'Counter with a summon?'
Hearing this, Itachi couldn't help but pause.
'Counter with a summon?'
Itachi looked at Sasuke's first summon slot, the One-Tail Shukaku.
He shook his head. "I don't think that'll work."
"Why not?" Sasuke pressed.
Itachi didn't explain, as the match situation was getting tense again.
After some probing and exchanges, Yuto, with the advantage of skills, secured the first move. Itachi sighed.
He glanced at his substitution bar, planning to wait a bit longer. If his summon slot had the panda or his secret scroll was indomitable spirit, he could afford to substitute more boldly.
Unfortunately... his secret scroll was lightning strike.
'Wait, lightning strike?!'
Itachi suddenly thought of a possibility and confidently said to Sasuke, "Watch closely. This strategy might be really cool."
Sasuke stared at the screen without responding, but he was also wondering, 'What could it be?'
At this moment, Susanoo Sasuke was spamming the 3a combo. Itachi knew the opponent was setting up for the 4a Chidori Blade, so... he held down lightning strike!
Itachi positioned himself in such a way that Susanoo Sasuke only had two options: either interrupt the basic attack and walk out of the lightning strike lightning circle, or use the 4a Chidori Blade to dash out of the circle while continuing the combo.
Clearly, the second option was the better choice. It would force the opponent to back off... but with skills and a summon in hand, there was no need to do that.
Yuto didn't overthink it and chose the second method, using Chidori Blade to dash out of the lightning strike's range.
Seeing this, Itachi quickly substituted, doing so while Susanoo Sasuke was still in the middle of the Chidori Blade dash.
Under Sasuke's puzzled gaze... Hawk Sasuke simultaneously used Chidori Blade!
This was a clash between Chidori Blade and Chidori Blade, a battle between skill and basic attack. But the answer was...
Your blade isn't fast enough, nor sharp enough.
Hawk Sasuke secured the initiation!
In the end, basic attacks couldn't compete with skills.
---
Yuto quickly tapped the first skill, trying to activate the Susanoo Skeleton to deal with the situation.
But to his surprise, the opponent's Chidori Blade was right on his tail. Almost the moment the invincibility frames ended, both of them dealt damage simultaneously.
Unfortunately, his damage was slightly lower than Hawk Sasuke's.
Moreover, his damage was basic attack-based, while Hawk Sasuke's was skill-based.
So, it wasn't hard to determine the winner of this exchange, but it was just one exchange.
Yuto glanced at his health bar… it was still decent. And because the opponent had dragged out his substitution time by waiting for skills, his substitution was almost ready again.
But Yuto couldn't help but mutter, "This opponent... why is their skill level so inconsistent? And their playstyle keeps changing…"
In the first round, they seemed eager to compete on skill, with decent awareness but lacking polish, making their play feel a bit clunky.
In the second round, their skill level dropped drastically. Yuto seriously wondered if they were just messing around. That level of play might not even match a Chunin-ranked player.
And now, in this third round, Yuto had to admire the opponent's combat IQ. Not only were they steady, but they were also incredibly detailed!
But so what?
Yuto looked at his nearly ready substitution bar. He was confident... he could secure the win with the next substitution.
---
Seeing Hawk Sasuke secure the initiation, Sasuke's eyes lit up, feeling like his understanding had suddenly broadened.
'There was actually such a strategy!'
This made Sasuke even more jealous.
'Why... was Itachi not only so skilled but also able to come up with such effective strategies?'
Sasuke thought to himself, 'If I were in that position, I would have probably substituted immediately when caught, relying on my strong reflexes to fight for an initiation opportunity. If I won, I'd win. If I lost... well, there was always the next match!'
Although Sasuke had considered the possibility of the opponent using a summon, he was still willing to gamble on luck.
There was also a 20% chance that Sasuke would wait, like Itachi, for lightning strike and Chidori Blade to come off cooldown before substituting.
But as for Sasuke's approach... he thought about it.
Of course, he would initiate with Chidori Blade! Then decisively stab with the second skill and see if he could secure the initiation.
If successful, he'd follow up with basic attacks. If not, it would mean the opponent might have used a summon.
At that point, Sasuke could choose to immediately use the third stage of the second skill to teleport away!
'But if the opponent activated the Susanoo Skeleton...' Sasuke thought, 'The match would probably be over.'
No matter how Sasuke thought about it, it all came down to a battle of skill.
He never imagined that he could use the lightning strike circle to bait out the opponent's Chidori Blade and then synchronize his own Chidori Blade to block the opponent from activating the skeleton.
Sasuke was thoroughly convinced. He finally understood where the gap between him and a Super Kage lay.
But Itachi hadn't secured this initiation easily. While waiting for his skills to come off cooldown, he had dragged out his substitution time for too long, and the opponent's substitution was almost ready.
Moreover, because he had held down lightning strike, it was now on a painfully long cooldown.
Itachi used three basic attacks followed by the stab, then three more basic attacks. By this point, the opponent's substitution was almost ready.
Seeing the cooldown for the third stage of the second skill finish and the opponent still hadn't substituted, Itachi sighed.
When dealing with the opponent's substitution later, he would only have one option.
Exactly the option Sasuke had mentioned earlier... counter with a summon.
If this were a lower-ranked match, Itachi could have considered calculating the opponent's substitution time and interrupting the combo to bait out the substitution just before it was ready.
But this trick had been overused by high-level players.
Itachi clearly remembered that just a few days ago, he had seen Kisame use this technique in a Jonin-ranked match. Unfortunately, Kisame was still stuck at the Jonin rank.
In the Naruto World, calculating the opponent's substitution time and using secret scrolls or summons to counter skills were the most basic of basics.
Any Ninja who had received proper training could master these techniques in about an hour and apply them relatively smoothly in matches.
To put it simply, if you didn't know these techniques, you probably wouldn't make it past Chunin rank in this world.
Because in the Chunin rank, there was no rank protection. You gained as many points as you lost, which was already quite merciful.
There were no bots in ranked matches, so you had to maintain at least a 50% win rate and play dozens or even hundreds of matches to have a chance of promoting to Chunin.
Nowadays, the Genin rank was mostly filled with casual players or kids from the Academy.
But tricks like baiting substitutions rarely worked against high-level players, though they could occasionally yield surprising results.