The battlefield was not only inside the barrier.
Outside the Chunin Exam arena, war had already erupted.
On the western side of the Leaf Village, the defensive line had been torn open into a massive breach. From that gap, the combined forces of the Sand Village and the Sound Village poured in like a flood.
Three gigantic pythons slithered at the very front of the invading army. Every time their massive tails lashed out, entire rows of houses collapsed, crumbling into smoking ruins.
Behind the pythons, the Sand Village troops manipulated yellow sand with practiced ease. Rolling waves of earth-colored sand surged along the streets, sweeping aside anything in their path.
The commander of the invasion stood atop a rooftop, overlooking the entire battlefield. He was a veteran jonin from the Sand Village, and up to this moment, everything was proceeding exactly according to plan.
The intel was crystal clear: the Leaf's top combat power—including the Fourth Hokage, the "Golden Flash," and the elderly yet still troublesome Third Hokage—had all been trapped inside the barrier surrounding the exam arena.
Deprived of its leaders, the remaining high-end combat strength of the Leaf Village was negligible—not worth fearing.
This operation was, at its core, a meticulously planned surprise attack. A one-sided slaughter built on overwhelming power.
Victory already seemed to be within his grasp. The commander was just about to issue the order for the second wave—an all-out assault to completely tear through the Leaf's defenses.
And then, in that moment, the unexpected happened.
"What is that?!"
A scout standing nearby suddenly pointed toward the sky, his voice cracking with panic.
The commander's instincts kicked in. He snapped his head up and looked.
A massive black shadow was descending from high above, blotting out the sky. An instant later, it crashed down into the very heart of the coalition's formation.
The world shook with a deafening boom.
The ground quaked violently beneath his feet. The tiles of the rooftop he stood on rattled and slammed against each other with harsh clacking sounds. A shockwave blasted outward, hurling smoke and dust into the air until the whole battlefield vanished behind a thick curtain of gray.
The commander spread his stance to steady himself, narrowed his eyes, and tried to pierce the dust with his gaze.
As the haze gradually dispersed, a colossal silhouette emerged from within it.
A giant toad, a pipe clenched between its lips, a short sword stuck into the back of its shell-like skin. Its sheer size dwarfed the ninja around it to the point that they looked like insects at its feet.
Gamabunta.
The commander recognized this summoning beast at a glance.
What truly made his heart sink, however, was the man standing on Gamabunta's head.
White hair that caught the light even through the dust. A distinctive red-and-green outfit that was impossible to mistake.
One of the Legendary Sannin—Jiraiya.
Why is he here?!
There was nothing about him in the intel!
Jiraiya stood on Gamabunta's head, hands already flying into a blur of seals. His fingers moved so fast they left afterimages in the air.
"Kuchiyose: Gama Gense no Jutsu (Summoning: Toad Manifestation Technique)!"
With his low shout, two massive explosions of white smoke erupted to either side of Gamabunta.
When the smoke cleared, two more giant toads appeared on the battlefield. One on the left, one on the right—Gamaken, wielding a spear and shield, and Gamahiro, with two blades hanging from his waist.
The three great toads stood shoulder to shoulder, like three towering mountains that blocked out the advance of the coalition forces completely.
"Damn it! Don't panic!"
The commander forcibly suppressed the fear rising in his chest and roared down at the troops below:
"They're just three summoned beasts! Push forward and crush them!"
His shout had some effect. The chaos in the ranks settled, if only slightly.
At the very front, the three massive pythons let out shrill hisses and lunged to attack, their huge bodies churning up the ground as they rushed toward the toads.
Gamabunta's response was simple and direct.
He gripped the short sword on his back, drew it in a seamless motion, and swung. A frigid blade of light flashed across the battlefield.
The leading python didn't even have time to react. Under that overwhelming strike, its head and body were skewered in a straight line, pinned like a worm to the devastated earth.
The python's massive body thrashed violently a few times before going slack.
One strike. One kill.
On top of Gamabunta's head, Jiraiya finished another sequence of hand seals. He and the toad beneath his feet opened their mouths in perfect sync.
"Senpō: Katon: Gamayu Endan (Sage Art: Fire Release: Toad Oil Flame Bullet)!"
Flames, mixed with thick toad oil, erupted from their mouths and compressed into a gigantic ball of fire.
The blazing sphere arced high into the sky before detonating with a thunderous blast, turning into a sea of flames that came crashing down over the remaining two pythons and the densely packed ninja around them.
The moment the flames fell, screams filled the battlefield—screams so shrill and raw they barely sounded human.
The commander could only watch, eyes wide, as that entire swath of the battlefield vanished into a roaring inferno.
Hundreds of his subordinates flailed and writhed within the sea of fire, their silhouettes warping and twisting—until, one by one, they stopped moving and turned into charred husks.
On his left flank, an elite assault unit that had been carving steadily deeper into the village suddenly fell into total chaos.
The commander strained his eyes, trying to see what was happening.
And then, he saw it.
A shadow.
A green shadow that darted back and forth through a force of hundreds like a phantom. It moved so fast that he couldn't track its path at all—only flickers, afterimages left behind by impossible speed.
Each time that green afterimage flashed, a gleam of sword light followed.
And with each flash of that sword light, dozens of ninja collapsed silently.
No screams.
No cries for help.
No effective resistance at all.
Veteran shinobi who had survived countless battles fell like wheat under a harvesting scythe.
This wasn't a battle.
It was a massacre.
"Shunshin… Shisui…"
The commander's lips trembled as he forced the name through his teeth. He recognized that legendary genius of the Uchiha clan—recognized the man who, according to official records, should have been dead long ago.
Fear twisted his voice into something thin and sharp.
Out on the battlefield, Shisui finally halted his movement.
He swept his gaze over the enemies around him—their formation shattered, their hearts seized by terror—and gave a small, helpless shake of his head. Then his hands began to form seals again.
"Susanoo (Guardian Deity Avatar)."
A massive skeletal frame erupted from the ground around him, its chakra radiating a pressure that made the very air hum.
In an instant, that skeleton filled out with muscles and armor-like chakra, forming a complete warrior-god clad in looming armor. A towering battle avatar holding a spiraled sword stood amidst the ruins of the village.
The chakra war god raised its spiraled blade and swept it horizontally toward the densest concentration of enemy ninja.
The sword stroke cleaved the air itself.
Where the blade's energy passed, everything vanished.
Ninja, houses, streets—everything simply disappeared, erased as if they had never existed.
When the attack faded, a gigantic fan-shaped void had been carved into the battlefield. The ground itself had been shaved away to a clean, smooth surface that reflected the light like a mirror.
On the commander's right flank, the situation was no better.
Another jonin assault squad, responsible for spearheading the advance, had run into their own personal nightmare.
Uchiha Itachi.
He simply stood there, calm and expressionless, as more than a dozen Sand Village jonin charged at him with killing intent in their eyes. His gaze didn't waver in the slightest.
"Tsukuyomi (Moon Reader)."
He murmured two words.
The leading Sand jonin froze mid-step without warning.
A heartbeat later, he let out a blood-curdling scream, clutching his head with both hands. Blood poured from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth as he toppled backward, convulsing violently.
In the span of a single instant, his spirit had been utterly destroyed.
The comrades behind him recoiled in shock, stumbling to a halt. Panic erupted in their eyes.
They scattered at once, trying to attack from different angles, desperately avoiding any direct eye contact with the young Uchiha.
Itachi didn't bother to chase them.
The tomoe in his Mangekyo Sharingan rotated slowly as his gaze shifted instead to the advancing tide of sand rolling across the battlefield—the massive "sand wave" unleashed by the Sand Village troops.
"Amaterasu (Heavenly Illumination)."
A tiny wisp of black flame materialized at the very heart of the sand wave with no warning whatsoever.
The black fire burned soundlessly.
Wherever it touched the sand, that sand vanished, erased in an instant.
The Sand ninja controlling the wave cried out in panic. They tried frantically to manipulate the sand with chakra, attempting to smother the flames.
It was useless.
The black fire could not be extinguished.
It spread instead, hungrily devouring the sand that made up their jutsu—devouring the very medium they relied upon to fight.
From the moment the coalition forces burst into the Leaf Village to now, only a few minutes had passed.
Yet in those few minutes, the entire situation had been flipped upside down.
Jiraiya's roaring flames.
Shisui's blinding sword light.
Itachi's devouring black fire.
These were powers recorded only in legends and sealed away in the highest-level classified scrolls.
Now, all of them were being unleashed right before the invaders' eyes.
The morale of the Sand–Sound coalition shattered in an instant under this absolute difference in strength.
"The intel was wrong! The intel is all wrong!"
The commander stared blankly as his proud elite units fell like grass before a storm. The last defenses in his heart crumbled.
He could no longer suppress the terror rising from his core. A hoarse, desperate howl tore itself from his throat.
"The Leaf's battle strength is nothing we can stand against!"
"This isn't a war! It's a trap! We've walked right into a trap!!"
All across the battlefield, the surviving ninja—after witnessing the grotesque deaths of their comrades and the overwhelming power of these "legendary" shinobi—completely lost the will to fight.
They threw down their weapons, abandoned their orders, and turned to flee.
The invaders who, only minutes ago, had stormed in like a pack of ravenous wolves were now scattering in all directions like terrified sheep, scrambling frantically for any path that led out of the village.
On the ruined street, Shisui dispelled his Susanoo.
The towering chakra war god dissolved into glittering particles of light and vanished.
Shisui landed lightly beside Itachi.
Watching the enemy forces flee in panic, he spoke in a calm, almost casual tone.
"Itachi, it's been a while since we had a match. Want to see who can take down more of them?"
Itachi didn't answer the question.
His gaze passed over the battlefield that was no longer a threat and turned instead toward the deeper part of the Leaf Village—to the place still sealed within the purple barrier.
The fight over there was far from finished.
(End of Chapter)
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