The metallic taste of blood filled the air, thick and cloying, mingling with the ozone scent of spent chakra and the damp mist of the waterfall. Renjiro stood amidst a growing circle of carnage, his thirty-foot bladed staff held lightly in his hands.
'I just wanted to extend it a few feet,' he thought, a flicker of wry amusement crossing his mind before it was snuffed out by the hyper-focused calm of battle. The unstable, volatile chakra, the barrier forced upon him, was a wild stallion.
He couldn't use it for delicate jutsu, but for this? For pure, unadulterated force? It was perfect.
The first wave of shock had passed, and the remaining shinobi, fueled by rage and discipline, surged forward again. This time, they came not with reckless charges but with coordinated attacks. Kunai and shuriken whistled through the purple-tinged air in a deadly cloud, aimed not just at him, but at every possible angle of evasion.
Renjiro's Sharingan whirled, not just tracing the paths of the projectiles, but calculating their trajectories, their speeds, their points of origin. His mind became a supercomputer of violence. Instead of blocking, he moved. With a grunt of effort, he didn't try to control the wild chakra; he harnessed its unpredictability. He fed a burst of it into the staff.
The massive weapon didn't just extend; it jerked and twisted in his hands with the force of a living thing, its movements erratic and terrifying. He didn't fight the motion; he guided it. He used the violent, shuddering extension to slap a cluster of kunai out of the air. But his aim was precise. He didn't merely deflect them downward. He angled the flat of the colossal blade so that the deflected projectiles ricocheted backwards with amplified force, shooting directly into the ranks of the Suna shinobi who had thrown them. There was a series of sickening thwacks and surprised cries as men and women fell, impaled by their own weapons.
A group of Iwa shinobi used Earth Release: Headhunter Jutsu, sinking into the ground. Renjiro didn't wait for them to emerge. He stomped his foot, not with chakra control he didn't have, but with pure physical power. The ground cracked. Then, he drove the pointed end of his gargantuan staff into the fissure like a pile driver and unleashed another chaotic surge of chakra.
The earth for twenty feet around him heaved and ruptured, not from a controlled quake, but from a raw concussive blast. The submerged Iwa shinobi were violently expelled from the earth, coughing up dirt and blood, disoriented and vulnerable. A single, sweeping horizontal slash of the staff, its reach now covering the entire area, cut them down before they could reorient themselves.
He used the bodies of the fallen as shields, yanking his staff back to drag a corpse into the path of a Lightning Release jutsus. He used the environment, deflecting attacks off the shimmering purple walls of the barrier itself, angling them back at the attackers. He was a whirlwind of calculated, ruthless efficiency.
His taijutsu was a dance of death, every step, every twist of his body designed to position his enormous, unwieldy weapon for maximum carnage. He was no longer just fighting them; he was using them as components in his own brutal machinery of war.
Inside the blood-red Crimson Ray barrier, the Konoha shinobi watched, their emotions on a rollercoaster. Initially, there was awe. Akira's Sharingan tracked every move, her mind struggling to keep up with the breathtaking display of predictive analysis and tactical genius.
"He's… he's using their own numbers against them," she breathed, her voice full of horrified wonder.
But as the minutes bled on, the awe began to curdle into something else. The initial mesmerisation with his skill was replaced by a growing, cold dread at his ruthlessness. Renjiro did not disable. He did not knock anyone unconscious.
There were no non-lethal takedowns. Every movement of the thirty-foot bladed staff was final. It was designed to kill, to maim, to eviscerate. The ground inside the purple barrier was becoming a charnel house, slick with blood and littered with broken bodies. The sheer scale of the slaughter was numbing.
"He's… he's killing them all," a young chunin whispered, "Every single one."
Arata said nothing. He just watched, his knuckles white as he gripped his own weapon. He understood the necessity, but the visceral reality of seeing his captain become an avatar of death was chilling. This wasn't the skilled jonin they admired; this was something primal and terrifying.
On the cliffside, the reactions of the three jonin masters were different shades of the same fury. Ogata's face was a thundercloud, his body crackling with suppressed lightning. Each death of a Kumo shinobi was a personal failure, an insult to his command.
Toma, though his face was hidden, radiated a cold, simmering rage. His perfect trap was being torn apart from the inside by the very prey it was meant to contain. Hiro's frustration was quieter but deeper, a geologist's anger at an unpredictable earthquake. His sensory abilities told him everything, each life snuffing out a tiny star on his internal map, and he was powerless to stop it.
The battle raged for what felt like an eternity but was likely only minutes. Finally, the last attacker, a Kumo chunin with a lightning-coated sword, made a desperate lung. Renjiro simply sidestepped, the movement minimal, and let the man's momentum carry him onto the stationary, bladed end of his staff. There was a wet, crunching sound. Then silence.
The only thing moving inside the purple pentagon was Renjiro. He stood, chest heaving slightly, surrounded by a mountain of the dead and dying. He was splattered head to toe in blood, a macabre painting in red and black, but not a single wound marred his skin. With a sharp flick of his wrists, he willed the staff to retract. It shrank back to its normal six-foot length, the blades dripping gore. He gave it a final, dismissive shake, scattering droplets of blood across the ground.
He lifted his head, his Sharingan scanning the five points of the barrier where the clones and the masters stood. His voice, when it came, was hoarse but clear, cutting through the moans of the wounded.
"If you were planning on wearing me down," he shouted, "you failed. Miserably."
Ogata, his body trembling with rage, took a step forward. The smug, controlled facade was utterly gone, replaced by naked hatred. "Wear you down?" he spat, the words venomous.
"You arrogant fool. We know what you are. Even with less chakra, you are still an Uzumaki. Wearing you down would be pointless."
He gestured to the horrific scene around Renjiro, a sweeping motion that took in the hundreds of corpses.
"We weren't waiting to tire you out. We were waiting for you to provide the means to your Death!"
Toma, Hiro, their clones, along with Ogata, all raised their hands in unison, their seals identical. Their voices merged into a single, chilling chant that echoed with ancient power, resonating through the very fabric of the barrier.
"Sarashi Rengoku Fūin!"("Desert Tempest Bane Seal!")
The moment the words left their lips, the air within the barrier changed. A low hum began to emanate not from the walls, but from the ground itself. From each of the three hundred fallen shinobi—from every corpse, every drop of spilt blood—a faint, purple vapour began to rise. It was thin at first, like heat haze, but it quickly coalesced, thickening into a swirling, miasmic fog that began to fill the enclosed space.
Renjiro's Sharingan darted around, analysing the phenomenon. But before he could comprehend it, before he could form a counter-strategy, a seizing, paralysing pain erupted in his chest. It was as if a vice made of pure energy had clamped around his heart. His eyes widened.
A deafening, thunderous "THUMP" echoed in his own ears—the sound of his own heart hammering against a sudden, impossible pressure.
Then another "THUMP", weaker this time.
His muscles turned to water. The bo staff slipped from his nerveless fingers, clattering to the blood-soaked earth. His vision swam, the purple vapour and the crimson of his Sharingan blurring into a nauseating swirl. The last thing he saw was the triumphant, grim faces of the fuinjutsu masters through the thickening haze.
His knees buckled. Uzumaki Renjiro, who had just single-handedly slain an army, collapsed forward onto the ground he had painted red, completely and utterly unconscious. The unnatural purple vapour swirled over his still form, the seal's purpose finally achieved.