"Look at that, Kannon. Aren't you glad you did not cheapen out and hired a chunin to assist you? Those prominent clan kids would have killed a lesser shinobi in minutes."
The Jonin spoke casually as he walked slowly toward us. His steps were deliberate, meant to draw every ounce of our attention.
"I must say, as always, you have done your homework. I now understand why you paid so much to hire me on such short notice. My abilities perfectly counter theirs." A huge, malicious grin appeared on his face as he pointed a finger directly at Shizuru. "You. Nara kid. You will die first."
Genta growled, immediately stepping in front of her to block his line of sight.
The man merely chuckled. "A brave kid we have here. Good. I am Yodomi. Kannon is very serious about that karma stuff, so I will ask you not to hold a grudge against me in the afterlife. It is nothing personal, after all. Understood?"
A terrifying, oppressive chakra erupted from Yodomi. He flew through hand signs at blinding speed. I instantly summoned my spear. Lightning exploded around the shaft, turning the world black and blue from the violent electrical currents.
However, I did not fire it toward the rogue ninja.
Every hair on my arms stood completely on end. A sickening tingle of pure dread washed over my entire body as I spun around instinctively.
An attack of unfathomable power collided with the barrier just in front of my head. The sheer impact bought me a literal fraction of a second. I threw myself to the side just as the barrier was erased from existence and an invisible force severed through the space where my skull had been a moment prior. The strike continued onward, cleanly slicing massive trees in half on the far side of the clearing.
My heart violently contracted in my chest. I never saw it coming.
The only reason I turned was a phantom whisper of danger. I felt a terrifyingly faint chakra signature, followed instantly by a sharp, acoustic note. That unseen blade would have killed me effortlessly if the barrier had not delayed the inevitable just long enough for my lightning enhanced reflexes to pull me out of the way. Anyone else would most likely have died instantly.
"If you had not warned him of my existence, he would have died there."
A heavenly voice echoed from the flank. I jumped away from the convoy, making sure to activate a protective barrier around the carts before my feet even touched the dirt. My eyes locked onto the new enemy.
Looking closely, she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in either of my lives. She looked like a true goddess holding a delicate instrument. However, I could sense dense chakra pooling directly on the strings of her lute. I quickly formed a horrifying idea of what was actually happening.
I did not wait for her to act. Forming a quick hand sign, a shadow clone immediately appeared and flickered away to assist Genta and Shizuru. Since we were facing two Jonin simultaneously, I had to ration my chakra carefully until I understood both of their fighting styles. Even with that tactical mindset, the sheer terror radiating from Kannon was on an entirely different level.
Yodomi wove through hand seals with blistering speed. A thick wall of water erupted in front of him, stopping Shizuru's thrown kunai just in time. Genta rapidly slapped the ground. Multiple thick spears of stone formed and launched forward with massive momentum, smashing into the water wall and utterly destroying it.
The water user had already moved. He finished a new set of signs, creating a colossal dragon made entirely of condensed water. It crashed down hard, shattering the earth beneath it before launching directly toward my teammates. My clone flickered out of the way. Genta slapped the earth again, erecting a powerful defensive barricade just before him as Shizuru desperately jumped clear, using the little time the wall bought them as the water dragon demolished the defense with little resistance.
On the other side of the battlefield, Kannon spoke in an almost imperceptible whisper. "Severance of Maya."
Time seemed to stop entirely. I sensed her chakra ignite into violent motion. She used ungodly control to shape it around her lute strings, which I now realized were forged completely from chakra metal. Wind energy coated the strings a microsecond before she struck a chord. An invisible slash carried directly through the sound wave at an acoustic velocity, a pace almost too fast for my brain to comprehend.
I dodged only because my senses caught the pooling chakra, throwing my body aside before she released the technique. A terrifying gouge appeared on the earth right behind me, cutting impossibly deep into the solid dirt. I stared in shock at the silent destruction I had just witnessed.
My clone rapidly approached Yodomi, who immediately turned his water dragon around, sending it attacking from behind to almost crush my copy between its watery jaws. The clone jumped to the side just in time.
Shizuru was already sprinting toward the man to press the advantage. He clicked his tongue and dismissed his technique, jumping backward to evade a dark shadow she had sent creeping across the ground.
"You Nara clan kids have a really annoying technique," he grumbled, skidding through the ground once he landed.
He slapped both of his hands violently onto the earth. The solid terrain instantly turned into a deep, muddy nightmare. Shizuru's legs sank into the mire, halting her momentum completely. She looked up in dread at the rapidly approaching water spears Yodomi had seamlessly conjured.
Genta crashed down into the mud right in front of her. He slammed his hands together to create another thick earth wall that took the devastating hit at the very last second. However, chunks of his barricade immediately began to crumble. Worse, the liquefied earth beneath them caused the heavy defense to sink rapidly. Genta was completely unable to counterattack. He could only desperately reinforce the sinking shield while they both sank deeper into the muck, putting all their hopes on my approaching shadow clone.
I could not waste another second. Now that I knew exactly how dangerous Kannon was, I had to go all out.
I ignited my Stormdrive, letting lightning burst into every seam of my body. The world around me perceptually slowed and narrowed into a single focal point. Becoming a blurred streak of electricity, I split the distance between us in a fraction of a heartbeat. I blinked into existence almost directly in front of her.
She did not panic. Instead, her fingers were already dancing across the strings. Her voice cut through the warped perception of my speed, sounding unnervingly clear and calm.
"Verse of Detachment."
She struck the instrument with a speed that completely defied logic. My eyes widened in shock. I slammed my feet down to halt my charge, shattering the earth beneath me under the weight of my shifting momentum as I flickered back. A microsecond later, the entire area I had just been in erupted. It was as if the space itself was struck by thousands of micro slashes all at once. I was already throwing my body backward, yet multiple bloody gashes appeared across my arms and chest before I could fully clear the blast zone.
I glared at her, breathing heavily and seething with rage. She simply smiled back. Her eyes were so warm and genuinely kind that my brain completely short circuited for a brief moment of utter confusion.
"Let me guide your safe journey to the afterlife," she whispered softly.
She placed all five fingers against the thickest strings. An unbelievable concentration of chakra flooded the lute. Every instinct in my body screamed in pure terror.
"Asura Blade."
The air became suffocatingly dense. It grew so sharp that shallow cuts began appearing across my skin before the attack even launched. When it finally came, the speed was impossible. My only saving grace was my Stormdrive. Pushed by my expanded senses and screaming instincts, my reflexes triggered the flicker technique a fraction of a second before her fingers left the strings.
She let the attack shatter reality, and the unseen blade tore the world apart in a single, cataclysmic motion.
It moved with such blinding, inescapable velocity that a chunk of my shoulder was cleanly sliced open despite my precognitive evasion. Then, my blood ran completely cold. I remembered that Genta and Shizuru were trapped in the mud far behind me and directly in the attack's trajectory. The invisible blade did not wait for my panic to catch up to the implications as the world itself split completely in half.
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A/N: Important Announcement!
So I have some good news and some bad news. Let's start with the bad news: this arc is ending very soon, which means our massive 60+-day break is almost upon us. Please put down the pitchforks because here comes the good news: I am not abandoning you to the void! I've just unleashed my second story onto the world, Bloody Nirvana, and it will be running while Stormbreaker is on break.
If you need your daily fix of my writing, then head over there and drop a follow: (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/182626/bloody-nirvana). You'll love it, trust me.
Go follow your favorite author's new story so we can continue having fun there. Thank you in advance, and I love you all! <3