Outside, the world was falling apart.
Inside that circle, he kept his side completely safe.
That contrast hit Sakura hard, and in that instant, Akira's figure seemed to grow impossibly tall in her mind.
Even someone as experienced as Chiyo was left staring in shock. The boy's mastery of Lightning Style had gone past the point of reason.
Those attacks could have punched through steel without slowing down, yet that single Lightning Net had shut them out completely. What kind of chakra control did that even require?
Chiyo was already thinking ahead.
With a monster of a genius like this, Konoha's rise might be impossible for anyone to stop.
At last, that suffocating metallic storm came to an end, leaving the ground littered with twisted scrap metal.
Sasori ground his teeth and slammed a fist against the inside of the giant puppet.
Even that hadn't killed him. Damn it.
It had been a perfect killing setup. Who could have guessed that lightning screen would be so absurdly tough, like a shell no force could crack, ignoring even impacts traveling at several times the speed of sound?
It was like raining artillery on someone and failing to shake their barrier even once.
Akira casually dismissed the Lightning Net and looked toward the human puppet with open amusement.
"Got anything else? That barely qualifies as interesting."
That line was like rubbing salt into Sasori's wounds.
He roared, "Don't think I'm really out of options!"
Akira chuckled. "Then I'll keep you company."
Then he turned slightly and said to the two behind him, "This is between me and him. Go stand off to the side and rest."
But Sakura stubbornly stepped forward anyway, insisting on fighting alongside him.
Akira said nothing. He simply looked at her.
It was Chiyo who understood first. She grabbed Sakura by the arm and gave a bitter shake of the head.
"At this level of battle, stepping in would only make us a burden."
The words hit like cold water.
Sakura hated it, but reality was staring her in the face. The gap between her and Sasori was still a canyon.
If Akira hadn't protected her from that last attack, she would already be dead.
In the end, she could only retreat to the side, her eyes full of conflict as she told Akira to be careful.
Akira gave a small nod in answer.
Sasori definitely had some skill.
But only that much.
Everything was still under control.
If anything, Akira was curious what the man's final trump card actually looked like.
Sasori fixed his eyes on the young man who had embarrassed him again and again, and the ten-meter puppet began forming hand seals under his control.
If physical attacks didn't work, then he would try this.
A combined jutsu.
"Wind Style: Pressure Damage. Fire Style: Dragon Flame Jutsu!"
The instant the puppet completed the seals, a crushing surge of chakra exploded upward.
And it wasn't just Sasori's own Kage-class chakra. The puppet itself held stored reserves equal to roughly five times the amount of his original body.
That, at least, made Akira reassess him slightly.
Using external means to expand his chakra pool. Smart.
The energy coming off the puppet now had clearly passed beyond ordinary Kage level.
When he heard the names of the jutsus, Akira's brow lifted slightly.
Weren't those Kakuzu's signature jutsus?
So Sasori had been doing more than a little borrowing behind the scenes. Given his talent, that wasn't surprising.
And Akira remembered very well just how strong those jutsus could be.
Sure enough, as the seals completed, a massive fire dragon burst forth with a roar, riding a gale and swelling instantly into a wall of flame vast enough to blot out the sky.
The power of that combined jutsu had probably already touched the threshold of S-rank.
For a puppet specialist to drive ninjutsu to that level, Sasori truly did have something special.
Purely in terms of puppet jutsu, he had long since left Chiyo far behind.
Watching from the distance, Chiyo could only wear a bitter expression.
So he really had been holding back earlier.
The Sasori standing here now had already gone beyond her.
Sakura clutched the edge of her clothes tightly, palms soaked with sweat, barely daring to blink.
Chiyo patted her on the shoulder and quietly said, "If Akira is calm enough to let us stand here and watch, then he must already know what he's doing."
Sakura nodded, but her heart was still pounding like a drum.
Chiyo looked at Sakura's distracted expression and understood immediately.
The girl had fallen.
Before Sakura could fully gather herself, Akira moved.
His hands blurred so fast they were nearly invisible.
"Water Style: Water Shockwave. Wind Style: Pressure Damage!"
Using wind to amplify water in exactly the same way, Akira unleashed a massive column of water more than ten meters thick. Under the force of Wind Style, its impact power multiplied several times over.
The water column shot forward with terrifying speed and a thunderous roar, colliding head-on with the fire dragon.
BOOOOM—!
The collision was like two meteors smashing into each other. Even the ground trembled beneath it.
A vast cloud of steam exploded outward at once, turning everything within several hundred meters into a white, suffocating bathhouse of fog.
The violent hiss of water and flame tearing into each other rang without pause.
The water column kept driving forward relentlessly.
The fire dragon roared and pushed back just as furiously.
Neither side gave an inch.
The stray energy sheared deep trenches through the earth all around them.
The deadlock lasted only three seconds before both jutsus finally burned through their power at the same time.
The battlefield vanished beneath a density of mist so thick it felt solid.
And in that exact instant, Akira and Sasori charged at one another as if by unspoken agreement.
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