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Chapter 742 : A Second of Hesitation!
🕑 Added 2024-09-08 01:03:05 +0000 UTC[A/N: Apologies for not replying. I had kept my phone away as I decided to sit on my laptop until I was done with the chapter.
PS: Now you guys know why I made that author's note a month back 😅]
“Heh, to think that the mighty Konoha would one day have to see such a day.” Hozuki Gengetsu, the second Mizukage, taunted Hiruzen. He found the situation quite amusing.
He wasn't the only one. The rest of the reanimated Kages were quite surprised too. Irrespective of who it was, all of them had tried to destroy Konoha and failed miserably. No matter how many villages attacked Konoha, it remained a Behemoth that couldn't be destroyed. Even though they weren't pleased that someone was controlling them, seeing the destruction of Konoha was quite a pleasant surprise for them.
Hiruzen snorted and replied, “I wonder if you'll be this amused when he reanimates all of you to attack your villages next. If Konoha falls, do you think your villages could stop him when he turns his eyes towards them?”
Immediately, the faces of all the Kages became dark. Needless to say, that was their first thought. Even though none of them were at their full strength, their power was more than sufficient to destroy any Great Village. Since Hashirama and Tobirama had stopped their attacks momentarily, Hiruzen immediately decided to strike with his words.
The Third Mizukage thought, ‘Hiruzen is correct. Unless the strength of our villages has immensely increased somehow, they won't be able to stop us. The best hope for their survival is if Hiruzen stops us. Of course, that is unless we can regain control of our bodies. If we do so, we can just kill Orochimaru first and then kill Hiruzen and destroy Konoha.’
His eyes quickly scanned through the situation outside the barrier as he analyzed, ‘There are only Konoha ninjas. There must have been a war and Konoha won overwhelmingly, forcing Orochimaru to summon us. In this case, we could have a chance to break free of his control.’
The Third Mizukage's scheming mind immediately calculated all the scenarios. The other Kages had similar thoughts. The First Kazekage suddenly chuckled and said, “As expected of the schemer's student. Even without lifting a finger, you're making us want to eliminate your enemy first. Haha, Tobirama selected a good successor.”
Without skipping a beat, Hiruzen asked, “Do you see the Fourth Kazekage outside the barrier? He was killed not too long ago by the very person who summoned you. Right now, your village doesn't have a single rank S ninja.”
The eyes of the First and Second Kazekage widened in shock. Instinctively, both tried to break free of Orochimaru's control, making his job much more difficult. Orochimaru cursed, ‘Shit! If I allow him to keep speaking…’
Without showing his real emotions, Orochimaru chuckled and said, “It looks like age failed to tone down your scheming nature, Sensei. You allied with Suna and killed the Kazekage under the pretence of a meeting, forcing the Sunagakure to attack Konoha recklessly and fall into your trap. The bodies of Suna ninjas are still littered in the arena.”
Without wasting any time, Orochimaru tried to confuse the two Kazekages. Needless to say, they didn't believe his words. However, they knew that they couldn't trust Hiruzen either. Orochimaru continued, “You can give up trying to break my control. The only thing that will be broken is the village you hold so dear to yourself. Hahaha!”
Hiruzen interrupted his laughter and claimed, “You can stop acting tough, Orochimaru. You were already having a difficult time controlling Lord First and Lord Second along with Sakumo and the two Kazekages. You have a lot of courage to keep reanimating more ninjas even in that condition. Tell me, how much of your strength can you exert?”
In an instant, Orochimaru fell under a lot of pressure. The wills of 10 rank S ninjas attempted to break free of his control! In addition, his previous 5 summons were also passively resisting him. Even for someone as strong as Orochimaru, it was an extremely difficult thing to maintain control.
Even though Orochimaru had improved Tobirama's Edo Tensei considerably, he was still a long distance away from the level to which Kabuto would have improved it in the future. He could still fight when he hadn't summoned 10 more Kages. However, after summoning them, he was forced to focus entirely on maintaining control. In a way, his situation was similar to that of a puppet master!
Even so, he laughed and said, “Hehe, as expected of you, Sensei. You're right, I won't be able to fight you much. However, do I really need to? Can you break through all the former Kage and attack me? That'll be an amusing sight!”
Immediately, the reanimated Kage began moving against their will. Hiruzen was about to face twelve former Kage by himself!
In the skies, Fujin continuously calculated several possibilities. He quickly eliminated most of them, but one remained in his mind. He thought, ‘Since teleporting the Kages away won't help much, what if I directly eliminated Orochimaru? I can just prepare the Rasenshuriken and hit him by teleporting close to him.
Once he is taken out, Sakumo, Hashirama and Tobirama won't be under his control. Even though none of them are at their peak, their strength is equivalent to the others. Along with me, Jiraiya and Hiruzen, we could fight with them despite having just half the numbers… Not to mention, Guy and Kakashi would be freed up as well. However…’
Fujin hesitated. There were several flaws in his strategy. The very first flaw was that he wasn't certain if the Rasenshuriken would kill Orochimaru. If Orochimaru survived and healed with his skin-shedding technique, Fujin would have exposed his Flying Thunder God jutsu without gaining anything.
The second flaw was that even if he killed Orochimaru, the odds were strongly against Konoha. Hashirama, Tobirama and Sakumo could take on one opponent each. That would leave Fujin, Jiraiya and Hiruzen to deal with 3 each. They were terrible odds even if Fujin went all out.
Even if Guy took out one by opening the Seventh Inner Gate, it wouldn't make much of a difference. While Kakashi and Renjiro were strong, their battle against Sakumo had shown that neither could battle at such a level.
Fujin concluded, ‘The only way we could turn things around is if weaker Konoha ninjas take some of the Kages on and stall them. However, this will result in extremely heavy casualties. Knowing Hiruzen, he might use the Death Reaper Seal anyway to prevent those casualties, which again makes my attempt pointless…’
Fujin's calculations made him hesitate. As someone who loved keeping his cards hidden, it was against his nature to expose them without any certainty of results.
Ironically, his biggest motivation to act out had nothing to do with Konoha or even Hiruzen. The main reason why he was tempted to stop being as careful as he always was, was to see whether he can force a major change to the future. It was his way of proving to himself that fate didn't exist, or at least his existence could impact major events.
While Fujin hesitated, there was one person who didn't. Fujin extended his right arm and began forming the Rasengan in his right hand. However, even before he could completely form the basic Rasengan, Hiruzen created 12 Shadow Clones and all 13 weaved hand seals rapidly!
They first weaved the Snake seal and followed it with the Boar, Ram, Rabbit, Dog, Rat, Bird, Horse and Snake seals in that order before clapping their hands together.
Enma shouted, “Don't tell me you're…?”
In the sky, Fujin sensed the change in Hiruzen's chakra and stopped creating the Rasengan. He let out a sigh and thought, ‘In the end, this still happened…’
‘That order of hand seals… Sarutobi, you are performing that jutsu!!!’ Enma thought in disbelief.
Hiruzen glanced behind him and thought, ‘So this is the God of Death that Minato was saying only the caster of this jutsu can see. Sigh, I hope this works…’
Orochimaru noticed Hiruzen's odd actions and said, “No matter what you try, it's too late. I've won! Konoha will fall!”
Hiruzen didn't reply as he saw all 12 reanimated Kages moving towards him. Without wasting any time, all of his Shadow Clones immediately moved towards them!
In the forest, Gaara couldn't resist the bombardment of Naruto's supercharged Wind jutsus! The explosion of Fujin's kunai had damaged the sand armor around him considerably and before he could fix it, he was attacked by Naruto.
To his horror, several sharp wind blades cut straight through the sand around his body! Several long cuts opened up on his body, injuring Gaara like he never was in his entire life. Even Fujin's clone was surprised. As Gaara's screams echoed through the forest, Fujin's clone couldn't help but wonder, ‘Could this attack kill Gaara or will he…?’
Even before he could complete his thoughts, Gaara transformed entirely into Shukaku!
[A/N: Still wasn't able to finalize the fight scenes. I decided to have them in the next chapter so that I could go through them once again tomorrow. I feel like I'm done with most of them though, so hopefully, I'll be able to complete it tomorrow.]
