The sniper rifle's report cracked across the battlefield again and again, each thunderous echo striking not the air but the hearts of Iwa shinobi below.
Koseki wasn't alone in recognizing him. Many in the Iwa forces understood the truth in that instant—the mysterious figure responsible for the psychological devastation at the war's beginning was Hyuga Seiran. The same boy who'd crushed the Four-Tails with his Defensive Electromagnetic Armor, the same one who'd defeated Roshi before.
The images collided in their minds like a hammer strike.
When Koseki traced the trajectory of Seiran's barrel, he went rigid. His eyes swept back toward the direction it pointed.
"The camp," he breathed. "That's pointing at our camp."
Several kilometers distant, the Konoha encampment appeared as nothing more than a black speck, thin trails of smoke rising from it like funeral pyres.
Damn it.
Jiraiya had pieced it together the moment he understood the Iwa strategy, and fury ignited through him like wildfire. Every instinct screamed to abandon this battlefront and race back to base.
His offensive exploded outward. The elite jonin surrounding him found themselves pushed beyond their limits, gasping for breath against his onslaught.
---
In the massive ravine at the battlefield's center, an arm wrapped in lava dragged a battered body across stone.
Roshi collapsed onto the earth, heaving for air.
Remnants of lava armor clung to his torn form. His chest was a ruin of blood and shattered cloth, his breathing ragged.
"Too close," he rasped between gasps. "If the Four-Tails hadn't lent me its power in time—"
He didn't finish. His heart still hammered against his ribs.
Seiran's attack had shattered nearly everything—his defenses, his confidence, his certainty that he'd survive this war. Only the Four-Tails' intervention at the final moment, creating gaps for the magma to disperse the kinetic force, had kept him from dying on the ravine floor.
A thought surfaced through the pain: If they succeed over there, then this sacrifice means something.
It was a fragile comfort, but it held.
Then—a sonic boom, sharp as a whip crack.
Roshi's head snapped up, his eyes wide. Horror flooded his features.
"No... damn it!"
---
Chaos had consumed the Konoha camp.
The Iwa demolition squad's clay bombs were systematically neutralized—each explosive met by brilliant blue arcs of electricity that detonated them in the sky, their force scattered and muted. When squad members attempted suicide runs, charging forward to take Konoha shinobi with them, a single blue bolt would punch through their bodies before they could even detonate.
Their final option—their final dignity—had been stripped away.
Kakuzu felt humiliation like acid in his throat. As the ace demolition squad of Iwagakure, he'd never experienced such powerlessness.
"Retreat!" His voice cracked with panic. "Fall back! We can't all die here!"
Under that supernatural sniper fire, nearly ten squad members lay dead. For a specialized unit as selective and resource-intensive as theirs—fewer than twenty members total throughout Iwagakure—the losses were catastrophic.
Returning to Ōnoki with these casualties? The Third Tsuchikage would take them all apart piece by piece.
Some buried themselves in the earth, hoping the ground would shelter them.
It didn't matter.
Seiran's Byakugan tracked every movement with perfect clarity. His bullets punched through soil and stone as easily as water. Bodies convulsed once, twice—then went still, swallowed by the earth that had promised them safety.
One after another, demolition squad members died in desperation. Some fell before the tents. Others burned. Still others were buried alive.
Each death hammered at Kakuzu's mind like a spike.
It's over.
Everything's over.
The enemy had no intention of letting them escape. Every movement was seen. They were trapped here like fish waiting for the blade.
Despair gave way to something darker—a hunger for destruction that welled up from deep within.
His chakra surged violent and wild, transforming into explosive force. Unlike ordinary demolition squad members, his power came from a kekkei genkai, not technique. Even if someone could deactivate explosive clay, they couldn't stop him.
The chakra condensed on his right hand. His body tensed for the final detonation.
With tears streaming down his face, he thought he could see it—Iwagakure's restoration after their victory, the glory, the honor—
"Lord Tsuchikage! My mission is complete!"
The blue glow punched straight through his chest before he could finish speaking. His volatile chakra collapsed instantly into nothing.
His corpse dropped like a stone. Arcs of electricity danced across it mockingly.
---
Several kilometers away, Seiran lowered the Armstrong Electromagnetic Railgun and floated higher, looking down at the Iwa forces with contempt written across his face.
"Self-detonation is self-detonation," he muttered, shaking his head. "What's with the dramatic speeches?"
A pause.
"Wait—I thought your codename was Pangolin?"
With Kakuzu's death, the Iwa demolition squad was obliterated.
The assault on the Konoha camp was finished.
Seiran set his weapon down and hovered above the battlefield, a silhouette of power against the sky. He looked down at the Iwa forces with undisguised superiority.
Cold spread through every Iwa shinobi's body.
Though they didn't know what the sniper had been targeting, one fact was certain: Seiran was no longer focused on distant threats.
Now he was looking at them.
Fear cascaded through their ranks like poison.
Koseki's teeth clenched so hard he tasted blood. His heart felt crushed in an iron fist.
Seiran had stopped sniping. There could be only one reason: the demolition squad's mission had failed.
The losses—he didn't want to imagine how many of their elite lay dead in that camp. But judging from the devastation the scouts had reported finding, it had to be catastrophic.
He underestimated him after all, Koseki thought, staring up at the figure suspended in the air.
The battle was lost. Again.
---
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