Chapter 34: The Beast

**Chapter 32**

Kael ran across the thick canopy as if the branches had always belonged to him. His feet found every perfect landing without conscious thought. Leaves whipped past his face. Wind tore at his black jacket. The body he wore moved with a precision that still startled him whenever he noticed it. It’s like I’ve been doing this all my life, he thought. The muscles already know. I just have to stop getting in their way.

Distant sounds of combat reached him—steel on scale, shouted warnings, the wet slap of heavy bodies striking trees. He pushed harder. The noise grew louder with every leap.

He stopped on a high branch overlooking a wide clearing where the forest floor had been torn open. The scene below was chaos.

Sasuke’s sword flashed in clean arcs, each slash leaving black blood and severed coils in its wake. Two human-sized snakes lunged from opposite sides; he flickered between them, Sharingan spinning, and cut both throats in the same motion. Sakura was farther left, fists wrapped in green medical chakra, smashing a snake’s skull into pulp against a tree trunk. The impact cracked the wood. Another serpent tried to wrap her from behind; she spun and drove an elbow into its midsection hard enough to rupture organs.

Samui had rejoined the fight. Her blonde hair was streaked with dirt and blood. She moved with the same cold efficiency Kael remembered from the anime, kunai flashing, precise cuts opening the soft underbellies of the snakes that closed on her. Karui fought near her, red hair wild, blades a blur of aggressive strikes. Omoi stayed closer to the center, dual swords working in short, economical motions while he muttered strategy under his breath. Mabui remained higher in the trees, throwing senbon with uncanny accuracy whenever a snake tried to climb.

It was not enough.

The snakes kept coming. Dozens. Scores. They poured from the undergrowth and dropped from the branches in endless waves—thick-bodied, human-sized serpents with armored scales and jaws that could crush a skull. Every time one fell, two more took its place. The clearing was already littered with twitching corpses, yet the living ones tightened the circle.

Sasuke cut down another and shouted, "They’re herding us!"

Sakura smashed a snake into the ground and spun. "There’s too many!"

Samui’s voice cut across the noise, calm even under pressure. "Keep moving. Don’t let them pin you against the trees."

But the trees themselves had become part of the trap. Snakes coiled around trunks and dropped onto the fighters from above. One landed on Omoi’s shoulders; he twisted free only because Karui sliced its head off a second later. Another wrapped Samui’s left arm; she drove a kunai into its eye and tore free, but the delay cost her. Three more closed in.

The ground trembled.

From the far side of the clearing a shape larger than any of the others pushed through the trees. The beast. Its body was thicker than a carriage, scales the color of old bronze, eyes glowing a dull yellow. It moved with slow, deliberate power, as if the smaller snakes were merely clearing the path for it. When it opened its mouth the hiss that rolled out vibrated in Kael’s chest even from the high branch.

The fighters below felt it too. Their formation tightened. Sasuke’s Sharingan tracked the massive head. Sakura’s fists clenched harder. Samui’s expression did not change, but her stance shifted to cover more ground.

They were surrounded. Nowhere left to run.

Kael exhaled once.

He stepped off the branch.

Mid-air he formed the seals. "Shadow Clone Jutsu."

The forest exploded with white and black.

Thousands of identical figures burst into existence around him, cascading downward like a living avalanche. The original Kael and a dense core of clones remained high while the rest hit the ground in a storm of bodies. Snakes that had been closing on Samui and the others found themselves suddenly face-to-face with an army of Naruto.

The first wave of clones met the outer ring of serpents with fists, kunai, and pure momentum. One clone drove a knee into a snake’s jaw hard enough to snap bone. Another wrapped both arms around a thick neck and spun, using the serpent’s own weight to slam it into its neighbor. A third simply tackled a snake mid-strike and both vanished in a burst of smoke when the jaws closed—taking the snake with it.

The real battle began in the next breath.

Clones poured into the gaps between the Cloud and Leaf fighters, forming living walls. Where Samui had been about to be overwhelmed, a dozen clones appeared and shredded the snakes with coordinated strikes. Karui laughed once, sharp and startled, then kept cutting. Omoi adjusted instantly, using the clones as temporary shields while he picked off the more dangerous targets.

Sasuke’s eyes flickered across the battlefield, reading the new flow. He did not waste words. His sword work became even more precise, every cut timed to the openings the clones created. Sakura slammed a snake into the dirt and a clone finished it with a Rasengan before she even straightened.

High above, Kael and the densest cluster of clones began forming the technique.

Blue light bloomed in hundreds of hands at once.

"Rasengan."

The spheres spun into existence—dozens, then scores, then hundreds. Each one hummed with compressed chakra. The air itself seemed to vibrate.

Kael dropped.

The clones followed.

They fell like meteors, Rasengan leading.

The first impacts hit the outer mass of snakes. The spinning spheres tore through scale and flesh with wet, explosive force. Bodies ruptured. Coils flew apart. The ground cratered under the force. A second wave of clones landed and released their Rasengan into the denser clusters, turning the middle of the clearing into a storm of blue light and flying debris.

Snakes tried to strike upward. Clones met them in mid-air, Rasengan first. One serpent’s head simply ceased to exist. Another was driven into the earth so hard the impact threw dirt twenty meters. The continuous roar of spinning chakra drowned out the hisses.

Samui watched a clone land beside her, drive a Rasengan into a snake that had been lunging for her throat, and vanish in smoke as the serpent’s body was obliterated. She did not speak. She simply kept fighting, using the chaos the clones created.

Karui shouted something that might have been approval. Omoi adjusted his stance again, blades finding new openings. Mabui’s senbon continued to fall with perfect timing, finishing any snake that tried to escape the blue storm.

The smaller serpents died in droves. The clearing became a charnel ground of twitching black-and-bronze bodies and the lingering smoke of dispelled clones. The air stank of blood and scorched flesh.

Kael landed in the center of what remained, the last of the dense clone cluster around him. Most of the minions were gone—either dead or fleeing into the deeper forest. A few wounded snakes still thrashed; clones finished them without ceremony.

The massive beast had stopped at the edge of the destruction. Its yellow eyes locked on Kael. The long body shifted, scales rasping against one another. It did not retreat. It did not charge. It simply watched, as if measuring the new threat that had erased its army in under a minute.

Sasuke appeared at Kael’s left, sword still drawn, Sharingan fixed on the giant serpent. Sakura moved up on the right, knuckles bloody, breathing hard. Samui and the others closed ranks a short distance behind them.

Kael rolled his shoulders. The residual chakra of the Rasengan still hummed in his arms. He looked at the beast and felt the System’s quiet presence at the edge of his mind, waiting.

The smaller snakes were finished.

The real fight had not yet begun.

---

Give me power!!!