaves you half-dead afterward. Don't try to block one of his punches head-on. You'll shatter."
Akita clenched his fist, reveling in the strength now flooding through him, his knuckles crackling.
"This power... it's beautiful! Orochimaru-sama really is a genius!"
Before the last word had fully fallen, the ground split apart.
"BOOM!"
Akita vanished.
A heartbeat later, he was already in front of Akira, fist crashing down.
He moved so fast Samui couldn't even react.
Stone exploded, and dust roared skyward.
Samui's heart stopped cold.
"Is he dead?"
Then Akira's voice sounded from off to the side.
"Not bad. Fast enough. And your strength is almost respectable."
Samui whipped around in shock and found Akira standing more than ten meters away, one arm wrapped around her as he held her safely out of danger.
"That was... teleportation?"
She hadn't even seen him move.
Akira looked down at her briefly, a faint crease in his brow.
"In that state, you can't handle him. If we start trading large-scale jutsu here, we'll wake the Three-Tails for sure. What a pain."
Samui was still too stunned to reply before Akira had already carried her back to where Hinata and the others were.
"Stay here. Don't interfere. Protect yourselves."
With that, he turned and faced the monster again.
Karui and Omoi watched Akira's back, and every trace of earlier contempt had vanished from their eyes, replaced by deep, instinctive awe.
Seeing Akira dodge that killing blow so casually, Akita roared in frustration, chakra surging wildly.
"I want to see how long you can keep dodging!"
He slammed both hands to the ground, then spat out a stream of highly pressurized water.
"Water Style: Heavenly Weeping!"
Needles of water rained down from above, blanketing the entire battlefield like a storm of steel blossoms. There was nowhere to dodge.
Every drop carried enough penetrative force to punch through rock.
Akira's eyes sharpened, his hands becoming blurs.
"Water Style: Water Encampment Wall! Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
Water surged upward, and with the wind amplifying it, the torrent spun violently into a high-speed barrier of spiraling water, shielding everyone behind it.
A combination jutsu.
Samui's pupils shook.
That didn't just require absurd chakra control. It required a deep mastery of two separate nature transformations. Was this really something a thirteen-year-old boy could do?
"Rattle-rattle-rattle!"
The countless water needles slammed into the spinning barrier, exploding into white spray, but they never once broke through the defense.
When the barrage ended, Akira stood there completely untouched.
Ino stared, dumbfounded, and muttered under her breath,
"H-he's... so strong..."
Hinata looked at his upright back, her eyes brimming with admiration and something even softer. Quietly, she swore to herself that she would work even harder until she could stand beside him.
Akita panted heavily, staring at the uninjured boy in front of him as despair finally began to creep into his heart.
Even that had been blocked?
Samui drew a slow breath, forcing down the turbulence inside her. When she looked at Akira again, her gaze had changed completely.
"Kill him. The body is mine. The mission credit is yours."
Akira tilted his head slightly, the corner of his mouth lifting.
"Deal."
His eyes locked onto every movement Akita made, like a built-in tracking system.
Then, in a flash too quick for normal sight, Akita's figure disappeared.
At the exact center point where the two of them had been standing, a blinding burst of light exploded without warning.
The detonation was so violent it nearly ruptured eardrums.
The ground across dozens of meters shattered instantly, splitting apart in every direction. Broken earth and stone flew outward like bullets.
The shockwave was so intense it became visible, a white ring of compressed force that tore through the forest hundreds of meters away.
A savage wind followed, whipping through the battlefield so violently that no one could even keep their eyes open.
Thankfully, aside from that brutal gale, the blast didn't tear up the terrain beyond the immediate zone.
Even so, the sheer sight of it was enough to numb the scalp.
As the dust thinned, Samui finally saw Akira standing at the very heart of the explosion, and the disbelief on her usually cold face became impossible to hide.
"This guy... he tanked Akita's full-force curse mark strike with nothing but his body?"
Beneath Akira and Akita's feet now lay a crater dozens of meters deep.
The surrounding soil had been blown violently outward, forming a scorched ring of blackened earth at the edges.
For the first time, Akita felt true fear crawl up from the depths of his soul.
"What the hell is this thing made of? He's overpowering my fully released curse mark with raw physical strength alone?"
His whole understanding of the world was collapsing.
The man in front of him wasn't even some monstrous medical-nin like Tsunade, someone who specialized in brute force.
To suppress a fully transformed curse mark state through sheer body strength alone... that kind of physique was beyond human.
A flicker of impatience crossed Akira's face. He didn't waste a single extra motion. He simply lifted one leg and delivered a plain, direct side kick.
"BAM!"
With a heavy, meaty impact, Akita was launched like a cannonball.
His body tore through the air in a blur and slammed straight into a dirt mound more than ten meters high in the distance.