"So he stayed his hand just to let his teammates stall for time while he eroded the ground to create sand..."
"And then he used a special ability to collapse it all at once..."
"That's a bit terrifying..."
Lexon's wood clone mentally gauged the remaining chakra in his body.
'I wonder if I can survive this...'
He thought to himself.
"Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands—Summit Manifestation of the Buddha!"
The jutsu was unleashed. A colossal Guanyin Buddha statue, towering between heaven and earth, suddenly rose. Behind it were countless, innumerable arms!
This Wood Release technique was originally the strongest attack of Hashirama Senju, which required the use of Sage Chakra.
However, the current Lexon was only a wood clone; he didn't know how to use Sage Mode, and naturally, no Sage Chakra existed within him.
Yet, the Six Paths Mode perfectly compensated for the lack of Sage Chakra.
In fact, the Buddha statue he sculpted with ordinary chakra appeared far larger than the one Hashirama had created!
Its power seemed even greater!
In the next moment, sand fell from the sky like the vast flood of the Three Thousand Weak Waters, threatening to completely bury Lexon's wood clone!
"Strike."
Controlling the Great Buddha, Lexon's wood clone tilted upward and thrust his palms out.
In an instant, countless palms struck out in succession.
They collided repeatedly with the falling sand!
A series of earth-shattering explosions rang out!
It was impossible to tell how much sand had poured down or how many strikes the Buddha had delivered.
At a certain moment...
A cold female voice suddenly rang out.
"Thought Fragmentation!"
It was the voice of Number Three.
While the sand and the Buddha were locked in combat, she seized the gap and invaded the mind of Lexon's wood clone.
The figure of a white-haired woman involuntarily appeared in the clone's mind.
She tugged at the ethereal, almost non-existent lines in her hands and pulled violently!
The strings of the wood clone's thoughts seemed to snap, and the movements controlling the Buddha faltered.
In a fierce battle, even a single instant was of vital importance.
"BOOM!!!"
The sand collapsed instantly, crushing the Buddha and causing its outer body to shatter, eventually disintegrating into blocks of wood.
Lexon's body was completely covered by the sand, sinking deep within.
...
When the sand had finished falling...
The Hidden Rain Village and the surrounding areas had been completely transformed into a desert.
Light from the sky shone down once more.
The wind and sand swirled, gradually coalescing into the figure of Number One.
A spatial rift opened beside him.
Number Two and Number Four stepped out.
Following them, Number Four's head surged with movement, and Number Three slowly crawled out from his memories.
It seemed that because the previous move had also dealt fatal damage to her, she had no choice but to be reborn from someone else's memories.
"Is he dead?" Number Two asked, his face somewhat pale.
This was an unavoidable side effect of using his "Domain," which left him quite weak.
"He's dead..." Number One replied.
His current state wasn't great either; that last move had drained ninety percent of his power.
To prove the truth of his words and put his teammates' minds at ease, he exerted his power once more.
The sand in front of them surged.
The lifeless corpse of their enemy reincarnator, "Uchiha Lexon," in his normal state, was delivered before them.
"As long as he's dead, it's fine." Number Three finally breathed a sigh of relief. Although she could be reborn in memories, each rebirth cost a massive amount of mental energy.
Reborning twice in a short period and using multiple powerful skills within the consciousness of someone much stronger than her had pushed her to her limit.
"Damned brat!" Number Four might have been genuinely angry, or perhaps staying in the form of a child for too long had started to affect his mind, making his behavior increasingly childish.
He shouted as he ran to Uchiha Lexon's corpse, raising his fists to hammer the head several times.
He viciously smashed the head into the sand.
"Enough, Number Four. You need to return to your original form," Number One reminded him.
"Huff... huff..." Number Four's massive child-like body seemed to have vented its anger. Hearing Number One's words, he gradually regained his senses.
His body slowly turned into liquid and then restructured into a human.
However, he looked much thinner than when he first arrived in this mission world.
He must have consumed too much energy and fat.
"Do you need to go replenish your fat?" Number Two asked.
"No need," Number Four replied, rubbing his stomach. "The things I ate before haven't been fully digested yet; they're still in my belly."
"Then hurry up and digest them... We still have to go to the moon to get those items later. There might be another tough battle ahead," Number Two said.
Compared to the rest of them who could rest to recover their strength, Number Four's ability—while convenient for power-ups—seemed much more troublesome at a time like this.
"Ah... speaking of the moon..." Hearing Number Two's words, Number Three remembered something. "What about the other reincarnators from the opposing faction? Number One, you're still keeping them, right?"
She turned her gaze toward Number One.
"They're all dead... Under the intensity of that battle, I couldn't afford to worry about them," Number One explained.
"All dead?" Number Three frowned, questioning, "Then why hasn't the notification for a successful mission return popped up? Logically, in a confrontation mission, killing all enemy reincarnators should trigger a prompt and an automatic return shortly after..."
"Could it be that there are more enemy reincarnators than just those people?" Number Two speculated.
"Unlikely." Number One argued against the idea in a low voice. "When I captured those reincarnators, I specifically had several people confirm the number of existing reincarnators in their faction through the Main God. There were no mistakes; there aren't any extras."
Hearing Number One's words, the others immediately fell into deep thought.
"Then that's strange..." Number Two appeared confused.
"It really is strange..." Number Four rubbed his chin, looking contemplative.
As Number Three thought it over, she suddenly felt as though she had missed something...
"Why is that?..." Number Two continued to murmur in confusion.
"Yeah, why is that?" A somewhat familiar voice suddenly emerged from the middle of the group.
[Reviews - Power St0nes - Comments are highly appreciated to keep me going.....(+50 chapters) patre0n.c0m/talecrafter]