Chapter Five – The Ant King vs. Uchiha Sasuke
The audience of the battle watched through television screens, their collective breath held.
On the ground,the S-Rank hunters suffered under the sheer, oppressive pressure exerted merely by the presence of the Ant King, who hadn't even fully unleashed his aura.
The intent to lock down the entire area was palpable to every hunter present,so intense that a primal part of them screamed to flee the location immediately.
But in the center of the destroyed ant nest, [Uchiha Sasuke] looked up at the Ant King with a lethal coolness.
His stance was relaxed,his expression one of bored assessment.
"Since you're the first person I've been able to understand,"he stated, his voice devoid of any pity, a flat monotone perfectly suited to the last Uchiha rebel, the final survivor of his clan, "I'll kill you quickly and end your suffering without pain."
His words hung in the heavy air, colder than the high-altitude winds.
He stared at his opponent,who hovered in the sky, radiating an immense pressure that was, admittedly, a little surprising in its intensity.
But to[Uchiha Sasuke], who had dealt with and witnessed the power of the Six Paths Sage, this level of force was nothing.
Insignificant.
Furthermore,he didn't even feel the tremendous pressure the Ant King was emitting, because his own chakra aura—a swirling, dark-purple mantle of energy—continuously repelled and pushed back the foreign mana, creating a bubble of calm around him.
FWWWOOOOSH…
The sound was the constant, low roar of the two colliding energy fields.
"If you will, I shall eliminate you," the Ant King buzzed in response, its multi-tonal voice vibrating with arrogant certainty.
Its value was its evolution.
It possessed the best genes in the world,capable of infinite development through predation, absorbing the abilities of other creatures.
The power of the opponent before him wasn't as important as the evolutionary potential the fight represented.
In one instant, the Ant King vanished from the air.
Its speed was multiple times greater than that of any S-Rank hunter.
It left no afterimage,no blur—just an empty space where it had been.
The high-tech cameras,in which all major Korean news corporations had invested fortunes to manufacture, couldn't track its movement at all in that moment.
It simply transitioned, appearing directly in front of the Uchiha Hawk, its obsidian-black, ice-clawed pincer already sweeping in a decapitating arc aimed at [Sasuke]'s neck with a sound like tearing silk—SHWIIIP!
Most of the S-Rank hunters, their senses heightened to the extreme, caught a glimpse of the King's movement.
They stared,their eyes wide with shock, at the black-haired youth who hadn't moved an inch.
They hadn't expected…this.
This fight,this aura the boy had emitted, was once again something that fundamentally shouldn't exist.
But in the very next fraction of a second, they all witnessed what [Sasuke] did.
As the King's pincer shot towards his throat, [Sasuke] simply tilted his head back with minimal, elegant motion.
Simultaneously,he shifted his center of balance with the fluid grace of a falling leaf, his body curving just enough.
The attack that would have been impossible to parry for any S-Rank hunter passed through empty air,missing him completely.
It was all so slow to [Uchiha Sasuke].
The moment his Mangekyou Sharingan had activated,the world had decelerated.
He saw the Ant King moving as if through thick syrup,its trajectory laid bare, its intent screamingly obvious.
It allowed him not only to predict the attack's path but to find the most efficient,least wasteful method to dodge it.
Then, in the following nanosecond, [Sasuke] moved.
He was faster than the Ant King.
With a simple,chakra-infused motion, he pivoted on his front foot—swish—and launched a spinning kick into the center of the King's exposed back.
The sound of impact was not a thud, but a localized thunderclap.
KRA-BOOOOOOM!
A burst of purple lightning erupted from the point of contact.
The Ant King's eyes,usually pools of calculated malice, flew open in genuine, unprecedented shock.
It felt intense pain—a novel sensation—before its entire massive form was catapulted through the air.
It flew like a meteor, streaking across the sky for hundreds of meters before plowing into the earth.
CR-R-R-UNCH-BOOM-SMASH!
The impact devastated hundreds of trees,shredding them into splinters and sawdust, before the King skidded to a halt, gouging a crater a full hundred meters across from a single kick.
[Sasuke], who had delivered that blow and sent the Ant King flying with one kick, looked toward the distant dust cloud, his eyes narrowing slightly in self-critique.
"It seems my power isn't what it used to be,"he mused aloud, his voice carrying coldly in the sudden silence. "I feel my strike wasn't precise enough."
From the depths of the newly formed crater, the Ant King recovered its composure after a single moment.
It stood on its feet,the chitin of its back smoking but already knitting itself back together with a wet, sizzling hiss-crackle.
It looked at the devastation caused by its landing,then back at the human who had done this.
"You truly are a strange being," the King buzzed, its voice now holding a note of analytical curiosity. "The information I have acquired makes me incapable of comprehending your power."
The Ant King possessed a reservoir of information. It could absorb the knowledge and traits of the targets it killed. Furthermore, during its gestation, the Queen had pumped it with the information of all the humans she had consumed, granting it not just human intelligence, but intellect that surpassed most humans and reached genius levels.
Yet,it couldn't analyze the energy [Sasuke] used.
It didn't resemble the mana whose properties were cataloged in its mind,the energy that allowed it to wield its own strange powers for self-enhancement.
The man before him was a puzzle.
He wasn't usingthat energy, but something else entirely.
The King's primal instincts,sharper than any detection device in this world, were able to extract the fundamental differences between the two energy types with extreme ease.
As for the damage from the kick to its spine, it wasn't heavily affected.
Its highly evolved,incredibly durable body was capable of withstanding such blows. The injury took mere seconds to heal completely as the Ant King rose once more.
The pressure of its energy returned, but this time it was several times stronger than before, a visible, dark-purple miasma distorting the air around it.
This focused pressure was now directed solely at [Uchiha Sasuke].
He wasn't affected.On the contrary, a faint, cold smirk touched his lips.
"I feel I need to train a little," [Sasuke] said, almost to himself. "It seems arriving in this world has lessened my control over my abilities. I'll use you as a training dummy, just as I used to do with that idiot."
He couldn't help but think of a certain loud, blond comrade as he said these words, his gaze fixed on the monster now directing pure killing intent his way.
The Ant King raised its hand.
The limb morphed,chitin reshaping with a series of sharp crack-crack-pop sounds.
It transformed into shards of dark ice fused with a black,claw-like pincer.
The hardness of this new appendage seemed capable of shattering space itself.
Ice Magic – Piercing Ice Claw.
Upon using this magic, the force and speed of the Ant King's strike amplified.
It further enhanced itself using wind magic,layering multiple skills simultaneously.
The King's power skyrocketed several times over in a single instant.
The colossal pressure wave reached most of the S-Rank hunters.
[Goto Ryuji],the hunter who aspired to be of national rank, was stunned by this overwhelming pressure.
He couldn't comprehend how the person who wassmiling—who looked like a 16-year-old teenager—could withstand it.
In the same moment, [Goto] saw it.
[Sasuke]and the Ant King collided.
Not once,but dozens of times in the span of a heartbeat.
CLANG! KRA-KOOM! SHING! BZZZT!
With each collision, purple lightning bolts and shards of dark ice exploded outward, filling the air with a deadly, beautiful storm of destruction.
It was faster than lightning,a dizzying ballet of violence that was barely a blur to the hunters' enhanced eyes.
"What in all the hells am I seeing?" [Goto Ryuji] whispered, his body trembling. "What kind of monsters are these? They… they are definitely stronger than me, aren't they?"
The truth dawned on him with icy clarity. If he intervened in this battle, he would die without affecting either party or the outcome. He was merely part of the audience for this violent spectacle, a spectator who happened to be powerful enough to almost be on the stage.
"This is madness,"he breathed.
The hunter known as Korea's Flame Master was, at this moment, utterly incapable of believing the insane scene unfolding before him.
The battle resembled a storm.
Every punch or kick launched by that black-haired youth with the strange eyes released a shockwave of thunder.
The Ant King reacted to each blow with precision;its physical durability was above all physical and even most energy-based attacks. Its body adapted, enduring them with what seemed like ease.
But all the S-Rank hunters could discern one clear fact, even as they struggled to observe the fight and were forced to hide from the immense side-effects of the pressure bearing down on them—pressure that was merely a byproduct of the terrifying aura the Ant King was directing at [Uchiha Sasuke].
[Sasuke], in this moment, was preparing his own strike to counter another coming from behind.
He was acutely aware that the Ant King was evolving at a tremendous rate,faster than the ordinary ants, far beyond what any normal human could conceive.
But was it enough to stop the Uchiha Hawk?
First, [Sasuke] vanished from his spot.
The Ant King's claw tore through empty space with a frustrated SWOOSH.
It hesitated,its multifaceted eyes scanning furiously.
"Where did he disappear to?He was right here! I cannot sense him! How can he vanish at such speed?"
A flood of information and unanswered questions streamed through the Ant King's mind.
[Uchiha Sasuke] had already reappeared directly behind it.
He spoke,his voice a cold whisper beside the King's auditory sensor, right before driving a fist saturated with pure lightning chakra into the small of its back.
"You're starting to pique my interest. But I have to end this quickly. In the end, you're boring, and I need to find that person and finish what we started. I need to sever that bond."
There was no mockery in his words as he spoke them.
He even smiled a little—a cold,fleeting smile—as he pictured a certain someone and a reel of memories from a past he both despised and was inextricably tied to.
Chidori!
The scream of a thousand birds erupted, not as a focused spear, but as a storm of condensed light and sound emanating from his fist.
SCREEEEEEE-KAAAAAAAAA!
A scene that shocked everyone unfolded.
The sky turned white and purple in a fraction of a second as the devouring light consumed the spatial domain.
Particles distorted,and it seemed as if they were suspended in a realm of pure energy.
Even the viewers watching on television instinctively squeezed their eyes shut from the shockwave of light before it vanished.
When they opened them,even the clouds that had been in the sky were gone.
Vaporized.
Is it all over?
This thought flashed through the minds of the Japanese and Korean hunters, and indeed, the entire watching world.
Most of the drones and transmission devices were scrambled from the electromagnetic pulse.
Yet,the picture clarity was stark because daylight had fully arrived, and the clouds had been utterly dispersed by [Sasuke]'s lightning strike.
One scene appeared clearly to all.
[Uchiha Sasuke], with a cold, expressionless gaze, looked down at the newly formed crater on the earth—this one spanning dozens of kilometers, a smoking, glassy wound upon the island.
He spoke in clear Japanese,picked up by the surviving cameras and the ears of the S-Rank hunters.
"Your power, Ant King, is nothing in comparison. But thank you for letting me train a little."
These were the last words [Sasuke] spoke before he descended, landing gracefully on the scorched earth using the gravity control ability of his Rinnegan, as casually as stepping off a stair.
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End of Chapter.
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A one-sided training session concludes, leaving a scar on the island and on the world's understanding of power. Thank you for reading this chapter of overwhelming force and cold precision. Your continued journey through this clash of worlds is deeply appreciated!
❤️🙂