[Third Person POV]
The gashadokuro's hand grazed past Hajime, barely missing him by less than a meter.
With the negative-energy destroying properties of senjutsu and silver eyes combined, the gashadokuro, a creature born from the anguish of the deceased, was hurting as if it were a vampire stepping into the sunlight.
"Raauuggh," It roared in pain, its very being burned by the spiritual attack.
Hajime watched the area he struck, eyeing the damage to see how effective the combination attack was.
Though the area was clearly injured, the ribcage showed no visible damage, though it looked covered in soot.
Noticeably, though, the aura of the gashadokuro dipped slightly. It wasn't much, given its supreme-class power, but it fell.
Unfortunately, hoping to weaken its power that way wouldn't be easy.
Now that it knew he could do that, it would avoid such attacks where it could, plus even if they did hit, it might take dozens of attacks focused on one point to actually do anything.
The gashadokuro was known for its invincibility after all. The only reason Hajime's attack did anything was its positive spiritual properties, countering the gashadokuro's own being.
Without giving it time to recover, Hajime attacked once more, unleashing a second beam at the gashadokuro, this time towards its tattooed arm.
The beam collided with it, unleashing a burst of light as it passed over the arm.
"RAAUUGH!!"
The sharp sting of pain striking it again snapped the gashadokuro out of its shock. Unused to any pain, it was frozen in terror, having finally felt what it's like.
After the second strike, it finally started moving again, wishing to avoid any more pain from the monster in front of it.
The gashadokuro started moving once again. Though slow, each movement of its body was full of power.
Raising both arms, it curled its skeletal hands into fists before slamming them toward Hajime.
Infusing Barrier with senjutsu, Hajime blocked the giant attack.
Bones crashed against the Barrier, burning at its touch.
Even with so little intelligence, the gashadokuro was starting to understand that this wasn't an opponent it wanted to fight.
While it had the strength to break the Barrier, it would require pushing through pain, something it was completely unable to do. It was only its survival instinct that let it move at all, knowing that standing still would draw more attacks.
Standing up, the gashadokuro turned toward the town, which was almost fire-free. The gashadokuro knew it would have more food if it caused more terror there.
More food meant more strength, and more strength meant it could finish off this being without a second thought.
First the left leg, then the right one, then the left one again, the gashadokuro moved toward the town at an unnatural speed.
From the outside, it seemed slow because of the giant skeleton's size; yet the gashadokuro was moving faster than ever.
Unluckily for it, Hajime was several times faster.
A burst of lightning appeared where Hajime stood, and seconds later, it crashed into the gashadokuro before appearing in the skeleton's way.
Swinging its mighty fists once more, the gashadokuro cracked the ground. The skeleton yokai's power overturned the land beneath it.
Giant stones rose from the ground. Trees toppled over, their roots no longer buried in the ground.
Hajime jumped into the air before shooting several strings around the area.
The chaos slowed to a stop before Hajime landed on a small platform hovering in the middle, created entirely of strings.
A thick string burst from his hand, a warm, deep orange color.
Overheat!
Tipped with senjutsu and armament haki, the attack burned its way into the arm bone it fired toward, but only left a small hole, less than a foot deep.
Hajime launched attack after attack toward that hole, hoping that enough attacks would leave a scar on the monster before him.
Each attack buried another hole in the arm.
The gashadokuro tried to move away, but its size made it easy for Hajime to follow, and its speed meant it could never escape him unless he wanted it to.
Holes covered the left forearm, each one slightly draining more of the yokai's strength from it.
It tried to regenerate the injuries, but the lingering energy from each attack made it impossible.
Realization struck: it needed to kill its opponent, or it would certainly die.
The urgency only now known, the gashadokuro struck once more, hand moving across the ground as if splashing water. The ground gave way, flying toward the human in its way, trees and rocks joining the large wave of dirt.
Hajime knew he couldn't use Barrier to block, or he'd be buried underneath.
Instead, Hajime gathered the few clouds still scattered around with waterbending, quickly moving them to the sky above, and grabbing onto them using strings to pull himself above the danger.
An avalanche of dirt, stone, and wood surged past where Hajime had stood moments before.
Minutes later, when the attack finally settled down, a new hill was next to a new hole.
The gashadokuro struck again, swinging both its massive arms to swat Hajime out of the sky.
Bringing up another senjutsu-infused Barrier around himself, Hajime was surprised when the gashadokuro didn't back off when it collided, instead pushing further until the Barrier started cracking.
Seconds later, it shattered into several pieces, each fragment disappearing as it flew.
The giant hand kept moving until it slammed into Hajime.
Hajime crossed his arms to block, covering them with armament haki to bolster his defenses. He was thrown away and flew hundreds of meters.
Before hitting the ground, Hajime used string nets to bleed off momentum, crashing through five before stopping on the sixth.
Hajime fell to the ground, coughing blood from the strength of the attack. It was hard to tell whether the gashadokuro had used its full strength, since it has no physical features beyond bones, and those don't show emotion.
Still, such an attack didn't seem like it'd keep up that level forever.
Gashadokuro were tough, sure, with a durability bordering on the divine, but that was all it had going for it. There was a reason that so many had been killed in the past, and it was because they exhausted themselves. Against someone like Hajime, who could injure its spirit, reduce the food it received, and slowly chip away at its strength with shadow clones, the gashadokuro would eventually fall; it had no means of stopping him or escaping.
The only issue Hajime had at this point was how much would be destroyed before he stopped it.
With senjutsu, he was cleansing most of the negative energy in the area that the yokai could feast on, and he wasn't worried about it growing stronger when he was permanently injuring it.
Another hand came falling from the sky, ready to smush him into the ground.
Using substitution jutsu to move out of the way quickly, Hajime watched as another hand-shaped imprint littered the ground.
The hand crashed down, leaving a thick dust cloud that obscured its vision. Hajime took the chance to throw a rock above the skeletal hand and substitute once more, landing on the back of the hand.
As the gashadokuro pulled back to see the damage, it was surprised to see Hajime standing on it.
Running up the forearm, Hajime tied strings around the bones while sending a few strings to the other arm.
Swinging its left arm at the nuisance that was standing on it, the gashadokuro missed as Hajime jumped down onto the foot bone.
Tying strings around more bones, Hajime used wall-climbing to quickly make his way up the legs, wrapping the string around both the whole time.
The gashadokuro kept trying to smack him off, but Hajime was too small and fast for it to stop him.
Eventually reaching the ribcage, Hajime climbed up from the inside, leaving the gashadokuro unable to touch him.
Taking the opportunity to tie more strings up, Hajime finally tightened them all, reinforcing them with haki and senjutsu. He also used senjutsu and silver eyes to burn the yokai from the inside out, leaving it completely unable to retaliate.
The strings, already burning the gashadokuro's very essence, made resistance difficult, but the pain erupting from its ribs made it impossible to focus on breaking out when it needed to find a way to kill Hajime first; otherwise, he could sit there and burn it from the inside.
The strings pulled tighter, pinning the arms to its body and pulling the body down toward the legs.
It fell over but still wriggled, trying to break the strings, but now that it was immobile, Hajime's job got much easier. Creating a string clone to run around, wrapping the gashadokuro in more string, it quickly covered every part not already bound, even the skull.
Infused with senjutsu, each string slowly incinerated the giant yokai, but its true power still had yet to fall to any meaningful amount.
Still, while he had it tied up, Hajime injured it as much as possible in a three-pronged attack. The strings would injure it from outside, his eyes would injure it from within, with several shadow clones working in tandem to strike at the neck until it popped off.
Unfortunately for Hajime, despite all his efforts, the gashadokuro broke the strings after a few minutes. Though a few still lingered on it, it had gotten up and was moving toward Itose with haste.
For it to recover, it knew it needed to feast on the terror of the citizens and maybe a few corpses while it was at it.
Though Hajime did his best to slow it down once more, the gashadokuro barely reacted at this point; having grown used to the burning sensation, it ignored it in favor of gathering the energy to heal.
Hajime, seeing how tough a supreme-class gashadokuro is, decided to use something he'd otherwise hesitate to, since it was likely the only way he'd be able to finish the creature off in any reasonable timeframe.
While homies were generally able to be considered alive, and thus, unable to be put inside Hajime's inventory, those made with his soul were an exception.
As such, he'd only left Vulcan, the Fire Flower homie, free, since the others were all too useful to leave behind in an emergency like now.
Pulling Benedict out, the holy light radiating from it was already having a noticeable effect on the yokai.
Injecting the sword with senjutsu, as well as using Benedict's enhancement abilities, created a feedback loop.
The enhancement from senjutsu strengthened the sword, temporarily amplifying the blessing and further powering senjutsu until the two looped into a 10x increase in power.
By now, the gashadokuro had fallen over in pain. If before Hajime's attack was like a candle, this was a raging fire, burning everything in its path, and inside the ribs, the only way out was through the yokai.
Swinging the haki-covered sword, Hajime expertly cut into rib after rib, creating wounds that quickly started to fill the inside of the gashadokuro.
Each wound weakened, slowed, crippled any chance at survival for the titanic monster.
The holy light seeped into each wound it created, like a poison, infesting the bones in such a way that recovery would only be possible once it had enough energy, energy that was quickly being depleted.
Though the gashadokuro was a supreme-class being, with immense durability and strength, it had almost no flexibility and a crippling weakness to positive energy.
Against anyone else, the fear of its power would feed it more, while any hope would be crushed as it resisted all attacks. However, Hajime had the experiences of people like Laxus, Slade, Jiraiya, and Doflamingo, meaning that while a giant skeleton was intimidating, it was far from scary.
Thanks to his size and shinobi skills, Hajime was easily able to take advantage of the gashadokuro's weaknesses.
Under normal circumstances, the gashadokuro's overwhelming power and unbreakable defenses would make fighting it a lost cause. However, with the opponent constantly running around its body, its strength became useless. At the same time, the positive energy of senjutsu, silver eyes, and holy light all pierced the defenses in a way that couldn't be stopped.
In the end, after nearly five hours of battling the gashadokuro, Hajime stood atop a charred black skull, victorious.
__________
Author's Note:
Thanks for reading; I'll see you next time!