บท 461: Chapter 456 : Standstill
[A/N: Bonus chapter for reaching 6334 Power Stones last week! Our rank dropped to 8, but still very good! Keep it up guys :)]
Kakuzu, who was lying pretending to be dead, was dumbfounded. It was a common practice in the ninja world to collect the dead bodies of enemy ninjas instead of destroying them. After all, the dead body of a strong ninja was a treasure trove. It contained a lot of information. It was even more true in the case of Konoha ninjas due to the Yamanaka clan's ability to read memories. Hence, Kakuzu never expected that Fujin would try to destroy his dead body!
He immediately jumped up. The Vacuum Cannon hit where he was lying and created a canal in the ground as it moved. Of course, that wasn't the end of Kakuzu's trouble. He quickly hardened his body before he was hit by the Fire-Wind combination jutsu!
He wondered, 'Is there something wrong with his head? Or does he have information about my abilities? Did Konoha find out so much about me after that small clash with Renjiro?'
Kakuzu couldn't be sure. Unfortunately, he didn't have the time to ponder about it deeply. Even though Kakuzu managed to barely protect himself in time, it wasn't enough to completely stop the combination attack. The high speed and razor-sharp winds combined with hot flames forced Kakuzu backwards! The Akatsuki cloak on his body was blown away. Several burns and a few cuts appeared on his body.
Fortunately, he could endure the pain. Unfortunately, he didn't dare to use any defensive jutsus to help himself and instead focused entirely on the incoming attack. Immediately, he moved within the firestorm. A few Vacuum Bullets pierced through the space he was standing at earlier.
Outside the firestorm, Fujin sighed and thought, 'He dodged them so easily. Vacuum Bullets have no chance of killing a strong ninja unless I catch him completely by surprise. I need a large-scale Vacuum jutsu. He wouldn't have had much chance of dodging while playing possum if I had it. But how do I create one?'
Though Fujin had created an array of Wind Vacuum jutsus, he had failed to create one that had a wide range. The Vacuum Core would always collapse when he tried to do so. Though he hadn't practiced Vacuum jutsus much in recent times, he did keep thinking about solving this issue. Unfortunately, he hadn't had much luck.
As he fell back, a large number of threads began poking out of Kakuzu's body. They replaced his missing arms and the left side of his body. Two masks, the Fire Mask and the Wind Mask, appeared next to his head. Another mask, the Lightning Mask, appeared on his chest.
In an instant, the Fire and Wind masks began preparing their jutsus.
'Wind Release: Pressure Damage jutsu'
'Fire Release: Searing Migraine jutsu'
In order to stop the combination jutsu, Kakuzu decided to counterattack with a similar combination jutsu. Normally, the two jutsus would have been equally matched. However, Fujin's jutsu had already been active for some time. As a result, Kakuzu's jutsu managed to overpower what was remaining of Fujin's jutsu and his jutsu moved through the Firestorm Fujin had started.
Fujin saw the incoming attack and shot a few Vacuum Bullets before flickering to the side. The Vacuum Bullets had no chance of stopping the incoming attack. They were only meant to annoy Kakuzu who was standing on the other side of the firestorm. He dodged the incoming Vacuum Bullets as Fujin predicted. However, Fujin had achieved his goal. The Vacuum Bullets once again forced Kakuzu to be on high alert at all times and kept up the pressure Fujin had built up!
With no opposition, the Fire-Wind Combination jutsu moved through the snow-covered forest. Every tree in its path was set on fire. The snow on the ground began melting as well. In fact, even the remains of Kakuzu's arms were burnt to a crisp by the firestorm.
After travelling a few hundred meters, the combination jutsu finally died down. As for the target of the jutsu, he flickered a few times to completely avoid the jutsu and snuck behind Kakuzu. Kakuzu quickly turned around to face him and thought, 'His fighting style is as relentless as the intel said.'
Akatsuki had researched Fujin and the Spectral Swordsman after Juzo's death. According to their intel, Fujin's method of fighting was being extremely relentless and peppering the enemy with jutsus that consumed less chakra but had high speed and high penetrative power continuously. His enemy has to fail to dodge just once and the battle would be over. Unfortunately for Fujin, Akatsuki had several individuals who didn't have a normal body. As a result, fighting with his usual fighting style was very restrictive for Fujin.
On seeing Kakuzu's form, Fujin wondered, 'Is this his most powerful form? After all, he used it against Kakashi when he had lost two of his hearts. Seeing the Lightning Mask on his chest, I guess his current level is stronger than what he was against Naruto. I wonder how strong he'd be if he had the 5th heart as well…'
Fujin quickly moved closer to cut him with his sword once again. However, Kakuzu had no intention of engaging in close-range combat with Fujin after getting hurt twice. The Wind Mask shot Air bullets, the Fire Mask shot small fireballs and the Lightning Mask shot a few lightning bolts to keep Fujin far away. At the same time, threads extended from Kakuzu's body to make it very difficult for Fujin to engage in close combat.
The barrage of attacks forced Fujin backwards as he dodged. A few threads drilled out from the ground to trap Fujin, however, he flickered far away as soon as he felt something drilling through the ground. He concentrated his wind chakra into his sword and swung it horizontally.
A massive sword slash accompanied by several sharp winds flew towards Kakuzu. However, Kakuzu once again resorted to the Fire-Wind Combination jutsu, forcing Fujin to escape once again.
After dodging, Fujin flickered a few times to approach Kakuzu from another direction but was stopped again. The masks fired a few more shots as Kakuzu asked, "You are good. How did you detect that I wasn't dead?"
Kakuzu didn't get any response from Fujin. Though Kakuzu was the one at a disadvantage, Fujin didn't dare to underestimate him. Every one of the elemental attacks could hurt him considerably. And, the threads were constantly trying to sneak up on him through the ground. He had to maintain full attention on the battle to ensure that Kakuzu didn't gain momentum once again.
The two continued fighting. With his sword and Blades of Wind jutsu, Kakuzu's threads weren't of any danger to him as long as he detected them. Whenever they got too close, Fujin would cut them off. However, due to the elemental bombardment along with attacks from the threads, Fujin was unable to get close to Kakuzu. His Vacuum Bullets and other attacks didn't pose much of a threat to Kakuzu as he had plenty of time to dodge them.
To pressure Kakuzu, Fujin used his Shadow and Wind clones to bombard him with more Vacuum Bullets from various angles. It put Kakuzu under a lot of pressure. But even under such pressure, not a single Vacuum jutsu hit Kakuzu!
The battle entered a standstill with Kakuzu successfully keeping Fujin at midrange. Though he couldn't harm Fujin, Fujin was unable to harm him either. He also used Fire-Wind Combination jutsu several times, but Fujin dodged each time without counterattacking.
The main reason for not counterattacking with large-scale jutsus was that this battle was one of the few ones where Fujin didn't have the advantage in terms of chakra reserves. Kakuzu was considerably superior to Fujin in this aspect. Since Fujin didn't see any way to overpower Kakuzu's combination jutsu, he didn't bother wasting his chakra as there wasn't much point in merely stopping it.
As a result, several Firestorms moved unrestricted through the snowy forests. A large area was burned down. If not for the snow, multiple forest fires would have started spreading throughout the Land of Frost.
Fujin sighed internally after being unsuccessful in closing the distance for the nth time. He thought, 'There is no end to this. We will just have to keep fighting until one of us runs out of chakra. Of course, no one is stupid enough to reach that stage.
Worse, he is getting used to my fighting style. Even if I somehow make him run low on chakra and be unwilling to use so many elemental attacks, I doubt I'll be able to injure him as well as I did earlier. I will need to use my Wind Domain if I want to injure him now. Unfortunately, my Wind Domain isn't strong enou...'
Suddenly, Fujin sensed a disturbance. During the fight, he had kept his Space-Time Sensing Technique activated at all times. Someone had entered into it!
[A/N : Bonus chapter on next Sunday if the fic gets 1000 Power Stones. Bonus chapter on next week's Saturday if the fic gets 2000 Power Stones.]
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