While the Sunagakure vanguard pushed deeper into the Land of Rivers, the "Global System" was experiencing a series of high-frequency conflicts on its other partitions. Inside a fortified command tent near the Suna front lines, I sat cross-legged atop the Mirage, my hands busy with a fine-tuning wrench while my mind parsed the latest "Data Dump" from our intelligence network.
The news coming from the northeastern border of the Land of Fire, at the junction with the Land of Hot Springs was staggering. In that sector, the terrain transitioned from geothermal hills to dense, high-interference forests. It was there that the most extreme speed duel in the history of the Ninja World was currently being recorded.
The Kumogakure army, moving like a massive black thundercloud, had attempted a "Direct Injection" strike into Konoha territory. Standing before them was a defense force led by a young Jonin named Minato Namikaze. According to the reports, the battle had entered a "Critical Load" phase from the very beginning, but the protagonists weren't the thousands of soldiers in the melee; they were three specific "High-Spec" units clashing like lightning.
"Lightning Release: Lariat!""Yo! Idiot! Bastard! Liger Bomb!"
The cooperation between Ai, the future Fourth Raikage and his brother Killer Bee was a masterclass in "Parallel Processing." One was a blue lightning flash, a high-voltage CPU charging in a straight line with unparalleled kinetic power; the other was a multi-threaded combatant, wielding seven blades wrapped in lightning while occasionally extending the "Eight-Tails" octopus tentacles for binding maneuvers. Their combined assault was a "Brute-Force" attack that most Konoha ninjas couldn't even track before their systems were force-closed.
However, they had encountered a "Logic Error" in the form of Minato Namikaze.
From my perspective as Logan, an engineer from a world of physics, Minato's Flying Thunder God Technique wasn't just fast; it was a "Teleportation Script" that bypassed the very concept of travel-time. While Ai and Bee were attempting to maximize their "Clock Speed," Minato was simply editing his coordinates in the world's positioning database.
A golden light, moving with zero latency, flickered across the battlefield. Minato's specially made kunai were like "Packet Markers"; the moment one was thrown, the "Golden Flash" would materialize at its location instantly.
Ai's Lariat would crash down with a destructive velocity that should have been unblockable, only to pass through a golden afterimage. Minato would already be "Re-spawning" next to a different kunai, pressing a Rasengan, a high-density chakra-vortex toward Killer Bee's flank.
Bee's "Seven Swords Style" was an impenetrable firewall of steel, but just as he calculated a killing stroke, his target would vanish, replaced by a kunai inscribed with the Flying Thunder God formula. Even the Eight-Tails' tentacles, moving with massive area-of-effect coverage, couldn't catch a ghost that didn't exist in physical space between the "A" and "B" points.
"So fast! Faster than lightning!" Bee's rap-logic had apparently crashed under the stress of the encounter. "Damn it! I can't hit him at all!" Ai roared, his Lightning Release Mode redlining.
Minato didn't engage the AB Combination in a prolonged "Combat Loop." Instead, he used his "Zero-Latency" advantage to harass, rescue Leaf comrades, and precisely delete Kumogakure's offensive nodes. Every time he appeared, it was accompanied by the "System Wipe" of a Cloud elite.
After several large-scale skirmishes, the Kumogakure high-command realized their strongest "Spearhead" was being held back and subtly suppressed by a single young Jonin. The Cloud's offensive had hit a "Bottleneck." Konoha's defense line, supported by the "Yellow Flash," became exceptionally resilient. Ultimately, the Kumogakure army had to accept the reality of the stalemate, forming a static standoff along the border.
This was a catastrophic failure for the "Third Raikage", a man whose entire military philosophy was based on high-output aggression.
Inside the Kumo command center, the Third Raikage's fury nearly tore the roof off. His surprise attack on Suna had been repelled by the Rasa-Chiyo "Defense Patch," and now his "AB Duo" had been stalled by a single "Golden Flash." The continuous setbacks were causing his prestige to hit rock bottom. The Council of Elders was already starting to "Audit" his decisions, criticizing the aggressive moves that had left Kumo in a passive position.
"Damn it!" The Raikage smashed his desk, lightning leaping across his body like a short-circuiting reactor. "Konoha! Sunagakure! And that old fox Ōnoki! Are they all laughing at my bandwidth?!"
He wouldn't tolerate the status quo. Kumo needed a "Win-Condition" to re-establish its status as a Great Power. His gaze shifted on the strategic map toward the Land of Earth.
"Ōnoki, you fox... you want to farm resources while I'm busy? Your main forces are pinned at the Grass and Wind borders, aren't they?" A crazy, high-risk glint flashed in the Raikage's eyes. "I'm going to execute a Backdoor Attack!"
An insane plan formed in his mind: he would personally lead a "Direct Injection" strike into the Land of Earth, targeting Iwagakure's home base to force the old Tsuchikage to abandon his other fronts.
Meanwhile, back in the Land of Rivers, I sat on the Mirage and stared at the intelligence scroll. The moniker "Yellow Flash" was spreading through the Ninja World like a high-priority virus. Konoha had even issued a "Flee on Sight" order for any ninja encountering him—a testament to his absolute speed superiority.
"Flying Thunder God..." I whispered, my fingers tracing the Mirage's vector-nozzle schematics. "He's not moving through the medium; he's bypassing the medium entirely. My Mag-Lev technology is optimized for speed (v = d/t), but Minato is playing with the denominator. If t = 0, velocity becomes infinite."
I looked at my own hands, then at the Natural Energy Core glowing in the Mirage. The duel between the Yellow Flash and the AB Combination was a "Hardware Benchmark" for the entire world. It proved that the war was no longer about numbers; it was about "Technological Singularities."
The Third Raikage's furious pivot toward the Land of Earth was about to introduce a massive "Variable" into the global conflict. The "Three-Body Problem" of the war was becoming even more complex.
"If I encounter the Golden Flash," I muttered, my internal engineer soul already running a "Worst-Case Scenario" simulation, "my current 'Mirage' reaction time won't be enough. I need to update the sensory array. I need to move from 'Manual Thread Control' to a 'Neural Link' if I want to survive a Zero-Latency opponent."
The war was shifting, and the "Meta" was evolving faster than my manufacturing cycles. I stood up, the Mirage rising with me as its Mag-Lev field hummed in the dark tent. The "Yellow Flash" had stabilized the northeast, but the Raikage's desperate strike was about to set the Land of Earth on fire.
The storm was getting bigger, and Suna's vanguard was right in the middle of the atmospheric collapse.