Although the Third Raikage was irritated by the Eight-Tails' cunning, part of him was still relieved. At least the alliance treaty with Konoha had already been signed. He didn't even want to imagine what would have happened if the Eight-Tails had gone berserk while they were still facing Konoha across the border.
He couldn't help regretting it. Killer Bee was still lacking in experience. He never should have listened to Yotsuki Ai and brought the boy out so early.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The battle was so violent it shook the night itself. The Third Raikage was tiny compared to the fully manifested Eight-Tails, yet every movement he made forced the beast into caution.
What surprised Chiba Shun most was how well prepared Kumogakure seemed to be for a tailed beast rampage. Under the direction of elite jonin, the surrounding cloud shinobi didn't blindly rush forward. They let the Third Raikage fight the Eight-Tails head-on while they rapidly formed small and medium battle formations around the battlefield.
No one launched any large-scale attacks while those formations were still being built. No one wanted to draw the Eight-Tails' attention too early. The entire army moved with the kind of quiet coordination that only came from repeated drills and old fear.
Before long, the formations were ready. The cloud shinobi were about to strike, only for the Third Raikage to signal for them to hold.
Since the Eight-Tails was still focused entirely on him, he intended to drag the fight out a little longer on his own. As long as he kept its attention, the rest of the army would take fewer losses.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Every blow the Third Raikage landed made the Eight-Tails howl in pain. Yet for all its size and fury, the beast could not land a clean hit on him.
The Third Raikage was terrifyingly strong. He was fighting a fully released tailed beast barehanded and still had not taken the slightest injury. If not for the fact that even his chakra had a limit, and if not for the absurd depth of the Eight-Tails' reserves, Chiba Shun felt the others might not have needed to interfere at all.
At last, after half the night had passed in a thunderous clash of flesh and chakra, the Third Raikage gave the signal.
The battle formations around the battlefield erupted into action.
At that point, taijutsu shinobi had very little room to contribute. The Eight-Tails could withstand the Third Raikage's blows for a time, so ordinary body-to-body fighters had almost no way of threatening it. The real role of the taijutsu users now was to protect the ninjutsu specialists while they unleashed their techniques.
And Kumogakure's ninjutsu specialists were, overwhelmingly, Lightning Release users.
Lightning Release techniques rained down from every direction. From where he stood, Chiba Shun counted at least twenty or thirty Lightning Release jutsu at A-rank or above flashing across the battlefield in overlapping arcs.
The Eight-Tails screamed as its massive body convulsed under the barrage, its movements stuttering for just a beat.
That single beat was enough.
The Third Raikage flashed in and drove a savage piercing thrust and kick into the Eight-Tails' head. The beast managed only the smallest tilt of its skull.
One of its horns was cut clean off.
The Third Raikage frowned. He had expected that attack to be a killing strike. The fact that it had only severed a horn clearly annoyed him.
And that was the moment the Eight-Tails truly lost control.
It abandoned the Third Raikage entirely and turned toward the surrounding cloud army.
Its tentacles rose like a forest of giant whips and smashed down in every direction.
The Third Raikage moved instantly, but even he only managed to blast away two of them. When he saw just how many tentacles were descending toward the gathered shinobi, his expression finally changed.
Then the ground beneath the Eight-Tails suddenly shifted.
No, not sank. One side of the battlefield had been raised.
The entire body of the Eight-Tails lurched sideways, its balance thrown off. The tailed beast nearly toppled over. It had to drive several of the tentacles meant for attack into the earth just to brace itself.
Following the disturbance in chakra, it turned its head and found the culprit.
Chiba Shun froze in place.
That was right. The sudden change in terrain had been his doing.
He had used Earth Release: Mountain Earth Technique.
But this wasn't the same Mountain Earth Technique he had used against Hyuga Akira's team. The orthodox form of the jutsu created two gigantic hemispherical masses of rock that rose and converged to crush everything caught between them.
The Eight-Tails was simply too massive for that. There was no way Chiba Shun could completely trap it.
So he had changed the shape.
Instead of trying to crush the beast, he forced two colossal masses of earth upward from one side under its body. They did not rise very high, but they rose just enough to make the Eight-Tails lose its footing at the crucial moment.
The attack hadn't injured it at all.
But that had never been the point.
His goal had been to interrupt the Eight-Tails' rampage for even an instant.
And he had succeeded.
He had burned through every scrap of chakra he had recovered over the previous few days. In truth, what he produced could hardly even be called a complete execution of the technique. After exhausting himself completely, all he had managed to do was make the Eight-Tails stagger.
Yet the timing of that stagger was perfect.
The Eight-Tails' furious attack had been broken.
Now its enormous eyes fixed directly on Chiba Shun, burning with rage. At that moment, he had no chakra left and no means of resistance. If the Eight-Tails casually swept one tentacle his way, he would die.
Fortunately, he was not standing alone.
The instant that opening appeared, another powerful Lightning Release strike crashed into the Eight-Tails. And this time, the Third Raikage did not waste the chance. He drove another devastating blow straight into the beast's vital area.
The Eight-Tails shrieked in pain, its murderous attention shifting away from Chiba Shun at last.
Sakai Hashi, being a taijutsu specialist, had almost no role in a fight like this. He seized Yotsuki Ai, who had already been injured, and then grabbed Chiba Shun, who had completely emptied himself, and hauled them far away from the center of battle.
What happened after that no longer involved the three of them.
Long after, the Eight-Tails was finally suppressed and sealed again by the Third Raikage and the combined efforts of Kumogakure's forces.
Even so, before it was sealed away, it still managed to kill hundreds of cloud shinobi.
Fortunately, the dead were mainly genin and chunin, with only a smaller number of jonin and elite jonin among the casualties. The higher-ranked shinobi had quicker reactions and better survival instincts. During the final frenzy, most of them managed to evade in time.
On top of that, many taijutsu shinobi had reacted just as Sakai Hashi did, rescuing ninjutsu specialists at critical moments.
Because of that, the losses were still within what Kumogakure considered acceptable.
But only barely.
In one night, the army's combat strength had been cut by more than half.
If Hiruzen Sarutobi had arrived with Konoha's forces at that exact moment, the cloud army would have been doomed. The Third Raikage was exhausted to the point that he was likely no longer a match for Hiruzen. And the rest of the army, like Chiba Shun himself, had nearly burned through all their chakra.
The Konoha army could probably have crushed them with a single full charge.
The Third Raikage immediately raised the entire camp's alert level to the maximum. Everyone spent the rest of that night in a state of fear and exhaustion, waiting for the worst and praying it would not come.
The next day, the Third Raikage completed a rough tally of the losses.
The deaths of more than three hundred shinobi pained him deeply. But compared to earlier tailed beast rampages, it was still far less than what might have happened.
Most importantly, the Eight-Tails had gone berserk in the field this time, not inside the village. No homes had been destroyed. No large barriers had to be rebuilt from scratch. The economic losses were comparatively light.
After letting the army rest in place for several more days, the Third Raikage convened a meeting of all jonin.
At that meeting, he publicly commended the shinobi who had distinguished themselves in sealing the Eight-Tails.
Among those singled out, Chiba Shun received especially high praise.
Looking back over the battle, the senior officers came to the same conclusion. Without Chiba Shun's desperate use of Mountain Earth Technique, the Eight-Tails' disrupted attack would never have happened. At least a hundred shinobi would have died right there.
And that was the conservative estimate.
More than that, the rhythm of the army's ninjutsu barrage would have been broken. The Third Raikage would not have found his chance to heavily injure the Eight-Tails so early. If the fight had dragged on under those conditions, Kumogakure might have lost over a thousand men that night.
Many jonin and elite jonin would probably have been forced into all-out, life-and-death combat, and the final losses could have been catastrophic.
So in front of all those jonin and special jonin, the Third Raikage directly announced that Chiba Shun had officially been promoted to jonin.
On top of that, he was awarded another S-rank mission record.
He wasn't the only one promoted. Kumogakure had lost too many jonin in too short a time and urgently needed new blood to refill its upper ranks.
After the rewards were handed out and the merits settled, the Third Raikage led the army back toward Kumogakure.
Privately, he couldn't help feeling some regret. A large chunk of the 1.4 billion ryo he had squeezed out of Hiruzen Sarutobi had already been burned up by all this.
Chiba Shun, however, was overjoyed.
He had finally become a jonin.
And he had gained another S-rank mission.
He was rich.
Once the cloud army fully withdrew to the village, most of the shinobi were dispersed. Only a smaller portion remained stationed in preparation for a possible Third Shinobi World War.
Meanwhile, on Konoha's side, Hiruzen Sarutobi returned to the village, while the rest of Konoha's forces were divided into three groups.
One group remained behind to guard against the possibility of Kumogakure changing its mind and attacking again.
A second group moved to reinforce Danzo.
And the last group headed toward the Land of Whirlpools to join Orochimaru's forces.
The sudden treaty between Konoha and Kumogakure directly gave Onoki a pain in the lower back.
He had honestly thought the cloud army was preparing for a major war with Konoha. He had watched them push forward with almost all their strength and assumed a clash was unavoidable.
Who would have guessed that they were only building leverage for negotiations?
Since when had the Third Raikage grown a brain?
The more Onoki thought about it, the more it felt as if he himself had been played for a fool. He had let the cloud shinobi use him as a piece on the board, and now he was stuck in an awkward situation.
He didn't want to withdraw immediately. Mobilizing that many shinobi had already cost far too much. But if he stayed in place, he wasn't confident he could gain anything worthwhile either.
After thinking it over, he ultimately sent an envoy to Konoha's frontline camp, intending to imitate Kumogakure and extort concessions from Konoha as well.
Unfortunately for him, the one facing him was Danzo.
Danzo had just finished publicly attacking Hiruzen Sarutobi in front of the upper command of that Konoha force, accusing him of weakness and compromise. There was no way he was going to turn around and negotiate with Onoki now.
So when Onoki's envoy arrived, Danzo had him killed.
When the news reached the Third Tsuchikage, Onoki was furious. But anger did not rob him of his judgment. After hesitating for one day, he finally ordered the Iwa army to withdraw.
Onoki was still rational enough to understand one thing.
The cloud army had not merely withdrawn. It had formed an alliance with Konoha.
If Kumogakure suddenly turned its attention to the Land of Earth while he was still stalled there, the consequences would be disastrous.
Danzo, meanwhile, was delighted when he saw the Iwa forces withdraw. He immediately began spreading the story that he had personally frightened the earth shinobi into retreat.
Hiruzen Sarutobi, he said, had been forced to sign a humiliating alliance agreement just to make his enemies withdraw. Danzo, on the other hand, had driven away a powerful foe without paying any price at all.
The contrast spoke for itself.
Because of that, Danzo succeeded in winning over yet another group of not particularly bright, but very enthusiastic, ordinary shinobi.
Most shinobi with brains, of course, saw it differently.
They understood that Hiruzen Sarutobi's alliance with Kumogakure was, in many ways, a betrayal of Konoha's interests. But they also understood something Danzo preferred not to say.
If that alliance had not been signed, war would have broken out. And the losses from a full war would have been far greater than the seven hundred S-rank mission payments Hiruzen had offered.
Even if the two sides had merely remained in a deadlock, Konoha's losses would likely still have exceeded what Hiruzen paid out to Kumogakure.
Danzo's so-called victory existed only because Hiruzen had already signed that alliance.
If the cloud army had not withdrawn, the Iwa army almost certainly would not have withdrawn either.
But Danzo did not see it that way.
He only felt that, if he had been given more time, he could have won over even more shinobi and expanded his influence still further.
Unfortunately for him, the moment news came that the Iwa forces had pulled back, Hiruzen Sarutobi immediately sent Tsunade with direct orders.
Danzo's army was disbanded on the spot.
Of all the fronts in that near-war, only one had come close to feeling like an actual war.
That was the battlefield in the Land of Rivers.
There, Jiraiya's force had engaged the army led by the Third Kazekage. The clashes had been limited. Neither side had suffered major casualties, and neither village's Kage-level fighter had taken the field personally. Even so, compared to the other fronts, it looked far more like a true war.
But that was all it amounted to.
After hearing that the Iwa army had withdrawn as well, the Third Kazekage sighed and led Sunagakure's forces back to the Land of Wind.
Jiraiya did not pursue.
He had left the Land of Rain in a hurry, abandoning the three disciples he had only recently begun teaching. More than anything else, he wanted to go back and see how those three children were doing.