Chapter 348: Freeze Everything
The battle shifted so quickly that an ordinary person like Sosetsu could barely keep up.
Just moments ago, Doto had seemed overwhelmingly strong, holding his own two on one. In the blink of an eye, both his arms had been severed, and he now lay on the ground, unable to move.
Because of Doto's identity, the instant that thunderous slash sounded, Rin quickly wrapped her arms around Koyuki's head, shielding the girl from the sight so she would not be traumatized.
After taking Doto down, Kakashi and Obito did not waste a second. They moved together with the guards and swiftly helped finish off the remaining three Snow ninja.
One of the guards stepped forward, sword in hand, intending to deliver the final blow to Doto.
Sosetsu raised a hand to stop him.
He walked slowly to Doto's side and asked quietly, almost pleading, "Doto, do you regret any of this?"
Even now, Sosetsu still could not understand why his younger brother had chosen to usurp the throne. Doto lacked neither money nor power.
"Of course I regret it," Doto said with a sneer. "I regret not preparing earlier. If I had started sooner, I might have finished everything before you found out."
At this point, even if Sosetsu wanted to protect him, it would be almost impossible. Since death was certain either way, Doto refused to show any hint of submission.
Seeing that Doto was still like this, Sosetsu finally let go of his last shred of hope.
He gently rubbed Koyuki's head and shifted his body to block her view completely.
The nearby guard immediately understood. In one decisive motion, he thrust his sword out and ran Doto through, killing him on the spot.
"Take his body to the front lines," Sosetsu ordered calmly. "Show it to them and persuade them to surrender. It should help Mugetsu relieve some of the pressure."
Doto had essentially been the client and patron behind the Snow ninja. With him dead, their reason to keep fighting would crumble.
"Look over there, everyone. What is that?"
At that moment, someone noticed a new change on the battlefield.
"It is about time to end this," Mugetsu murmured.
After unleashing Great Fire Annihilation, he gauged how much chakra he had left and decided to settle the fight in one move.
That Great Fire Annihilation had indeed been powerful. Even with hundreds of Snow ninja working together, they had failed to fully stop it. But the cost on his chakra reserves had been enormous. If he continued fighting at that pace, victory was certain, but Mugetsu preferred to keep some chakra in reserve in case something unexpected happened.
The reason he had opened with Fire Release was simple. His Fire Release was incredibly strong. He had perfect level Fire Release nature transformation, proficient level Flame Breathing, and an entire arsenal of high level Fire Release techniques.
With such a stacked toolkit, of course he wanted to test their real combat performance. The panel only showed mastery values, not how the techniques felt on a live battlefield.
If he had wanted to win as easily as possible, Fire Release actually would not have been his first choice.
The Snow ninja's so called Ice Release was, in truth, mostly Water Release and snow based secret arts, which naturally countered fire.
"Water Breathing, Full Concentration."
Mugetsu shifted his breathing rhythm, switching from Flame Breathing to Water Breathing to enhance his Water Release. In the next moment, he stepped into Water Breathing Chakra Mode.
In the Land of Snow, an island nation, Water Release or genuine Ice Release were the optimal tools of war.
After Mugetsu entered Water Breathing Chakra Mode, Kanko felt that something about him had subtly changed.
But after witnessing Mugetsu's earlier display, Kanko no longer had the courage to confront him head on. He stayed back, hurling ninjutsu from behind his own men instead.
"Water Release: Super Exploding Water Shockwave."
Mugetsu brought his hands together.
A massive volume of chakra inside his body instantly converted into Water Release chakra. An enormous torrent burst from his mouth, surging forward like a towering ocean wave crashing down on the Snow ninja line.
"He actually has Water Release at this level," Kanko muttered, his expression twisting. A heavy sense of dread rose in his chest.
The other Snow ninja instinctively backed up a few steps as they saw that colossal wave rolling toward them.
"He really is like a walking natural disaster," Asama Santaifu breathed.
As someone who had grown up in an island nation, he understood the sea well.
Just watching a wave of that magnitude from a distance was enough to make your heart pound. He could imagine the terror the Snow ninja must be feeling as it bore down on them.
To Santaifu, a ninja like Mugetsu could only be described as a human shaped catastrophe. Mugetsu completely overturned his understanding of what a shinobi could be.
"As expected of Mugetsu sensei. His Water Release puts the Hidden Mist to shame," Obito said proudly.
Even though Mugetsu had rarely shown powerful Water Release in front of them before, Obito was not surprised.
This was Mugetsu sensei, who could do anything.
"His Water Release is on this level too. Has Mugetsu sensei's ninjutsu already reached the same realm as the Third Hokage?" Kakashi wondered aloud, watching the rolling tide he had conjured.
Up until now, the ninjutsu Mugetsu had used most frequently in front of them had been Fire Release. This was the first time Kakashi had truly seen him fight with Water Release.
For a moment, a bold thought flashed through Kakashi's mind.
Maybe all of Mugetsu's other nature transformations were just as strong. He simply had not had a good opportunity to use them.
Kakashi considered it more carefully and felt that it was still a bit unrealistic.
The Third Hokage was a super genius in ninjutsu. It should not be possible for Mugetsu to stand on that same level after training for such a short time.
But just as everyone was marveling at the power of Mugetsu's Water Release, the battlefield changed again.
Bang, bang, bang.
A chain of explosive sounds rang out. The ground split, and pillars of water shot skyward.
Super Exploding Water Shockwave was not terrifying purely because of the amount of water it created.
Even a normal Exploding Water Shockwave fueled by enough chakra could produce enough water to form a lake.
The true uniqueness of Super Exploding Water Shockwave lay in the user's fine control over water flow within an enormous area, even drawing groundwater to the surface.
If it could pull groundwater up, then naturally it could draw from existing wells.
Across the Castle, every well suddenly erupted, spewing geysers of water toward the battlefield.
Super Exploding Water Shockwave was worthy of being called an S rank Water Release forbidden jutsu. To use it, three conditions had to be met.
First, Water Breathing Chakra Mode.
Second, high proficiency in Water Release nature transformation, at least proficient level with more than three thousand mastery points.
Third, a large chakra reserve.
The water columns shooting in from all directions left the Snow ninja in complete disarray. Some of them were struck by multiple jets at once and were severely injured on the spot.
"What is this jutsu?" Kanko stared at the water pillars erupting both from the ground beneath the Snow ninja and from the distant city wells.
His worldview was once again shattered.
None of the ninjutsu he knew could affect an area this large.
But Kanko had no time to keep thinking about it.
Besides the water pillars converging from every direction, he also had to deal with that enormous ocean wave crashing in.
Boom.
A thunderous roar echoed as the tidal wave smashed down.
Some of the Snow ninja coughed up blood and collapsed outright from the impact. The rest were swept off their feet and tumbled helplessly into the raging current.
Although Kanko braced his body and managed to withstand the front of the wave, he had no way to escape it completely.
There was simply too much water.
Just as he was trying to figure out how to get out alive, he noticed something strange.
The direction of the water pillars changed.
Instead of striking at random Snow ninja, they started reinforcing the flowing mass of water from every side.
The currents that had swept the Snow ninja away also refused to disperse, held in place as if by invisible walls.
They began to gather, fold, and compress around the struggling ninja until a gigantic elliptical sphere of water nearly a hundred meters tall took shape, trapping every Snow ninja inside.
This was the full effect of Great Exploding Water Shockwave. Super Exploding Water Shockwave naturally inherited that property.
This was why Mugetsu trained so relentlessly in all kinds of ninjutsu.
When you had a deep enough foundation, creating new jutsu on top of existing frameworks became much easier.
"This big shell cannot be very strong. I still have a chance."
Holding his breath, Kanko swam hard toward the edge of the water sphere, intending to force his way through with his own strength.
His idea was good in theory.
But there was no way Mugetsu, the caster, had not already thought of something that simple.
"Ice Release: Freezing Ray."
Mugetsu lifted both hands.
A vast quantity of chakra erupted inside him and shifted in an instant, taking on the qualities of Ice Release.
He then released it all at once.
A blinding white radiance burst from his palms, and a thick, blue white beam shot into the massive water sphere.
Just as Kanko was about to reach the inner surface, the water around him began to freeze at a frightening speed.
He, true to his name, was turned into ice right along with it.
The massive sphere of water rapidly solidified into a gigantic ice sphere. Under the sunlight, it refracted the light into shimmering bands of color.
The castle guards, Mugetsu's disciples, Sosetsu, Koyuki, everyone stared in stunned silence at the enormous, glowing mass of ice.
"Is he the snow god sent to save the Land of Snow?" one of the guards whispered, unable to believe what he was seeing.
Standing before that towering ice sphere, it was hard to feel like anything but an ant.
Even if you stacked fifty two meter tall people on each other's shoulders, they would barely reach the top.
In front of this giant, one human being seemed impossibly small.
"I would rather believe he is the snow god," Asama Santaifu thought to himself.
In his eyes, every technique Mugetsu had used so far had gone beyond what a human should reasonably be able to do.
He only dared keep that thought in his heart.
There were still many in the Land of Snow who sincerely believed in the snow god, after all.
Because the ice sphere was so huge, the residents in the nearby districts could see it as well.
The sudden appearance of this colossal ice monument sent ripples of shock through the entire castle.
People began chattering excitedly, and more than a few of them believed it was a miracle from the snow god, especially with the Snow God Festival drawing near.
"What an unimaginable strength," Kakashi thought as he stared up at the sphere, still feeling an internal tremor.
The sequence of moves Mugetsu had just unleashed contained too much information.
First his unbelievable Water Release, then, in the end, his Bloodline Limit, Ice Release.
After his Breathing Technique had leapt forward, Kakashi had grown quite confident in his own talent.
Yet the more he saw of Mugetsu, the clearer it became who the true genius was.
Mugetsu was simply too humble and low key.
"If I could learn even three tenths of Mugetsu sensei's Water Release, I could play a much bigger role on the battlefield next time," Rin said softly, eyes shining as she looked at the gigantic ice sphere.
In this battle, she had been little more than a bystander.
Kakashi and Obito had handled almost everything.
It was not that she wanted to slack off, but if she used Water Release poorly in a fight like this, she might interfere with Obito's Fire Release.
Rather than wasting chakra and messing up the team's rhythm, it was better to focus on protecting Koyuki.
Of course, Rin knew this ultimately came down to her own lack of strength.
If she were on Mugetsu's level, this kind of problem would not even exist.
"Father, what is that? It is huge!" Koyuki gasped as soon as she poked her head out from behind Rin and finally saw the ice sphere.
"That is the work of our hero of ice and snow," Sosetsu answered, letting out a long sigh.
When he thought of everything that had happened over the past few days, Sosetsu felt as if he were dreaming.
Absurd, bizarre, and yet undeniably real.
His younger brother, whom he had trusted so much, had been secretly plotting to overthrow him.
When the situation seemed completely hopeless, a single ninja appeared on his side, a man who could fight against an entire ninja village alone and create miracles in front of their eyes.
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