On the spectator stands, three Kage-level shinobi were already locked in combat.
Below them, a golden tide surged upward and swallowed the battlefield whole.
Vision vanished first.
Then sound.
Then light itself.
Everything was sealed off by the crushing, metallic sand—dense, heavy, and saturated with murderous intent.
Rasa had moved.
Hiroki reached that conclusion instantly. Among everyone present, only one person could create something like this.
Damn it.
The gold sand completely blocked his vision. He could no longer see what was happening above, and his gaze couldn't pierce through the thick metallic layers to establish eye contact with Rasa.
Worse still, as the sand shifted and compressed, the grinding friction and layered density absorbed sound almost entirely. Even if Hiroki altered the transmission medium of his genjutsu to rely on sound instead of sight, Rasa would never hear it clearly enough for it to take effect.
Had that bastard already taken precautions after witnessing the instant knockouts?
"So it's been countered…"
Hiroki's thoughts were calm, almost cold, as he reached the conclusion.
His near-unsolvable attack—establishing a connection through eye contact and shattering the opponent's mind in an instant—might not have been fully understood by Rasa.
But that no longer mattered.
What mattered was the result.
Rasa had responded.
Using gold sand to block vision was crude, direct, and brutally effective. A purely physical method of isolation.
However—
That alone wasn't enough.
Hiroki remembered their previous encounter clearly.
Rasa was a sensory ninja.
And if Rasa could perceive him, then that meant something else as well.
If you can sense me—
Then your "network" is also exposed to me.
Hiroki's consciousness plunged inward, sinking into the System without hesitation.
[Scanning for available networks —]
| Rasa — Secure — Signal · Strong |
Found it.
[Connecting to | Rasa — Secure — Signal · Strong |…]
[Connection established.]
If genjutsu pathways were blocked, then brute-forcing the connection itself was still an option.
His consciousness converted into a stream of data and surged straight into the opponent's network.
It worked.
Hiroki didn't hesitate for even a fraction of a second.
He immediately invoked execution permissions and launched his most familiar command.
[Brain Overload — Activate]
[Muscle Overgrowth Script (Self-Destruct Variant) — Activate]
The gold sand froze.
For an instant, the surging metallic tide stopped completely.
The Brain Overload script had taken effect.
Hiroki was just about to sneer—
When a pop-up window abruptly appeared in his vision.
[Error Code 080070005 — ACCESS DENIED]
[Target "Rasa" has denied access. Administrator privileges required.]
The same message.
Again.
Why!?
Hanzo had resisted by sheer force of will—decades of battle, iron discipline, and unshakable conviction sealing off his system permissions.
But Rasa?
What was he relying on?
There was no time to analyze.
Because in the very next moment, the frozen gold sand roared back to life, surging even more violently than before.
Deal with it first.
Rasa's technique manipulated gold sand—but at the end of the day, it was still metal.
And metal had weaknesses.
[Fire Release: Flame Bullet]
[Wind Release: Great Breakthrough]
Fire and wind erupted from Hiroki's mouth at the same time, intertwining into a violent torrent. The flames surged forward, crashing into the wall of gold sand with explosive force.
The metal instantly softened, liquefying into molten gold as a massive hole was blasted open in the tide.
But beyond the breach—
There was no sign of Rasa.
Instead—
Floating there in midair—
Was a sand-formed eyeball.
—
Troublesome brat.
Rasa's expression was grim as he observed the battlefield through his constructs.
The kid looked barely ten years old, yet his danger level was already comparable to elite jōnin. Whether it was the sudden, sign-less genjutsu or that inexplicable mental assault that struck without warning—
If Rasa hadn't been prepared, he would have fallen for it.
He glanced over his own body with lingering unease.
A layer of Magnet Release chakra clung tightly to his skin. That unstable electromagnetic turbulence had jolted him awake the moment his consciousness faltered—an automatic countermeasure he hadn't even realized had triggered.
That attack…
It seemed to work best when the target lacked strong emotional resistance.
No matter.
Whatever its conditions—
This boy had to die immediately.
Unsealed Fire and Wind Release already? Tch.
Impressive.
But not enough.
—
Hiroki sprinted along the crest of the gold sand wave, passing through the molten opening he had created. Around him, gold liquefied and solidified in rapid succession, but he used the brief instability to propel himself forward.
He broke through the upper layer and reached the top.
There wasn't much sand left around him.
Most of it had been compacted into a massive sphere.
And Rasa—
Was likely inside it.
It looked like Rasa had committed almost all of his gold sand to attacking Hiroki, keeping only the bare minimum for self-defense—so much so that he couldn't even spare attention for the rest of the battlefield.
Hiroki checked his chakra reserves.
Approximately 4,700 units remaining.
Not bad.
But not limitless.
Golden Finger control was clearly unreliable against Rasa now. If he wanted to win, he'd have to defeat him head-on—with conventional ninjutsu or something riskier.
And more importantly—
Hiroki understood something critical.
Once abilities were displayed openly in the ninja world, secrecy had an expiration date.
Konoha capturing Hanzo alive had already shaken every major nation. They would dissect every detail of that battle, interrogate every Rain ninja prisoner, and construct countermeasures piece by piece.
Now—
He had instantly defeated dozens of Genin in full view of the world.
Even if their real strength was closer to chūnin or elite jōnin, it didn't matter.
His methods had been witnessed.
Analyzed.
Filed away.
His ability was no longer an untouchable mystery.
Which meant—
He had to adapt.
Hiroki made his decision and began forming hand seals.
But the moment he mobilized chakra—just as he prepared to release Wind Release: Vacuum Sphere—
He froze.
Literally froze.
Like a low-spec computer hitting a fatal lag spike after running too many heavy programs at once.
His mind was clear.
Sharp.
Fully conscious.
But his body—
His arm rose at a glacial pace.
Chakra flow became thick and sluggish, as if pushing through deep mud.
It felt exactly like the last time.
Like when Orochimaru had overwhelmed him with high-frequency genjutsu, flooding his system and occupying massive memory space.
His system—
Was stalling.