Kumo ninja moved with a determination of someone who was ready to give away their life for their comrades without a second thought.
While all of Konoha ninja had formed a tight circle around the outpost, they were still outnumbered. When two groups consisting of 15 ninja went in two directions, they had to shift some of their ninjas.
Since one of the groups was moving toward Jiraiya, there was no need to worry about that group for now. Their focus was on the second group which was perfectly moving between the area where two of Jiraiya's clones were present—a fine strategy, but predictable.
Normally there were hundreds of things they might have planned: dividing into smaller teams and trying to breach some point in the circle, or hiding and waiting till some opening arose and attacking at that moment, or... many more.
Even someone at the level of Shikaku would have been hard pressed to come up with a plan against every such scenario, so he simply reduced the number of options Kumo ninja had in the situation by adding more variables on the field. Jiraiya's shadow clones' presence simply meant that those half-baked strategies of survival would not cut it anymore.
They had to either go all out and survive or die trying. This meant the chance they would come up with something similar was glaringly clear, at least to him. And since he already knew Kumo ninja's plan before they even made it, he had given a perfect counter plan to Jiraiya's team for this scenario.
Seeing everything unfolding in front of them as Shikaku had said, the team moved like a well-oiled machine, already knowing what they had to do in such a scenario.
A team of 7 ninja shifted from their position, taking the place where these 15 ninja were going to attack, while the rest moved to intercept others moving toward their position. Since there were thirty Kumo ninja moving towards each Konoha jonin individually, but now since eight Konoha jonin had joined to intercept the 15-person team, eight Kumo ninja were free to either reinforce their comrades or simply make a run for themselves.
Considering their goal was to run away, there was a very high chance they would simply do so, but there was no way Shikaku would have left such a glaring weakness in the plan.
Two of Jiraiya's shadow clones made their move at this point, engaging as many ninja as they could, while giving others a chance to reorganize themselves.
With them moving now, the only danger on the field was two fifteen-person teams consisting of the best of the best of the outpost. Almost all of them were jonin and elite jonin, with one or two exceptional elite chunin in the mix.
With their lives depending on it, they had become a force much greater than their individual sum, and everyone present there knew it.
Seeing the crazed eyes of ninja moving toward them, all of them remembered the last order or advice of Shikaku:
"There is still one thing even I can't predict on the battlefield... when a person knows that they are going to die anyway... they do some insane stuff which couldn't be explained by words. Suicide attacks, throwing their comrades at you to get a chance to run away, or throwing themselves at you to give their comrades a chance to run away, or anything else.
We can't tell what they will do when all of the routes are cut for them. This is the variable no human could predict, so all I can say for such a scenario is: fight like you are in their shoes. Make sure none of you die because you thought they were going to fight normally."
And now those words were as clear as day to them. The crazed look in the eyes of the enemies was testament to their strategist's words.
When both sides collided, the silent night erupted in chaos. The sound of fireballs blasting, earth walls erupting here and there, the lightning attacks jamming past one area to another created a chaos never seen in the area.
The burning outpost provided perfect light for the ninja to see their surroundings, to see the blood around them, not being able to tell whether it belonged to ally or enemy, just continuing to fight each other.
Konoha ninja simply had the upper hand there. The Kumo ninja were injured, tired, mentally exhausted, frustrated, confused, and on the verge of nervous breakdown.
The only thing they had to look out for was any suicide attacks, and they were doing it just fine, always maintaining a safe distance from the enemy, making the fight highly ninjutsu and shuriken jutsu based.
But the battlefield would not be a battlefield if it didn't have the element of surprise in every corner of it. When Kumo ninja saw what Konoha was trying to do, they knew they would lose for sure. They were already injured beyond measure, making their reactions slower and in turn making it impossible for them to dodge the incoming attacks coming toward them.
It was only a matter of time when their growing injuries would become the reason for their death, so they left every thought of self-preservation behind. Some of them used Iron Skin jutsu in conjunction with Earth Wall jutsu to weave through the ninjutsu being thrown at them, others using unrefined crude versions of Raikage's Lightning Cloak.
Every ninja who had enough control over his chakra and chakra nature could envelope his body in that chakra. The main problem arose after that—not being able to handle the side effects of that enveloping.
If a fire chakra user did this, his chakra would slowly cook him alive when he used it to move or in combat, not being able to control it at that time. As for lightning chakra, small burns and paralysis were just the beginning of the problems. That's why no ninja normally did something so wasteful and dangerous, but Kumo ninja were different.
They had a prime example of what would happen when one mastered this technique, so everyone wanted to achieve that level, and they had a basic idea of how to use this ability in combat.
Not at Raikage's level, but some of the talented ones in the Kumo force could use their lightning chakra to coat their bodies to increase their movement and reaction speed exponentially in battle for a limited amount of time, in return being paralyzed for the rest of their lives if their nervous systems got fried.
But it was still better than just dying at the hands of their enemy. With them choosing the better option from the two worst ones possible—dying or being paralyzed for the rest of their lives—Konoha ninja now started to feel the real brunt of attacking Kumogakure.
In many places, where the ninja bull-charged toward Konoha ninja using the defense of Iron Skin jutsu and Earth Wall, they had to take multiple jutsu head-on on their way, resulting in becoming more injured after reaching their enemy.
Since they didn't have any chance now anyway, they chose to die with the enemy instead, to give their brothers and sisters a chance to run away, and in hope that they would remember their sacrifice and take care of their families in place of the ninja who sacrificed himself for them.
Within a matter of minutes, many explosions happened all around the outpost. Kumo ninja activated explosion tags on their bodies while throwing themselves at Konoha ninja like living weapons.
Some of Konoha jonin were able to evade those explosions, some suffered minor injuries, while two were headbutted by a ninja covered in lightning who also activated their explosion tags, taking two Konoha jonins with them to the afterlife in the pure lands.