Chapter 172: Ancor Vantian
A mere minor nation getting tangled up in the bloody meat grinder of the Great Nations was foolish enough. But to act as the vanguard and strike directly at the heart of Konohagakure? That required a level of suicidal audacity that bordered on the magnificent.
Stelle actually had to admire their sheer, unadulterated guts. She had no idea what kind of silver-tongued nonsense Black Zetsu had fed these idiots to embolden them, but one thing was absolutely certain: they were marching straight into their own graves.
Setting her chopsticks down with a sharp clack against her porcelain bowl, she rose from the table. Her casual demeanor vanished, replaced by the razor-sharp authority of a Kage. She strode toward the door, barking orders at the Anbu operatives concealed in the room's shadows.
"Initiate Level One Alert immediately. Mobilize every available shinobi within the village limits. Evacuate the civilian populace to the underground shelters—do not dawdle. Have the Barrier Team reinforce the Beidou Barrier and establish a defensive perimeter around the Medical Corps. I want rescue and triage units on standby."
When she began the command, she was standing by the sliding doors. By the time the final syllable left her lips, her physical form had already dissolved into a crackling blur of purple lightning. She vanished completely, leaving only the ozone-scented air and the lingering echo of her voice ringing in the Anbu's ears.
High above the village, atop the Hokage Monument, a sudden flash of violet heralded Stelle's arrival. She materialized just as the sensory patrol teams caught the massive, incoming chakra signatures brushing against the village's outer detection wards. A crimson signal flare shrieked into the night sky, bursting into a brilliant red warning.
"Enemy attack! Sound the alarm!"
The invaders from Soragakure descended upon Konoha. A chorus of ear-splitting, metallic screeches tore through the tranquil night—the high-frequency sonic booms generated by the Sky Ninjas' mechanical flight suits tearing through the atmosphere at breakneck speeds.
Hitting the invisible dome of Konoha's primary barrier, the aerial vanguard banked sharply, circling like a flock of mechanical vultures. Hatches on their flight apparatus clicked open, dropping specialized chakra bombs in a coordinated bombardment to shatter the shield.
They severely underestimated their target. This barrier was a masterpiece originally engineered by the sealing grandmasters of the Uzumaki Clan, carefully refined and layered by generations of Konoha's finest. Its defensive threshold was nothing short of monstrous.
The munitions, crude early iterations of Scientific Ninja Tools, slammed into the translucent dome. They detonated in a blinding, thunderous display that lit up the night sky like a grotesque fireworks festival. The barrier rippled, violently shuddering under the kinetic and chakra-laced impacts, but the golden hexagonal patterns held firm. Clearly caught off guard by the sheer density of the shield, the Sky Ninjas broke formation, hovering in confusion for a brief second before pulling back to a higher altitude.
Their retreat heralded the arrival of something far worse.
A colossal silhouette eclipsed the stars, drifting ominously through the upper atmosphere. As it passed directly beneath the pale moon, it cast a suffocating shadow over the entirety of Konoha, seemingly swallowing the moonlight itself. The gargantuan black mass slowly descended from the cloud cover, revealing its true, terrifying form: a floating, heavily armored steel fortress.
Shrouded in the gloom of the night, the exact architectural details of the behemoth were obscured, save for the hundreds of crimson signal lights blinking menacingly across its metallic hull. Beneath its underbelly, massive chakra turbines hummed with a bone-rattling, low-frequency rumble. Plumes of superheated, deep-blue exhaust flames jetted downward, stretching dozens of meters into the air to keep the mechanical leviathan afloat.
Stelle stood atop the Hokage faces, the howling wind whipping her haori around her. Her eyes sparkled, reflecting the blue flames of the fortress.
The technological leap of Soragakure was frankly absurd. While Konoha's brightest minds were still struggling to mass-produce basic combustion-engine cars, these lunatics had somehow managed to construct a fully operational flying citadel. The technological tree of this world was completely unhinged—stuck in a feudal, agrarian society on one hand, yet perfectly capable of birthing mechanized Sky Ninjas and floating dreadnoughts on the other.
'It's a damn good thing Orochimaru and Hiruko are out of the village right now,'Stelle mused, a dry smirk tugging at her lips.'Those two mad scientists would be at each other's throats trying to claim this beauty for their laboratories.'
She tapped her earpiece, her voice cutting through the static. "Kajisuke. I am leaving the ground defense and civilian triage entirely in your hands. I will take the vanguard and handle the airspace. Have your anti-air units coordinate with my movements."
"Understood, Hokage-sama!" Nara Kajisuke's steady voice replied over the comms.
High above, within the armored command bridge of Ancor Vantian, the leader of Soragakure scowled at the tactical monitors. Seeing his vanguard's munitions fail to even scratch Konoha's primary barrier, he slammed his fist onto a heavy firing mechanism on the central console.
A blinding, incandescent white light erupted from the fortress's primary cannon muzzle. A massive sphere of highly concentrated chakra began to coalesce at the firing port, warping the air around it with sheer gravitational pressure.
The energy swelled, carrying a distinctly heavy, almost toxic chakra signature. It expanded rapidly, mimicking the terrifying density and visual profile of a Tailed Beast Ball. Pulsing with raw, unadulterated destructive power, the cannon fired. The beam tore through the sky with a deafening shriek, slamming dead center into the Uzumaki barrier.
The resulting explosion turned the night into blinding day. The barrier arrays shrieked in protest, overloading instantly under the concentrated beam. With a violent, devastating tremor, the golden dome fractured, spider-webbing with cracks before shattering into millions of dissipating chakra shards.
The Sky Ninjas, hovering at the perimeter, seized the opening. The moment the shield collapsed, they tipped into steep dives, swarming out from the fortress's shadow like a plague of locusts. They breached Konoha's airspace, re-engaging their bombing runs and raining a fresh volley of explosive chakra shells down upon the exposed village.
On the ground, Kajisuke was already moving. He rapidly deployed platoons of Earth and Water Release specialists across the rooftops. Massive mud walls and high-pressure water dragons surged upward, intercepting the falling munitions and forcing them to detonate harmlessly in mid-air, showering the streets in harmless sparks and steam.
"Anbu Tiger, on me!" Stelle commanded, her chakra flaring.
She executed a flawless Body Flicker, her silhouette blurring into a streak of purple light as she launched herself toward the heaviest concentration of falling artillery.
Tiger, a silent shadow in a porcelain mask, matched her blistering pace. The moment Stelle skidded to a halt atop a water tower, he unrolled a blank parchment scroll. His ink-soaked brush danced across the paper in a flurry of masterful strokes, his hands blurring through hand seals.
"Ninja Art: Super Beast Scroll!"
The ink leaped from the parchment, expanding and solidifying into a flock of massive, black-and-white hawks fueled by his chakra. The ink birds let out silent cries, launching themselves toward the upper atmosphere.
Stelle didn't hesitate. She leaped onto the back of the lead hawk, using it as a mobile platform to ascend into the chaotic airspace. A stray chakra shell whistled down, dropping directly toward her face. Without breaking her stance, she condensed a dense layer of crackling purple flames over her palm and backhanded the explosive projectile. The kinetic force redirected the shell upward, sending it hurtling right back into the chest of a diving Sky Ninja.
The man barely had time to scream before the shell detonated, blowing his flight apparatus to pieces and sending him plummeting into the dark abyss below.
Drawing a single, razor-sharp shuriken from her pouch, Stelle hurled it straight into the swarm of hostiles above. Her hands flashed through seals in a blur.
"Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique!"
"Flame Release: Consecutive Flame Bullets!"
The lone shuriken multiplied exponentially in mid-flight, cloning into hundreds, then thousands of lethal steel blades. The metal storm formed a dense, inescapable net that blotted out the sky, completely enveloping the enemy vanguard.
The Sky Ninjas panicked, banking their gliders sharply in desperate attempts to weave through the deadly steel rain. But Stelle's combat instincts were leagues beyond theirs; she had already calculated their evasive trajectories.
Following the shuriken, a rapid-fire barrage of superheated flame bullets roared upward, tracking their movements perfectly. The fireballs slammed into their flight suits, melting metal and igniting fuel lines. Several burning figures spiraled out of the sky, trailing thick black smoke.
The shinobi of Soragakure relied entirely on their advanced aeronautic technology; strip away their toys, and their individual combat prowess was laughably mediocre. Terrified by the sheer, overwhelming firepower of a single Konoha kunoichi, the remaining squadron broke formation, frantically trying to put distance between themselves and the purple-flamed demon riding the ink bird.
But Stelle was relentless. Guiding the ink hawk with precise shifts in her weight, she carved through the air, hunting them down one by one.
Inside the armored bridge of Ancor Vantian, the Soragakure leader slammed his fist against the command console, his face twisting in rage. "Concentrate all fire on that woman and her ink constructs! She doesn't have true flight capabilities! Shoot the birds out from under her! Once she falls to the ground, she is completely powerless against us!"
Heeding the command, a massive squadron of Sky Ninjas abandoned their bombing runs on the village infrastructure, converging their flight paths directly toward Stelle. Against the pitch-black canvas of the night sky, the glowing chakra thrusters on their flight suits made them stick out like brightly lit, incredibly stupid sitting ducks.
Stelle easily read their tactical shift. They assumed she was bound by gravity, banking on the idea that destroying her aerial mounts would render her helpless.
She let out a quiet sigh. If this hadn't been the height of the Second Great Ninja War, with the village's core defenses spread dangerously thin across multiple fronts, she wouldn't have even bothered stepping outside. Uchiha Kagami and his Military Police Force would have swatted these mechanical gnats out of the sky before she finished her dinner.
Deciding to change her approach, Stelle channeled chakra into her soles. She abandoned her ink hawk, using its broad back as a springboard to launch herself higher into the stratosphere. She soared over the incoming barrage, dropping perfectly onto the back of a passing Sky Ninja. Her chakra flared, adhering her boots firmly to the metal plating of his flight apparatus.
Why rely on ink birds when the enemy was kind enough to deliver ready-made, high-speed flight equipment straight to her feet?
The hijacked Sky Ninja let out a muffled scream of absolute horror. He violently pitched and rolled his glider, performing sickening aerial loops in a desperate bid to shake her off. But Stelle remained locked in place, immovable as a mountain.
Worse yet, his erratic, panicked flight path inadvertently carried Stelle right into the center of the enemy formation. Taking full advantage of her new chauffeur, she unleashed a devastating volley of Flame Release at point-blank range. The fiery blasts shattered their ranks, sending half a dozen burning Sky Ninjas tumbling out of the sky, their formation completely broken.
Leaning down, Stelle placed a hand casually against the back of her pilot's neck, her voice chillingly calm over the roar of the wind. "If you want to keep your head attached to your spine, you are going to fly me directly to that fortress. Do we have an understanding?"
Meanwhile, the main cannon of Ancor Vantian was humming with lethal intent once more. A second chakra sphere, significantly larger and denser than the first, began to coalesce at the firing port. Fueled by the captured chakra of the Seven-Tails, the fortress's offensive output was exponentially magnified. Each blast it generated was a localized apocalypse, a synthetic Tailed Beast Ball radiating a suffocating aura of destruction that inspired primal fear in anyone caught beneath its shadow.
Inside the bridge, a dark, viscous entity slithered out from the shadows of the command console.
"There is no need to aim precisely. Just fire at will," Black Zetsu rasped, his yellow eyes gleaming with malicious amusement.
He knew her nature all too well. It didn't matter where the cannon was pointed. As long as the blast threatened the village below, Ida Mutzuki would throw herself directly into its path to intercept it. She was the Fourth Hokage, bound by her duty to protect Konoha—a weakness he fully intended to exploit.
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