Rotation Blade

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After Kakashi lost consciousness, Naoki had effectively taken over as Team Eleven's captain. Guy did not dare say anything else. He immediately carried the unconscious Kakashi and broke out toward the outside of the valley.

Several Kumogakure squads split off from the surrounding shinobi at once and chased after them.

Then the elite Kumogakure jonin leading the force looked over Naoki and Shisui, who remained where they stood, and smiled. "What an outstanding group of juniors."

Naoki said coldly, "Thanks for the compliment."

"My name is Fukado. I am the commander of this garrison." After a pause, the elite jonin named Fukado continued, "I admire you. Unfortunately, all of you will die here today, including the two who escaped."

Naoki did not answer. He swept his gaze around, his expression grim.

Leaving aside the Kumogakure squads that had just gone after Guy, there were still more than a hundred Kumogakure shinobi surrounding him and Shisui. Among them, more than ten possessed jonin-level chakra.

On top of that, the signal that the secret warehouse had been attacked had been sent long ago. Kumogakure reinforcements were probably rushing in from every direction right now.

Seeing that Naoki and Shisui still had not given up hope despite falling into such a desperate position, Fukado smiled with appreciation. "If I kill such promising juniors from Konoha, Lord Raikage may not blame me too harshly for failing to defend the warehouse."

Naoki silently stared at Fukado, waiting for an opening.

As his strength steadily improved, the range of Revolving Will had expanded to around twenty-two meters. If he overdrew his chakra at the cost of damaging his body, he could push it to twenty-five meters.

At the moment, Fukado was roughly twenty-one meters away, within the range Revolving Will could affect.

But considering that Fukado was an elite jonin of Kumogakure, his strength was certainly not weak. Twenty-one meters was not reliable enough. Ideally, Naoki needed to close to around fifteen meters to ensure success.

While silently calculating the distance between himself and the enemy, Naoki took a bottle of toxin from his pouch.

The paralytic toxin on Kusanagi-maru had been almost entirely used up during the previous battle. He needed to coat the blade again to maintain its effect.

He had arrived too hastily and forgotten earlier. Now he had no choice but to apply poison to the blade in front of all his enemies.

Seeing Naoki poison the short sword in the open, the Kumogakure shinobi reacted in different ways.

Fukado's brows tightened slightly. 'Why hasn't Kurapa arrived yet?'

The reason the Kumogakure shinobi did not rush to attack was that they were waiting for Kurapa, an interrogation shinobi from their village.

In Fukado's eyes, Naoki and the others were already dead.

Before they died, however, they needed to be used properly. At minimum, Kumogakure had to interrogate them for Konoha intelligence.

Kumogakure had not yet developed a secret technique capable of invading a corpse's brain to extract information, so they needed to wait for Kurapa to arrive before acting. Once he was here, even if Naoki and Shisui were beaten to the edge of death, Kurapa could still interrogate them on the spot.

The Kumogakure shinobi's odd behavior was immediately noticed by Shisui. He leaned closer to Naoki and whispered, "Senior, something feels wrong. They seem to be waiting for someone."

Naoki had noticed it too. Knowing he could not hesitate any longer, he said, "Once the fight starts, activate Susanoo immediately."

Shisui did not ask why. He simply nodded seriously.

After warning Shisui, Naoki slowly walked toward Fukado.

Fukado's expression hardened. He immediately ordered the Kumogakure shinobi around him, "Stop waiting. Attack."

Before the order could fully leave Fukado's mouth, an enormous, indescribable pulling force dragged him toward Naoki.

Not only him. With Naoki as the center, everyone within twenty-one meters, even Shisui, was pulled toward Naoki by that tremendous force.

Naoki gripped Kusanagi-maru and shouted, "Rotation Blade!"

Rotation Blade was an improvised move Naoki had devised after obtaining Kusanagi-maru.

His idea was to use Revolving Will to pull every surrounding enemy toward him at once, then perform Eight Trigrams Palms: Rotation while holding Kusanagi-maru.

With Kusanagi-maru's blade serving as the attack and Rotation as the defense, the technique would combine offense and protection.

However, before he had time to practice the idea privately, he had been sent here on this secret mission. So now, trapped between life and death, he could only force the attempt.

The tremendous pull of Revolving Will dragged more than a dozen shinobi, including Fukado and Shisui, to Naoki's side. The Kumogakure shinobi were shocked, and even Shisui's face showed disbelief.

Although Shisui had seen Naoki use Revolving Will before, this was the first time he had personally experienced its pull.

Fortunately, Naoki had warned him in advance, so he did not panic. He activated his Mangekyo Sharingan in time and manifested Susanoo.

Slash, slash, slash...

The sound of a blade cutting through the air rang out at exactly the right moment.

Every shinobi pulled to Naoki by Revolving Will was struck by Kusanagi-maru to varying degrees. Aside from Shisui, who was protected by Susanoo, every single one of them was cut by the blade.

After stopping Rotation Blade, Naoki panted as he checked the result.

Using Revolving Will over such a large area and at such intensity had drained the little chakra he had left. He had to confirm that Fukado, Kumogakure's commander, had been cut by Kusanagi-maru.

But at that moment, among the Kumogakure shinobi wounded on the ground by Kusanagi-maru, every jonin except the chunin and genin vanished with a pop into streaks of lightning.

'Lightning Clones?'

Naoki's heart shook.

Even a dojutsu user might fail to see through a high-level clone technique. In Naoki's memory, Kakashi had once used a Lightning Clone to successfully deceive Pain, who possessed the Rinnegan.

But when the same thing happened to him, especially while he was trapped in such a desperate situation, the feeling was far from pleasant.

In truth, Naoki had not been completely unaware. His Tenseigan had faintly sensed that Fukado seemed a little unnatural. But because he had never seen a Lightning Clone before, he had failed to judge that every Kumogakure jonin in front of him, including Fukado, was only a Lightning Clone.

Fukado and several other Kumogakure jonin who had lost their Lightning Clones stepped out from the shadows.

Fukado looked at Shisui inside Susanoo with open interest and smiled. "Heh. It seems I underestimated you. Shinobi sent into enemy territory for a suicide mission really do have a few tricks."

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