Chapter 31: Cooperation Without Words
"Izumi..." Inoshita stared blankly at his old friend, whispering in disbelief. "You... you were really that determined?"
The next moment, the ground beneath Izumi began to tremble. Just as the flames from the exploding tags were about to engulf him, he felt himself enveloped by something warm and damp. The searing pain from the ignited tags began to fade.
Huh? Where did that guy go? The black-robed Jonin frowned from a distance. The expected massive explosion never came. What's going on? A strange, unsettling feeling washed over him. What happened when I used the Body Flicker?
He quickly pushed the thought aside and turned his attention to the barely conscious Inoshita. With a cold snort, he raised his scythe and charged again. "Let's finish off this old relic first!"
"Earth Style: Earth Spear!" Inoshita released the jutsu he had prepared.
SHICK! SHICK! SHICK!
Sharp spikes of earth shot up from the ground along the Jonin's path, but they only served to momentarily slow him down.
"Don't embarrass yourself with a jutsu of that level!" the Jonin roared, weaving between the spikes and rapidly closing the distance.
Just then, a barrage of iron quills, glinting coldly, shot towards him from the left, covering an area of five or six square meters—precisely where he was about to land. He had calculated the trajectory!
Can't dodge! The thought flashed through his mind. The Jonin narrowed his eyes, gripped his crimson scythe in the middle, and held it to his left side, spinning it rapidly. The scythe became a blurred, impenetrable windmill.
CLING! CLANG! CLING! CLANK! CLANG!
A continuous stream of metallic impacts rang in his ears, but the force behind them wasn't enough to significantly drain his stamina.
TING!
He deflected the last silver quill and stopped spinning. A cruel smile touched his lips as he looked in the direction the quills had come from, only to see empty ground.
"Interesting!" A cold light flashed in his eyes. A sense of shame at being toyed with filled him, and his face darkened. He whipped his head around to glare at the stumbling Inoshita, his eyes filled with murderous intent.
WHOOSH!
His figure vanished.
At the same time, alarm bells went off in Inoshita's head. An unprecedented sense of crisis made the hair on his body stand on end. His eyes darted frantically around. Where is he?
Cold sweat beaded on his forehead. Under the immense pressure of life and death, his nerves were stretched to their absolute limit, yet he still couldn't spot the Jonin.
"Looking somewhere?" A sinister voice suddenly whispered from behind him. Inoshita froze.
SHINK!
He slashed backward with his kunai, cutting only air. The next instant, he was sent flying. The Jonin reappeared where he had been standing, his foot still raised from the kick.
"It's over, old man!" The Jonin sneered at the airborne Inoshita and flicked his right wrist. A spinning shuriken, like a deadly cursor, flew toward Inoshita just as he hit the ground. It reached him in an instant!
CRUNCH!
An earth wall suddenly erupted in front of Inoshita, blocking the shuriken at the very last second.
"Who did that?!" the Jonin roared, his face flushed with anger and embarrassment. The old man had just landed; there was no way he could have performed the hand seals for a jutsu. So who cast the Earth Flow Wall? Thwarted from delivering the killing blow again and again, he was furious.
He failed to notice the square prison of earth rapidly rising around him. The next moment, it completely enclosed him. His eyes widened in shock, and he looked up just in time to see the top slam shut.
BAM!
Earth Style: Earth Prison!
Peering through the thick bars of the earthen cage, the Jonin glared at Inoshita, who was lying on the ground, gasping for breath. He shook his head, trembling with frustration that bordered on madness, but managed to grit his teeth and hold it back. To be pushed this far by mere Chunin... it was unprecedented!
Taking a deep breath, the Jonin gradually calmed himself. "I must admit, you used that jutsu well. It must be your trump card, right?" he said coolly, looking at Inoshita. "Your timing was perfect, and your chakra control minimized the jutsu's signature. But... what good does it do?"
"Hah... hah..." Inoshita was still struggling to breathe, unable to reply.
I chose to trust you, Kael. You won't let me down, right? he thought desperately.
The next second, a piercing eagle cry echoed through the sky. The Jonin and Inoshita both looked up, one with dawning horror, the other with sudden hope.
A swirling vortex of wind, the size of half a house, plummeted from the sky. The air around it spun violently, forming a tornado several meters in diameter.
Bursting Spiral Sphere!
BOOOOOM!
A heaven-shattering explosion ripped through the area. Even Watanabe Musashi and the other Jashinist Jonin, hundreds of meters away, couldn't help but look toward the blast. Both their expressions changed slightly.
Recognizing the familiar signature of wind-nature chakra, Watanabe's eyes lit up with understanding and relief. It's the kid's summon!
Among Kael's summons, the only one Watanabe considered a real threat, even to himself, was the Wind Eagle. However, during their previous missions together, he had noticed that while the eagle could manipulate wind chakra, it did so inefficiently. For some reason, there was always a significant delay when it performed ninjutsu, giving enemies ample time to prepare.
But if Kael was having the eagle use its jutsu now, it meant the battle had reached a critical point. And given the sheer power of the Wind Eagle's techniques, Watanabe doubted many shinobi could survive such a terrifying onslaught. Even he wasn't confident he could withstand being shredded by countless, minuscule wind blades.
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!
Perched high above, the Wind Eagle continued to spit Wind Blades into the swirling dust cloud at the center of the explosion. Compared to the Bursting Spiral Sphere, which took seven or eight seconds to charge, the Wind Blade was weaker and faster to cast, but it was reliable.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
After a full thirty seconds, Kael, sitting atop the eagle's barrel-sized head, finally felt it was overkill and patted its neck. "Alright, alright! Even an iron statue would be dust by now! Don't turn the old man into an idiot with the shockwaves..."
He peered toward the edge of the dust cloud but couldn't see Inoshita. Only fifty meters from the blast's epicenter, Inoshita was completely covered in dust and debris. He sat there, dazed and pale, looking utterly nauseated. His ears were ringing incessantly.