The next day, on a small island behind the Land of Waves.
Kirigakure Headquarters.
The atmosphere inside was oppressively heavy. The lighting remained cold and dim, but what it illuminated on every face now were expressions of complexity and grim seriousness.
The battle reports had already been compiled and distributed to every key figure present, yet the numbers and words written on them were painfully glaring.
In a single day—
All four landing forces had failed to achieve their intended objectives.
The Kaguya Clan had suffered the worst.
Their Clan Head, Umemaro, had been killed in action, and more than half of the clan's elite forces had been wiped out. The surviving remnants had barely managed to retreat to nearby offshore islands, where they were now regrouping and reorganizing. For the foreseeable future, they had completely lost the ability to continue fighting.
It could even be said that after this battle, although the ancient clan that had once stood proudly among the ninja world thanks to the Shikotsumyaku could still barely maintain its position among Kirigakure's top three clans, it had already fallen to the bottom of that ranking. Without ten years or more of recuperation, it would likely never recover its former vitality.
The Hōzuki Clan had fared little better.
Their Clan Head, Hōzuki Hangetsu, had also been killed. Their casualties were comparatively lighter, but that "lighter" was only in comparison to the Kaguya Clan's disastrous losses.
Having lost both their clan leader and multiple core elites within their command structure, morale throughout the entire force had sunk to rock bottom. A deputy from the Hōzuki Clan had temporarily taken over command, and the troops had already withdrawn to the second line to recover. In the short term, they were likewise incapable of participating in any high-intensity combat operations.
And the person who had killed both of these great clan leaders—
Was the same man.
Higashino Shinichi.
The mixed force composed of the Yuki Clan and the Seven Ninja Swordsmen had successfully landed according to plan and had even established a forward position for a time.
However, because both flanks had collapsed far too quickly, they had been forced to abandon the position they had already secured and withdraw of their own accord.
And why had the two flanks collapsed so quickly?
Because they had encountered a true god of slaughter—
Namikaze Minato.
The man known as the Yellow Flash, master of the Flying Thunder God Technique, had become an uncapturable streak of death across that battlefield.
Every time he flashed across the field, another Kirigakure elite inevitably fell.
Even more terrifying was the fact that, with the support of the Hyūga Clan's Byakugan, every one of his attacks was executed with chilling precision.
The Byakugan users were responsible for wide-area enemy detection and penetrating observation, rapidly identifying the locations of Kirigakure commanders, key shinobi, and critical battlefield nodes.
Meanwhile, Namikaze Minato relied on the instantaneous movement provided by the Flying Thunder God Technique to leap between those locations in an instant. The efficiency of his killing was enough to make one's scalp go numb.
According to Kirigakure intelligence, Hyūga Hiashi, the Hyūga Clan Head, had almost no prior interaction with Namikaze Minato before this battle.
This should have been their first true battlefield collaboration.
And yet, the two of them displayed a level of coordination that seemed completely natural, as though they had fought side by side for years. (Future in-laws, lol.)
Under Hiashi's calm direction, the Hyūga Clan's Byakugan unit had practically become Minato's "all-seeing eye" on the battlefield.
No matter how Kirigakure's forces attempted to conceal themselves using mist and terrain, once they were locked onto by the Byakugan, the next moment would inevitably bring the whistle of a specially crafted Flying Thunder God kunai cutting through the air—
And that flash of gold would arrive right on schedule.
Yuki Hiro, Suikazan Fuguki, and the others attempted to organize effective counterattacks and interceptions, but achieved very little.
The rhythm of both offense and defense had been completely seized by the enemy.
All they could do was watch helplessly as that golden streak darted back and forth across their left and right flanks, harvesting lives like a hungry wolf loose among sheep.
The formations on the wings rapidly disintegrated.
The battle lines continued to collapse.
And once the flanks collapsed, if they still refused to retreat, the entire force would face the danger of being divided, surrounded, and annihilated piece by piece by Konoha's shinobi army.
After an emergency discussion, Yuki Hiro and Suikazan Fuguki ultimately had no choice but to make a decision—
Abandon the forward position they had established and withdraw voluntarily.
Thus, Kirigakure's all-out offensive on the first day ended in complete defeat.
Silence filled the command headquarters.
Yagura still stood before the enormous map with his back facing the room.
No one could see his expression, but the slightly clenched fists hanging at his sides revealed just how unsettled the young commander truly was.
"This battle..."
After a long silence, Yagura finally turned around.
His gaze slowly swept across everyone present before he spoke.
"The fault lies with me."
"Yagura..." Hiro frowned slightly, wanting to say something.
Yagura raised a hand and gently pressed downward, stopping him.
"Everyone has worked hard."
"Go back and get some proper rest. Review the gains and losses from this battle on your own."
"We'll discuss everything tomorrow."
"Yes."
The crowd exchanged glances.
After a brief silence, they responded one after another before turning and leaving the headquarters.
The sound of footsteps gradually faded away.
The curtain fell.
Only Yagura remained inside.
He slowly sat down at the head seat. His expression remained unchanged as he picked up the battle report once more and lowered his eyes to the name that appeared more frequently than any other throughout the document—
Higashino Shinichi.
"Higashino Shinichi..."
Yagura murmured the name to himself.
He had known for a long time that the Konoha youth was strong.
Ever since the guerrilla campaign in the Land of Lightning that had thrown Kumogakure's rear lines into complete chaos, he had been studying the young man's strategic thinking.
But he had never expected things to unfold this way.
On the very first day, the boy had taught him such a profound lesson.
The offensive he had prepared for so long and repeatedly simulated had been seen through completely. Even the four landing points he had carefully selected had all been accurately predicted by Higashino Shinichi, who had laid deadly traps at every critical juncture.
"Amazing..."
Yagura had no choice but to admit it.
Whether it was battlefield command or strategic foresight behind the scenes, this opponent was far stronger than he had anticipated.
The first exchange between us...
I lost.
But wars were never decided in a single day.
Yagura took a deep breath, suppressing that brief sense of frustration deep within himself before turning his attention back to the map.
The first day's offensive had ended in total failure.
But the war still had to go on.
The question now standing before him was—
What should his next move be?
A direct assault?
The idea surfaced in Yagura's mind.
But he quickly dismissed it.
A direct assault was out of the question.
Large-scale frontal offensives came with far too many casualties.
Throughout the history of the ninja world's wars, all-out assaults were usually a desperate measure employed only after both sides had failed to achieve a breakthrough and the battlefield had descended into a stalemate.
Unless one side possessed an overwhelming advantage in strength, such battles were nothing more than meat grinders that cost the enemy a thousand while costing oneself eight hundred. No one truly benefited.
Kirigakure was infamous for its brutal tradition as the Village of the Bloody Mist. Coldness and indifference were the way of life for many people born on that land.
However, Yagura was different from many of the village's ruthlessly hardened shinobi.
He genuinely cared about the life of every single comrade in the village.
Unless absolutely necessary, he would never willingly send his fellow villagers into a battlefield where lives were traded for lives in a merciless meat grinder.
Unfortunately, Yagura did not understand the principle that mercy and command rarely go hand in hand.
The more one treasured the lives of subordinates, the easier it became to hesitate at critical moments, only to cause even greater sacrifices in the end.
The scales of war did not always tilt in favor of compassionate intentions.
Yagura's gaze slowly moved across the map, tracing the long coastline of the Land of Fire as he considered his next strategy.
After a while, an idea gradually took shape in his mind.
Break the army into smaller units.
Abandon large-scale landing operations and instead disperse forces into numerous small teams, infiltrating the Land of Fire from multiple points along its vast coastline. Stretch the front line, force Konoha to run itself ragged, and scatter its manpower and attention.
If they did that, they would eventually find a weak point and open a breach.
With that thought in mind, Yagura immediately picked up a pen and rapidly wrote down his ideas and tactical considerations.
Unfortunately, he had no idea that this line of thinking was exactly what Shinichi wanted.
If Shinichi learned that Yagura intended to adopt such a strategy, he would probably burst out laughing.
The Elastic Defense system Shinichi had proposed from the very beginning had been designed specifically to counter exactly this kind of dispersed, multi-point harassment strategy.
Controlling a larger area through key positions, using mobility to counter mobility, and leveraging concentrated local responses against dispersed threats—those were the core principles of the entire system.
If Kirigakure dispersed its forces to conduct harassment operations, it would indeed place enormous pressure on Konoha's defensive lines and wear them down over time.
But it would also mean giving up the ability to concentrate strength and achieve a decisive breakthrough.
All Konoha needed to do was withstand that continuous yet scattered pressure, use the layers of Elastic Defense to delay and exhaust the enemy, and wait for an opportunity.
Perhaps a local counteroffensive advantage would emerge somewhere.
Or perhaps Kirigakure itself would begin exposing weaknesses as the inefficiency of such attritional warfare gradually took its toll.
Elastic Defense had been designed from the start to deal with exactly this sort of offensive—one that appeared flexible on the surface but was fundamentally fragmented.
By comparison, if Kirigakure concentrated all of its forces into a single massive frontal offensive, Konoha would be subjected to enormous pressure due to its numerical disadvantage.
Even if Konoha ultimately held the line, the price paid would be extraordinarily severe.
And the seemingly prudent decision Yagura had just made was, in fact, leading Kirigakure directly down the path Shinichi most wanted them to take.
Of course, all of this depended on one crucial premise—
Konoha had to hold.
It had to survive this prolonged war of harassment without collapsing first.
For Konoha, this was undoubtedly a test of endurance.