Watching the quickly filling arena, Hinata gave Ino an innocent look. “Since I dealt with the previous big attack, this one is yours, Ino-chan.” She sweetly said, causing Ino to give her a stink eye.

Hinata just smiled through it until Ino relented and clicked her tongue. “Fine! Let big sister Ino show you how it’s done, then.” Ino grumbled with a huff, but she couldn’t refuse.

Hinata dealt with the first attack because she had lost in a mental rock-paper-scissors competition. The problem and the reason she was annoyed, however, was that she was a precision fighter. She was no ninjutsu specialist. She didn’t have numerous powerful techniques capable of wide area destruction.

No. Between the two of them, that was Ino’s job.

Letting her sword disappear back into the seal on her wrist, Ino nonchalantly clapped her hands together. The gesture looked almost mundane. Casual, even.

But the change could be felt instantly. The winds started picking up as Ino’s chakra started to concentrate around her hands, changing into a wind natured one while being refined and sharpened at a rapid pace in a seemingly unending circle, while Ino was molding it into a technique.

Ino and Hinata’s hair and clothes started flapping in the breeze, at first slowly. But it swiftly became wild as the breeze changed into a strong gale, and the heavily concentrated air chakra around Ino’s hands started to exude a tangible pressure.

A bead of sweat flowed down Ino’s temple as she glanced down at the arena, mentally calculating how big of an area of effect she could afford to give her attack without affecting the spectators. Biting her lower lip, Ino slowly outstretched her hands and pointed her palms downward, toward the arena full of sand and golden dust.

A ball started forming in front of Ino’s palms, the wind chakra it contained screeching and grinding against each other while swiftly rotating at speeds invisible to the naked eye.

As small wind blades made out of pure wind chakra started to form around the ball, Ino smirked in satisfaction, and added her own twist to it, causing the ball to turn blackish as it started to inwardly destabilize. Even the loud screeching stopped, the ball becoming deadly silent.

“Wind Release: Vacuum Rasenshuriken.”

Ino intoned, more to look cool in front of Hinata than for any other purpose, and she instantly shot the ball downward before it could explode in her hands as the recoil from shooting the technique sent her spiraling backward through the air with a deafening boom.

The blackish ball smashed through the golden dust mixed with a copious amount of sand near the center of the arena, burrowing inside of it through sheer force.

For a moment, nothing happened as more sand and golden dust filled the hole.

It was enough that even Rasa, who was hiding near the wall, blending in with the sand, had furrowed his eyebrows. Such a dramatic preparation shouldn’t have an underwhelming effect.

Just in case, he decided to relocate and formed a small floating platform underneath his feet before shooting into the air. His instincts were screaming at him…

In the next moment, the black ball within the sand expanded. Not loudly. There was no warning. Silent as a grave, the entire arena was suddenly engulfed in a pulsing, black bubble alongside everything that was inside.

There was no explosion. No wind pressure. No overwhelming shockwave.

The black bubble lasted barely a moment before it quietly dissipated, leaving only a massive, bowl-like crater within the arena bordering exactly with the walls, showing that Ino’s calculations and control over the technique reached pinpoint precision.

Rasa could only stare in disbelief as most of his golden dust was deleted out of existence before he could even blink.

As for Hinata and Ino…

“Heh! How did you like that!?” Ino proudly shouted at Hinata with a smug grin.

But Hinata furrowed her eyebrows with a small wince, and shouted back, “What!?”

While the technique itself was silent, the shooting was positively deafening, and both Ino and Hinata were right next to it. In fact, Ino had used her wind chakra to prevent her eardrums from rupturing. Hinata was not so lucky.

“I ASKED HOW YOU LIKED THAT!?” Ino loudly shouted.

“WHAT!? YOUR TECHNIQUE DEAFENED ME! SPEAK LOUDER!” Hinata’s lips twitched as she stifled a laugh. They both knew Hinata could read lips superbly. But there was no snowball chance in hell she would give the bimbo the satisfaction she sought.

Screw her for not warning her.

“I SAID YOU ARE A BITCH!” Ino scowled and crossed her arms under her chest.

“I HEARD THAT!” Hinata shouted back with an amused grin, causing Ino to roll her eyes at her as the two of them slowly neared the ground inside the crater.

Their options for flight were both very energy-intensive. Preferably, they didn’t want to stay in the air when they didn’t have to.

Their feet hit the ground, and Ino slumped, ‘Sage, that took a lot of chakra.’

‘Mhm. My Lightning Armament wasn’t a walk in the park either.’ Hinata nodded in sympathy. Throwing around these S-rank techniques was definitely badass. But they were not free.

After all the fighting today, their chakra pools were almost running dry.

‘Hey, Hinata…’ Ino wryly smiled, feeling a bit down. ‘We are not really prepared to duke it out with a proper S-rank ninja, are we?’

Ino felt quite arrogant prior to this fight. She thought she could handle something like this easily after all her training. But her pride had taken a hit during this fight.

The fact that Rasa was still alive was damning proof. It was two versus one, and both of them were truly trying to kill him. They were not playing around. Yet, he had evaded every attempt while returning them with zeal.

Hinata glanced at Ino and shrugged, sending her the mental impression of a ‘so-so’ gesture. She honestly didn’t care about Ino’s inner turmoil.

It was childish. They were properly trained for less than two years, and they were already at this stage. What was there to complain about? In her heart, she scoffed at Ino’s attitude.

Ren had prepared them well. They could fight on this level. They were fast enough to react and keep up the pace with Rasa. They could easily flee whenever the fancy struck them. That wasn’t the problem.

No. The actual problem was that, unlike the ninjas who had reached S-rank after years of effort and hard-won life-and-death experience, they did not have enough said experience against S-class opponents.

Rasa did. And it gave him a noticeable edge.

Rasa slowly controlled his floating platform made out of the golden dust and hopped onto the ground opposite Ino and Hinata with a solemn expression.

He had only one more seal filled with golden dust. The dust from the remaining three… He gave the two girls a disgruntled look. They were children! Wet-behind-the-ears, barely out of the academy, brats!

‘And they pushed me this far.’ Rasa thought in cold anger aimed at himself, mixed with an immense disbelief.

This… This was disgraceful.

His pride took a severe beating. When he jumped them, he knew they would be strong. Maybe even on the precipice of S-rank. But they should still not be as good in an actual combat as a hardened and experienced S-rank veteran.

The fact that they could keep up with him… Rasa’s face darkened, and he only reaffirmed that these two girls needed to die and they needed to die now.

If he didn’t feel that both of them were running on a near-empty, he would have fled by now, pride be damned. With only one scroll of golden dust left, his combat effectiveness was extremely weakened. Fortunately, the two Konoha girls were on the verge of chakra exhaustion, and as a Kazekage, he had to finish them.

Hinata and Ino stared at Rasa, who was clenching his fists while glaring at them with narrowed eyes. They were in that awkward stage of a fight where both sides were severely weakened and tried to find a weakness in each other to exploit.

Or so it probably appeared to Rasa.

Ino almost cracked up, and even Hinata’s eyes narrowed in mirth. Unfortunately for the Kazekage, who thought they were weakened, they had a sugar daddy!

With amused expressions, both Ino and Hinata activated the chakra storage seal on their bodies and emptied them in one go, feeling their chakra networks flooded with chakra. Hinata’s breath hitched, and Ino visibly shuddered from the pleasant, invigorating feeling that filled them.

Rasa’s solemn expression and calculating eyes froze as he felt the surge of chakra from his opponents. He subconsciously gulped as, right in front of his very eyes, the impossible had happened.

From near chakra exhaustion, his opponents had their chakra refilled to its full capacity in an instant. Recognizing what this meant for his chances of not only winning, but even just surviving this battle, Rasa’s expression almost sank.

For the first time, he started having some regrets regarding this invasion. He only hoped Gaara could cause enough damage before the Suna forces retreated.

The tension filled the air as Ino and Hinata stared at Rasa with a savage glee of a hunter watching its prey, while Rasa had decided to try and run away from this lost fight.

And just as the two parties were about to move…

A burst of smoke appeared between them and quickly dissipated, revealing Kakashi idly standing in his usual slightly slumped position with his nose buried in an orange book.

“Yo! Sorry, I am late. A black cat cro-, er.” He raised his free hand before stopping. Casually looking around in confusion, his sole visible eye slowly blinked, and he tilted his head. “Did I miss something?”

—

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Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep