The Eight-Tails snorted two plumes of mist from its nostrils and glared at Izuna, displeased. "You're the first human to come looking for trouble since the old Sage of Six Paths!"
The Tailed Beasts themselves didn't get along, particularly the One-Tailed Shukaku and the Nine-Tailed Kurama, who fought every time they met. After countless eons, he couldn't believe a human would actively seek to provoke one of them.
"Countless disasters await you Tailed Beasts in the future. I'm doing this for your own good. Sign a contract with me. Become my summoning beast," Izuna said, making an inviting gesture.
"Get bent!"
If it were that easy to command, it wouldn't be a Tailed Beast.
An octopus tentacle whipped toward him. Izuna swiftly pulled out a Flying Thunder God Kunai and threw it at the Eight-Tails, vanishing in a flash and reappearing right in front of it. The cliff where he had been standing was smashed to rubble by the tentacle.
*Ninjutsu?*
As a creature created by the ancestor of ninjutsu, the Eight-Tails was no stranger to the art. Even seeing the Flying Thunder God Technique didn't surprise it as much as it would an ordinary ninja. After all, it was used to seeing the Sage of Six Paths' Sage Arts.
Izuna, now airborne after using the technique, was about thirty meters from the Eight-Tails' face. The moment he appeared, countless tentacles lashed out at him.
"Tch. What a troublesome beast."
Izuna grabbed a kunai and threw it skyward, dodging the tentacles but increasing the distance between them.
"Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! You're just a brat who can only run! Watch how the great Gyuki takes care of you!" the Eight-Tails chanted in a strange, rap-like cadence reminiscent of the later Killer Bee. It tilted its head back, opened its mouth, and spat out a jet of black ink.
Even this casual attack had the range and power of a top-tier A-rank jutsu.
*Similar to a Water Release, but if it hits, it also obstructs your vision?* Izuna thought, quickly forming hand seals in mid-air. "Fire Release: Great Fire Annihilation!"
A giant spear of concentrated flame shot from his mouth and collided with the ink. They were locked in a stalemate for no more than three seconds before the ink actually overwhelmed his Great Fire Annihilation.
*I lost in a direct clash?* he thought. He quickly formed another seal as the A-rank ink blast slammed him into the cliff face on the other side of the valley.
*Plop!*
The moment Izuna's body fell from the cliff, it transformed into a meter-tall wooden log.
*A substitution?*
The Eight-Tails blinked, then its brow furrowed. One of its eight tentacles whipped behind it, swatting away a Flying Thunder God Kunai that had been flying toward its back.
"Over here!"
Suddenly, Izuna appeared at the beast's lower right, his left Mangekyo spinning. It was the eye's ability to foresee the future, and it worked on Tailed Beasts just as well. Another Flying Thunder God Kunai was already embedded in the Eight-Tails' right flank, but with its tough hide, an attack like that was nothing more than a pinprick.
What came next, however, was another story.
"Great Ball Rasengan!"
The moment Izuna appeared, a massive, basketball-sized Rasengan was already spinning in his right hand. He slammed it into the underside of the Eight-Tails' body. Even with its colossal frame, the beast was knocked back more than ten meters before it managed to stop, a spiraling black mark now seared into its lower abdomen.
"Grrr! You little brat!"
Being hit again, the Eight-Tails' rage was palpable. "Jumping around all over the place! You're so annoying!" it roared. Its eight tentacles began to curl around its body, and after a few seconds, it formed a shape like a giant rubber tire.
"I'll flatten this whole place!" a muffled voice boomed from within the coiled tentacles. The tire-like form began to spin violently.
Izuna's expression froze. He hurled a Flying Thunder God Kunai with all his might in the opposite direction.
But the Eight-Tails was already in motion.
*RUUUUMBLE!*
If the tremors from the Eight-Tails' bath had been an "earthquake," this was the world itself coming apart. Its spinning body generated a whirlwind, sucking the pulverized rock and dirt from the surroundings into the air and forming a spectacular sand tornado.
The spectacle lasted for more than half a minute before finally stopping.
The area that had once been a canyon was now completely flattened. If not for the intermittent river still flowing past, one would never know this had once been a valley with a waterfall.
Izuna appeared about half a mile away from the Eight-Tails, his body covered by the ribcage of a Susanoo, its surface marred by faint cracks.
"The power of a Tailed Beast... truly not to be underestimated," Izuna said to himself.
Although he had used the Flying Thunder God Technique to evade most of the attack, its sheer scale had been so vast that he'd had no choice but to use Susanoo to defend. A strange sensation coursed through him, making him stumble. He could feel the cells in his body aching.
This was the side effect of using a regular Mangekyo Sharingan. It wasn't just a decline in vision; it was a gradual deterioration of the entire body.
*Damn it! Was that old Sage of Six Paths just biased toward the Asura line when he had his kids? The Indra descendants' bloodline is riddled with hereditary diseases.*
"You dodged that last one, you little brat!" The Eight-Tails had now uncoiled its tentacles and was cracking its neck. "But you can't run around anymore! You bastard! You bastard!"
Forcibly suppressing the pain in his body, Izuna sneered. "Once the fighting started, I almost forgot my purpose."
There were currently two ways to obtain the power of a Tailed Beast. One was to control it with ocular power, as Uchiha Madara did with the Nine-Tails. The other was the method used by the great ninja villages in the future: Jinchuriki.
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