Hey guys, here is the new chapter hope you will liked and read thru everything.
If we hit 300PW I post a extra chapter.
Don't forget to leave your power stones along with your comment if you have any ideas or opinions that could help me, as well as a review to continue showing your support.
Enjoy the chapter!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Night fell upon the Devil's Desert without mercy. The stifling sun that had whipped the dunes during the day vanished quickly, giving way to a freezing cold that dropped the temperature well below zero. The desert wind now blew with sharp whistles, dragging thin curtains of dust across a shadowed landscape.
Unlike most foreign teams who had wasted valuable water and chakra reserves desperately running under the afternoon sun to push deeper into the area, Sunagakure's Team 4 had taken a completely different approach.
On a rocky plateau near the northern border, Shima Museifu, Kanra Chinoike, and Sōritsu waited in silence. They showed no signs of exhaustion or dehydration. They had patiently waited for darkness to cover the terrain before beginning their true tactical deployment.
Sōritsu took a step forward, executing a rapid sequence of hand seals before pressing his right palm against the stone surface.
"Summoning Jutsu!" he muttered under his breath.
A dense cloud of white smoke expanded into the freezing air. As it cleared, it revealed the figure of a gigantic hawk. Its dark feathers absorbed the moonlight, and its golden eyes gleamed with predatory sharpness. Its claws dug into the rock without making the slightest sound.
The three Suna genin comfortably climbed onto the majestic bird's back. With a subtle flap of its wings, the hawk rose silently into the night sky, taking advantage of thermal currents to glide over the Devil's Desert.
"Simple strategy," Shima spoke from the front, her eyes fixed on the vastness of the landscape below. "We are in no hurry to search for chests in the sand. Let the others do the hard work for us. Our mission in these first few hours is to reduce the competition and eliminate as many threats as possible."
Kanra smiled coldly, adjusting the leather tactical pouches strapped to her hips, packed with prepared fluids. "The aerial advantage at night is absolute. So I don't see it as a bad idea sensei always taught us that finishing off the enemy quickly is better than talking."
Sōritsu extended his hand, subtly guiding the hawk's route through minor chakra pulses into the creature's plumage. Several hundred meters below, amidst the shadows of a dry canyon, a small makeshift campfire gave away the presence of an Amegakure team trying to take shelter from the night wind.
"Target located," Sōritsu whispered. "Three Ame genin. They have a poor guard post."
Shima Museifu lost no time. As a specialist in her unique nature, the Whisper Release, her fingers began moving in an almost imperceptible dance of seals.
"Whisper Release: Silent Bullets," Shima murmured.
Unlike conventional Wind Release techniques that generated noisy gusts and visible distortions, Shima's chakra compressed the atmosphere flawlessly. Bullets of highly dense air descended at high speed from the sky. They were completely invisible to the eye and did not emit the slightest whistle as they cut through the night.
Below, the Amegakure team didn't even have time to react.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Dry, deep impacts echoed in the canyon. One of the Ame ninjas dropped to his knees as an invisible air bullet pierced his right shoulder; another suffered a severe impact to the thigh that fractured the bone.
"We're under attack! It's an ambush!" the Ame leader yelled, desperately drawing a kunai as he looked frantically around at the canyon rocks. "Where are you?! Show yourselves!"
Looking for a culprit among the rock shadows, they never imagined looking up at the sky.
From the dark above, a shadow detached from the hawk's back, free-falling with terrifying grace. Kanra Chinoike descended directly into the center of the Amegakure camp.
Upon landing softly, the three Ame ninjas turned their faces toward the intruder. It was their final mistake.
In the darkness of the night, two deep crimson irises gleamed with intensity. Kanra's Ketsuryūgan activated instantly, trapping the gaze of the three wounded genin in a boundless optical illusion. The Rain shinobis froze in place, pupils dilated and mind locked by the Chinoike clan's genjutsu.
Without losing a second, Kanra unbuckled the seals on her hip pouches. A torrent of highly concentrated blood, saturated with her chakra, burst forth like liquid whips at her command.
The crimson whips wrapped violently around the necks and torsos of the three Ame shinobis. With a sharp flick of Kanra's hands, the manipulated blood exerted devastating pressure, snapping their defenses in an instant before they could break the illusion.
Silence returned to the canyon as quickly as it had been broken.
Shima and Sōritsu descended beside Kanra merely to check the fallen team's supplies.
"No chests or keys yet," Sōritsu commented after examining their belongings. "But that's one less team on the map."
"The plan works," Shima said indifferently, climbing back onto the giant hawk's back. "Let's continue the hunt."
While Team 4 dominated the skies, another high-intensity clash was unfolding in the central dunes of the Devil's Desert.
The Iwagakure team, taking advantage of the darkness in a sand valley, had set a careful ambush. Deidara, perched atop an elevated rock formation, watched with a confident smirk as a small swarm of dozens of explosive clay spiders moved stealthily across the dunes, surrounding the position of the team led by Gaara.
"Artistic and silent, hm," Deidara whispered, forming the activation seal with one hand. "Katsu!"
However, before the command could detonate the attack, the ground beneath the clay trembled subtly.
Gaara, keeping his hands extended toward the ground, used his mastery over seismic sensing to perceive every minor pressure on the terrain. He detected the dozens of small clay presences moving around them through the density of the sand.
With a masterly sweep of his arms, Gaara raised a circular wall of sand that rose like a violent tidal wave, enveloping and smothering the swarm of explosive spiders before they could get close to his group.
The explosions rumbled muffled beneath the heavy mass of sand Gaara kept under control. The massive sand tornado continued to swirl around the Suna team, serving as an impenetrable shield.
"Haku, now!" ordered Gaara's calm voice from the center of the barrier.
Haku stepped forward, extending his hands into the interior of the sandstorm created by his teammate. Channeling his Ice Release Kekkei Genkai, he unleashed a wave of freezing air at extreme speed.
The sand tornado began freezing visibly from base to peak. The particles of sand and tiny stones crystallized into a reinforced ice structure. Immediately after, Haku detonated the flow of his ice chakra, shattering the frozen tornado from within and launching hundreds of meters of sharp shrapnel made of ice and frozen sand directly toward the Iwagakure team's position.
"Watch out!" Kurotsuchi shouted.
Thinking fast, Kurotsuchi slammed both palms onto the ground, raising a massive wall of stone using her Earth Release to cover herself and Deidara from the initial hail of projectiles.
However, the sheer density of the ice shrapnel threatened to punch right through the Doton barrier. That was when Sekka stepped up. Seeing the pieces of frozen ice overcoming the wall and raining down on them, Sekka clapped her open hands together in a loud burst.
CLAP!
Using her Explosion Release, a shockwave of raw heat and pure detonation erupted from Sekka's palms, generating a massive aerial blast that instantly pulverized all the fragments of ice and sand threatening to crush them.
A dense curtain of dust, smoke, and steam covered the scene.
Through the grit and detonation haze, a huge shadow emerged at high speed. It was Asper, charging alongside his giant Komodo dragon.
Asper began weaving a rapid series of hand seals while the Komodo dragon ran beside him, drooling a highly venomous substance. Asper took a deep breath and combined his Fire Release chakra with the volatile venom oozing from his mount's glands.
"Fire Release: Violet Venom Blaze!" Asper shouted.
From the Suna shinobi's mouth burst a torrent of fire of a brilliant, menacing violet color. The flame not only possessed a scorching temperature far superior to common fire, but the toxic gases from the Komodo dragon's venom amplified the combustion, spreading like a chemical inferno toward Iwagakure's positions.
Kurotsuchi and Sekka had to leap backward frantically to avoid the radiant violet heat, which began melting the very rock they had been standing on.
Deidara landed beside them, observing the violet flames wide-eyed and with gritted teeth.
"Maddening Sand bastards, hm..." Deidara growled with irritation, stuffing his hands into his clay pouches. "I'm going to turn that reptile and its owner into artistic ashes!"
"Calm down, Deidara!" Kurotsuchi scolded firmly, grabbing his shoulder while watching Gaara step impassively through the fire, sand floating all around him. "That team has an absurd defensive and offensive combination. Fighting them right now means wasting more than half our chakra before finding a single key. It's not worth it."
Sekka nodded, keeping her hands ready for another defensive detonation. "We'll exhaust ourselves and clear the path for everyone else. We need to fall back."
Deidara grunted in frustration, knowing his teammates were right. Still, he had no intention of leaving empty-handed.
"Tch! Take this as a souvenir, hm!" Deidara yelled, tossing a dozen small clay birds into the air.
The tiny clay birds came to life and dived straight toward Gaara, Haku, and Asper. As the flying creations swooped in to detonate, Deidara, Kurotsuchi, and Sekka used the remaining smoke curtain to leap back, disappearing at full speed into the shadows of the northern canyons.
Gaara didn't even flinch; a simple wall of automatic sand rose and intercepted Deidara's birds mid-air, absorbing the distant explosions with a dull thud.
"They've retreated," Haku noted, deactivating his Hyōton as the ice around them sublimated rapidly due to the dry air of the Devil's Desert.
"A smart move on their part," Asper said, patting his Komodo dragon's head to calm it down. "Fighting here would have been suicide for either group."
Gaara crossed his arms, gazing in the direction Iwa had fled. "It doesn't matter. The priority remains securing our pair of keys before the dawn of the third day."
Hours later, far from there, in a broad canyon buried under the ruins of an ancient military fortress in the Devil's Desert, the moon shone at its highest point.
Konohagakure's Team 7 advanced with extreme caution among the crumbling stone pillars. Sakura walked in the center, checking a tactical compass and keeping an eye on the temperature with a small field thermometer.
"The night cold is stabilizing," Sakura reported in a low voice. "But the reflection of the moonlight on the sand is starting to create false shadows. Keep your eyes peeled."
"Don't worry, Sakura-chan," Naruto replied, rubbing his hands to warm his face. "My body's full of energy. If anything moves, I'll spot it first."
"Don't be careless, Naruto," Sasuke warned, keeping one hand near the hilt of his tantō while his two-tomoe Sharingan constantly scanned the cracks in the fortress. "This place is packed with ideal spots for ambushes. Plus, chest seals are usually hidden under heavy structures."
Suddenly, Sasuke stopped dead in his tracks, signaling with his hand for his team to halt. Naruto and Sakura instantly dropped into fighting stances, drawing their kunai.
In front of them, emerging calmly from the shadows of a destroyed stone wall, three figures appeared, moving with astonishing natural ease in the desert environment.
It was Sunae, Karin, and Daiku.
Sunae walked in front with a serene, confident smirk, her hands resting behind her neck. To her left, Karin adjusted her red glasses, analyzing the Leaf ninjas' chakra signatures in a single glance. To the right, Daiku stepped forward in silence, his right hand resting firmly on the hilt of his broad-bladed katana.
The air in the canyon instantly grew dense. The eyes of both teams locked beneath the cold moonlight.
"Well, well..." Sunae said, observing the Leaf group with a playful, provocative tone. "Look who we stumbled upon in the middle of the ruins. A Leaf team."
Karin adjusted her glasses, narrowing her eyes as she locked her sight onto Naruto and Sasuke.
"The blonde has an exaggerated amount of chakra larger than yours, Sunae and the Uchiha is Chunin-level. The girl is Genin-level in chakra."
Sasuke took a step forward, the tomoras of his Sharingan spinning slowly in his red eyes as he measured Daiku's relaxed yet flawless posture. "We aren't looking for trouble if you don't have a key we need."
Naruto grinned, clenching his fists with enthusiasm as the freezing breeze of the Devil's Desert ruffled his blonde hair. "Hey, Sand guys! If you're looking for a fight or have a chest, you better get ready cause we're not backing down easily!"
Daiku simply tilted his head slightly, unsheathing his katana just a single centimeter enough for the moon's reflection to glint off the sharp steel.
"Uh, your face reminds me of a story my dad told me," Sunae whispered, tilting her head to the side.
"What did you say? I couldn't hear you," Naruto asked, confused by Sunae's gaze.
"You still haven't realized? That's the son of the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze. The other one is an important Uchiha to be on the squad of the Hokage's son," Karin explained.
"Oh, so you're the son of the guy my dad kicked the butt of? Seems like it's my family's duty to kick yours," Sunae said with a smirk.
Confused by her words, Naruto looked at Sasuke, who sighed as he pieced everything together.
"Naruto, the ones in front of us are the two children of the Kazekage, and their father defeated yours during the war," Sasuke clarified.
"Oh, I get it now! So I finally ran into one of my goals for coming to Sunagakure! I won't hold back against you guys my name is Naruto Uzumaki Namikaze!" Naruto announced.
"Mine is Sunae, my brother is Daiku, and this is Karin," Sunae said with a challenging grin.
"Too much talking," Daiku muttered.
The tension between both teams hit its absolute peak, promising an inevitable clash amidst the freezing silence of the night.
End of Chapter