Chapter 186: Wear Her Down
"Kirigakure!"
Mu's voice echoed through the dense, rolling mist. Stelle tilted her head back. High above the battlefield, the Second Tsuchikage floated in the sky, suspended by his Light-Weight Rock Jutsu. He was playing the grand commander, using his aerial vantage point to orchestrate the slaughter.
A roaring hurricane of flames tore through the fog. This wasn't a standard, run-of-the-mill fire dragon. It was a ferocious, sky-devouring beast of pure heat, carrying an overwhelming, crushing momentum as it viciously plummeted toward the masses below.
In perfect synchronization, the Kirigakure platoon rapidly wove hand seals. They inhaled deeply and expelled a massive torrent of water.
"Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!"
A colossal serpent of water roared to life, violently colliding with Stelle's Flame Dragon. Steam hissed violently into the air as the two opposing elements neutralized each other.
The resulting vaporization thickened the already heavy mist, swallowing the entire battlefield in a suffocating white veil. The Four Nations Allied Forces clearly intended to use the night and the dense fog to blind her.
A cute tactic. Unfortunately for them, Stelle was a sensory ninja. A little fog wasn't going to save them.
To her right, the distinct clacking of wooden joints signaled the Sand Village's puppet brigade making their move. Dozens of mechanical monstrosities lunged forward, unleashing a dense, inescapable shower of hidden arrows and poison-laced senbon.
Stelle didn't even bother with hand seals. She simply slammed her palms onto the earth.
"Fire Formation Wall!"
A towering, solid barricade of roaring purple flames erupted from the ground. The mechanical projectiles slammed into the inferno and instantly melted. The intense heat was so absolute that the poisoned senbon vaporized into harmless gas before they could even breach the wall.
Simultaneously, the earth groaned. Four towering walls of rock, summoned by the Stone Ninjas, began to warp and bend. Guided by their synchronized hand seals, the massive slabs of earth converged inward, forming a gigantic, inescapable spherical cage designed to entomb her alive.
From above, the mechanical puppets detached spherical canisters that plummeted toward the closing gap. Stelle casually swatted them away, but as they hit the ground, they burst open, spewing thick plumes of black, toxic smoke.
Stelle clicked her tongue. She stomped her foot, cracking the ground beneath her, and launched herself straight up toward the remaining opening in the earthen sphere.
The moment her head cleared the rock, a blinding flash illuminated the sky. The Cloud Ninjas had linked their chakra, bringing down a massive, coordinated Lightning Release strike right on her position. The sheer concussive force slammed her back down into the dark, closing earth sphere.
'Impressive,' Stelle thought, brushing dust from her shoulders in the pitch-black cage. They had actually developed combination ninjutsu. This wasn't a disorganized mob; this was a highly coordinated, carefully drilled army. They must have spent months secretly preparing this exact formation just to hunt her down.
It honestly felt like the Fourth Great Ninja War had kicked off a few decades early.
Sadly for them, these nameless grunts weren't the legendary figures of the actual Fourth War. The visual spectacle was great, but the actual threat level? Significantly lacking.
More, because there were barely any named characters in this mob, her system's mood value was trickling in at an agonizingly slow pace.
If the points were this bad, why would she even bother playing out a mock ninja war every day?
A concentrated Flame Bomb materialized in Stelle's palm, swirling with volatile, compressed heat. She leaped upward and ruthlessly smashed it against the inner roof of the earthen cage.
The reinforced stone sphere, constructed by the combined chakra of dozens of elite Stone Ninjas, violently detonated into a shower of rubble.
While she was still suspended in mid-air, a lethal droplet of highly pressurized liquid shot toward her head—Hōzuki Gengetsu's Water Gun technique.
Stelle contorted her body in an impossible mid-air flip, inhaling deeply before exhaling a gargantuan sphere of fire.
The fireball expanded exponentially, instantly transforming into a raging sea of purple flames. A standard Great Fireball might have been pierced by Gengetsu's bullet-dense water projectiles, but her Flame Release was fundamentally different.
The purple inferno crashed down like a tidal wave. The sheer area of effect was inescapable. Dozens of allied ninjas who couldn't retreat in time were instantly incinerated, their screams cut short as they were reduced to ash.
Stelle landed gracefully on a jagged remnant of the shattered earth sphere. In the next fraction of a second, she vanished.
Hōzuki Gengetsu, the Second Mizukage, had already locked onto her coordinates.
He and his giant clam summon immediately activated a massive, wide-area genjutsu, warping the surrounding reality to confuse her vision. The mirage allowed him to completely conceal his true body, rendering him untouchable while simultaneously hiding the movements of the Allied Forces to disrupt Stelle's combat rhythm.
It was a flawless, Kage-level strategy.
Except, his intelligence division had catastrophically failed him. They missed one crucial detail: Stelle was completely immune to genjutsu.
To make matters worse for the Mizukage, her system was currently providing a helpful, real-time analysis of the exact mechanics behind his illusion.
Seeing Stelle standing perfectly still, her eyes seemingly glazed over, the Third Raikage seized the opening. Lightning armor crackled around his massive frame as he lunged forward with his signature Hell Stab.
He was fast. Unbelievably fast.
But Stelle was faster.
Unburdened by the illusion, she vanished from his trajectory just as his fingers pierced the empty air. She instantly reappeared directly inside the densely packed formation of Kirigakure ninjas.
In the blink of an eye, she became a blur of lethal purple light, darting through the crowd at godlike speeds.
The cold glint of a kunai flashed in the mist. With every single flash of steel, a ninja collapsed, their throats cleanly severed.
Once she reached the dead center of the enemy formation, she abruptly halted, her hands blurring through a sequence of seals.
"Flame Release: Flame Burst Technique!"
High above, the Second Tsuchikage's eyes widened. He had been charging his chakra for agonizing minutes, waiting for the perfect opening. Seeing her finally stand still to cast a large-scale ninjutsu, Mu instantly locked onto her coordinates.
"Dust Release: Particle Style: Atomic Dismantling Jutsu!"
A blinding geometric cone of absolute destruction erased the space Stelle occupied, disintegrating her instantly.
Then, the destroyed Stelle dissolved into a puff of white smoke.
"A Shadow Clone?! When did she cast it?!"
Pure horror rippled through the allied ranks.
"Flame Release: Hell Realm Domain!"
Ida Mutzuki's most terrifying, signature ultimate move materialized without warning. A suffocating, inescapable purple barrier instantly erected itself, completely swallowing Hōzuki Gengetsu's real body.
No one in the ninja world understood the mechanics behind this cursed technique. The only known fact was absolute: every single person who had ever been trapped inside her domain had died.
A second later, the purple barrier shattered like glass.
Hōzuki Gengetsu collapsed onto the blood-soaked earth. A massive, charred hole had been cleanly punched straight through his heart. He twitched once, barely clinging to the last fading embers of life.
"Lord Mizukage is dead?!"
The Kirigakure ninjas stared at the fallen Kage, their voices tearing through the mist in absolute grief and indignation.
The remaining three Kage-level leaders felt a deep, icy chill grip their hearts. Witnessing Stelle assassinate a Kage with such effortless speed was terrifying, but it only solidified their grim resolve.
"We absolutely cannot let her leave this place alive!"
"Don't panic! She just fought a massive battle in Konoha! Look at her, she's still wrapped in bandages. There's no way she has the stamina for a prolonged war of attrition. Wear her down!"
Driven by desperation and rage, a renewed, indiscriminate barrage of lethal attacks rained down on Stelle's position.
The slaughter dragged on from the dead of night until the break of dawn. The conflict devolved from a flashy clash of high-level ninjutsu into a brutal, large-scale meat grinder of taijutsu and kenjutsu. Ninjutsu was strictly reserved for life-or-death moments to conserve chakra.
The Land of Lightning, a region infamous for its dry climate, was suddenly hammered by a torrential, unnatural downpour.
The heavy rain was a massive boon for the surviving Kirigakure ninjas, amplifying their water techniques, while simultaneously expanding the conductive range of the Cloud Ninjas' lightning strikes.
Conversely, Stelle's Flame Release was severely suppressed by the deluge.
At least, that was how it looked to the Tsuchikage. In Mu's eyes, Stelle was relying on physical combat because her chakra reserves were finally running dry.
Hours bled into one another. The relentless rain showed no signs of stopping. Mutilated corpses piled up in grotesque mounds across the cratered earth, their blood mixing with the rainwater to form shallow, crimson rivers.
Stelle stood atop a jagged rock pillar, panting heavily. Her clothes were soaked, her chest heaving with every breath, yet her eyes burned with an unnerving, predatory brilliance.
"It's been a day and a night," she called out, her voice slicing through the sound of the pouring rain. "My reinforcements are already on their way. Tell me... how much longer can you all last?"
The surviving elites stared up at her. They weren't looking at a human anymore; they were looking at a monster.
Their intelligence from Konoha had been incredibly specific. The Fourth Hokage had engaged in an apocalyptic battle with a mysterious master from Karaku Village. To protect the village from a catastrophic ninjutsu, the Hokage had erected a massive barrier, suffering severe injuries in the process. Stelle had been caught in that crossfire.
She was supposed to be crippled. She was supposed to be an easy target.
Yet here she was, heavily bandaged and supposedly exhausted, surviving a full day and night against a coordinated encirclement by the world's greatest elite ninjas. And now, as dusk threatened to fall once more, she still radiated a terrifying amount of killing intent.
If this dragged on, her bluff might become reality. If Konoha's reinforcements actually arrived...
If this assassination failed, none of them dared to imagine the political and physical consequences.
Mu, his own chakra reserves dangerously depleted, finally descended to the muddy earth. He no longer dared to waste his remaining energy using Dust Release to chase her around the battlefield. He needed to preserve every last drop of chakra for one final, decisive strike.
Through the pouring rain, the Second Tsuchikage exchanged a grim, silent look with the Third Raikage and Chiyo.
The message was clear. It was time to change tactics.
[Inorin's Note:
Enjoying the story? Dropping a quick review, comment, or Power Stone means the world to me and keeps these daily updates flowing!
Want to read 50 chapters ahead or just want to help keep a shameless translator alive? (My livelihood actually depends on this, haha 😭). You can support me directly here:
(P.S. Just remove the brackets and replace the [.] with a regular dot . to use the links!)
✨ Patreon (50 Advanced Chapters): patreon[.]com/InorinTL
☕ Ko-fi (Support / Sponsor): ko-fi[.]com/InorinTL
Thank you so much for reading and keeping this project alive!]