Raizen's lips curved into a smirk. "Who said anything about a direct assault?"
He raised his arm high, voice cutting through the cold air.
"Amamiya-nin — attack!"
The forest stirred as three hundred shinobi drew their blades. The metallic whisper of steel was soon joined by the sharp whistle of kunai. Across the ridge, Kaguya sentries stiffened at the sight of movement and raised their own alarm.
"All units on alert!" one shouted.
A younger Kaguya leaned over the barricade, scowling. "Are they actually dumb enough to attack head-on? They'll die before they reach the wall!"
No one answered. Even they knew the slope was death itself — a fortress of bone and earth. Still, the Amamiya clan pressed forward. To the Kaguya defenders, it looked like madness. To Raizen, it was theater.
"Blade corps — commence bombardment!"
Hundreds of kunai arced into the sky, slicing through the air in perfect unison before raining down like a black storm. The first barrage struck the bone wall with a harsh metallic scream — ding, ding, ding! Cracks spiderwebbed across the surface until the front layer of defense collapsed in splinters.
But the second wall held. The momentum of the kunai had burned out.
"What the hell are they doing?" a Kaguya jōnin muttered. "Breaking one wall and running home? That's not strategy — that's stupidity."
"Maybe they're trying to bait us," another offered. "Or maybe their young patriarch's just as reckless as they say."
They sneered when they spotted Raizen among the attackers — a young man barely past boyhood, cloak fluttering, expression unreadable.
"That's him? The Amamiya leader? Tch. Barely old enough to shave."
Raizen didn't respond to the mockery. He ordered the next wave, another volley of kunai. Then another. Three layers of bone fell before he abruptly called a retreat.
The Amamiya vanished into the treeline like ghosts.
The Kaguya, confused, hesitated. "They broke through three defenses just to… leave?"
An hour later, Raizen returned. Another assault. Another retreat. Then again. And again.
By sunset, the Kaguya clan was furious.
"Are they mocking us?! What kind of idiot keeps doing the same thing?"
They didn't realize they were already playing Raizen's game.
For two days and nights, he repeated the attacks — constant pressure, constant irritation. The Amamiya were exhausted, eyes sunken, fingers blistered from throwing weapons. But the Kaguya defenders were no better, kept on endless alert by an enemy who never followed the rules of war.
When the third dawn rose and their supplies dwindled, Raizen gathered his men. The tired murmurs faded as his voice cut through the fog.
"You all think the past two days were useless," he said flatly. "You're wrong. We weren't fighting — we were numbing them."
He drew a line in the dirt with his sandal.
"The Kaguya rely on terrain. Their confidence is their cage. Every fake assault, every wasted kunai — it's been hammering one thing into their heads: We're too tired to win."
He looked up, eyes sharp as lightning.
"Tonight, they'll believe it. And that's when we strike for real."
The men straightened, something fierce lighting in their chests.
"Eat the last of your rations," Raizen said, voice steady. "Sharpen every blade. Clear your heads. When the sun falls, we take that ridge in one blow."
The soldiers ate in silence. No speeches, no chatter — just the quiet rhythm of steel being honed.
When the final rays of dusk bled across the plain, Raizen knelt and rolled up his sleeves. From a pack at his side, he pulled out pale, fine clay and began kneading it with chakra. His fingers moved like a sculptor's — precise, deliberate.
One by one, monstrous clay dragons rose from the earth, each with coils long enough to carry a squad. Their hollow eyes glowed faintly with chakra, their wings stretching wide.
Fifty dragons. Three hundred shinobi.
Every ounce of clay Raizen had brought was gone.
He looked up at the ridge — the beast of rock and bone that had defied them for days — and exhaled slowly.
"Showtime."