Chapter 271: Defeat
Third match. Sand Village puppet corps fighter versus Might Guy.
Looking at the arena terrain, it was clearly disadvantageous for the Sand Village's puppet user. With no cover anywhere, an opponent could track every movement of his puppet control techniques with complete clarity.
Puppet corps fighters typically preferred ambush tactics, striking from concealment or operating under the protection of teammates. While direct confrontation was not something they shied away from, having everything visible inevitably created some disadvantage.
Of course, if the puppet technique itself was powerful enough, as with Sasori, none of that mattered.
The Sand Village fighter produced a scroll and unsealed his puppets.
The puppets resembled two ox-like creatures. On his back he also carried a third puppet wrapped in bandages.
When the referee's whistle sounded, Guy did not immediately attack. Instead he first smiled and called out to his opponent, straightforwardly expressing that he could feel the pressure and excitement coming from the puppet user and inviting him to engage in a passionate and heated contest.
This scene only confirmed Yashamaru's suspicion that Guy was absolutely an idiot.
The puppet corps fighter said nothing in response. He immediately whipped his chakra threads and drove the two puppets skimming along the ground toward Guy at speed.
These two puppets had clearly been modified. They could burrow underground and disappear from sight, then erupt from the soil close to Guy, spraying a volley of senbon needles.
Guy used his flexible taijutsu to evade these.
Then one of the puppets burst from the ground and launched into the air, where its chakra thread connections were released and it split apart into individual component pieces, each studded with an assortment of sharp bladed weapons. Through the puppet user's arm movements that blurred like afterimages, these pieces were launched at Guy in a continuous barrage.
Even when Guy dodged these puppet components temporarily, the chakra threads could pull them back and redirect them for repeated assaults.
Guy's reaction was also extremely fast.
He exploded forward in a burst of startling speed toward the puppet user.
He understood clearly that the best counter to a puppet corps fighter was close-range combat, eliminating the controller first.
But the Sand Village's puppet user was one of the outstanding members of the village's newer puppet corps generation, someone who had been modeling himself after Sasori from the beginning. His capability was not comparable to ordinary ninja.
While using one puppet to block Guy's advance, he rapidly retreated.
And with the puppet interference disrupting the pursuit, even Guy's extraordinary speed could not close the distance immediately.
Guy discovered that his opponent's chakra thread range was impressively long and his control was extremely fluid. Even at a considerable distance, any movement Guy made gave the puppet user ample reaction time.
Guy then found himself simultaneously having to dodge the puppet components continuously flying at him from above while staying alert to the second puppet concealed underground.
Before long, wounds had appeared on his body.
Guy recognized that without using his true capabilities, dealing with this puppet user would be genuinely difficult.
After retreating to extend the distance, he removed the training weights from his legs in front of everyone.
This scene made Yuji in the gallery feel as though he was watching the original story's match between Rock Lee and Gaara.
Guy and his future student were clearly cut from the same cloth entirely.
After removing the weights, Guy simultaneously opened the first three gates of the Eight Inner Gates, the Opening Gate, the Healing Gate, and the Life Gate.
The first three gates fell within the Eight Inner Gates' safe zone and carried relatively limited physical burden. The moment they opened, terrifying chakra energy erupted outward.
Guy's speed became something the puppet user's eyes simply could not track. It was fast to the point of abnormality.
He heard a single sharp sonic boom and his opponent had already vanished from his line of sight.
The puppet user tried to use distance to stop Guy's advance, pulling his chakra threads back to reassemble the scattered puppet components in midair. But it was far too slow.
The airborne puppet pieces shattered directly. As though struck by some invisible force.
Even the puppet hiding underground had barely emerged before it was destroyed in an instant, reduced to fragments.
The puppet user's expression changed immediately. He recognized the danger.
But he kept his composure. Because he still had a follow-up.
Because of Sasori's existence, the Sand Village's puppet corps level had been advancing continuously. The current state of puppet construction technology and technique variation was incomparable to anything that had existed before.
Bang.
Guy appeared at the puppet user's back in an instant and fired a sudden kick.
He had intended this single strike to deal a severe blow to his opponent.
But unexpectedly, the bandage wrapping on the puppet user's back shattered apart, as though a hard shield had blocked the strike.
Guy's kick had not been able to break through it.
The cloth wrapping scattered. The puppet the fighter had been carrying on his back revealed its true form as it fell heavily to the ground.
Looking at it now, it was not a traditional puppet model at all. It was a solid cylindrical shape constructed from countless small densely packed wooden blocks.
Like a barrel.
"What is this?" Shimizu raised an eyebrow from the gallery.
"Sasori's handiwork," Yuji said with a slight catch in his voice.
This particular specialized puppet had not been made by Sasori for the fighter.
Sasori, given his personality, was extremely unlikely to craft puppets for other people.
Because in Sasori's eyes, other people did not have the standing to use his work. Using it would simply be contamination.
"Most likely he gathered some of Sasori's discarded puppet components and assembled them himself," Yuji said with a quiet smile.
One should not underestimate Sasori's discarded puppet parts.
Even scrapped puppet components contained Sasori's construction philosophy and the ingenious design of their mechanisms. As long as they could be put to use, even at a fraction of their original effectiveness in Sasori's hands, for a younger generation puppet user like this Sand Village fighter, the enhancement would still be considered substantial.
Swoosh.
The Sand Village fighter had managed to take Guy's first kick by luck.
But the second attack came before he could react at all.
Guy's striking speed was simply too fast.
A single punch sent the puppet user flying.
But before his body had even finished traveling through the air, the puppet user's chakra threads had already connected back to the circular wooden barrel-shaped puppet.
With barely a twitch of his fingers, the barrel suddenly expanded. Each small wooden block transformed into a puppet arm, and like branches spreading from a tree they intertwined with each other and extended outward in every direction, shooting out at high speed.
At the same time they released a thick mist.
The most familiar weapon of any puppet corps fighter. Poison. This was a toxic fog.
These arms shot out at tremendous speed, covering a wide area. Even Guy could not react immediately. His expression shifted and he covered his mouth and nose, immediately withdrawing to create distance.
But his eyes showed a brief flash of alarm.
The Sand Village's poisons were not like ordinary poisons. And with the Sand Village's medical system being as advanced as it was, its research into toxicology was incomparable to what any other village had developed.
After forcing Guy to retreat, the puppet user climbed back up from the ground, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. In an instant he seized his chakra threads. The puppet arms that had extended outward in every direction retracted immediately back into their circular wooden stack formation, pulled back to stand in front of him.
With his continued manipulation, the wooden stack centered on him slowly spread outward and divided into four separate smaller wooden boxes, wrapping him tightly within them as a defensive shell.
From this configuration, any time Guy closed in and landed a hit, as long as the puppet user's consciousness did not immediately shut down, the arms within the boxes would spring outward again with spreading toxic smoke.
In this way, after several exchanges, even with Guy's precautions, the cumulative poisoning effect would deepen over time. And the mechanical arms would gradually add to his injuries.
This was a fighting style of trading wounds for wounds. Defensive counterattack.
However, from both Yuji and Shimizu's perspective, the puppet user had already lost.
Because this was not a real battlefield. It was only a competition match.
If these were mortal enemies, that first kick Guy had landed would not have simply wounded the puppet user. It would have ended him outright.
That said, Yuji was still genuinely pleased.
Because through this fight he had seen the transformation Sasori had brought to the Sand Village's puppet corps soldiers.
Previously, the puppet corps fighters within the village, whether in their control techniques or their construction philosophy, had never shown this kind of inventive ingenuity. There was something almost supernatural about it, something difficult to predict or defend against.
This particular fighter's puppet, assembled from Sasori's unwanted scraps, was a creation of his own thinking and craftsmanship.
A puppet user's combat capability was in part determined by the concepts and thinking they brought to constructing and operating their puppets. In this way they were fundamentally different from ordinary ninja.
"He used paralytic and disorienting toxins rather than lethal ones. If he had used a lethal toxin, even if his opponent could technically win, the cost would be severe," Shimizu said with some reluctance, having already read the outcome.
"A loss is a loss. No need to make excuses," Yuji said with an indifferent smile.
"Ha ha. The Sand Village's puppet corps is genuinely formidable. Even Guy's victory here is a narrow one," Minato said with practiced modesty from beside Yuji.
"Besides, a fight is never concluded until the final moment. Drawing conclusions now seems a little premature."
"Please," Yuji said with a quiet snort.
Minato's expression went slightly awkward.
He got the distinct feeling that Yuji had just dismissed him.
Because what he had just said was a bit disingenuous. Too transparently false. Not sincere enough.
...
BOnus @200 PS
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