On the screen.
A vast open plain appeared before everyone's eyes. Kimimaro and Gaara stood facing each other, the distant forest rustling in the wind.
"Gaara... is that who you are?" Kimimaro bent down, crossed both hands over his chest, and bone spurs emerged from his ten fingers. "Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets!"
Kimimaro let out a low shout, and ten bone spurs shot out from his fingertips at the same time, the sound of them cutting through the air sharp and piercing, heading straight for Gaara's vital points.
Gaara made no move. The sand in front of him suddenly surged, and a pile of yellow sand rose from the ground as if alive, forming an arched sand wall in front of him.
The bone spurs struck the sand wall, producing muffled thuds of "pff pff pff." Behind the sand wall, conical bulges rose one after another, as if something was trying to drill out from inside, but none of the bone spurs managed to pierce the sand wall. Their force was worn away layer by layer by the sand, and in the end they fell to the ground, turning into white fragments.
"Impetuous..." At this moment, Gaara was in no hurry to attack, and even had the leisure to ask Lee why his level had declined so much compared to when they fought in the Chunin Exams.
Of course, he didn't know that after fighting him, Lee hadn't fully recovered till now.
Opposite him, Kimimaro had bone spurs protrude from his ten fingers again. "Gaara of the Desert... You use sand, as the name implies, huh...?"
At this point, Kimimaro had also realized that Gaara was not a close-combat shinobi. If he wanted to win, he had to find a way to get close. But that sand would automatically defend, and getting near him was itself very dangerous.
While Kimimaro was thinking, Gaara chose to strike first. The sand from the gourd on his back shot toward Kimimaro.
Kimimaro lightly jumped, rising to dodge, and in midair once again flung out his Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets, only to have them easily blocked by Gaara's sand wall again.
Sand and bone spurs went back and forth between the two sides. Kimimaro kept dodging the sand that pursued him while throwing out bone spurs. Gaara looked more relaxed. No matter how many bone spurs Kimimaro had, they were all blocked by the sand wall in front of him.
"Sand Shower!" As Gaara activated his Ninjutsu, countless tiny grains of sand appeared out of thin air above Kimimaro, continuously falling like rain.
The sand grains fell densely onto Kimimaro's hair, shoulders, and clothes. At the same time, the earth beneath his feet also began to turn to sand, changing from hard dirt into flowing sand that bound Kimimaro's legs.
"Sand Burial!" Gaara tightly clenched his right hand, and the sand binding Kimimaro instantly tightened, wrapping his entire body into a huge sand cocoon.
[Sand Burial can be considered one of Gaara's signature Ninjutsu, and its lethality is quite good.]
[This Ninjutsu achieves a fatal strike through a two-stage attack. The first stage is Sand Binding Coffin, using the sand controlled by Gaara to completely wrap and bind the enemy, forming a sealed sand sphere space. This stage not only restricts the enemy's ability to move, but also blocks the flow of chakra, causing the target to fall into a state of suffocation.]
[The second stage is high-pressure sand layer compression. On the basis of Sand Binding Coffin, the sand grains generate pressure on the scale of several tons, continuously squeezing and crushing the target's body into a blood mist.]
[This thing's enhanced version—Giant Sand Burial—is even more incredible. Its attack range expands to one square kilometer. And in the Fourth Great Ninja War, Gaara once used this technique to suppress the Ten-Tails' clones; with the sand layer exceeding three meters in thickness, forming an absolute forbidden zone for fifteen seconds.]
[However, the early-stage Gaara was still lacking, as he had his Jutsu broken by the first stage of Kimimaro's Curse Mark.]
Sure enough, on the screen, Kimimaro's entire body was covered with black markings. He forcibly broke free from the sand's restraints and walked out of the sand cocoon.
But Gaara was even more direct. He pressed his hands together: "Sand Tsunami!"
A vast sea of sand rose from the ground, surging toward Kimimaro like a tsunami. At first, Kimimaro could still dodge backward, but he was soon submerged by the sea of sand.
Looking down from the sky, a small patch of forest had been covered by sand. Trees were pushed down by the sand waves and buried beneath it, with only a few tall trees surviving. The area of the sand sea was several square kilometers, like a yellow carpet spread across the earth.
And Gaara didn't stop moving. He half-knelt on the ground, both palms pressed tightly against the sand surface. "Giant Sand Burial!" Several shockwaves erupted from his hands, continuously spreading through the sand, pressing the grains even tighter and more solid.
---
Across the Shinobi World timelines, the people watching the screen held their breath.
Someone murmured: "Is this Giant Sand Burial? One square kilometer of sand... How are you even supposed to fight that?"
The person next to them chimed in: "And even if you don't die being buried underneath, you'll lose a layer of skin."
Someone else shook their head: "Kimimaro is done for. With sand this thick, you can't even dig your way out."
---
But beneath the sea of sand, Kimimaro was unexpectedly still not dead.
Instead, he activated the second stage of the Curse Mark and crawled out. His skin turned brownish-black, black patterns appearing on his face, his back fully bulged, and a tail growing out.
He then rapidly charged toward Gaara. The force of the impact was so strong that even the sand wall couldn't stop his pace, and Gaara was knocked flying directly.
"So that's the extent of the rumoured 'Absolute Defense'?" Seeing this, Kimimaro couldn't help but mock. However, he soon discovered that a layer of sand also covered the surface of Gaara's skin, and his blow just now didn't cause any damage to Gaara.
Kimimaro wasn't too surprised by this. He slowly knelt down and pulled his spine out from his back, transforming it into a white sharp sword.
[To be honest, this battle had quite a lot of gimmicks. Gaara had the Shield of Shukaku, an absolute defense, while Kimimaro's spine was the most hardened bone in his entire body. It could be said to be Kimimaro's sharpest spear. The showdown between the strongest shield and the sharpest spear sounded impressive just hearing about it.]
[Moreover, both of them had Ninjutsu that could alter the terrain. Gaara needed no explanation—from beginning to end, he had the beauty of raw stats. But Kimimaro's Dance of the Seedling Fern directly caused a forest of bones to grow from the ground, which was quite shocking.]
All across the Shinobi World, quite a few shinobi nodded.
Gaara's sea of sand and Kimimaro's forest of bones both belonged to large-scale terrain-changing Ninjutsu, which was not something ordinary shinobis could do.
[But unfortunately, Gaara could fly, which directly rendered the Dance of the Seedling Fern useless.]
[What was even more unfortunate was that Kimimaro thought of Orochimaru's dream, angrily emerged from underground, and was just about to stab Gaara in the back with a bone when he suddenly died from illness. That was pretty frustrating too.]
On the screen, the sea of sand had already turned into a sea of bone spurs. Countless bone spurs pierced out from beneath the sand surface, densely packed like a white forest. Each one was sharp as a needle, glinting coldly in the sunlight.
But Kimimaro stopped at the very moment the bone sword in his hand was about to hit Gaara.
---
[Somewhere in an underground base in the Shinobi World]
Orochimaru looked at the white-haired boy on the screen, and a trace of regret flashed through his eyes. "The Curse Mark still isn't good enough. Kimimaro couldn't even beat a boy with Jonin-level strength, and his Tailed Beast hadn't even made a move yet! It's a pity that I am still quite lacking in the application of Senjutsu."
He then turned his head toward Kabuto: "How is your Sage Mode training coming along?"
Hearing that, Kabuto smiled slightly: "Orochimaru-sama, I'm still practicing, but I should be able to get started soon."
Orochimaru's eyes lit up: "Oh, then won't I get to see your Sage Mode soon? I'm really curious about what level of strength you will reach in the future with perfect Sage Mode."
Kabuto kept smiling and lowered his head: "No matter what, I am Orochimaru-sama's assistant. My dream is to assist you in achieving immortality."
Orochimaru chuckled, looking forward to the moment he could finally study Sage Mode.
---
[Land of Wind, Sunagakure]
Gaara didn't know when he had already raised his head to watch this battle.
He hadn't expected that without relying on the One Tail's power, his strength was actually inferior to this Kimimaro guy.
If it weren't for this guy's bloodline disease, he would have lost this battle!
[Actually, Gaara and Kimimaro can be considered the same kind of people—both were treated as tools and lived in a world where no one understood them.]
[But the paths the two ultimately took were completely different, and the most crucial reason was that the people they met were different.]
[The person Kimimaro met was Orochimaru, who just wanted to use him. Otherwise, with Orochimaru's intelligence, even if he couldn't cure the bloodline disease, he would at least have a way to help prolong his life. Unfortunately, Kimimaro's strength was insufficient, not worth Orochimaru doing these things for him.]
[But to Kimimaro, the words "being needed" were too important, so important that he was willing to trade his life for them. It wasn't that he did not know what kind of person Orochimaru was, but he just didn't want to think too much.]
[Because once he thought about it, he would once again have to face that world where no one wanted him. So he treated loyalty as the entire meaning of being alive. Even if he was sick to the point of death, he would still crawl out to fight, just to prove that he was useful.]
[Gaara was a bit luckier; he met Naruto.]
[Without Naruto, perhaps Gaara would have continued down the path of slaughter until he encountered the Akatsuki that came to capture Tailed Beasts, and finally died miserably.]
[Or perhaps one day he would have been unable to suppress the One Tail's rampage and ultimately completely transformed into a monster; or he might also have been deemed a failed Jinchuriki by the higher-ups of Sunagakure and become the merit that let a new generation of Kazekage rise to power.]
[But fortunately, Naruto's Talk-no-Jutsu cured Gaara's depression, and made him ultimately decide to live in a different way.]
---
[Land of Wind, Sunagakure]
Gaara looked at the screen, and his anticipation for the trip to Konoha grew stronger and stronger.
He remembered that the screen had said before that his future self would go from being a monster feared by everyone to a Kazekage accepted by the villagers, and all of these changes came thanks to Uzumaki Naruto.
Although they hadn't met yet, he felt as if he already knew Naruto very well.
'I really want to meet him.'
*****
Upto 20 chapters ahead on patreon :-
patreon.com/ReduxMagister