Everyone gathered around Tobirama to receive their mission scrolls and kunai marked with the Flying Thunder God seal.
The wheel of war was rolling forward, this was to be a decisive battle.
If everything went smoothly, Konoha's defensive line could finally turn inward, securing the stronghold without fear of attacks from behind.
After the others had left, the command tent returned to silence.
Arima remained behind, he wanted to ask his granduncle about the handling of the captured Gold and Silver Brothers.
Tobirama intended to delay the enemy's offer to exchange prisoners. If they won this battle, and with those two hostages still in his hands, he could maximize the political and tactical gains.
Once he finished, Arima left the tent to coordinate specific tactical operations with the individual squads.
Watching the setting sun in the distance, Tobirama muttered, "Let's hope this time we can cleanse the frontlines and change the tide for good."
As night fell, the camp came alive with the sounds of cooking. Everyone ate heartily before the decisive battle.
Koharu dragged Arima over to eat with her. He was more than happy to let her take care of the logistics.
By midnight, the entire force had assembled. Only a crew of logistics personnel remained at the camp, while the rest moved out en masse.
As planned, Arima would infiltrate the enemy's rear alone. Once Konoha signaled the main assault, he would strike from behind to break the enemy formation and attack their camp.
For ordinary shinobi, such a mission would be suicide, even elite Jonin squads would struggle to survive.
But for Arima, this wasn't difficult. His abilities allowed him to move through enemy lines as if they didn't exist.
The opposing forces weren't far apart, roughly half a day's forced march. By now, the Konoha troops were already on the move, morale surging like a rising tide.
Thanks to his keen chakra sensory abilities, Arima located the enemy's sentries and checkpoints with precision and slipped through the defenses with ease, reaching deep into the enemy's rear.
All he needed to do now was wait quietly for the signal.
He had slept well the night before, and now with nothing to do, he found himself full of energy, and quickly falling into idle thoughts.
He thought of everything back in the village, of little Tsunade, of his mother and Grandma Mito… even the image of the giant orange fox crept into his mind from time to time.
Out of boredom, he checked the system in his mind.
Learning Sage Mode had cost him 10,000 virtue points.
Since then, he'd saved up more, and now had a total of 18,900. Still far from what he needed to redeem the Mangekyo Sharingan.
But what truly caught his attention was something new in the exchange system, tailed beast chakra storage units. The discovery hit Arima like a thunderclap.
He had already inferred certain secrets of the shinobi world from the system's data.
But this.. this was just the tip of the iceberg. The true origins of the Tailed Beasts were shrouded in mystery, and he could only find vague clues in the village's ancient texts.
The chakra storage units were divided into nine types, one for each tailed beast, and when fully charged, they could be fused into something greater.
His biggest question now was.
What would happen if the chakra of all nine tailed beasts were combined? He was overflowing with curiosity.
But they were ridiculously expensive. The lowest, for the One-Tail, cost 5,000 points. The Nine-Tails' storage unit was equivalent in price to a pair of Mangekyo Sharingan.
Arima stared at the numbers, speechless. At his current pace of earning 100 points a day, it would take him three years just to afford one Nine-Tails unit, and he still needed the other eight.
'If there were no war,' he thought bitterly, 'it would take me at least ten years to afford them all. And to fuse them... I'd need 500,000 points. It feels impossible.'
Still, there was a silver lining, he hadn't hit the ceiling of the shinobi world's power yet. There was room to grow.
Time passed, and the sky began to lighten. Based on the plan, his fellow disciples should now be in position.
Suddenly, a dazzling flare lit up the sky, brilliant and unmistakable.
Whether from excitement or the cold night air, Arima felt his body tremble. His hairs stood on end.
This was the largest battle he'd ever faced.
He quickly centered himself, pressed his hands together, and entered Sage Mode.
From afar came the faint sounds of battle, shouts, explosions, and even the faint smell of blood.
Thinking of his comrades bleeding on the front lines, Arima knew he had to act. The sooner he entered the battle, the more lives he might save.
He used the Flying Thunder God technique to teleport into the fray. What greeted him was devastation, corpses strewn across the field, rubble everywhere.
Blood and fire mingled in the air, overwhelming his senses.
Amid the chaos, he saw several Jonin attacking Koharu.
He knew he had to act.
Pressing his hands together, he spoke softly, voice low and resolute.
"Shinobi of Kumogakure... I'll send you to the Pure Land. This hatred, I'll bear it, I'll repay it slowly."
"Sage Art Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands."
With that, he summoned a massive wooden statue, the thousand-armed bodhisattva.
The colossal figure towered like a mountain range, one hand alone seemingly capable of grasping the Nine-Tails itself.
The Konoha forces, seeing reinforcements arrive, quickly signaled for retreat. They withdrew at top speed.
The Kumogakure shinobi stood in shock, awed by the divine statue. Before it, they were as ants, tiny, helpless, insignificant.
Some of the more experienced Kumo shinobi realized something was wrong.
With Konoha retreating and the massive statue closing in, they were caught between the two with nowhere to hide.
Arima sensed his allies had regrouped and saw their signal.
Looking at the stunned Kumo troops below the statue, Arima saw countless young faces.
To him, they might have been someone's husband or wife, a parent, a sibling, or just a kid dreaming of returning home after the war to see their loved ones again.
And now, he was about to crush all their hopes.
With a heart full of solemn respect for life, he stood atop the statue and shouted down.
"Surrender. Lay down your weapons now, and you might still return home. I'll give you ten seconds to decide. If you're still armed by then... I won't hold back."
The Kumogakure shinobi looked up at the enormous statue, their hearts filled with dread.
Behind it loomed countless giant fists, any one of which could kill them outright.
Many were prepared to die in battle, but at the mention of "home," their thoughts turned to the loved ones they'd left behind.
Some had doubted the war's purpose from the beginning. They'd gained nothing, and only watched friends die one after another.
With no hope of victory, no reason left to fight, they dropped their weapons and surrendered.
This was the best possible outcome for Arima. He didn't crave killing, but to protect Konoha, he had to shoulder the weight of hatred.
A few extremists tried to fight to the death, but under Arima's overwhelming strength, their resistance was crushed almost instantly, like ripples on a pond.
The rest, seeing his ruthless efficiency, gave up any lingering thoughts of resistance. Before such power, their schemes were meaningless. This was the despair of ants facing a god.
Arima sent a clone to report the situation to his fellow comrades, who quickly dispatched personnel to secure the prisoners.
Living prisoners were far more valuable than corpses. This battle had truly turned the tide.
Once the prisoners were secured, Koharu finally noticed that Arima had already left, he was headed to another battlefield.
She turned back to look once more at the towering statue, still shaken. To her, Arima had become a figure of awe and admiration.
She whispered, "As long as you're here, Konoha will never know war again."
At that moment, Arima was already teleporting toward another battlefield using the Flying Thunder God.
He was deeply worried for his senpais. They had split their forces into three groups, and with limited manpower, they were vulnerable to encirclement.
He prayed for their safety.
When he arrived, he found two Konoha squads already locked in a fierce, deadlocked battle.
Using the True Several Thousand Hands technique here would be too dangerous, it could harm his own allies.
The two sides were too closely entangled, and the Konoha forces couldn't retreat in time.
'I'll just have to capture them all,' he thought.
Forming the hand seal, he whispered.
"Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence!"
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