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Elsewhere.
“Did you two see it clearly?” Kaede Onime asked, considerately checking in on their experience with the Double Pupil, angling for a five-star review.
Mangetsu and Zabuza both nodded.
Yagura’s speed was thunderclap-fast, whether sprinting or drawing and sheathing his blade, it all happened in a single instant, start to finish.
But Munashi Jinpachi was even faster.
Even at that speed, he evaded Yagura’s blade with ease.
The two of them imagined themselves in Yagura’s opponent’s position.
Even with support like Kaede Onime to help them track Yagura’s movements, their bodies would never be able to dodge.
The gap in strength was just too vast.
Mangetsu and Zabuza, two people with a grudge between them, now shared the exact same thought.
“Two or three years?”
Yagura knew, and accepted, that the gap between himself and a jonin was still enormous.
But: “It won’t take that long, Uncle Munashi!”
Sensing the chakra inside Yagura’s body stir back to life, Munashi Jinpachi was stunned.
He still had strength left?!
“Hey, hey, hey — we agreed on one move!”
“This is still the same move!”
Munashi Jinpachi hadn’t even brought out his Kabutowari yet!
Yagura wasn’t willing to admit defeat, not in words, not in body.
He stepped back again and settled into his charging stance.
Even more lightning erupted from his body, roaring and terrifying.
Yagura shouted: “Thunderclap and Flash! Second Consecutive!”
The same move again?
Munashi Jinpachi felt a touch of boredom.
The speed that looked like divine swiftness to the three kids was, in his eyes, no different from a ninja running at normal speed, though Munashi Jinpachi’s “normal” was defined by his own standards.
Only when Yagura appeared before him again, drawing his long blade in a horizontal slash, did Munashi Jinpachi finally move.
Without even building power, he leaped high on the spot with ease, completely evading Yagura’s head-on charging slash.
From behind Munashi Jinpachi came Yagura’s low, hoarse voice.
“Third Consecutive!”
BOOM!
Yagura compressed his rest and restart time to the absolute limit.
The moment his first strike missed and he landed, he immediately charged again at Munashi Jinpachi, still in midair.
He could actually use it a second time this quickly!
Not bad.
His speed’s even faster now.
Munashi Jinpachi inwardly praised him.
Facing Yagura, he no longer merely dodged.
Hand seals: “Water Clone Technique.”
A mass of water detached from Munashi Jinpachi’s body and rapidly took human form.
Munashi Jinpachi stepped on the water clone and leaped far away.
He actually used that to create a springboard!
One slash cut through Munashi Jinpachi, the clone, cleaving it in two.
Yagura landed on a rooftop, his eyes rapidly scanning for his target.
Suddenly, a black shadow from above blocked out the light.
Yagura only noticed after the shadow’s range had grown larger.
Munashi Jinpachi raised his leg high, descending: “Hahahaha — where are you looking, brat!”
BOOM!
The instant Yagura sensed danger, his body moved with lightning and leaped clear.
Munashi Jinpachi’s fierce downward stomp shattered the roof tiles and plunged into the building’s interior.
A sharp glint flashed in Yagura’s eyes.
He immediately returned and followed inside, standing upside down on the ceiling, his eyes full of the certainty of a predator who has cornered his prey, fixed tightly on Munashi Jinpachi below.
The cramped interior gave him the perfect battleground.
Munashi Jinpachi brushed the dust off his body.
Even realizing he was now in a disadvantageous position, he didn’t care in the slightest.
He looked up and answered Yagura with a provocative grin.
He had no intention of leaving.
“Come on, kid! Let me see just how much faster you can get!”
“Fourth Consecutive!”
The fourth consecutive was the highest count he could manage in daily practice.
Gritting his teeth, enduring the immense pain screaming warnings from every part of his body, Yagura exploded into a sprint once more.
Munashi Jinpachi stomped down hard, snapping a floorboard underfoot into his hand, and met the slash head-on with a horizontal strike.
“Fifth Consecutive!”
The wooden board had just been cut in two by the previous slash.
Munashi Jinpachi switched to a two-handed grip, crossing the pieces in an X before him to meet the attack.
BOOM!
The “weapons” in Munashi Jinpachi’s hands were cut through again, but the attack was still deflected, the force borrowed and turned aside.
Yagura stopped on the ground.
In the span of a single breath, he turned to face his target.
A tremor.
As Yagura’s right leg stepped back to build power again, it suddenly lost strength and quivered.
The loss of strength lasted only an instant.
Yagura quickly adjusted his stance and posture.
But his body was sending a message, to Yagura, and to everyone present who had noticed.
The next strike would be his final attack capable of maintaining the power of Thunderclap and Flash.
SHING!
“Thunderclap and Flash — Sixth Consecutive!”
He can still move?!
Mangetsu and the other two were horrified.
Watching Yagura charge at him with the blade for the sixth consecutive time, Munashi Jinpachi roared with laughter, excitement surging through him.
The wooden pieces left in his hands, only palm-length now, could no longer serve as weapons.
CLANG!
In a flash of swift lightning, blade met axe edge head-on!
Yagura got his wish.
He had forced out Kabutowari.
“Very fast!”
As fast as a normal jonin’s sprint now.
Munashi Jinpachi caught Yagura’s slash easily with the short axe of Kabutowari in one hand and bellowed: “But this force isn’t even worthy of sharpening my Kabutowari!”
Yagura clenched his teeth desperately, pouring more strength into his sword hand, but the short axe blocking his blade stood utterly unmoved, like a towering stone mountain.
The strength gap was too vast.
He couldn’t budge it.
Was this as far as he could go?
Sensing that the force from the other side had reached its limit and was even beginning to wane, Munashi Jinpachi bared his teeth and let out a breath.
“Kid, watch closely.”
“This is how you use a blade!”
Munashi Jinpachi shifted from defense to offense.
With just normal exertion, he pressed the blade down onto Yagura’s chest.
If the blade were to snap now, that short axe could cleave Yagura’s body in two without effort.
If Munashi Jinpachi used the wooden mallet in his other hand, that outcome would be certain.
The lightning-wreathed blade and the pure axe edge ground against each other in a contest of raw strength, throwing off sparks.
Legs bent in a half-crouch, the web of his sword hand trembling uncontrollably.
Damn it.
His hand was starting to go numb.
He couldn’t keep going like this.
Yagura coated his left hand with Lightning Release chakra and raised it to the axe blade.
“Coral Palm!”
Bursting, growing coral rapidly covered the surfaces of both the short axe and the ninja blade, separating the two.
Munashi Jinpachi frowned slightly and pressed down harder.
The coral on the axe blade shattered at the slightest touch.
But in that brief disengagement, Yagura seized the chance to retreat and break free.
“That’s more like it.”
Munashi Jinpachi nodded in approval, returned Kabutowari to his back, and curled his lip.
“If we’d met on a real battlefield, you’d have died 800 times over already, brat!”
True.
Yagura hung his head.
He couldn’t deny it.
He had forced out Kabutowari, but Munashi Jinpachi hadn’t even used Kabutowari’s wooden mallet.
His speed might be fast, but in Munashi Jinpachi’s eyes it was probably just average.
Otherwise, Munashi Jinpachi wouldn’t have been able to keep up with his movements every single time.
And strength was even less worth mentioning.
“Really, really, really, a complete and total defeat.”
The gap wasn’t just ordinarily large.
Yagura sighed helplessly and released the Lightning Release Chakra Mode shrouding his body.
In that instant, the exhaustion of his cells, pushed to their absolute limit, erupted in revolt.
Yagura’s mind and vision flickered blank for several frames.
His whole body lost all strength.
He couldn’t even grip the blade that supported him.
He collapsed straight to the side.
Just before losing consciousness completely, Yagura sensed that he hadn’t fallen onto hard ground.
The solid sensation at his back was soft, like a water bed.
Mangetsu had used the Water Body Flicker Technique the moment he noticed something was wrong with Yagura’s condition, rushing over to catch him.
“Hey! Hey! Are you okay?!”
Mangetsu, your worried face is so funny.
Normally, Yagura would definitely have teased him with that, but right now he couldn’t even open his mouth to speak.
To hell with it.
Every cell in his body was in full revolt.
“Holy shit! Don’t close your eyes! You absolutely must not close your eyes at a time like this!”
“Shut up. So noisy.”
Munashi Jinpachi came over for a look and said calmly: “Just physical exhaustion. Don’t yell like someone died. You lot, get this kid to the ninja hospital.”
Before leaving, he added one more line: “Make it fast.”
➤ Next: Opening My Eyes to an Unfamiliar Ceiling