Chapter Eight – Uchiha Sasuke Before the Hunters
Only half an hour had passed since the gate's appearance.
[Sasuke]had ensured, with a cold, methodical efficiency, that all civilians had evacuated the immediate area.
He wasn't interested in their awestruck gazes or the cacophony of shouts,even though they were unintelligible.
Their strange language still rendered their emotions and words into meaningless noise.
He also took stock of the destruction wrought by the gate's emergence.
Skyscrapers had been sheared,their upper floors collapsing into clouds of dust and screeching metal that had since settled into eerie, jagged silhouettes against the sky.
Using his Rinnegan's enhanced perception,he confirmed that no life had been extinguished in the initial blast.
A small,clinically noted fact.
Simultaneously, news vans and camera drones had swarmed like mechanical insects, their lenses unblinkingly focused on the hunter who had shielded Korean citizens from the gate's explosive birth.
The star who had appeared in the Jeju Island incident was back.
"Where is he?There! It's the Japanese hunter! Look at him, how he stands before the gate with such calm! He protected the others!"
The footage showed[Sasuke], then replayed the moment his invisible gravity wall had shimmered into visibility under the intense mana pressure, captured by spectral-analysis cameras, deflecting the energy and saving the civilians.
In the end,the civilians were being evacuated rapidly, and damage control was underway.
No one had expected a gate to appear in the middle of a Seoul marketplace at high noon.And no one had expected the hunter to reappear in the same dramatic fashion.
But this time, he wasn't just standing there; he was staring at the gate.
His expression gave away little,a mask of impassive analysis, but the most skilled analysts and journalists expert in micro-expressions could deduce one thing: the 16-year-old with black hair and strange eyes was looking at the gate with profound, analytical bewilderment.
"Look! Chairman [Go Gun-Hee] has arrived, along with the S-Rank hunters!"
Attention swiftly shifted to the convoy of black vehicles and armored trucks that pulled up,disgorging a force bristling with the power of S-Rank and A-Rank hunters from various guilds, led by the Chairman of the Hunter Association himself.
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On the other side of the plaza, [Sasuke] had decided to test a hypothesis.
In one fluid motion,lightning crackled to life around his right hand—not the wild Chidori scream, but a controlled, humming coil of purple electricity, a product of precise chakra manipulation.
He wanted to strike this gateway,to force it open, to see what would happen.
His arm shot forward,and the bolt of concentrated lightning lanced towards the pulsating rift.
FZZZRRRAAA-KOOOOOM!
From a distance, the Korean hunters were about to advance towards the gate when they all witnessed it: a lightning spear hundreds of meters in apparent size, colliding with the summoned gate.
The force of the impact was titanic,a localized cataclysm.
Yet,the shockwave did not reach them.
[Sasuke]had focused his power with needle-like precision, containing the explosive energy to the immediate vicinity of the gate itself.
The shockwave reflected and reverberated back into the rift,producing a sound like repeated artillery shells hitting the same fortified point—BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
[Uchiha Sasuke] wanted to breach this gate.
He continued,launching a relentless barrage of lightning strikes at it.
KRA-KOOM! ZZZT-BOOM! KRAKATHOOM!
[Chae Ha-in] called out loudly, her voice strained as she watched the Chairman and the storm of lightning pounding the gate.
"What is this person doing?Is he trying to destroy the gate from the outside? What?"
Her voice was raised to be heard over the thunderclaps that now rolled continuously from the sky.
Clouds had begun to form unnaturally fast,darkening above the plaza as [Sasuke] gathered atmospheric chakra.
He was preparing aKirin-level technique, intending to annihilate this spatial anomaly from the outside.
He felt this gate was akin to the ant nest—a foreign,malignant growth that needed purging.
That instinct,driven by experience as a ninja who had overcome spatial barriers before, overrode all other considerations.
He began unleashing every lightning strike he could muster towards that door made of pure,warped energy—energy capable of leveling half the city.
The power level of this gate was extraordinary by any measure.
"We have to stop him, Chairman!" [Choi Jong-In]'s voice was clear as he observed the spectacle from behind his glasses, his red hair stirring in the unnatural wind now whipping from the sky.
The clouds were blotting out the sun,casting half of Seoul into an ominous, electrically charged twilight.
"He's capable of summoning lightning and thunder. Furthermore, he can control the atmosphere. This person… he's undoubtedly a National-Level Hunter."
The destructive power[Sasuke] was demonstrating in that moment was enough to prove to Chairman [Go Gun-Hee] that the person before him was far stronger than most S-Rank hunters.
Perhaps he had even reached the level of a National-Rank hunter like Thomas Andre.He could even be matched with the destructive level of the most powerful attacks the Chairman had witnessed in his long hunting career.
The lightning strikes around the gate resembled a continuous artillery and missile barrage hitting a single, unyielding point.
Each strike sent a visible shockwave rippling through the distorted space around the rift.
But after a minute—which felt like hours to the people watching,especially those viewing the live broadcast from the drones—the electric onslaught finally ceased.
[Uchiha Sasuke], who had executed all of this, let out a low, thoughtful sigh.
He spoke in Japanese,his voice carrying clearly in the sudden, ringing silence.
"As expected.This type of gate has the ability to bend space. Therefore, attacks that don't target space itself cannot affect it."
[Sasuke] had reached a conclusion.
Instead of using purely destructive attacks,he needed to employ spatial strikes, ones that targeted space-time itself.
His goal with the lightning barrage hadn't been to destroy it outright,but to test its resilience.
It was durable to a degree where most conventional attacks would be useless.
Of course, he didn't know that S-Rank gates were reinforced by an energy system that affected the time and space around them, making them immune to most physical and energy-based assaults.
They required either a comprehensive dismantling of the surrounding space or the destruction of the dungeon's boss monster at the heart of the area behind the gate itself.
"I'll finish this gate first," [Sasuke] murmured to himself. "I feel as though it might allow me to understand why I can't leave this world using space-time techniques."
---
Just as [Sasuke] solidified this decision, the Korean hunter known as the strongest, [Go Gun-Hee], arrived behind him, stopping at a distance of about ten meters.
[Sasuke]had detected the man's presence the moment he entered that radius, but he hadn't looked back, his focus absolute.
Then,[Go Gun-Hee] spoke. In Japanese.
"Who are you? Are you a hunter? And what do you aim to achieve by attacking the gate?"
[Sasuke] didn't understand the term 'gate' that the man referred to, but after a moment's thought, he connected it to the spatial rift he'd been attacking.
But in the next second,a different, more critical thought struck him.
This man… he can speak my language. Does this mean he knows the way to my world?
Without wasting a single second, [Uchiha Sasuke] turned around.
His movement was a swift,sharp pivot—swish.
He looked at the old man before him.
This elderly man was powerfully built,muscles coiled under his formal suit, and he radiated an aura of power that was no less than the Ant King's—indeed, it felt stronger.
[Sasuke]was certain this man could have defeated the Ant King with relative ease.
Simultaneously,the man's aura was overwhelming, yet it was also… gentle. Controlled.
But[Sasuke] didn't lower his guard.
Not out of fear of the opponent,but because it was second nature for a ninja to be cautious before any potentially powerful entity. Underestimating opponents was a luxury that led to graves.
"You speak my language," [Sasuke] stated, his voice flat and demanding. "Do you know where I can go to reach the Elemental Nations? To the Land of Fire?"
The question utterly baffled Chairman [Go Gun-Hee].
Drawing on decades of experience,he regained his composure quickly and posed a counter-question, his tone carefully neutral.
"What is the Land of Fire?What are the Elemental Nations?"
These questions confused [Sasuke] in turn.
The man before him spoke the same language,so he had expected him to also hail from the Elemental Nations or at least know of the Land of Fire.
A flicker of cold frustration crossed[Sasuke]'s features.
Finally,he scoffed, a sound of pure, icy derision directed at the Chairman of the Hunter Association.
"If you have nothing useful to say, then you're useless. Move aside. I have to destroy this thing behind me."
Without another word, [Sasuke] turned his back on the old man.
He had lost all interest in him and refocused his entire attention on the gate.
In the end,he felt this gate possessed immense spatial capability.
Perhaps by using it,he might find a way back to the Valley of the End to finish his battle with [Naruto].
That was his supreme priority at this moment.
"You cannot destroy this gate that way," [Go Gun-Hee] spoke again, his voice calm but firm as he also looked at the gate. He was simultaneously advising the young man who, to him, clearly did not fully understand what this gate was.
That,too, puzzled [Go Gun-Hee].
How could this incredibly powerful youth not know what a gate was?
Could it be that he wasn't from this place?But how was that possible, if he was a hunter?
The standoff continued: the dimensionally displaced ninja seeking a key home, and the world's most powerful hunter seeking to understand an enigma, both standing before a rift that threatened the city between them.
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End of Chapter.
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A conversation of the deaf, where power speaks but understanding falters. Thank you for reading this clash of contexts and colossal egos! Your anticipation for the inevitable dungeon dive is the true mana crystal fueling this story.
❤️🙂
Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed this chapter, my friend, and I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!