The smoke and dust faded.
In their place remained only a giant crater and hundreds of stunned Iwa shinobi.
Onoki hovered in the air. Staring at the spot where Minato had vanished, his expression was so dark it looked as if water could drip from it.
"Bastard."
Onoki trembled with anger, his old face turning a deep shade of red.
His carefully prepared trap, his supposedly inescapable net, had been broken open by explosive tags?
Not only had his target escaped right in front of him, but the decoy granary he used as bait had also been blown up.
Even if those granaries had been filled with rocks, the humiliation stung.
It felt like setting a trap for a mouse, failing to catch it, and in the end the mouse stole the trap instead.
Utter humiliation.
"Chase him!"
Onoki roared. "He cannot have gone far. His chakra is nearly depleted."
"Yes!"
The Iwa shinobi responded as one and rushed frantically in the direction Minato had escaped.
Land of Earth, border mountains.
A golden flash streaked past, and Minato reappeared on a cliff, staggering.
Pfft.
The moment he regained his balance, he coughed out a mouthful of blood that splattered across the stone before him.
His face was pale, his short blond hair soaked in sweat, his entire body disordered and drained.
His chakra was nearly gone.
Mental exhaustion made the world tilt around him.
The confrontation earlier had looked like he had escaped decisively, but only he knew how steep the price had been.
To escape as fast as possible, he had not jumped out of the blast zone when the explosive tags detonated. He had endured the shockwave head-on.
Now his internal organs screamed in pain.
"Cough... cough cough..."
Each cough tore more pain through his chest.
He had to move. Immediately.
Iwa pursuers would arrive soon.
In his condition, staying here was suicide.
He forced himself to activate the Flying Thunder God again.
Whoosh.
In the next instant, Minato appeared back at the Konoha camp.
Land of Fire camp.
Jiraiya had been anxiously waiting.
Suddenly, space beside him twisted.
Minato stumbled out with chakra so faint it was almost nonexistent.
"Minato!" Jiraiya rushed forward to hold him.
"Sensei..." Minato gave a bitter smile, blood at the corner of his mouth. "I... failed."
"Do not talk." Jiraiya cut him off and shouted outside the tent, "Medical squad, to the command tent now!"
Several medical shinobi rushed inside.
"Hokage-sama!"
Seeing Minato's exhausted appearance, they shouted in shock and began treating him immediately.
After stabilizing him, Minato explained what had happened.
The news hit like a bucket of ice water.
The granary was fake.
Onoki had anticipated everything and built a killing trap.
If Minato had not forcefully broken through at the last moment, he would never have returned.
The command tent grew suffocatingly silent.
"Onoki, that old fox..."
Jiraiya slammed his fist onto the table. "He not only predicted our target but even devised a counter to Minato's Flying Thunder God!"
"This complicates things." Shikaku frowned. "The failure of the surprise attack means we lost the chance to end this war quickly."
"Now we can only fight a war of attrition against Iwa, a test of endurance."
And that was exactly what Iwa excelled at.
Something Konoha least wanted.
Everyone's expressions darkened.
Minato, still pale, rested weakly against a chair. The overuse of chakra and the backlash of space-time techniques left him dizzy.
But what troubled him more was the direction of the war.
"It is not only here." Inoichi said.
"We have intelligence that the Land of Lightning front and the Land of Wind front are the same."
"Iwa forces are relying on fortresses and barrier defenses. No matter how the Allied Forces attack, they refuse to come out."
The atmosphere sank even further.
Onoki's strategy was clear.
He intended to use the simplest and most shameless method possible, dragging the Allied Forces into a long, grinding war.
He would use the Land of Earth's strongest advantage, defense, to wear down morale and supplies, until the Allied forces fractured from internal pressure and unequal resource distribution.
"Damn it!" Choza clenched his fist and struck his thigh. "This is no different from a coward turtle!"
"But it works." Shikaku sighed. "In war, the attacker always spends more than the defender."
"And Iwa is the defender."
No one spoke.
It was an open conspiracy.
One they could see clearly, yet had no way to refuse.
The war had already begun. They could not retreat now without losing face and invalidating every sacrifice made so far.
"It seems we can only grind them down slowly." Jiraiya stood and issued orders with a heavy tone. "Pass on my command. Change tactics."
"Starting today, focus on harassment and attrition. Avoid large-scale frontal clashes."
"If Onoki wants a dirty war, we will drag it out with him."
"I refuse to believe Iwa's turtle shell can stay hard forever."
...From that point on, the war fell into a strange stalemate.
Across the Ninja World, the same scene unfolded on all three major fronts.
Land of Lightning front.
This was originally thought to be the easiest breakthrough point for the Allied Forces.
Because Iwa occupied Kumogakure, the defensive foundations here were weaker than in the Land of Earth.
The allied armies of Suna and Kiri believed they would advance smoothly.
However, when they entered Kumogakure territory, everything changed.
All Iwa forces stationed there had already withdrawn.
Yet every critical pass and valley leading toward Kumogakure was firmly defended.
If they concentrated forces to attack one pass, Iwa would attack their supply routes from behind.
If they split forces to attack multiple points, Iwa would simply hunker down and refuse to move.
Several fierce assaults resulted in heavy casualties, yet the Allied Forces could not even touch Iwa's defensive lines.
What frustrated them more were the elusive Kumogakure avengers.
Kumogakure held deep hatred toward Iwa, but they also loathed Kiri at another level.
Kumo shinobi constantly launched suicide attacks, making the Allied Forces miserable.
Land of Wind and Land of Earth border.
Equally bleak.
The terrain here was desert shifting into Gobi, wide open and difficult to defend.
But Iwa shinobi used pure Earth Release to create temporary desert fortresses one after another.
Even though Suna excelled in desert combat, they could do nothing about Iwa's fortified defenses.
Kazekage Rasa tried multiple times to forcibly break through with Gold Dust, but each attempt was countered by stronger Earth Release constructs.
The war that had begun with explosive momentum now sank into a long, tedious, bloody grind.
Every day, shinobi died in pointless skirmishes.
Every day, supplies drained along the long supply lines.
The scales of victory slowly tilted toward the Land of Earth.
(To be continued.)