I pushed off the railing and began my descent down the concrete stairs toward the arena floor.
As I descended, the familiar chime of the System rang out in my head, freezing my vision for a split second as a bright blue screen materialized in front of me.
[NEW SUB-QUEST GENERATED]
[PUT ON A SHOW: DISPLAY YOUR STRENGTH FOR ALL TO SEE]:
Objective: Defeat your opponent and advance to the next round.
Bonus Condition 1: Win the battle maintaining more than 80% HP.
Bonus Condition 2: Utilize ONLY Water-nature Ninjutsu for your jutsu casting. (Taijutsu and passive buffs are permitted).
Bonus Condition 3: Deliver the finishing blow using a Water-nature Ninjutsu.
[REWARDS]:
+2,500 XP
+25,000 Ryo
Item: Tear of the Desert Priest
Bonus Reward: Unique Weapon
Ooo, a new weapon, I thought, a confident smirk pulling at my lips as I swiped the screen away. I wonder what it could be? Eh, I'll find out in a little while.
I already knew the [TEAR OF THE DESERT PRIEST] was coming my way as the final piece to 'The Sand's Salvation' hidden quest, but throwing in a unique weapon for simply flexing on a Genin? That was something that I wasn't going to turn down.
I finally made it down to the arena floor, my jacket fluttering slightly in the breeze.
As I walked toward the center of the battlefield, my heightened senses allowed me to filter through the deafening roar of the stadium, picking up on individual conversations and murmurs from the civilian and shinobi audience members closest to the arena floor.
"Is that really the Uzumaki kid?" a Chunin muttered to his friend. "I heard that he launched a Genin fifty feet into the air with one punch during the prelims."
"No way. That has to be exaggerated," his friend scoffed. "He's that same kid that used to pull all those pranks all the time."
"I don't know, man," a merchant nervously whispered to his acquaintance, while clutching a betting slip. "Look at the ease in his posture. Was it really wise to put money on the kid from the Mist? The Konoha kid has a terrifying feeling coming off of him."
"Look at his clothes," a noble murmured from a luxury box. "I've never seen fabric woven like that."
"Never mind that," said another. "I heard a rumor that he paid off a Five Million Ryo hospital bill for someone in straight cash just last week!"
Wow, they're all getting pretty rambunctious, huh? I thought, as I kept my hands resting casually in my pockets, finally coming to a halt opposite my opponent.
Chigiri stood waiting. He held a pair of sickles attached to a heavy chain, his posture straight and relaxed, attempting to project the terrifying, emotionless aura of a seasoned killer.
"Thanks for finally joining us," Genma said sarcastically. "Was the journey down fun?"
"Truly. It's not every day everyone gets to witness someone as great as me enter their lives," I replied. "And greatness is something that simply cannot be rushed."
"Yeah, yeah, tell that to your opponent," Genma said, gesturing towards Chigiri.
The young Kiri ninja was analyzing me with a clinical, dead-eyed stare.
"You wear your confidence like a noisy bell, Uzumaki," he finally spoke, his voice cold, and nearly devoid of emotion. "That flashy outfit, the loud posturing... it's an obvious front. You're trying to mask your uncertainty about what lies ahead."
I just stared at him blankly through my dark shades, letting him talk.
"You lack the quiet discipline of a true killer," he continued, tightening his grip on his sickles. "Your luck from the preliminaries runs out here. The Mist does not play games."
I stared at him for another long, heavy second.
Then, I opened my mouth and let out a massive, exaggerated yawn, stretching my neck until it popped.
"Are you done?" I asked lazily, waving a dismissive hand. "Because I've got a really busy afternoon of planning my victory parade, and your monologue is seriously eating into my schedule. So, let's get this over with, yea?"
Chigiri's eyes narrowed into dangerous, hostile slits, his clinical facade cracking just a fraction at the blatant disrespect.
"Looks like you two are ready," Genma smirked, as he looked back and forth between us before raising his arm high into the air.
"Match Two," he announced, his voice echoing across the quieting, anticipating arena.
He dropped his arm in a sharp, chopping motion. "Begin!"
The moment Genma's hand dropped, Chigiri moved.
He whipped his arms forward, sending a rapid-fire volley of kunai and shuriken spinning directly at my chest and face.
I didn't even take my hands out of my pockets. I just started walking forward. I casually tilted my head a fraction of an inch to the left, letting a kunai whiz past my ear, before leaning slightly to the right to avoid a shuriken. I didn't break my stride, effortlessly weaving through the lethal projectiles as if I were taking a casual stroll through a gentle rain.
Chigiri's eyes widened slightly, but he didn't freeze. He sprinted toward me, whipping the sickle in his right hand in a wide, decapitating arc.
The world instantly slowed down.
The ambient roar of the crowd morphed into a low, distorted bass drop. The spinning sickle, hurtling toward my neck at blinding speeds, suddenly looked like it was moving through thick mud. I could trace every single link in the chain, every jagged edge of the blade, and every microscopic drop of sweat flying off Chigiri's face.
Man, this is crazy. It's like a superspeed sequence in a superhero movie, I marveled with a grin, watching the world move in slow motion around me.
I waited until the blade was an inch from my throat, then ducked under it with flawless precision.
The crowd let out a collective "Oooos!" of shock at the last minute dodge.
Chigiri immediately followed up, pivoting on his heel to bring the second sickle crashing down in a brutal overhead strike.
Still moving in real-time while my perception slowed, I sidestepped the downward strike, lifted my foot, and firmly stomped down on the metal chain connecting his weapons, pinning it to the dirt. Before he could even realize his weapons were trapped, I sent a side-kick straight into his chest.
The heavy impact cracked like a whip. Chigiri gagged, his feet leaving the ground as he was launched backward. He skipped across the arena floor like a stone, tumbling violently until he splashed into the wide, shallow water basin on the far side of the arena.
The audience erupted into a chorus of cheers and awe at the effortless counter.
Chigiri scrambled to his feet, coughing up water, his clinical facade completely shattered. He quickly wove a sequence of hand signs, raising two fingers in front of his face to hold the final seal.
"Ninja Art: Hidden Mist Jutsu!"
A thick, unnatural fog instantly exploded from him, violently expanding outward until it swallowed the entire right side of the arena, plunging us both into whiteout conditions.
I know people are mad as hell watching this from above, I thought, completely unbothered by the lack of visibility.
I suddenly felt a buildup of chakra coming from behind me. Chigiri erupted from the fog, aiming a lethal strike at my kidneys. But I effortlessly sidestepped the strike. As he sailed past me, I finally took my hand out of my pockets, reached out, and grabbed him by the back of his collar.
"Not even close," I whispered into his ear.
I spun on my heel, using his own momentum against him, and hurled him right back into the center of the water basin. He crashed into the water with a massive splash.
Alright, that's enough playing around. It's time to complete these bonus conditions, I decided, raising one hand.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: WATER STYLE: HAIL]
My chakra spread out into the surrounding mist. In a fraction of a second, the thick, blinding fog completely condensed, freezing into thousands of highly pressurized, razor-sharp ice projectiles suspended directly over the water basin.
The stadium gasped in collective shock as the sudden removal of the mist revealed the massive, hovering cloud of deadly hail aimed squarely at the Kiri ninja.
Chigiri looked up, and absolute terror crossed his face.
I dropped my hand, sending the hail to descend upon him like a meteor shower.
"Water Encampment Wall!" Chigiri screamed in desperation.
A thick, swirling wall of water erupted around him just as my jutsu hit. The arena echoed with the deafening sound of a thousand frozen daggers shredding into the liquid barrier. Water exploded in every direction, violently rocking the arena floor.
When the barrage finally ended and the water settled, the crowd was left staring in stunned silence.
Chigiri was on his hands and knees in the shallow water, panting heavily. His clothes were sliced up, and he was completely drenched, looking like a drowned rat. His chakra reserves were practically running on fumes from maintaining that defensive wall.
"What's wrong?" I taunted, crossing my arms. "Giving up already? I thought the Mist didn't play games."
Chigiri gritted his teeth, his eyes filled with desperate rage. Seeing absolutely no other option, he stood up, gathering the very last ounce of his chakra.
"Water Style: Water Dragon Bullet Jutsu!" he roared.
The water basin violently churned. A massive, roaring dragon composed entirely of high-pressure water rose from the depths, before crashing down directly toward me with crushing force.
I immediately wove the required signs in a blur and slammed my hands on the ground.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: WATER STYLE: STORMY BLOCKADE (MEDIUM OUTPUT)]
A massive, swirling stream of water erupted from around me, intercepting the dragon head-on. The two jutsu clashed with a thunderous boom. My blockade effortlessly absorbed the dragon's momentum, neutralizing the attack completely.
But I wasn't done.
I blurred through another sequence of hand signs and extended a single palm forward, pushing a fraction of my chakra out.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: WATER STYLE: WATER SHARK BULLET JUTSU (MINIMUM OUTPUT)]
The water from the clashing jutsu instantly coalesced in front of me. Because of my monstrous level, my "minimum output" was anything but normal.
A terrifyingly massive shark—easily three times the size of Chigiri's full-power dragon—exploded outward at high-speed.
Chigiri didn't even have time to scream.
The shark completely swallowed him, carrying him across the arena with immense, crushing force. It slammed him brutally into the reinforced concrete wall of the stadium.
BOOM!
The impact triggered the defensive fuinjutsu etched into the walls, causing a massive barrier seal to flare to life and absorb the jutsu before it could shatter the stone. Even so, the sheer kinetic transfer violently shook the foundation of the arena floor. The water shark dispersed into a torrential downpour, revealing a massive crater in the ground just beneath the barrier.
Chigiri was embedded in the center of the crater, completely unconscious, his weapons shattered on the ground below him.
[SUB-QUEST (PUT ON A SHOW) COMPLETE]
[ALL BONUS CONDITIONS FULFILLED]
[REWARDS OBTAINED]:
+2,500 XP
+25,000 Ryo
Item Acquired: Tear of the Desert Priest
[RYO BALANCE: 55,440,100 → 55,465,100 RYO]
[UNIQUE WEAPON ACQUIRED: WINTER'S BITE]:
Rank: A
Type: Twin Daggers
Stats: +85 Attack Damage
Passive 1: High chance of freezing target on hit.
Passive 2: Enhances all Ice-based attacks.
Hell yea, I grinned, dismissing the screens. Those daggers are going to be incredibly useful. And with the Tear secured, I officially have the cure for Gaara's insomnia. I just have to find a way for him to actually take it without him thinking I'm trying to poison him.
It was only then that I finally noticed the silence in the stadium.
The entire audience was staring down at the arena floor, completely stunned. They were trying to process how a match hyped up to be a fierce, bloody battle against a deadly Kiri ninja had just ended in a spectacular water show—all without me even breaking a sweat, taking a single step backward, or looking the least bit winded from the massive amount of chakra I had just expelled.
A second later, the silence broke, and deafening, roaring cheers erupted from all sides.
I glanced up at the Kage box. Hiruzen was smiling, his pipe resting loosely in his hand. But my eyes immediately shifted to the "Fourth Kazekage" sitting beside him.
The disguised Orochimaru was leaning heavily forward, his veil shifting slightly in the wind. His attention wasn't focused on just me—he was staring intently at the flickering remnants of the stadium's defensive fuinjutsu seal that my shark had forcefully triggered. Even from down here, I could sense his foul chakra spiking with dark, calculating intrigue as he analyzed the barrier's stress points.
His plans to attack Hiruzen here might slow down because of this, or he might just adapt them because of all the planning he's done, I mused. It'll only be a matter of time now.
Genma jogged over to the crater, quickly checking Chigiri's pulse before standing up and crossing his arms in an 'X' motion.
"Winner, Naruto Uzumaki!" Genma's voice boomed over the stadium speakers.
The massive electronic screen at the top of the stadium flashed, updating Block B. My name slid forward, officially moving me on to face Neji in the second round.
I turned around and began the walk back up the stairs to the viewing balcony. As I made my way up, I glanced toward the lower civilian stands. Lee was practically in tears, cheering at the top of his lungs, while Tenten and Hinata watched in absolute awe. Ino and Sakura, however, were staring at me with their jaws completely unhinged, looking like they had just seen a ghost.
I reached the top of the stairs and stepped back onto the competitor's balcony. The remaining participants were looking at me with even more guarded caution.
Shikamaru was leaning against the wall, rubbing the back of his neck. "Since when could you use high-level Water Ninjutsu?" he asked, narrowing his eyes at me.
"I dabbled in it over the last month, along with some other things," I replied casually, waving a hand. "Honestly, you were smart to drop out when you did. If we had fought, I would have had a lot of fun destroying you."
Shikamaru just sighed, not even bothering to argue the point because he knew it was true.
I turned my attention to the rest of the room, letting an arrogant grin spread across my face.
"So, have you all settled on what places you plan on coming in yet?"
Gaara's sand violently churned inside his gourd, threatening to spill out, while Neji's jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth might shatter. Sasuke just glared at me, his fists trembling at his sides in pure frustration.
I turned my back on them and closed my eyes, seamlessly tapping back into my [SHADOW LINK].
I did a quick sweep. My elite Soldiers had successfully eliminated Orochimaru's summoning squads, and the bodies were already dragged into the dense brush, completely hidden from sight. The giant snake threat was entirely neutralized. Hiruzen was going to live, my secrets would remain safe, and Orochimaru's grand invasion was slowly being dismantled before it even began.
The audience's cheers finally began to die down as Genma stepped back into the center of the arena floor.
"Match Three!" the proctor announced. "Sasuke Uchiha versus Gantetsu of the Stone! Both fighters, make your way down to the arena floor!"
Sasuke pushed off the wall and walked past me in total silence, his eyes entirely focused on the arena below. Gantetsu cracked his massive knuckles and followed suit.
I leaned forward on the stone railing, my eyes darting back up to the Kage box.
Ight, snake-freak, I thought, watching the Kazekage's veiled face closely. Let's see how you go about this. Your grand invasion is crumbling before it even starts—what will you do now?