…
The coordinator moved first.
His body blurred forward, closing the distance before Murakami could fully settle into his stance.
His fist shot toward Murakami's jaw but Murakami tilted his head fast enough that the punch grazed past his cheek.
But a knee followed immediately.
Murakami intercepted it with the shaft of his staff and the impact rattled his arms.
The coordinator twisted his hips and transitioned smoothly into a spinning elbow.
Murakami ducked beneath it as his staff lashed upward, but the coordinator was already expecting it and slipped back just enough to avoid the strike.
Neither had landed a clean hit but both continued moving, the exchange accelerating.
A palm strike.
A staff thrust.
A low kick.
A shoulder check.
The two figures, one huge one small, danced across the fractured terrain, neither willing to surrender an opening.
Murakami's eyes never left the man's movements.
At first he had simply been reacting, defending and adjusting to the man's superior strength and experience.
But now something was changing.
The longer he fought, the more familiar the man's rhythm became.
The coordinator always shifted his weight onto his rear leg before committing to a forward strike and his right shoulder dipped slightly whenever he prepared a feint.
His attacks flowed in groups of three.
Three strikes.
Reset.
Three strikes.
Reset.
The patterns weren't obvious at first, but they were there, and Murakami was beginning to notice them.
The coordinator's eyes narrowed behind his mask the longer the exchange went.
A punch that should have connected or blocked was avoided by a fraction, a leg sweep that should have forced Murakami backward missed entirely.
The coordinator immediately recognized what was happening.
'He's adapting.'
His expression hardened as a thought struck him, but looking at Murakami's eyes and seeing they weren't glowing, he relaxed a bit.
However, this brought its own set of alarm.
The boy in front of him wasn't learning techniques mid fight nor was he reading his mind.
He was simply becoming more aware.
The masked Shinobi was not unfamiliar with this.
This was the sort of awareness that only emerged through combat experience and made opponents increasingly difficult to predict.
The coordinator clicked his tongue then abruptly disengaged.
Murakami stopped and didn't pursue, causing the distance between them to widen.
For several seconds neither moved.
Then the coordinator raised both hands, the familiar chakra threads reappeared.
Dozens of them, then hundreds.
Thin strands spread outward across the area like the roots of a tree.
Murakami watched carefully as the threads disappeared into the earth.
The next moment, the ground exploded as Stone spikes erupted beneath his feet.
Murakami activated the Phantom Step and vanished from the spot causing the spikes to strike empty air.
The coordinator flicked his fingers and a stone wall surged upward just as Murakami appeared above it.
Another gesture saw three stone spears launched toward him.
Murakami activated the Phantom Step and his figure disappeared once more.
But the barrage continued.
Stone spikes.
Collapsing earth.
Rising walls.
Fragments of rock launched like projectiles.
The battlefield itself had become the coordinator's weapon.
Yet Murakami refused to stop moving.
His body blurred from point to point, like a ghost dancing through a storm of stone.
All the while, he watched and analyzed.
The coordinator manipulated the earth through his chakra threads.
At first Murakami had assumed the threads were merely extensions of control following a technique, but the longer he watched, the more he realized they were acting as mediums.
The chakra wasn't simply flowing through the threads, the chakra itself was carrying intent.
Directing the Earth Release itself.
Murakami wasn't foreign to this concept of nature transformation.
He was capable of creating tables, chairs, walls and other structures through Earth Release, but that was accomplished by continuously pouring chakra into the earth and shaping it through direct manipulation.
This was fundamentally different.
The coordinator wasn't standing over every section of terrain he manipulated nor was he directly touching the earth.
Yet stone walls rose, spikes erupted and the terrain shifted according to his will.
The answer had been in front of Murakami the entire time: The threads.
Not as a chakra control exercise, but as carriers of will and intent.
The realization struck him like a bolt of lightning as his eyes widened slightly. 'So that's how he does it...'
For months he had mastered the chakra thread exercise.
He could attach them to weapons, manipulate objects, and extend his reach.
Yet he had never found the next step.
The missing piece… Until now.
Every time the coordinator moved his fingers, the threads stimulated those residual chakra traces and used them as anchors.
It wasn't direct control, but manipulation.
'Interesting...'
Another stone spear burst upward.
Phantom Step.
Another collapse.
Phantom Step.
A wall slammed shut.
Phantom Step.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The coordinator continued attacking relentlessly.
Murakami continued avoiding everything.
And the more he observed, the clearer it became.
And this realization opened an entirely new path of thought inside Murakami's mind.
One he had never considered before.
The next attack came, but Murakami didn't dodge.
He stopped and the battlefield suddenly became still.
The coordinator frowned as the earth spikes halted midway through formation. The man lowered his hands slightly. "Finally tired of running around like a mouse?"
Murakami shook his head. "No."
The coordinator narrowed his eyes.
Murakami glanced briefly at the chakra threads stretching through the battlefield.
Then back at their owner. "I'm actually thankful."
The coordinator blinked. "...What?"
Murakami smiled faintly. "Thankful…" His voice remained calm. "You allowed me to witness something interesting."
The coordinator's frown deepened.
Murakami continued. "I've been stuck for months."
The coordinator didn't interrupt, not because he wanted to listen, but because he didn't understand.
Murakami lowered his staff.
"I mastered the chakra thread exercise a long time ago."
Click.
The staff separated into two rods then Murakami smoothly secured them onto his back.
The coordinator watched silently, confusion beginning to creep into his expression.
Murakami slowly lowered both hands.
Fine chakra threads emerged from his fingertips.
Dozens of them.
The coordinator's eyes widened as the threads descended into the ground.
"No..."
The coordinator took an involuntary step backward.
"No..."
His voice cracked slightly.
"Impossible."
Murakami ignored him. His hands continued moving as more threads flowed outward spreading through the fractured terrain.
The coordinator stared in disbelief.
Nobody understood better than he did what he was seeing.
This wasn't imitation.
This wasn't luck.
This wasn't coincidence.
This was his specialty.
The technique that had elevated him above his peers.
The reason he had become captain of an entire demolition squad.
Years.
It had taken him years to develop.
Years to refine.
Years to understand.
And this boy…
This child…
Had watched it once.
Once.
And now he was reproducing the foundation behind it.
The coordinator's breathing became uneven.
"Impossible..."
Murakami finally raised his head as his palms came together.
Clap.
The sound echoed across the fractured battlefield. Then Murakami spoke. "Mountain Embracing Technique."
For a moment, nothing happened, then, the ground beneath the battlefield began to tremble.
The vibration spread rapidly through the terrain as the countless chakra threads he had woven into the earth carried his intent outward.
Chunks of stone shifted from their resting places and entire sections of ground rose from beneath the battlefield.
What began as a faint rumble quickly became a terrifying display of Earth Release as enormous masses of rock emerged from every direction.
They did not form walls or spikes like conventional techniques.
Instead, they curved inward, dragging surrounding stone and soil along with them as though invisible hands were gathering the landscape itself.
The earth folded and compressed from all sides, creating the illusion of a giant pair of mountains closing around a single point.
Dust exploded into the air as trees, boulders, and broken sections of terrain were uprooted and carried along by the moving mass, while the coordinator stood frozen at the center of it all, watching the battlefield itself answer Murakami's command.
"No..."
The earth continued rising from all directions as massive slabs of rock curved inward, the battlefield itself folding around the coordinator like a giant stone maw preparing to close.
Realizing the danger, he immediately activated his own chakra threads, sending dozens of commands into the terrain.
Stone walls erupted from the ground in rapid succession, explosive tags buried beneath the earth detonated one after another, and entire tunnels collapsed in an attempt to disrupt the technique from within.
Yet none of it worked.
The advancing masses of earth simply crushed through every obstacle in their path, overwhelming each countermeasure through sheer scale.
It was then that the coordinator finally understood what he was witnessing.
Murakami had not copied his technique.
He had used it as inspiration and transformed it into something entirely different, something larger, something beyond the scope of what the demolition captain had imagined possible.
As he looked up at the colossal walls of earth converging from every direction, blotting out the battlefield around him, true fear appeared in his eyes for the first time that night.
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Like what you read? Vote and Add to library for more. Have some idea about my story? Comment it and let me know.
I'ma be writing and posting on my patr@on page for a while. Interested individuals can check it out here. I've got 10 extra chapters there.
[email protected]/This_Young_Lord