The world did not explode so much as it unmade itself. One moment, Uchiha Daichi was standing in the oppressive, map-strewn silence of his command tent, the psychic echo of the Hokage's disastrous order still ringing in his mind. Next, the universe was consumed by a sound so vast it was less a noise and more a physical force.
"KRA-BOOOOOM!"
It wasn't a single impact. It was a symphony of detonations, a rolling, overlapping cascade of concussive fury that hit the camp from multiple sides simultaneously.
The air itself turned to fire and pressure. Daichi's instincts, sharper than any kunai, flared a microsecond before the blast wave hit. There was no time for thought, only reaction. He "fwooshed" backwards in a desperate shunshin, the world blurring into a streak of motion and noise.
He landed hard on the churned earth twenty yards away, skidding to a halt. He looked back, and his breath caught in his throat. Where his command tent had stood was now a crater. Scraps of burning canvas fluttered in the air like dying moths. His maps, his strategies, his reports—the entire brain of the First Division—were atomised, replaced by a plume of black smoke and dust.
"What the hell is going on?" he snarled, the words ripped from his lips and lost in the continuing roar. All around him, the camp was a vision of hell. "BOOM!"
A supply depot vanished in a fireball, sending casks of water and dried rations flying like shrapnel.
"KABOOM!"
A medical tent was eviscerated, the red cross on its roof a cruel joke before it was consumed. The air was thick with the smell of ozone, burnt earth, and the coppery tang of blood. Shinobi were running, but there was no coordinated retreat, only panicked, directionless flight. Some tried to form squads, others scrambled to dig out comrades buried under collapsed earth and debris. It was pure, unadulterated chaos.
A few feet away, the air shimmered as Fugaku appeared, one hand firmly gripping the shoulder of the Yamanaka shinobi, Inoshi. The younger Uchiha had moved a heartbeat after his father, his own reflexes and the brief warning of Daichi's flicker allowing him to snatch the vital communications specialist from the jaws of the blast.
"Are you hurt?" Fugaku's voice was a sharp crack, barely audible over the din.
Inoshi, pale and shaking but miraculously unharmed, shook his head. "N-no!"
"Good. Re-establish the link with Konoha now! Inform the Hokage we are under a massive, coordinated artillery attack!" Fugaku didn't wait for a reply. He shoved the Yamanaka toward a half-destroyed earthworks for cover and turned to his father.
Fugaku's Sharingan was already active, its tomoe spinning wildly as it tried to track the impossibly fast, incoming projectiles. "Who? Kumo? A lightning assault?"
Daichi's face was a mask of cold fury. His own eyes, though not yet activated, scanned the trajectories of the explosions with a veteran's understanding.
"No. This isn't lightning. This is earth and fire. This is Iwa. Their Explosion Corps." His gaze hardened.
"And you are not going anywhere. The Hokage's order is irrelevant now. Our division is fighting for its life."
Before Fugaku could respond, his father fwooshed away again, a blur of motion heading toward the thickest of the fighting, already barking orders that were swallowed by the thunder.
From the perspective of a young Konoha chunin, the world had ended. One moment, he'd been checking the edge on his tantō, nervous but steady. Next, the ground beneath his feet simply erupted. There was no warning, no tell-tale surge of chakra he could sense. It was as if the earth itself had turned against them. He was thrown through the air, his world a spinning carousel of fire, smoke, and screaming. He landed hard, the wind knocked out of him, his ears ringing. He saw a medic he'd had a crush on trying to drag a wounded man with a leg sheared off at the knee. He saw a fellow chunin simply vanish, replaced by a pink mist and a crater.
The question wasn't whether to fight or help; the question was where to even look. The enemy was invisible, attacking from everywhere and nowhere at once. Fear, cold and paralysing, began to freeze his limbs. This wasn't a battle; it was a slaughterhouse.
The Iwa shinobi were specters of destruction. Clad in the usual maroon gear that seemed to drink the light from the fiery chaos, they moved through the pandemonium with grim efficiency. Their attacks were a horrifying ballet of controlled annihilation.
From the periphery, the leader of the corps, a severe-faced man named Gando, made a series of sharp hand signs before slamming his palm on the ground.
"Bakuton: Suishō Bakuretsu Jirai!" (Explosion Release: Crystal Burst Mines).
The earth chakra flowed from him, forming dozens of perfectly transparent, quartz-like casings buried just inches below the surface. They were invisible, perfect traps. A group of Konoha shinobi, rallying to form a defensive line, ran forward—and triggered them. The result was horrific. The crystal shells didn't just explode; they shattered.
"CRUNCH-BOOM!"
The concussive blast was accompanied by a vicious hail of razor-sharp mineral shrapnel that scythed through the squad, tearing through armor and flesh with equal ease. The charge dissolved into screams and gore.
The rank-and-file Explosion Corps members employed a more direct, but equally deadly, technique. They forged small, dense spheres of hardened clay in their hands, infusing them with volatile chakra.
"Bakuton: Kyū Sōhō!" (Explosion Release: Charged Sphere Shot).
With powerful throws, they launched these orbs into the heart of the Konoha formations. The spheres would arc through the smoky air and, upon a mental command from the thrower, detonate.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
They weren't aiming for individuals; they were aiming for clusters, for morale, for any sign of organisation. A makeshift barricade was blown to splinters. A group trying to evacuate the wounded was caught in the open, the blast scattering bodies like broken toys.
A few elite members used a more specialised technique to sow maximum disarray. Clenching their fists, they channelled a unique blend of chakra. "Bakuton: Senkōha!"(Explosion Release: Flash Wave)
A sphere of energy erupted from them, but instead of a traditional fireball, it released a devastating one-two punch. First, a searing, blinding white flash that overloaded the optic nerves of every shinobi looking in that direction, Konoha and Iwa alike.
It was followed a nanosecond later by a concussive shockwave that hit like a physical wall, throwing men off their feet and rupturing eardrums. It was less about killing and more about complete sensory overload and disruption, turning the battlefield into a disorienting nightmare of light and sound.
Daichi moved through this hell like a vengeful spirit. His Sharingan allowed him to see what others could not: the faint chakra signatures of the buried mines, the trajectory of the incoming spheres a fraction of a second before they were thrown.
He was a whirlwind of motion, his kunai a silver blur. He'd deflect a thrown sphere with a precisely angled parry, sending it harmlessly skyward to detonate. He'd weave through minefields he alone could see, leaving them for the Iwa pursuers who thought they were chasing him into safe ground.
He found his target: an Iwa shinobi who had just launched a Charged Sphere into a group of fleeing medics. Rage, cold and absolute, filled Daichi. He didn't shout. He didn't announce his presence.
He simply flickered behind the man in a burst of speed that defied perception. The Iwa shinobi had just begun to turn, a look of surprise starting to form on his face, when Daichi's blade, guided by the perfect predictive power of the Sharingan, flickered once.
There was a wet, slicing sound. The man's head toppled from his shoulders, his body slumping to the ground, the unexploded sphere rolling from his lifeless fingers.
Daichi didn't even watch it fall. He stood amidst the carnage, his blade dripping onto the scorched earth, his Sharingan scanning the chaotic battlefield, hunting for the source of this orchestrated ruin. His voice, when it came, was low, flat, and carried a weight of pure murderous intent that cut through the cacophony of war.
"Now," he said, to no one and everyone. "Where is their leader?"
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