"Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
A single kunai was thrown and then multiplied into thousands, an exaggeration to say nearly ten thousand, transforming into a literal metal storm that engulfed Mukade.
Mukade was stunned, watching his body get torn to pieces. What kind of ninjutsu is this?
"Sugoi! We got him!" Naruto cheered, pumping his fist.
Minato Namikaze, however, shook his head. In his perception, the opponent's chakra hadn't diminished at all; in fact, it was growing stronger.
"Be careful. He can't be killed."
Sure enough, no sooner had the words left his mouth than Mukade, with only half a head remaining, stood up again. A powerful surge of chakra erupted from his body, and all the surrounding puppet parts flew towards him, reassembling into a giant spider-like puppet.
He then opened his mouth and fired a chakra cannon at Minato, who quickly grabbed Naruto and teleported away with the Flying Thunder God.
"He's immortal! What do we do?" The simple-minded Naruto grabbed his hair in frustration, pulling out a few blond strands.
"No one is immortal. He's just relying on the chakra of the Ryumyaku. As long as we sever the Ryumyaku, he can be killed," Minato explained with a smile. "Fighting him with chakra is the most unwise choice. He currently possesses an immortal body and an inexhaustible supply of chakra. It also seems he has modified his own body into that of a puppet."
Mukade was about to attack again, but the support team of Choza and Shibi had already stepped in. One was a tanky warrior, the other a versatile support. At the same time, Yamato also used his Wood Style to help, and the three Jonin managed to hold Mukade off for a time.
"No way! If we sever the Ryumyaku, the Land of Roran will turn into a desert! I absolutely can't let Sara do that!" Naruto shook his head without a second thought. That was his promise to Sara, and it was non-negotiable.
"Naruto, when you arrived, wasn't Roran already a desert? All you're doing is following the course of history. You have to remember, you're in the past. Whether the Land of Roran exists or not is something that was decided over a decade ago. It has nothing to do with you," Minato patiently explained.
Just then, an uninvited guest appeared behind Minato again, startling him and nearly making him jump out of his skin.
"Heh heh, it seems you're still a bit of a coward," Uchiha Nagi said, appearing behind the father and son.
He had heard the commotion when they started fighting. It was a deafening battle; even a deaf person could have heard it. He had taken a moment to sense the situation. It seemed the tall blondie hadn't had time to modify his Flying Thunder God formula yet. And so, with a few teleports, he appeared behind Minato.
However, even if he had modified it, it would have been useless. Uchiha Nagi just needed to watch him a few more times, copy him a few more times, and he could still use the same formula.
"Huh, it's you! The uncle with the Sharingan!" Despite his words, Naruto remained vigilant. The shadow Itachi had cast over him was too large.
"Naruto, there's no such thing as a perfect jutsu in this world, and that includes the Puppet Technique. Think about Sasori of the Red Sand. No matter how he modified himself, he always had to keep a part of his body human," Nagi said. "That means there must be a part of his body that is still human. If you hit that part, he will die. Besides that, there's another way." Nagi smiled.
"Huh, there is? What is it? As long as it's not severing the Ryumyaku and destroying the Land of Roran, I'm in!" Naruto said excitedly.
"Mukade uses the Puppet Technique. This is a factory that produces all kinds of puppet parts. If you destroy all his puppet parts, or transport them out of the Land of Roran, he'll have no parts to use and naturally won't be able to reassemble himself."
Puppets need parts, of course. The same went for Mukade's ability to reassemble his body. But if the puppet parts were smashed into tiny pieces, could he still reassemble them? He wasn't a nanobot; he couldn't reassemble jack squat.
"Ah, that's right! Why didn't I think of that? If I smash all the parts, he won't be able to use his Puppet Technique! Uncle with the Sharingan, you're amazing! You just casually came up with two ways to deal with Mukade!" As Naruto said this, he shot Minato a Kakashi-style side-eye.
"Unlike some people, who can only think of severing the Ryumyaku, as if there's no other way to defeat Mukade except by destroying the Land of Roran."
Minato was speechless.
You little brat, do you have any idea that the person you're looking down on might be your old man?! Huh?!
Of course, it wasn't that Minato couldn't think of a better way. It was just that the primary objective of his mission was to destroy the Land of Roran, which was why he couldn't stop talking about severing the Ryumyaku.
"Destroy the puppet parts…" Naruto looked at the thousands of puppet parts in the factory, many of which were still packed in boxes, and felt a headache coming on. Was he supposed to use his Rasengan to smash them all into pieces, one by one? That would take until dawn.
"Right! I can just carry them all away, right? Take them out of the Land of Roran!" Naruto's eyes lit up as he asked Nagi.
"Of course. The Land of Roran isn't large. Mukade can clearly only act so arrogantly here. Once he's outside of Roran, he won't have the Ryumyaku's chakra supply. Forget about reviving; it's doubtful he'd even have enough chakra to control his body," Nagi said with a smile.
"Yosh! Then watch me! Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto clasped his hands together, and his signature jutsu appeared.
Thousands of shadow clones appeared in the factory in a dense swarm.
"Yosh! Everyone, let's get to work! Clear out all the puppet parts!"
"Yeah!"
"Let's move them all out so that Mukade guy can't revive!"
"Charge!"
A thousand Narutos began to charge towards the nearest puppets, grabbing them and running, all heading out of the Land of Roran.
Nagi watched with envy. A thousand shadow clones… how much chakra was that? He had no idea. All he knew was that it was more than his own. And it seemed this wasn't even his limit. When the second-generation Naruto got angry, he could even draw a portion of the Nine-Tails' nuclear power plant chakra through the seal in his body. It was truly a case of having so much mana you could do whatever you wanted.
A thousand shadow clone Narutos, full of energy, carried all sorts of puppet parts and ran outside. In one wave, they cleared out more than half the puppets in the factory. The Land of Roran was a small country, so the factory naturally wasn't that big, nor did it have that much funding. This many puppets was the result of six years of Mukade's hard work.
He was still fighting Choza's group of three. Akimichi Choza, acting as the tank and damage dealer, had astonishingly high defense. In his chakra-enhanced state, his body was as massive as Mukade's, and he shattered the puppet body with a single punch.
After it was shattered, the surrounding puppet parts continuously flew up and reassembled. What annoyed him the most were those damn bugs. Just like when Shino fought Kankuro, Aburame Shibi was using his insects to chew through the chakra threads during the battle. This made it very difficult for Mukade to reassemble his body each time. What was even more frustrating was that these bugs could get in anywhere. The puppet's body was huge, and the gaps were large. The bugs crawled into his body, constantly gnawing at the various connection points and his chakra. If it weren't for the Ryumyaku providing infinite chakra, Mukade would have been finished long ago. An Aburame and an Akimichi alone could have taken him down.
"Wood Style: Tree Binding Eternal Burial!"
Yamato was using his Wood Style, trying to seal Mukade. But the Wood Style, which was a natural counter to the Tailed Beasts, seemed to have very little effect on Mukade. Of course, it could also be that he was too weak.
"He's reviving again! We can't kill him!" Choza shouted, slowly shrinking down. His Expansion Jutsu wasn't a long-lasting technique, and the recent battle had consumed a great deal of his energy.
"Wood Style: Deep Forest Emergence!" Yamato cast his Wood Style again, and a dense forest of trees appeared, wrapping around Mukade.
On the other side, Minato was still watching Uchiha Nagi, not moving, not joining the fight.
"You seem very wary of me," Uchiha Nagi said with a smile. "Don't worry, I won't use the Flying Thunder God to sneak attack you. Besides, didn't you put a seal on your Flying Thunder God kunai?"
Minato opened his mouth, wanting to ask something, but didn't say it.
"Yosh! The shadow clones have finished the first wave! Let's start the second! Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
A voice full of energy came through. It turned out that Naruto's shadow clones had successfully thrown all the puppet parts into the desert outside of Roran, and the memories had been transferred back to the original body. So, the original Naruto cast the Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu a second time.
"Minato!" Choza shouted from a distance. They were about to be overwhelmed. The giant puppet was already hard to fight. Ninja were glass cannons; one wrong move and they could be crushed. Now, after several major exchanges, their energy was greatly depleted, while Mukade was still alive and kicking, occasionally firing a few massive chakra energy cannons at them.
Minato took a deep look at Uchiha Nagi. His comrades were more important. With a Body Flicker, he went to help Choza and the others. He could sense that Uchiha Nagi had no ill will towards Naruto. Otherwise, with one Flying Thunder God, he could have slit Naruto's throat long ago. Against someone who could teleport just like him, there was no way to defend.
"Hey, uncle, aren't you going to help?" Naruto asked.
Uchiha Nagi rolled his eyes. "If you didn't call me uncle, and called me handsome instead, I'd go help."
Without a second thought, Naruto blurted out, "Handsome! Hot guy!"
Uchiha Nagi was speechless.
He had forgotten that this was the guy who could seduce Jiraiya by cross-dressing. The Sexy Jutsu was nothing to him, let alone his pride.
Oh well. He had planned to cut down Mukade and return to his own timeline anyway.
Uchiha Nagi silently drew his Nichirin Blade and said to Naruto, "When Mukade is shattered later, I'll cut his chakra threads so he can't reassemble the puppet insects. You take the opportunity to move his puppet parts."