Because of the continuous explosions erupting behind the Sand shinobi formation, the Third Hokage temporarily halted his advance.
At first, his instinctive reaction was caution.
Such sustained explosions were clearly not some trivial trick—this looked very much like Sunagakure preparing a large-scale, high-risk jutsu. That alone warranted vigilance.
But after a short while, he realized something was off.
Following the explosions, the Sand shinobi's command flow had become noticeably stiff—almost dysfunctional.
Could it be that they had attempted a large-scale forbidden jutsu and botched it themselves?
That didn't seem likely either.
On a battlefield, no one would deploy such a dangerous jutsu without absolute confidence.
Which left only one remaining possibility—
This wasn't an enemy attack.
It was an attack against the enemy.
But who could have done it?
Konoha had no shinobi capable of launching such long-range, large-scale attacks from behind enemy lines—especially with so many Sand shinobi in between. Striking "over the mountain" like this was no easy feat.
Take Minato Namikaze, for example.
Thanks to the Flying Thunder God jutsu, his operational range was vast—but his attacks still relied on personal movement. Fundamentally, he was still a close-combat shinobi, not a long-range artillery unit.
Just as the Third Hokage was turning these possibilities over in his mind, Minato appeared at his side.
"Third-sama," Minato said, "that was most likely an aerial attack carried out by KamishiroHagoromo."
"Hagoromo?" The Hokage was taken aback. "He has that kind of attack capability?"
Another surprise.
An aerial strike was plausible—but if Hagoromo truly possessed such an ability, why hadn't it been reported during the operational briefing? If they'd known earlier, that attack could have been deployed in a far more deliberate and devastating manner.
What the Hokage didn't know was this—
Hagoromo bombing the enemy command center was already the optimal outcome.
This was the inherent advantage of aerial reconnaissance.
Even with the Byakugan, one couldn't match the clarity of battlefield awareness gained from directly overlooking the terrain from the sky.
From above, Hagoromo could easily pinpoint the Sand command center and drop his attack directly on it—rather than painstakingly peeling back layers of defenses as the Hyūga would have to do.
"That said," Minato added after a moment's thought,
"the actual caster of that attack… probably wasn't Hagoromo himself."
"…His summoning beast?" the Third Hokage guessed.
Minato nodded.
To be honest, even Minato broke into a sweat for Hagoromo.
The kid likely didn't even fully understand the capabilities of his own summon—and yet he had the nerve to casually summon it and let it fly around the battlefield.
This bombing capability?
Hagoromo had probably only just discovered it himself.
Minato's judgment was, unfortunately, spot on.
As they spoke, explosions continued to echo intermittently from the Sand's rear.
"Minato," the Third Hokage said after a brief pause,
"order our forces to press the attack. I believe Hagoromo has disrupted the enemy's command system."
Even without seeing the Sand rear directly, the chaotic and disordered atmosphere was unmistakable.
Without any prior instruction—and largely by accident—Hagoromo had achieved maximum efficiency.
His "bombs" had landed squarely on the enemy command center.
Granted, his original intention had been rather… questionable.
Not outright depraved—but definitely unsanitary.
The Sand command center had been blasted into utter ruin.
And after discovering Yatagarasu's destructive potential, Hagoromo didn't back off—instead, he doubled down, continuing to carpet-bomb the already shattered command zone.
As for killing the Fourth Kazekage outright?
Hagoromo never expected that.
After all, the leader of a village was still a Kage-level shinobi. He would certainly have defensive measures in place—it wouldn't be that easy.
Still, blowing him into a soot-covered mess was plenty satisfying.
In truth, Hagoromo had underestimated the power of the egg-bombs.
More importantly, the attack was far too sudden.
The enemy hadn't anticipated it.
Neither had Hagoromo himself.
The Fourth Kazekage was hit squarely in the initial blast—not because he was unlucky, but because Hagoromo had been aiming at his head in the first place.
While he wasn't killed outright, he definitely sustained injuries.
As for how severe those injuries were—
The battlefield below was now completely shrouded in smoke and dust. Hagoromo couldn't see clearly, but that was fine.
His primary goal had never been killing the Kazekage.
That was the Hokage's job.
Hagoromo's objective was to utterly cripple Sunagakure's command structure amid the chaos.
After dumping several full "payloads," Hagoromo finally redirected his attacks toward other targets.
By now, the Sand shinobi had learned their lesson. They began scrambling and evading desperately.
Unfortunately for them—
Most shinobi's two legs couldn't outrun a bird's two wings.
Even so, Hagoromo's goal had already been achieved.
After destroying the command center, his second objective was complete battlefield disruption.
Whether the Sand formation was shattered by explosions or scattered by panic didn't matter.
Chaos was chaos.
And when the enemy fell into chaos—
That was Konoha's opportunity.
From this point on, in terms of casualty exchange ratio, Sunagakure's losses became ghastly.
No matter how chaotic things got on Konoha's side, they still maintained, at minimum, four-man squad cohesion.
The Sand shinobi, however, were bombed, chased, scattered, and isolated.
Many lost contact with their units entirely.
They had to watch the skies for bombardment while facing organized Konoha squads alone.
The result was predictably tragic.
Many Sand shinobi were wiped out in a single coordinated assault before they could even respond.
Once the enemy could no longer mount effective resistance, the outcome of the battle began to tilt decisively toward Konoha.
Victory was no longer abstract.
It was visible.
Knowing that any flying unit had limited ammunition—and that Yatagarasu's attacks were likely extremely chakra-intensive—Hagoromo stopped after neutralizing major strategic targets and spreading enough terror overhead.
He then sent another report to the command center.
"Enemy command system largely destroyed.
Rear formations completely disrupted.
Kazekage status unknown.
Sunagakure unable to organize effective counterattacks in the short term."
For several seconds after receiving the report—
The command center was silent.
If facial expressions could be transmitted by sound alone, they would have sent Hagoromo a profoundly confused one.
Because, as far as they remembered—
KamishiroHagoromo's assigned role was reconnaissance.
What he had just accomplished…
Could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as "reconnaissance results."
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