As the body attached to the tentacle rose above the surface, Uchiha Yoru confirmed that it was a false alarm.
The tentacle outside the bay belonged neither to a jinchuriki nor to a tailed beast, but to a round, oversized octopus.
Just… an absurdly enormous one.
Its head was like an eight-story building, while its tentacles varied in length and thickness. Fully stretched, they could extend more than a hundred meters. Even at their thinnest, they were still several meters across.
With a body that huge, the squid's electromagnetic barrier was nowhere near enough to stop it.
The swordfish had already proven to Yoru that squid roe was more valuable than squid flesh itself, so the giant octopus's target was obvious.
It wanted the roe too.
Of course, given its size, there was no way it could eat like the swordfish, biting open only the squid bellies. It could only use its tentacles to grab dozens—maybe hundreds—of squid at a time, then swallow them whole in one gulp.
Even so, its priority was still the female squid. If it caught those, it could eat both the squid and a belly full of roe at once.
Once the females finished laying eggs, those tiny glowing clusters would sink to the bottom of the bay and mix with the thick sand. No matter how flexible the octopus's giant tentacles were, its size alone meant it could never pick roe out from sand.
So it pressed closer to the bay, trying its best to extend its tentacles just far enough inside to catch the clustered squid.
No matter how hard the squid struggled, there was simply no resisting something that massive.
The male squid gathered together again and swam toward the mouth of the bay. They poured out even brighter fluorescence than before and released an even stronger magnetic field with everything they had.
The giant octopus was abnormally huge, and it carried chakra unique to tailed beasts—but it still suffered from an octopus's old problem.
Each tentacle had its own brain.
And none of them listened particularly well to the main one.
Every time a tentacle passed over the mass of male squid, it was lured by the electrical and optical signals they released. Against the will of the central brain, it instinctively snatched the males nearest at hand.
Again and again, the octopus tried to thrust its tentacles deeper into the bay, only for them to be diverted halfway by the males' desperate effort.
What it caught, every time, were the male squid with relatively little nutritional value.
These males, having already completed mating, used themselves as bait to ensure the females inside the bay could finish laying eggs safely.
By the time the attacking tentacles had killed off most of the males, the fluorescent squid's yearly gathering was already drawing to a close. The glow on their bodies began to dim, the frenzy of reproduction faded, and the instinct to survive once again took control.
The squid scattered in all directions at once, leaving the octopus, with tentacles more than three meters thick, utterly helpless.
It could only rear up all eight tentacles and slam them against the sea surface in rage and unwillingness.
Miwa Masayo suddenly spoke.
"Yoru, do you think that big thing tastes good, nya?"
Yoru was startled.
That habit of first wondering whether an unknown creature could be eaten… that was definitely not some local island mentality.
That was the foremost of the three great instincts unique to Yanhuang civilization.
A grin spread across his face.
Although the Yanhuang bloodline was the purest among the civilizations of Blue Star, they had never truly divided outsiders from their own by blood alone.
Rika-chan, with this level of awareness, you've already become a properly qualified Yanhuang family cat.
Uchiha Yoru burst into delighted laughter and pointed at the giant octopus.
"Octopus is seafood. And when it comes to seafood, the livelier and fiercer it is, the better it tastes. This thing must be delicious!"
Amid that laughter, Yoru released surging natural energy and chakra together. They erupted outward like a volcanic plume of transcendent aura, instantly drawing the giant octopus's attention.
"Come on then, nine-headed octopus. Get up here on shore and become my takoyaki."
Sensing that intense chakra—especially the scent of pure natural energy mixed into it—the little rationality the octopus had left collapsed completely. Even its instinct to survive was suppressed by the desire to evolve into a higher form of life.
Its hard beak ground against itself with a harsh, grating clatter. For once, all eight brains in its tentacles came to an agreement, hoisting that huge round head, like a small hill, and laboriously dragging itself onto land.
Its eyes were nearly the height of a person, large and wet and gleaming with undisguised greed as they stared fixedly at Uchiha Yoru and Miwa Masayo.
Miwa Masayo did not have Yoru's calm.
Being watched by a predator that enormous made her whole body tense. Every hair stood on end, her back arched high, and her tail shot straight up like a flagpole.
Taking on a battle stance, the tabby let out a threatening hiss.
"Haaah—!"
She was fully prepared to strike.
Yoru immediately understood what she wanted.
Without hesitation, he abandoned the skewering technique he had already prepared and switched instead to the Uchiha clan's most popular ninjutsu.
Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Jutsu.
Uchiha Yoru did not need complicated seals for this technique. He simply cupped his hands into a horn shape, puffed out his cheeks, and blew forward. Dense clusters of flames shot outward.
Thousands of fist-sized fireballs, each shaped like the tail of a phoenix, surrounded the giant octopus. They scorched the surface of its skin, rapidly dehydrating and carbonizing it.
But that was about the extent of the damage.
The octopus's hide was full of moisture and gelatin, and thicker than a human body was wide. A fist-sized burn from Phoenix Flower was nothing worth mentioning to something like this.
In fact, once the octopus left the sea, every step it took across land tore much larger gashes across its underside where jagged rocks ripped into its flesh.
Those wounds were deep, and blue blood poured out in streams. They were hundreds, even thousands of times more serious than the damage Phoenix Flower could inflict.
But Miwa Masayo, leaping through the flames, was even more lethal.
All four of her paws were wrapped in white bands of light—her Sage Art: Pure White Claws.
She planted all four paws onto the octopus's body. As senjutsu chakra poured in, the white flame-ribbons abruptly lengthened, forming giant claws like ninja blades.
The tabby sprinted around the base of one tentacle in a flash, and at once, a complete ring-shaped wound appeared there, releasing the mouthwatering aroma of grilled meat.
The wound was so cleanly seared that not a drop of blood came out, but it caused violent, overwhelming pain. The octopus made a sharp clacking cry and sent all its tentacles sweeping in to capture that tiny enemy.
Using the dense flames as stepping points, Miwa Masayo flickered agilely through all eight attacking tentacles, making them spin in circles around her. Before long, they were already starting to tangle.
While ensuring her own safety, she focused all her attacks on the injured section near the root of that tentacle, deepening the wound bit by bit.
As the cut grew deeper, the pain became more intense. The octopus's grinding beak grew harsher and harsher, and lightning began to flicker along all eight tentacles, trying to create a better chance to catch its target.
Uchiha Yoru looked surprised.
"Lightning Release? Why did it wait until now to use Lightning Release?"
The mountain-like octopus began to crackle all over with electric arcs, like a furious thundercloud about to unleash devastating lightning on its enemies.
But Yoru wasn't worried for either himself or Miwa Masayo.
Lightning Release was not true natural lightning. It required Lightning Release chakra to establish a conductive path before the electric discharge could trigger. The lightning itself moved at light speed, but Lightning Release chakra certainly did not.
Fire-step flicker combined with a cat sage's reaction speed was an unsolvable tactic.
Later, the Stone shinobi would use dozens of lives to confirm one simple truth: without equivalent spatial ability, do not even think about challenging an enemy who can flicker through space.
Human shinobi couldn't do it.
A giant octopus had even less chance.
Even though all eight knotted tentacles erupted in a storm of lightning, not a single hair on Miwa Masayo was touched.
Lightning Release could never hit someone who was moving by slipping through space.
As for Uchiha Yoru, ever since he had absorbed wind-aspect natural energy, a faint breeze was always present around him. He could turn Wind Release chakra into ninjutsu at any time.
If Lightning Release chakra extended toward him, it was dispersed the moment it approached by his Wind Release chakra. Wind overcomes lightning. When used against a chakra beast, there was nothing surprising about the result.
As the attacks deepened again and again, the injured tentacle finally became afraid.
Ignoring the main brain's command to attack, it began to curl inward, trying to protect itself.
But if all eight tentacles together could not stop Miwa Masayo's assault, how could a single one fend off the slicing white flame-ribbons?
Strike after strike, the wound deepened.
At last, the scorched wound had grown too large to hold the blood back. Large amounts of blue blood sprayed out. The injured tentacle lost all rhythm and began lashing wildly, disrupting the others instead and giving the tabby an opening to prepare a finishing blow.
Miwa Masayo drew in a deep breath.
Senjutsu chakra gathered in her right forepaw. The white ribbon lengthened without stop, taking the shape of a giant flaming blade like a field tachi.
The white blade sank deep into the wound.
After a sizzling sound like meat searing on a hot iron plate, the huge tentacle was finally severed at the root.
The tentacle that had writhed like a dragon instantly contracted into a twitching mass. Sensing death, the brain within it struggled desperately, making it flop and jump across the beach like the tail of a lizard that had broken off in fright.
After judging its size, Uchiha Yoru felt that one tentacle would already be enough to eat.
He actually began considering whether he ought to leave the remaining seven attached to the octopus. At least that way they would stay fresh for longer…
But the octopus, consumed by greed, had no awareness of retreat.
Instead, it whipped the remaining seven tentacles into motion and continued surrounding the tiny Miwa Masayo.
Seeing his dao companion weaving between the gaps in the tentacles, and sensing the octopus's stubborn greed, Uchiha Yoru immediately flew into a rage.
I gave you a chance.
Not only did you refuse to run, you actually dared strike back at Rika-chan?
Yoru clapped his hands together with a crisp smack.
Then he froze on the spot.
Only at this moment did he realize that he had no suitable technique for dealing with a beast of this scale.
The skewering technique he had prepared earlier simply wasn't large enough. It could inflict plenty of pain on the octopus, but not produce a one-hit kill.
Whether it was the Earth Release he had used on Root shinobi in Konoha, the firestorm he had used to wipe out Suna shinobi in the Land of Rivers, or even the mental genjutsu he had just used to kill fifteen Root members—none of those were suited for dealing with a giant monster of this size.
Especially not the mental genjutsu.
It was devastating against humans, and it would probably work just as well against tailed beasts, but against an octopus with eight additional brains outside the main one, it was practically meaningless.
Uchiha Yoru had already used genjutsu. Taking advantage of the octopus's greed, he had easily seized control of its main brain, but the greed in the seven brains within the remaining tentacles overpowered the main brain's caution.
And the brains in the tentacles were fundamentally different from the central one.
As a human, Uchiha Yoru simply could not understand them. He couldn't even plant suggestion seeds into them.
Faced with those bizarre thought-cores, he felt like a hacker staring at a ternary alien computer—unable to find an entry point at all.
Yoru laughed at himself.
"Well, now I've got another research topic. A dedicated technique for large and even giant enemies."
"Thinking about it carefully, giant summoned beasts and puppets like this won't be rare in the future shinobi world. Even if an Uchiha civil war ever breaks out, a technique like that could also be used against Susanoo."
As for the giant octopus in front of him, Yoru naturally still had a way to deal with it.
Not having an appropriate ninjutsu did not mean the creature had truly overwhelming defense like Susanoo, impossible to breach. It simply meant its body was big enough that the destructive power of any single technique was not sufficiently lethal.
"In that case, don't blame me for not giving you a quick death. Enjoy the beauty of slow slicing."
Uchiha Yoru pressed his palms together again. Using wind-aspect natural energy to drive the Wind Release chakra within his cells, he built a complete technique formula and then unleashed it.
Wind Release: Extreme Repeated Wind Blade Severing.
A pale-cyan ring of wind appeared around him. Countless wind blades were compressed into shape inside it, then shot toward the octopus in flocks like swallows.
Very quickly, there were thousands of those pale-cyan wind blades.
But every single one remained under Yoru's control. They curved precisely around Miwa Masayo, who was still charging at the front, and shaved off slices of octopus flesh so thin they were nearly transparent.
The sudden wave of pain filled the seven tentacle-brains with fear.
They wanted to run.
But the main brain had already been thoroughly disrupted by Yoru's genjutsu and was no longer capable of coordinating the other seven tentacles.
So the tentacles each made their own decision.
Running was a shared consensus.
There was no disagreement about where to run either. The octopus certainly wasn't about to flee uphill.
But how to run… that was a huge problem.
Not one of the seven tentacles wanted to sacrifice itself for the whole. So all seven stretched perfectly straight toward the sea at the same time, leaving the entire octopus lying stiffly on the beach and exposing its most vulnerable part—its head—directly to Uchiha Yoru and Miwa Masayo.
At that point, there was no reason to be polite.
Miwa Masayo gathered a little force, lengthened the white flame-ribbons around herself, and wrapped her whole body in them. Then she leaped.
At exactly the right moment, Uchiha Yoru dispersed the wind blades into suspended whirlwinds, leaving them hanging in the air as a chain of footholds. With them, he helped her spring more than a hundred meters upward, then used a fierce gust to accelerate her diving descent.
The tabby became a white flaming arrow with a long trailing tail of fire, plunging straight into the root of another giant tentacle.
Yoru controlled the swarm of wind blades and sent them into the gap she had opened, driving deep into the octopus's body and speeding up the destruction from within.
The noisy battlefield suddenly went quiet.
Only the faint sharp whistling of pale-cyan wind blades remained, pouring continuously into the octopus's wound.
Then, suddenly, a streak of white light burst upward from below, tearing through the root of the octopus's tentacle. Miwa Masayo landed firmly on the beach, her whole body wrapped in white flame-ribbon armor, not stained by a single trace of blood or filth.
She shook off the grains of sand clinging to her fur and walked back toward Uchiha Yoru with a dignified, majestic cat's stride, passing through flame after flame.
Behind her, black ink and blue blood gushed from the broken wound, quickly staining a large stretch of the beach.
From excessive blood loss, the octopus's head began to deflate like a leaking balloon, sinking lower and lower. Even its eyes looked dried out, wrinkled, and shriveled.
Miwa Masayo reached Yoru's feet and dismissed her flame-ribbon armor. First she stretched with great satisfaction, then rubbed herself against his lower leg, picking up the reassuring scent she liked. Only then did she jump up and settle onto her favorite shoulder.
She let out an enormous yawn and said regretfully,
"This big octopus probably won't be stupid enough to keep fighting us to the death now, right? We can't kill it all at once. Otherwise it'll be hard to eat meat this fat again."
Uchiha Yoru continued controlling the wind blades, slowly dismembering the two severed tentacles that were still twitching in death throes. If they flopped around too much, the meat would lose some of its firmness, and the texture would be just a little worse.
Hearing the tabby's words, he nodded in agreement.
"Exactly. We could make dried octopus meat and soak it before eating later, but octopus isn't like scallops. Drying it won't create any special flavor."
"It's only when you slice it fresh like this that you get the best taste."
After dealing with the two fallen tentacles, Uchiha Yoru carried the tabby closer to the octopus's head with the Body Flicker Technique and placed a large seal-like mark on it.
Miwa Masayo asked curiously, "What's that, nya?"
Yoru replied, "It's a marker I'm putting on this big guy. With it, no matter how far it hides once it goes back into the sea, I'll be able to find where it's staying."
"So now we can let it go without worry and keep the rest of this meat fresh."
Uchiha Yoru released his control over the octopus's main brain and, with the same motion, activated the suggestion seed he had planted long ago, stirring up terror and the desire to survive within it.
Under the combined effect of the suggestion and the pain, the octopus finally understood completely that it was not this enemy's match.
Worse, it had become prey.
Driven by intense fear and the instinct to live, the main brain quickly persuaded the remaining six tentacle-brains. All of them worked together, alternating their strength as they charged wildly toward the sea.
Once it reached the shoreline, the octopus plunged headfirst into the water.
Without even looking back, it swam southeast, propelling itself forward by spraying water while also releasing vast amounts of ink, dyeing the sea behind it pitch-black. Very soon, the colossal creature vanished completely into the dark water.
Miwa Masayo looked at the blackened sea and curled her lip.
"It didn't get away, nya?"
Uchiha Yoru pointed southeast, then slowly turned his finger toward the northeast instead.
"No. I can still sense my mark very clearly. That thing is already turning northeast. Pretty crafty."
Miwa Masayo yawned again, rubbed her eyes with a paw, and muttered,
"Go back and put some good meat on yourself, nya. When we get hungry again, we'll come find you, nya."
Read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon -> [email protected]/SorenSwiftTL (replace @ with a)