Chapter 133: Your Major Isn't Even Relevant!
It was like a priest performing an exorcism, pulling out holy water and a Bible to face a demon, only to realize the "demon" was actually a rice dumpling.
Not that the tools were completely useless.
They were just hilariously unrelated.
"The Hidden Cloud Village is really well hidden…" That was Shikaku's first thought, but he instantly snapped back to reality. The sealing barrier could weaken ninjutsu and resist chakra based attacks, but this was not ninjutsu at all.
"All shinobi, immediately use Lightning Release and Fire Release on the location I marked!" Shikaku did not have time to admire how ruthless Kumogakure had been with its secrecy. Right now, he only cared about one thing.
Stopping what Heavenly Demon had dropped.
If they could not solve this, how many people would die?
At the same time, he issued a second order. After one wave of attacks, everyone was to immediately use the strongest defensive ninjutsu they had mastered.
In theory, there was no way to notify everyone fast enough with only shouting. Luckily, he had an old friend beside him.
Yamanaka Inoichi.
Otherwise, yelling commands across a battlefield was just yelling into the wind.
But even with Shikaku's quick response, the metal object slammed down at terrifying speed. It struck the sealing barrier the moment it finished forming. Shikaku's ninjutsu had been launched, but ninjutsu still needed time to reach its target.
The barrier stalled the thermobaric bomb for a single second.
Then it was pierced.
Before it even hit the ground, the internal fuse triggered.
The massive amount of Sage Chakra Kenichi had injected earlier became violent in an instant, forcing its way through the superconducting metal and mixing with the thermobaric explosive inside.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the reaction detonated.
People felt the heat first, a burning wave that arrived before their minds could even process what they were seeing.
"The explosive power really did increase by a lot." Kenichi sat on the hot air balloon, watching the mushroom cloud rise and then begin to thin, his lips twitching.
He had expected the thermobaric explosive mixed with chakra from three Sage Techniques, wind, lightning, and fire, to be terrifying.
He just did not expect it to be this violent.
The moment it erupted, a brutal gust surged upward.
Kenichi managed to steer the hot air balloon away from the center in time, but the shockwave still smashed into them like a giant hand. The basket lurched. The balloon bucked.
In the next moment, they were thrown far off course.
Kenichi could no longer see the center of the blast clearly. All he saw was the mushroom cloud shrinking in the distance while the hot air balloon carrying him and Sasori was blown farther and farther away.
"That thing of yours got a lot stronger," Sasori said, staring at the distant cloud, then glancing at the balloon with an unamused expression. For a moment, it had felt like falling from a cliff.
"Hm." Kenichi's eyes narrowed in thought. "I tried to innovate a bit."
Just mixing chakra and explosives created such a massive boost. If chakra and explosives could be fused perfectly…
Kenichi imagined it for a moment.
It would be glorious.
Meanwhile, in the Land of Earth, Deidara, who had gone through a ridiculous amount of effort to escape Onoki, happened to see the mushroom cloud rising at the edge of the horizon.
His eyes widened.
Then lit up with pure madness.
"This is art! This is the art of the Heavenly Demon! Hm!"
In that instant, Deidara discovered the meaning of his life.
Explosions were art.
Mushroom clouds were art.
One day, he would create a mushroom cloud even bigger than Heavenly Demon.
Back in the sky, Kenichi waited until the hot air balloon stabilized. The moment it stopped drifting, he tossed down a large stone with markings etched into it, then urged the balloon forward toward the battlefield again.
He wanted to see the results firsthand and collect data along the way, to understand how the three chakra types had changed the thermobaric bomb.
Sasori was curious too.
He had seen what Kenichi threw before. The previous two times, it had never produced power like this.
From above, the first thing that caught the eye was a massive circle.
A dark circle, black as burnt ink, with hints of red mixed through it. Viewed from the hot air balloon, the ring on the ground looked eerie, like a scar carved into the land.
Kenichi peered through binoculars, thinking.
It did not match his expectations. Yes, he had added far more chakra, but the blast radius was too wide, and the shape of the circle was almost exaggerated.
Then he noticed something else.
There were shinobi still standing on the outer edge, and they did not look seriously injured.
Kenichi's eyes sharpened.
So that was it.
The wind attribute chakra had accelerated the spread of the thermobaric blast and expanded the affected range. The grass on the ground was burned away by the heat, leaving that enormous ring behind.
But the destructive power at the far edge was reduced.
A trade off.
Range increased, edge lethality dropped.
Still, in the crater near the center, there was no one left. The core of the explosion remained monstrously strong.
"It feels like something's missing if we cannot go down and see for ourselves," Kenichi said with a trace of regret. From up here, he could observe, but collecting detailed data on destruction was difficult.
"I think we should leave," Sasori said, looking down at the carnage. "Otherwise Konoha might go insane."
Kenichi had no intention of dropping into the middle of that mess. If he did, Konoha would swarm him. He was not especially afraid, but there was no reason to invite trouble.
Besides, making too many enemies among the other villages would not help his future plans.
If the shinobi world ever wanted to step out of this land and move toward an interstellar age, then the villages would eventually need to unite into something larger. Many hands made light work, even if it also meant many more problems to solve.
Whether that step was possible depended on the situation. Right now, the shinobi world's own internal problems still had to be dealt with first. And before he had enough strength, Kenichi had no desire to clash head on with Black Zetsu.
Of course, there were other ways to move toward a goal, slowly and steadily.
Kenichi glanced at his research progress. Chakra parasites, extinct parasites from the Sage of Six Paths era. He wondered if they could help him achieve what he wanted.
"Let's go back and ask Onoki for our reward," Kenichi said, shaking his head as he looked down at the ruined battlefield. "Konoha was unlucky to run into Nagato."
Nagato would never allow Akatsuki to be labeled as a village that belonged to Konoha. If Akatsuki only accepted Konoha's requests and ignored the others, it would clash with Akatsuki's development plan.
So dropping thermobaric bombs on Konoha during this mission was only natural.
After leaving the battlefield center by hot air balloon, Kenichi and Sasori destroyed the balloon and parachuted down, using the chance to search for the stones Kenichi had thrown earlier.
Kenichi wanted to measure how far the shockwave had pushed them. That data would matter for future missions and improving thermobaric weapons.
As they walked toward the marked stone's location, Kenichi chatted casually.
"Sasori, by the way, do you know where the Land of the Sky is?"
"The Land of the Sky was destroyed by Konoha during the Second Shinobi World War," Sasori replied as he moved at a fast pace. "Its current location should be toward the Land of Fire, near the sea."
As he spoke, Sasori held a strange little object in his hand.
It was a drone, built according to Kenichi's description. But calling it a drone was generous. It could not truly fly. It was basically an empty shell.
Kenichi raised an eyebrow. "Speaking of that, why did you even make it?"
He had noticed Sasori assembling it while they were still on the hot air balloon. There was no flight mechanism installed. Sasori had just been turning it over in his hands.
"I'm testing wind resistance," Sasori said calmly. "When I was improving Unit 01, I noticed the shape seemed to affect flight speed."
He guided the shell upward using puppet control threads, spun it once in a circle, then pulled it back into his hand.
Kenichi was surprised.
He had not expected Sasori to reach this kind of conclusion already. It really had to be said, shinobi were frighteningly smart.
Even Sasori had discovered the link between wind resistance and object shape.
"Your measurement method is not bad either," Kenichi said, looking at the chakra threads. For some reason, it reminded him of Doflamingo, the Heavenly Demon (Yaksha) from that other world next door.
Strings controlling everything.
It was different from puppetry, but the feeling was oddly familiar, and honestly, kind of interesting.
Kenichi stopped by the marked stone and glanced back at the mushroom cloud, now beginning to fully dissipate in the distance. Even from here, it was still far away.
"Sasori, honestly, I did not expect it to end up this far."
"Hm?" Sasori looked at him, puzzled by the sudden comment.
Kenichi hesitated, then asked the question that had been bothering him.
"Have you ever thought about using puppet threads to directly manipulate living people? Is that even theoretically possible?"
It was an interesting idea. If it could be done, the applications would be terrifying.
"It's difficult," Sasori said, shaking his head. "I tried it before, back in the village. If the chakra threads attach to a living body and the target has the will to resist, you cannot control them freely."
He narrowed his eyes slightly, remembering the attempts.
"And chakra threads cannot be too strong. Anyone with chakra can break free."
"What a pity," Kenichi sighed. "It would have been very interesting if it worked."
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