Just like the AB combo, the other Cloud ninja realized Saiki was the primary threat. They began to abandon their individual duels, clustering together to swarm him.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
The Cloud were brutal. They didn't care that Saiki was surrounded by the corpses of their own brothers. Kunai, shuriken, and explosive tags filled the air in a literal curtain of iron and fire, aimed directly at the boy.
Saiki knew A and Bee were nearby. He didn't want to use his "Auspicious Cloud" yet; he was saving his trump card for the big hitters.
Flash!
Blue light crackled. Saiki didn't weave a single sign. Under the stunned gazes of the Cloud unit, he transformed into a streak of pure electricity and vanished from the spot.
BOOM!
The projectiles slammed into the pile of corpses, launching severed limbs into the air in a grisly explosion. Saiki was nowhere to be found.
The lightning reappeared in the heart of their flank. Where the blade pointed, blood followed.
This was the true power of the Flower-Flower Fruit. Saiki and his clones were synchronized. Despite the shared-damage risk, the jutsu cast by his clones could be applied directly to Saiki's own body.
With two Flower Clones acting as his external CPU—one prepping Body Flickers, the other prepping Substitutions—Saiki was a bolt of sentient lightning. Every time he materialized, a man died. The night was a strobe light of blue sparks and red mist.
Even if someone managed to anticipate his Body Flicker, a Substitution would instantly swap him to safety before the strike could land.
The Cloud ninja realized with horror that they couldn't even track him, let alone hit him.
Everywhere his blade passed, a mist of blood followed. He was the Grim Reaper in the shape of a child.
Flash! Squelch!
Another man fell.
"SCATTER! DON'T BUNCH UP! GET AWAY FROM HIM!"
The terrified Cloud survivors broke formation, fleeing in every direction to escape the slaughter.
ZZZT!
Saiki appeared in the center of the clearing, letting out a long, heavy breath.
"Twenty-two!"
A simple number, yet it represented a catastrophic loss for the Cloud.
The raiding unit had roughly six hundred men. In less than three minutes, Saiki had executed thirty-three of them. He had personally reduced their combat strength by five percent in a single engagement.
His performance was a masterpiece of multi-tasking. In his base state, Saiki's chakra was Jonin-tier, and his physical constitution was an anomaly. In a group setting, his raw stats were the highest on the field.
Usually, a Jonin could be swarmed by a dozen Chunin.
But Saiki's perception—combined with his clones' support—granted him agility that rivaled Minato Namikaze's.
But doing what he did was nearly impossible for anyone else. Each of the jutsu he was weaving required a lifetime of mastery to cast at that speed.
Take his reflexes and reaction time: they were the direct result of his Pre-natal Qi cultivation. In the entire world, only a handful of people like Minato possessed that level of natural hardware.
Normal humans had limits. Saiki didn't.
Substitution and Body Flicker weren't rare; everyone knew them. But weaving them into a seamless, instant-cast loop? No one else could do it.
Refining a low-rank E-grade jutsu like Substitution into a "low-budget Space-Time technique" was Saiki's specialty. Its only weakness was the requirement to be faster than the enemy and to have the signs ready before the hit.
The Flower-Flower Fruit's sensory and jutsu-sharing mechanics solved that. His clones had all the time in the world to prep the signs for him. He was effectively un-hittable.
Saiki had cleared a massive pocket of the battlefield single-handedly, giving Tsume and Shinku a moment to breathe. They watched him in silent, terrified awe.
Genhai and Kurenai had spent the fight casting a few supporting Ninjutsu for their teachers, but they hadn't managed a single kill. They were outclassed.
The Shadow Clones guarding them remained motionless, acting as the team's final insurance policy and chakra reserve. The Flower Clones, however, had reached their limit. After providing the sign-support for Saiki's slaughter, they quietly dissolved into petals and vanished.
Flower Clones were a literal "glitch" in the world's system. Because they were physical entities of flesh and blood, they could generate what Saiki called "Virtual Chakra"—a disposable energy that functioned exactly like the real thing.
The only downside was that when the clone vanished, the virtual chakra vanished with it; it didn't return to the main body like a Shadow Clone.
But who cared? Chakra used for a jutsu was meant to be spent anyway.
The most broken part was the cost. Creating a Flower Clone required almost no physical stamina.
Under the Devil Fruit's rules, Saiki could use one percent of his stamina to create a clone with eighty percent of his combat efficiency. He was a one-man army in the most literal sense.
Saiki's cold gaze swept over the remaining Cloud ninja. Several of them shuddered, the memory of his lightning-fast butchery carving a path of fear into their souls.
There were a thousand men on this mountain. A thousand was a lot, but it was also very few. The panic Saiki was causing finally drew the attention of the two monsters on the field.
"BEE!"
A, the future Fourth Raikage, roared to his brother.
They were brothers-in-arms, bonded by a shared history. A single look was all they needed to communicate.
The definition of "Kage-level" was fuzzy—especially after the disgrace of Rasa, the Fourth Kazekage. But A and Bee were clearly hovering on that threshold.
A, wreathed in his Lightning Armor, was a tank that moved like a bullet. Despite Inoichi and the elite Leaf unit's best efforts, they were taking heavy losses just trying to slow him down.
The Uchiha unit led by Uchiha Ka was handling Bee. Even though no one had the Mangekyo, their three-tomoe eyes and specialized clan techniques were doing a better job of suppressing the beast.
But they weren't making progress. And Saiki had just killed five percent of their unit in three minutes. A was losing his patience.
"Bakayaro! Konoyaro! Fool, ya fool!" Bee's rap was dark and heavy, despite the tension.
"ROAR!"
A primal, guttural scream shattered the midnight silence. The sound echoed through the peaks, carrying for miles without losing an ounce of its ferocity.
Saiki turned toward the sound. A gargantuan monstrosity had manifested on the earth.
The darkness couldn't hide its scale. It had the head of a bull and a body that resembled an octopus, with eight massive, sucker-covered tails thrashing violently behind it.
The chakra radiating from it was a suffocating ocean of malice—cold, wicked, and corrosive. It was a literal mountain of negative energy.
"The Eight-Tails! Gyuki!"
Saiki stood his ground, his gaze hardening as his grip on his katana tightened.