“You! Karyu! So you finally showed yourself in this village!” Iou stood in front of this Karyu. He was already hurt in various places; blood dripped down from his forehead. All he had was his bamboo lance. But he gripped it tightly and charged at Karyu.
“As if that’s going to work!” Karyu threw one of the balls at Iou. The instant it hit Iou in the stomach, it bounced back with a crack. Iou went flying and slammed into the wall of his house behind him.
“Ngah!” An enormous amount of blood jetted out of his mouth.
“Now then, let’s go for the head, shall we?” Karyu took aim at the head of Iou—slumped down, back against the wall—and threw the other ball to strike the final blow. Iou couldn’t move a muscle.
The fierce sound of the house being destroyed echoed through the village, and once the dust settled, there was a gaping hole in the wall.
“Hmm?”
But Iou was nowhere to be seen.
“B-brat …”
Seconds before, Sasuke had grabbed onto Iou’s clothes and yanked him away.
“Hm, oh, ohhhhhh?” Karyu looked at Sasuke and blinked several times, before a look of delight rose up onto his face. “I never dreamed I’d actually get to meet you, Sasuke … !” He appeared thrilled to the bone. “Uchiha Sasuke! I’ve admired you so much! The man who burned with revenge for his clan, and stuck to his own principles, even going so far as to take on the world! I’ve wanted to meet you! I’ve wanted so much to meet you!”
Just as Nowaki had said, Karyu adored Sasuke. The Sasuke from when he was steeped in darkness. Karyu spread both arms wide as if to show his appreciation.
In contrast, Sasuke looked at Karyu with a feeling of disgust.
“What, boy? You’re with Karyu?!” Holding back the blood oozing out of his side, Iou suddenly turned suspicious eyes on Sasuke. Apparently, he had already forgotten that Sasuke had saved him.
“Ha! You really are a self-serving old man,” Karyu murmured, exasperated. It seemed they knew each other.
“Sh-shut up! Enough outta you, you evil man! Anything’s fine, boy! He killed my daughter! He’s the root of all evil! Hurry up and kill this man!”
“What’re you talking about, old man? Sasuke’s my hero, you know.” Karyu’s eyes glittered. “So obviously, it’ll be me killing Sasuke!” He brought his hands together. “I will go beyond you!!”
Hardly listening to Karyu’s proclamations, Sasuke clad his unsheathed blade in electricity and aimed the tip at the other man’s stomach.
“Whoops! Can’t let you do that!”
Earth Style! Mud Wall!
A wall of earth shot up with great force from within the ground. Karyu continued to weave signs.
Lava Style! Rubber Wall!
Karyu bent his torso back, and expelled what rose up from within his body at the wall.
Sasuke’s sword touched the wall, and the electric charge vanished.
“Rubber is resistant to Lightning Style!”
A wall of earth enveloped in rubber. It appeared that Karyu had a kekkei genkai called Lava Style that produced rubber. Hidden behind this wall, Karyu continued to knead his chakra. “Your boss is serious this time. Everyone, get back!”
The men of Dark Thunder flew out of the village like they were running away.
Lava Style! Rubber Ball!
Karyu called out the technique name, and balls of various sizes shot out of his mouth, rolling along the ground. The rolling spheres looked like traditional woven Japanese balls.
“Gah ha! And now!” Karyu slowly raised his arms. As he did, the balls bobbed up into the air. Conversely, when he lowered his hands, the balls dropped. In line with his hand movements, the balls began to bounce somewhat eerily. “Here we go!”
Karyu punched a ball close to him with his fist. He whirled his body around and hit a different ball with a backhand blow. He kicked a ball flying low to the ground in front of him before grabbing the final ball to his side, leaping up high, and flinging it at Sasuke. The four balls closed in on Sasuke, each with its own trajectory.
However, it wasn’t difficult to read those trajectories. Sasuke dodged the balls and tried to get closer to Karyu.
“We’re just beginning!” Karyu sensed Sasuke’s movements, and wove signs.
A protrusion suddenly rose up beneath Sasuke’s feet. The ground continued to rise. When he was about to lose his balance, a new ball came flying at him. Sasuke flipped backward, and twisted around to dodge it.
“Still more to come!” Karyu used Earth Style and created high walls, one after another. As he did, the balls he had released hit them and bounced back, creating even more complicated trajectories.
The balls closed in on Sasuke from all directions.
“Tch!”
One of them hit his thigh. The ball bounced lightly back, but it had no sooner hit him than a dull pain ran through the bone like an echo. The balls likely contained kneaded chakra to increase the power of a hit. He would get nowhere like this. Sasuke tried to catch Karyu in a genjutsu with his sharingan.
“C’mon, then! Try and catch me!” Karyu grabbed a villager whose legs had been broken so he couldn’t run away, and thrust him forward.
“Eee, eee! Stooooooop!” the villager screamed, pushed forward like a shield.
Sasuke shifted his gaze momentarily. “Tch!”
Karyu didn’t just say he adored Sasuke; he had actually looked into Sasuke in some detail.
When Sasuke tried to get closer, the balls got in his way, and if he used any big techniques, the villagers would be dragged into it. Or rather, the entire village might be destroyed. The techniques he could use to stop Karyu with minimal damage were limited.
“You … you monster … !” Iou shouted.
At Iou’s unthinking cry, Karyu laughed, still clutching the villager. “A monster has no right to call me a monster!”
“What did you say?!”
Karyu flung the villager down to the ground and glared at Iou. Although he had seemed to be having great fun up to that point, he turned serious for a moment. “The second things aren’t convenient for you, you toss us aside. How do you have any right to say anything to anyone?”
“Ngh, hngh …”
Sasuke hadn’t heard anything about this from Iou. But what was important to him at that moment was not their stories. The bouncing balls. The Earth Style walls that appeared when he tried to get closer. The Lava Style rubber that snuffed out electricity. And the people being held hostage.
Sasuke’s eyes, his sharingan, memorized the state of this hectic movement. And then finally, they reflected Iou and the bamboo grove. Sasuke turned his back to Karyu.
“Hm? Hey!” Karyu shouted. “Where are you going?!”
Sasuke ignored him, and stepped into Iou’s house through the ruined wall.
“… This.” Just as he grabbed ahold of the object he wanted, an enormous ball assaulted Iou’s house. Immediately escaping the building, Sasuke poured his chakra into the object he had acquired.
“Hah!” Jumping up high with the rising earthen wall as a foothold, Sasuke aimed for Karyu.
“Ha ha! I have these rubber walls!” Karyu moved to protect himself with the rubber walls as he had done throughout the fight.
However, the rubber bounced back, and the earthen wall that appeared beneath it crumbled. Not only that—the balls all around Karyu were all destroyed at once.
“Wh-what’s going on?! I don’t know this technique!” Karyu dropped his surprised gaze to his feet, and saw a bamboo skewer stuck there. One of the ones Iou had made. “A skewer?! You couldn’t possibly have kneaded your chakra into a skewer and destroyed the rubber?!”
The tapered point of the bamboo. And this was just a diversion.
“Dammit!” At the moment Karyu sensed the aura and gasped, he heard the call of a plover signaling the end.
Once Sasuke had defeated Karyu and taken care of the members of the Dark Thunder group who had been watching things play out from outside the village, Chino and Nowaki brought the villagers back. They were all injured in some way or another, but fortunately, none of them had been killed. The men of the Dark Thunder group were restrained inside of the shed in the village for the time being.
“Sassy, looks like they’re waking up.”
Evening fell, and when Karyu regained consciousness, Sasuke and the others went into the shed.