"There's no other way! We can only defend! Earth Style: Earth Flow Wall Technique!"
The panicked Chunin thrust his hands into the ground, raising an earthen barrier while retreating. The wall trembled, fragile and hastily formed.
"Too flimsy," Uchiha Shigure muttered, his crimson Sharingan spinning. He formed a seal with his index and middle fingers and shouted, "Detonate!"
The barrels of oil they had prepared ignited with a thunderous boom.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
The earthen wall shattered to rubble, the shockwave blasting the three enemy Chunin backward. Fortune was on their side—none suffered mortal wounds. Their bodies tumbled into the dirt, bruised and shaken, but alive.
"Hahahahaha!" one of them, a tall shinobi called Nobunaga, sat up and laughed as if madness gripped him.
"Brother! Why are you laughing again!?" groaned his comrade Foxfire, clutching his ears.
"We might as well be dead already!" Yukimura, the third of the squad, looked half-wrecked. Both nearly stuffed a hand into Nobunaga's mouth to shut him up.
"I'm laughing," Nobunaga smirked, "because he thought himself clever with all those tricks, but still couldn't bring us down! If it were me—"
Shigure cut him off smoothly. "—If it were you, you'd use the height advantage, attack from above with a powerful jutsu, and press forward relentlessly. Isn't that what you were about to say?"
Nobunaga froze. "Wh–what? How did you know? Are you… reading my mind?"
Kusuo Hatake nearly tripped over himself. "Mind reading? He literally said it out loud!"
Foxfire and Yukimura buried their faces in their palms, despairing that their supposed leader was this clueless.
But Shigure's expression hardened, his eyes flashing scarlet with the gleam of the Sharingan. "If that's what you wanted, then allow me to show you. Water Style: Great Waterfall Technique!"
The words thundered from his lips.
The three Chunin laughed at first. "What a joke! You're barely out of the Academy—how could you possibly summon—"
Then their laughter died.
Behind Shigure, water surged unnaturally, spiraling into a colossal torrent. A roaring cascade tore down the slope, the force so immense it threatened to swallow the battlefield whole.
"Impossible…"
"Crasshhhhh!!!"
The Great Waterfall came crashing down, sweeping across rocks and trees, and nearly dragging the enemy trio into oblivion. The ground shook as water flooded downhill, until an entire basin transformed into a gleaming new lake.
For nearly thirty seconds, the relentless waterfall hammered the earth before it finally ebbed.
On the ridge, Kusuo Hatake and Hyūga Akane gaped, jaws slack.
"Shigure…" Kusuo's voice trembled. "That water jutsu—are you sure that was just… a water jutsu?"
"Of course," said Shigure matter-of-factly, lowering his hands.
"Look below," Kusuo urged. Where the slope once was, a small crater lake now shimmered in the sunlight.
"A lake…" Akane whispered. Even with her Byakugan, she was stunned by the sheer scale Shigure had unleashed.
Down below, the three defeated Chunin staggered to the water's edge. Exhausted, drenched, and wide-eyed in disbelief, they collapsed against the mud.
"We… we concede…" Nobunaga wheezed.
"I'll never run my mouth again…" Foxfire sobbed, face ashen.
"I'm… sorry…" Yukimura muttered, eyes glassy with despair.
The three disappeared in a miserable retreat, leaving behind score cards gleaming with chakra. Shigure calmly collected them—90 points in total.
"Shigure, what now?" Akane asked cautiously, brushing wet strands of red hair from her face.
"We've a vantage point here," Kusuo observed. "But we've also trapped ourselves. After that lake you summoned, no one will be coming up this way easily."
Shigure frowned. "You're right. I got carried away wanting the high ground. Now no one will use this route to reach the Tower of All."
But as his Sharingan swirled, a flicker caught his eye. Three figures hidden in the shadows behind the tower. He masked his reaction quickly.
"Akane," he said aloud, "use your Byakugan. Do you see anyone near the rear of the tower?"
"Byakugan!" Veins bulged around her eyes. She scanned swiftly, then gasped. "Yes… three of them. And I know those chakra signatures."
"Oh? Seems the game is up," one of the hidden shinobi said, stepping into the light of his own volition. Two others followed, no longer bothering to conceal themselves.
Shigure smiled faintly. "Nara Kazu. Yamanaka Yuki. Akimichi Dotonoki. So it's you three. My old classmates."
Surprise flickered across Kusuo's face. "The new Ino–Shika–Chō?"
Akimichi Dotonoki didn't answer. He was too busy munching potato chips from a bag half the size of his head. Even for someone of the Akimichi clan, he was impressively large.
Yamanaka Yuki rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Don't blame us. It was Kazu's idea to set an ambush here."
Nara Kazu stretched lazily, eyes already heavy-lidded. "I miscalculated this time. You were faster. Too much hassle to steal points from you now."
Akane tilted her head. "So? You're exposed. You're not attacking. You're not surrendering. What game are you playing?"
Shigure thought carefully, then spoke. "You don't want to fight us. But you don't want to give up, either… Correct? Then why not an alliance?"
The three blinked in unison.
"We're all fresh graduates from the Academy," Shigure continued. "If we work together, we can ambush others instead of wasting energy against each other. The score cards—we divide evenly. But trust is the key."
Kazu smirked faintly. "Funny. That's exactly what I was thinking. You know, you're not bad, Shigure."
His tone brightened as he laid out the proposal. "With my clan's Shadow Possession, Yuki's mind techniques, and Dotonoki's brute power, plus your traps and overwhelming jutsu… We wouldn't even break a sweat to overwhelm the newcomers. And most importantly—it saves a lot of chakra."
Shigure acknowledged the logic with a nod. Indeed, the Nara were always sharp.
Just then, the air itself rippled.
"Bzzzzzt—"
High above, the chakra barrier containing the battlefield shimmered and began to contract. The edges folded inward, the field slowly tightening.
"A shrinking barrier…" Shigure muttered. "That means a sixth of the time has passed. The circle's tightening."
"It reduces the importance of this tower," Kazu agreed, his voice suddenly serious. "We should move before we're trapped."
"But first," Yuki interrupted, forming seals. "Heart Transfer Technique!"
Her spirit darted into the form of a nearby bird, commandeering its body. With graceful flaps, the bird soared skyward, her eyes sweeping across the collapsing border.
Moments later, she reported through Kazu, who had tethered her mind. "The southern tower—the barrier there has vanished completely. It's been destroyed."
The entire group tensed.
Shigure narrowed his eyes at the distant horizon, the Sharingan reflecting crimson light. "So… the first tower has already fallen."
--
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