While Kaida and the leader of the wolf pack were having fun, the wolves were starting to get restless. The latest attack their leader had done was one of the signature techniques of their clan, a sure-kill technique, something their leader excels in, and somehow his opponent not only dodged that but also managed to heal himself in no time.
The confidence they had about the victory of their leader was waning a little, and doubt that he may lose started to come in their minds—something they most surely don't want.
While the wolves were worrying about that, their leader was having the best time of his life.
"Excellent! Even that attack was not able to take you out. Truly a worthy opponent," the leader said, shaking his fur to shake off any extra dust that had fallen on him during the fight with Kaida's clones.
"Don't tell me that was the best you could do?" Kaida said, as a smirk came on his face.
"Hahaha, don't worry. I still have many cards hidden like you have said, like this one," the leader said, while moving his claw up and then slamming it back to the ground.
As if coming to life, all of the shadows around Kaida started behaving erratically. Kaida did the most natural thing at the moment:
"Earth Release: Iron Body Jutsu."
With his tone getting darker and eyes shining red with a beautiful pattern visible in them, Kaida was ready for any attack. The most probable one, which he was hoping for, was something similar to what he fell for recently—another surprise attack. And he was correct; it was a surprise attack.
The shadows, which were behaving erratically, shot up toward him like bamboo, ready to make him resemble a sponge.
Kaida swiftly flickered away from his position while sending a fireball to the shadow spikes, just to test his theory. And it was correct—some of them did get destroyed by the fireball, but only some. The rest went back, and the shadows around him started behaving erratically again.
"This is a continuous attack?" Kaida muttered, dodging once again while sending fireballs at the spikes.
'This is not working,' he thought, looking toward the shadows like they were his greatest enemy, then toward the mountains that were producing these shadows. For a second, he did consider blowing the whole mountain away to get a better fighting chance.
Though he quickly dismissed the idea—to destroy someone's house for just a spar was too much.
"Just dodging will get you nowhere," the leader said, as he appeared behind Kaida in a heartbeat. Since Kaida was focusing on the shadow spikes, his attention wavered from the leader for a second, which he capitalized on without any hesitation at all.
With the leader at his back and the shadow spikes in front of him, Kaida didn't have much of a choice, especially since the razor-sharp teeth of the leader were now covered with shadow, resembling the claw attack he did but more deadly.
There was no doubt in Kaida's mind that the wolf had excellent battle awareness and environmental control. It got Kaida in a position where dodging the attack would be so much more difficult than if the wolf had attacked directly.
Though this was not going to help the wolf. Kaida dodged the attack, which was looking increasingly difficult. Since defense was not possible, Kaida decided to go on full offense, imbuing too much fire chakra and yang chakra in his staff. He did a full 360-degree motion while using the Strength of the Hundred Seal to increase his strength to maximum.
And the result was nothing short of shocking. The shadow spikes crumbled like they were not even present there, while the leader dodged the attack, giving Kaida a few seconds of breathing space.
"So Yang attacks are your weakness, huh!" Kaida said, looking toward the leader, his staff still pointing toward the leader with fire and yang chakra coating it.
"I will not say a weakness, but yeah, they are more effective. Good job finding that, boy," the leader said before preparing something else once again.
Kaida could tell because of the high amount of chakra he was using inside his body, but since he didn't know anything about the chakra points in a wolf's body, there was no way for him to know what the leader was preparing.
But he didn't have to wait too long to find out, as the leader opened his mouth, pointing toward him.
'Don't tell me he has a breath attack too?' Kaida thought in his mind, ready to cancel the technique and go back to Konoha. There was no way he was going to fight a dragon in a wolf's skin.
Thankfully, his fear didn't become true, but something equally terrible happened.
Aaaawwwooooooo
A howl came from the leader's mouth, but there was nothing simple about that howl. It created visual ripples in the air, resembling something very close to a sonic attack. As in the direct line of the attack, Kaida was directly affected by it.
Even though he tried to dodge the attack, it was faster than the speed of sound, making a complete evasion almost impossible. Kaida suffered from the attack on the left side of the body, and it felt like someone grabbed his organs from inside and shook them as hard as they could.
Puck
He truly suffered some internal injury, clear from the blood he was puking.
////**
"Man, that really hurts," Kaida said, already using both the Mitotic Regeneration Seal and Healing Palm Jutsu to heal his injuries. Thankfully, the attack was not easy for the leader as well.
As he was also huffing and puffing at his spot, and since he moved from his position earlier, the shadow spikes he had been sending had also been stopped.
"I know...huff it takes too much energy...huff but is best for some really slippery enemies," the leader said, trying his best to calm down as soon as he could.
Kaida, not wasting these moments, just patched himself the bare minimum for movement before leaving the healing to the seal.
"I have been on the receiving end for too much time. How about I go offensive now?" Kaida asked, as tens of shadow clones who had been waiting till now surrounded both the leader and Kaida.
"Hah, this is quite an annoying little trick you got there," the leader said, looking toward the clones. It was not difficult for him to disperse these clones, but the sheer number and versatility they had was the really annoying part.
"I know," was all Kaida said before his clones started bombarding the leader with jutsu, forcing him to use shadow travel multiple times to evade the jutsu. Kaida also noticed how the leader was coating his body to shake off any stray attack that actually hit him.
While the leader teleported from one place to another, he kept Kaida in his direct vision, ready for his attack, because he knew all of the other attacks, no matter how big and flashy they looked, were just distractions, and the main attack was coming from Kaida, the real one.
And he was right about that but was unable to keep his eyes on Kaida as he suddenly vanished from his vision.
'Genjutsu again,' the leader thought as he used chakra in his nose and brain to increase his sense of smell to the extreme. The boy was extremely good at fooling his vision, but smell was not his forte.
Without even looking at his right, the leader jumped back.
Bang
The place he was standing on was now blown to smithereens, with Kaida standing there. His staff was embedded in the ground, and with how much fire and yang chakra he was pushing into it, smoke was coming out of the ground because of the attack.
"That would have hurt pretty badly for sure," the leader said, looking toward Kaida.
"Oh, the attack is not over yet," Kaida said with an innocent smile on his face.