Hey guys, here is the new chapter hope you will liked and read thru everything.
If we hit 300PW I post a extra chapter.
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Enjoy the chapter!
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The night silence of the ruins in the Devil's Desert lasted for barely a fraction of a second. The accumulated tension between the two teams exploded into a burst of violent movement when Daiku shifted his right shoulder, unsheathing his katana with a metallic snap that echoed through the canyon.
Without uttering a single word, Daiku lunged forward at blinding speed, cutting through the freezing air straight toward Naruto. His silhouette was a mere blur among the shadows of the dunes.
Naruto's eyes widened, barely having time to react to the initial assault. However, before Daiku's steel could reach the blonde's throat, a figure interposed itself in the attack's trajectory.
CLANG!
Sasuke had drawn his tantō in a split second of pure instinct, blocking Daiku's katana inches from Naruto's face.
Bright sparks showered into the night air. Noticing the interception, Daiku parried forcefully, gritting his teeth as he applied maximum pressure onto his hilt—pushing his blade downward to violently drive Sasuke back and break his stance.
"Don't get distracted, Naruto!" Sasuke shouted, keeping his arm muscles strained to the limit against the overwhelming physical pressure of the Sand swordsman.
Taking advantage of Sasuke keeping Daiku locked in a contest of brute strength, Naruto didn't waste his opening.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto yelled.
With a puff of smoke, two shadow clones appeared at Daiku's sides, springing forward simultaneously with their kunai bared to flank him from behind. But Daiku didn't even blink.
Out of nowhere, Sunae intercepted their path with impressive agility. Delivering a single axe kick loaded with terrifying physical power, she dispelled the first clone into a cloud of scattered smoke.
Using the momentum of the spin, Sunae caught the foot of the second clone mid-air—which was actually the real Naruto attempting to land a strike on Daiku's head—and clamped her hand onto his ankle with a vice-like grip.
"Too slow," Sunae muttered.
Demonstrating flawless body control, Sunae pivoted on her axis and hurled the real Naruto several meters away, sending him flying through the air until he crashed heavily against the sand dunes surrounding the ruins.
From the rear, Sakura watched the scene with wide, terrified eyes, her breath caught in her throat.
Her hands trembled as she clutched her kunai. 'What is that strength?... She stopped Naruto's kick dead in its tracks and threw him like he weighed nothing...' she thought in sheer panic.
Meanwhile, in the Hidden Sand's rear guard, Karin adjusted her red glasses with the tip of her finger, keeping her eyes fixed on Sasuke.
Her sensory perception and sharp intellect instantly identified the crimson tomoe spinning in the Uchiha's pupils.
"Daiku!" Karin warned in a loud, commanding voice. "That kid has the Sharingan active. I know the reach of those eyes and the visual genjutsu they can cast in a flash. Don't make eye contact with him under any circumstances!"
Hearing Karin's direct warning, Sasuke clicked his tongue in clear irritation. His initial plan to catch the swordsman in a subtle illusion to off-balance the duel had been thwarted before he could even execute it.
Daiku simply nodded to Karin without averting his gaze from Sasuke's neck and shoulders. Although fighting while keeping his sight lowered toward the torso and limbs cost him a bit of initial fluidness, Daiku's technical mastery immediately made up for the limitation.
Both swordsmen broke their lock and engaged in close-quarters kenjutsu. The clashing of steel echoed ceaselessly through the canyon. Clang! Clang! Pring!
Daiku pressed forward with heavy thrusts and precise slashes from his broad-bladed katana, demonstrating superior physical strength and formal mastery of swordplay.
For his part, Sasuke was forced to compensate for his lesser strength and shorter reach by leveraging the Sharingan's precision to anticipate trajectories, making razor-thin dodges and tight-angled parries with his tantō.
However, it was clear that Daiku couldn't fight with total comfort while avoiding direct eye contact, while Sasuke was feeling the gap in raw technique and sheer power.
On the other side of the battlefield, Naruto pushed himself up from the sand, dusting off his clothes. He glared at Sunae, who was waiting for him with a relaxed stance and a confident smirk.
"I admit you're pretty tough," Naruto said, adjusting his Leaf headband. "But you're gonna need a whole lot more than that to beat the next Hokage!"
"You talk too much, blondie," Sunae replied.
Naruto charged forward, initiating a fierce exchange of taijutsu. Sunae parried and deflected Naruto's strikes with overwhelming ease, displaying clear tactical superiority in hand-to-hand combat.
Every blow Sunae landed on Naruto's ribs and shoulders forced him back in pain.
Realizing that direct taijutsu wouldn't cut it, Naruto began creating multiple shadow clones mid-exchange.
Four, six, eight clones burst into existence around her, multiplying the angles of attack and overwhelming Sunae's read.
Taking advantage of his clones keeping Sunae busy as she dispelled copy after copy, the real Naruto leaped back a few meters and rapidly wove hand seals to launch a wind-style jutsu.
Spotting the concentration of chakra in Naruto's chest while destroying the last clone, Sunae backflipped with grace.
With breathtaking hand speed, she executed her own seals before Naruto could finish his technique.
"Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!" Sunae shouted.
A massive stream of roaring flames burst from Sunae's mouth, illuminating the ruins in a scorching orange glow.
The immense fireball surged forward, sweeping away everything in its path. Naruto, witnessing the sheer scale of the attack threatening to consume him, had to hastily summon two emergency clones, using them as springboards to launch himself clear of the heatwave, tumbling onto the rocks below.
As the battle intensified on both fronts, Karin decided it was time to move. She locked her gaze on Sakura, who remained frozen in a defensive stance.
Without wasting a beat, Karin darted toward the Leaf kunoichi with surprising speed. Sakura tried to react by raising her kunai to block, but Karin was far too fast.
With swift, precise movements, Karin slipped past Sakura's weak guard, landing a solid strike to the pink-haired girl's stomach that stole the breath from her lungs, followed by a leg sweep that brought her crashing down.
Before Sakura could recover or weave a seal, Karin pinned her knee onto Sakura's back and slapped a chakra-blocking seal directly onto the nape of her neck. A faint purple glow flashed before shutting down Sakura's chakra network, leaving her completely defenseless and pinned against the dirt.
Karin stood up calmly, adjusting her glasses as she looked down at Sakura with deep indifference and disdain.
"Stop wasting your time trying to be a shinobi if you're this weak," Karin said coldly, watching Sakura grit her teeth in helplessness as tears of frustration welled in her eyes.
"You're nothing but a liability to your teammates."
Without giving the defeated kunoichi another glance, Karin crossed her arms and began intently monitoring the main fights.
In the sword duel, the dynamic began escalating to ninjutsu. Sasuke channeled lightning chakra into the blade of his tantō, causing blue sparks to crackle along the metal. He drove forward in a lightning-fast thrust to break Daiku's guard, but the Sand shinobi executed a one-handed seal and released a compressed blast of Fūton from his mouth, dispersing Sasuke's electric charge into thin air.
It was at that moment that the tomoe in Sasuke's Sharingan spun furiously. Meticulously reading the subtle muscle movements, footwork, and grip adjustments of Daiku, Sasuke began flawlessly copying his opponent's kenjutsu style.
Sasuke advanced once more, but this time he executed the exact same surgical slashes, parries, and angled counters that Daiku had used moments before. Caught off guard by the mirrored replica of his own technique, Daiku was forced to yield ground, taking several steps back to maintain distance.
Sasuke paused for a second, resetting his stance with a proud, confident smirk on his face. He was convinced that having deciphered and copied Daiku's style, victory was only a matter of time.
Daiku caught Sasuke's smirk and understood immediately what was running through the Uchiha's mind. Far from flustered or frustrated, the Suna swordsman simply shook his head slowly.
'Does he really think this is all I've got?' Daiku thought with absolute coldness.
Daiku stepped back and wove a brief, unfamiliar sequence of hand seals.
Suddenly, a drastic shift occurred in the environment. The freezing night temperature inside the canyon began to spike suffocatingly in a matter of seconds. The icy wind vanished, replaced by a thick, heavy air that burned to breathe.
Sasuke stared at Daiku's figure with curiosity and growing alarm. Before the Uchiha's stunned eyes, Daiku's broad katana underwent a striking visual transformation:
The dark metal of the blade began to emit an incandescent glow, shifting from a dull red to a brilliant, scorching orange, exactly like a piece of steel freshly pulled from a forge at peak melting point.
A wave of radiant thermal energy emanated from the katana, distorting the air around Daiku. Feeling the intense heat blast against his face and dry out his skin instantly, Sasuke was forced to leap backward several times to put distance between them.
Daiku said nothing. He gripped the hilt of his incandescent katana with both hands and raised it high above his head. With a slow, deliberate movement filled with relentless kill intent, he brought the blade down in a vertical slash toward Sasuke.
FWOOOSH!
Sasuke's survival instincts screamed through every fiber of his body to move. Pushing his Sharingan reflexes to their absolute limit, Sasuke threw himself desperately to the side, rolling across the ground.
The gust of pure heat and cutting pressure that descended from the katana didn't touch Sasuke directly, but it passed mere inches from his body. The superheated shockwave struck the surface of the Devil's Desert in a straight line extending over twenty meters: all the sand and rocks in its path melted instantaneously, transforming into a line of pure, shimmering glass.
The residual heat was so extreme that Sasuke felt his throat instantly dry up, leaving him gasping and fighting to inhale the scorching air.
Daiku lowered his glowing blade slightly, peering at Sasuke through the heat distortion.
"Try copying that," Daiku said, his voice gravelly and detached.
Without giving him time to process what had just happened, Daiku vanished from his spot with terrifying speed. He reappeared directly in front of Sasuke, swinging a simple, straightforward strike toward his torso.
In a moment of pure desperation, Sasuke raised his tantō to block the glowing blade. But the instant the two metals made contact, something Sasuke never imagined took place: the Leaf tantō couldn't withstand the extreme temperature and melted instantly, turning into a stream of liquid metal that fell uselessly onto the sand.
Stunned and disarmed, Sasuke dropped the burnt hilt and leaped back, desperately trying to comprehend the nature of Daiku's technique and how to counter such a level of heat.
However, Daiku had zero intention of letting him catch his breath. Moving at maximum speed, Daiku materialized instantaneously at Sasuke's left flank. With a swift, clean thrust, he impaled the Uchiha's midsection from side to side with the burning katana.
Sasuke's body dispersed into a flock of black crows that scattered into the air, revealing he had utilized a substitution/illusion technique at the very last millisecond to avoid the lethal blow.
Daiku turned around slowly as the crows vanished. He shook his head once more, thoroughly annoyed that Sasuke was prolonging the fight longer than necessary.
"Enough," Daiku muttered.
In the blink of an eye, Daiku re-emerged right beside the real Sasuke, who was barely finishing his rematerialization a few meters away after using the substitution. This time, Sasuke had neither the time nor the space to react.
Daiku drove the red-hot katana directly into Sasuke's right shoulder, carving through flesh and bone with chilling ease.
"AAAAAHHHH!"
A agonizing, gut-wrenching scream ripped from Sasuke's throat. Direct contact with the incandescent blade didn't just inflict immediate third-degree burns; the overwhelming heat began evaporating and cauterizing the Uchiha's vital fluids at a terrifying speed.
The scorching heat spread rapidly through Sasuke's circulatory system and skin. Before the horrified eyes of Naruto and Sakura, Sasuke's complexion lost all volume and moisture, wrinkling and darkening drastically as the extreme dehydration process consumed him in seconds—leaving his body looking akin to instant mummification.
Sasuke collapsed to his knees, unable to move, his breath nearly extinct and his body completely neutralized under the relentless heat of the Hidden Sand.
Naruto and Sakura, watching Sasuke fall before Daiku, could only clench their fists in helplessness. Yet, deep down, Naruto remembered his mother and father's words—he had to use it if he wanted to save his friends.
In a single instant, his eyes shifted from their natural blue to a feral, crimson red.
"Get back, Sunae! His chakra is spiking outta control!" Karin screamed out, warning Sunae, who immediately backflipped away to regroup at Karin's side.
End of Chapter