BOOM—!
A shooting star streaked across Kikyo City.
Pakura could feel an enormous threat rapidly approaching from behind.
She felt as though there was nowhere left to run.
It was simply too fast.
Am I going to die?
I’m probably going to turn to ash with a single hit…
I don’t want to die…
But I can’t escape…
The roar and violent wind grew closer and closer.
Pakura closed her eyes.
She didn’t dare watch herself die.
Suddenly—
The air became completely still.
The roar disappeared.
The wind vanished.
Absolute silence descended.
It was so quiet that even the sound of a needle falling could have been heard.
“Am I dead?”
“Is this what it feels like after you die?
All the sounds are gone?”
Pakura opened her eyes.
She was still standing exactly where she had been.
She looked at her hands.
Nothing had changed.
She looked at her clothes.
Nothing had changed.
She touched her face.
Still intact.
Then Pakura turned around.
What she saw left her stunned.
A trench nearly three meters wide stretched all the way from Kikyo City to the place where she stood.
But it ended about five meters away from her.
“Why did it stop?”
Without realizing it, she looked back toward Kikyo City.
Yagami Yue was standing on the roof of the lord’s residence.
He was watching her.
Pakura had no idea what had happened.
But instinct took over.
She immediately fled.
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Inside Kikyo City, Yagami Yue watched Pakura rapidly disappear into the distance.
A faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
He had deliberately let Pakura escape.
By now, he had become highly proficient with the Railgun and understood that its effective range was not infinite.
The principle behind the Railgun was to use an electromagnetic field to generate Lorentz force, accelerating a metal projectile until it acquired enough kinetic energy to strike its target.
Compared with conventional artillery propelled by gunpowder, a Railgun could greatly increase the projectile’s velocity and range.
So how fast could it go?
Anywhere from 1,000 meters per second to 10,000 meters per second.
The exact initial velocity depended on the strength of the electromagnetic force Yagami Yue generated.
As for the range—
That depended on both the projectile’s velocity and its material.
The faster the projectile traveled, the greater the losses caused by friction with the air, and therefore the shorter its effective range.
The harder and more durable the projectile was, the farther it could travel.
The one-hundred-ryō coin used as the standard currency throughout the shinobi world was made from a uniform material.
Yue had experimented with different velocities and had already memorized the effective range corresponding to each one.
At a velocity of 3,000 meters per second, a one-hundred-ryō coin could only withstand the journey for roughly 80 to 95 meters.
That was why Yagami Yue had told Pakura:
I’ll let you run 150 meters first.
Well…
That line had been a little too much of a flex.
After Pakura fled, Kikyo City’s Sand shinobi lost their jōnin commander.
Their formation immediately collapsed into chaos.
The Konoha forces quickly wiped them out.
Kikyo City officially fell into Konoha’s hands.
“Next comes the ambush…”
“According to the original history, Konoha achieved a crushing victory here, practically crippling Sunagakure and severely damaging its strength.”
Yagami Yue sneered.
“But I won’t let things go that smoothly for you.”
He didn’t want Konoha to win the war so easily.
Konoha’s potential for war was simply too terrifying.
It possessed more Kekkei Genkai, more powerful clans, and more elite shinobi than any other village in the shinobi world.
After all, in the original history, Konoha ultimately became the victor of the Third Shinobi World War.
That alone demonstrated how frightening its potential was.
And Yagami Yue had already decided that he would eventually defect from Konoha and become a major villain.
Naturally—
He intended to weaken Konoha as much as possible.
…
…
Bang!
Inside the Kazekage’s office, Rasa smashed his fist through the desk once again.
“Why was Kikyo City captured by Konoha?!”
“What the hell were you doing, Pakura?”
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“You’re supposed to be an elite Sand jōnin, yet you couldn’t even stop Konoha’s attack!
What use are you?!”
Rasa roared furiously at Pakura.
But deep inside, he was actually delighted.
Pakura, Pakura…
Let’s see you act arrogant now!
Pakura knelt on one knee with her head lowered.
She listened expressionlessly to Rasa’s furious scolding before calmly responding:
“The person who attacked was Yagami Yue.”
“He used his trump card—the Shooting Star.”
“I couldn’t defeat him.
There was nothing I could do, so I returned.”
Rasa’s expression froze.
Yagami Yue’s Shooting Star.
It was Rasa’s greatest source of humiliation.
His body still hadn’t completely recovered, despite possessing the physical constitution of a Kage-level shinobi.
But the damage to his pride was even worse.
The ridicule throughout the shinobi world.
The strange looks from the villagers.
All of it had left him so frustrated that he was nearly driven mad.
Pakura might have fled Kikyo City because of the Shooting Star.
Other people might have had the right to criticize her.
But Rasa had no right to do so.
“Hmph!”
Rasa wisely stopped blaming Pakura.
Instead, he began thinking about what to do next.
The Land of Wind had always been relatively poor.
And Kikyo City, located on the border between the Land of Wind and the Land of Fire, was a prosperous commercial city with a large population.
It was one of the major cities of the Land of Wind.
Losing it was a tremendous blow to both the Land of Wind and Sunagakure.
It was also a major blow to Rasa himself as Kazekage.
Especially recently, rumors had begun spreading.
People were saying that ever since Rasa had become Kazekage, he had accomplished nothing.
He suffered defeat after defeat.
He had even been seriously injured by an eight-year-old Konoha chūnin.
The reputation of the entire Land of Wind and Sunagakure had been dragged through the mud.
Some people were even saying that Rasa was simply unfit to remain Kazekage.
Therefore—
Rasa absolutely could not allow another important city like Kikyo City to remain in Konoha’s hands.
“We must take it back!!”