A serpent, colored like a tree bark, curled itself around a piece of rock debris and observed the transpiring battle. Despite the reptile's unorthodox size, surpassing that of even long-extinct historic snakes, its camouflaging scales and the fact that it would rather hang out on or around debris instead of partaking in battle kept it relatively safe and sheltered from battle.
That was until a thin, long metal rod whizzed in through the air and ripped through the serpent's head. The reptile jerked and thrashed its punctured head about before flopping lifelessly on the ground and leaking dripping sludge of magenta color. With the bubbly, thick ooze flopping out of the reptile's wound, it would have been tough to notice a slender and short man flopping out from the snake's mouth onto the ground alongside blood and viscera. However, based on the cascade of more ripping, thin metal rods whizzing through the air, that was exactly what happened.
With unusual flexibility, the humanoid coated with magenta gore flipped rolled and leaned out of the way of the incoming rods. Then, a pair of amber-colored eyes shot wide open as the concealed shinobi wiped his face clean of grime with a long white sleeve, staining it further than the ninja's outfit had already been stained. The amber eyes raced around, doing their best to track the assailant that not only tracked the shinobi hidden inside of a sunning snake but also had enough free time to pick trouble with him.
A handful of sea-water-colored serpents emerged from underneath the baggy, blood-stained silk kimono that was held together just by a carbon-fiber vest that hung tightly across the core of the slender and short shinobi with a red cloth tied around the lower area of his face and a Kusagakure forehead protector plate positioned over the mouth of the snake-user. The reptiles turned and twisted, slipping out their tongues and drawing in intelligence from the air particles themselves before fixing their position onto a hole blasted inside the arena grounds.
The snakes shot out in a coordinated assault as more and more serpents struck out from underneath the baggy clothes of the Kusagakure ninja. A handful of metal rods whizzed through the air and nailed the incoming snakes while they were still airborne, but then the firing quickly stopped and the serpents slammed into the open shady hole with vicious ferocity. Having failed to sink their venomous fangs into anything concrete, the serpents opened their mouths and released cascading waves of smaller serpents that sought to drown out the underground cavern and force the shadowy assailant into the light.
A booming explosion ripped through the area, and the Kusagakure ninja turned his attention to the noisy blast, figuring he'd finally see his attacker for who and what they were. Strangely, only rising mountains of coiling serpents emerged only to reach the climax of what the laws of physics could support and implode from within, which made snakes rain down upon the surface of the arena and slither about, sharing their fright with the rest of the competitors. Despite successful flooding of the cavern with deadly serpents, the assailant refused to allow himself to get flushed out; it seemed.
A perfectly camouflaged shape sent a cascade of flickering, reflected light as a triplet of red gleaming dots closed in on the snake-commanding ninja from behind. These lights appeared to be positioned around the head area of an average-sized human, giving the impression that these were the assailant's eyes. The reflective, perfect camouflaging outer layer that matched, if not surpassed, the natural concealment abilities of the massive snake that the Kusagakure ninja hid inside earlier, was like the artificial skin of this swift and silent assassin.
However, before the fleet-footed assassin could ram his rod dispenser into the back of the Kusagakure ninja's head and force him to surrender or put him through a painful case of lobotomy, the head of the Kusagakure ninja cracked around. This way, it turned to an alarming degree that made the flesh and skin of the serpentine ninja stretch and wrinkle. The amber eyes of the ninja with the concealed face and spiky black hair that went upward as high as they could before naturally being weighed down by their own weight and fell past his chin now displayed a slit-iris more attributable to a carnivorous reptile than a human being.
"Got you…" the serpentine ninja gleamed his predator's eyes, emitting an invisible pulse of chakra from them that froze the camouflaged assailant in place.
"Damn…" a masculine voice belonging to seemingly no one spread from the location of the three glinting red dots. "Right through… The suit's… Camouflage…"
A murky green snake emerged from underground and bit into something chunky. It pulled downward, causing a crunchy thud, followed by a ripping sound. In a surprising turn of events, the underground serpent removed the mask with the thermal and night vision goggles, revealing a ragged face of a shaved-head man underneath. Alongside his reflective camouflage skinsuit, it appeared as if the head had been hovering above ground when the man rolled and stood back up.
"Those toys…" the serpentine ninja said while his underground reptile emerged, burrowing itself out from an underground cavern caused by the violent battles proceeding into the underground areas of the arena with the mask and the hi-tech goggles still stuck in its mouth and flopped what it had taken away from the invisible attacker into the ninja's hand. "Reflective scales, artificial eyes that simulate thermal vision. I'm not sure if I should feel flattered or not."
"As long as you just stand still, I'm good either way," the spy spat out in defiance while flinging an airborne orb that blew up with pepper gas that was sharp to breathe in or keep one's eyes open through. The snake ninja staggered back, surprised by this strangely effective method of attack that made it impossible to perceive the environment by sniffing the air particles or to use the innate infrared vision that the serpentine ninja possessed.
With the breathing room he had just earned, the spy quickly reloaded his rod dispenser with another capsule of iron rods and sent them whizzing at the stunned ninja while all the serpents he had unleashed slithered back underneath his clothes. "What the…!?" the spy barked out when his opponent leaned out of the way of the incoming metal rods as if he could still see them clear as day. A serpent shot out from underground and chomped down on the spy's shoulder, tearing through his camouflage suit and leaving it halfway tattered, which exposed almost the entire left half of his body and sent trails of warm blood running down.
"I'm beginning to think that this was no freak encounter. You ignored the chaos raging on the stage and targeted me specifically, also, your gear appears to be loosely based on the innate abilities of a snake and you possess equipment capable of countering a snake's natural abilities," the Kusagakure ninja appeared from the cloud of pepper gas wearing the shreds of the mask that the underground snake had ripped off of the spy. Upon seeing the method that his opponent used to overcome the cloud of pepper gas, the spy couldn't help but chuckle to himself.
"Sorry, my goggles just locked on you, sitting tight and hiding inside your pet. I couldn't let anyone sit out most of the battle and then emerge with a massive advantage during the later stages. That was sort of my plan. That's all that was," the spy grumbled out through the pain before slipping out a curved knife from a concealed pouch on his camo suit and slashing across the area in between the nostrils of the snake chomping down on him and keeping him in place.
Reacting to the attempted escape, the Kusagakure ninja slammed his arms together, forcing twin intertwining snakes to coil around one another and merge to make a much thicker and more massive snake that shot out its neck for a crushing bite. The injured spy bounced on top of the incoming snake snout and then kicked off into the air. Just as the serpentine ninja turned to pursue his elusive target, a loud buzz from over his head made the ninja turn his head up in that direction, revealing an incoming plastic whirligig gadget with hanging explosives homing in on his location.
A vicious blast ripped through the stage, though, at this point, it hardly distracted anyone. All that this explosion achieved was forcing the duking combatants to brace for impact temporarily before resuming their bouts. A dome of flames and an expansive blast radius colored the central area of the arena for a few blinks before burning out and leaving just a cloud of smoke and dust hanging. When the smoke cleared out, it revealed a curled snake that had coiled around its summoner like a protective dome of a snake shield. The snake's body had been littered with scrapes and bruises, yet, instead of dispelling into smoke or rolling over and dying, the snake dissolved into tiny snakelets from each of its scales.
The shell-shocked ninja put a few steps out in a dazed stagger before he could straighten up and brush off the suicidal attack of a toy drone stuck with explosives. Before this day, the serpent ninja didn't really consider spies as rivals to the ninja. He barely had only heard of them, in fact. Yet, the fact that they so flawlessly combined multiple ninja arts into a highly effective combination and used hi-tech equipment to compensate for talents they lacked impressed him at least a little. This one persistent man fought like a taijutsu, weaponry, and puppetry specialist, despite being taught in neither of these ninja arts.
Before the scorned Kusagakure ninja could find a trace of his opponent again, a loop of steel wire wrapped around his throat and zipped him up higher. An ironclad lock of tight and powerful arms locked around the ninja's throat while his feet dangled in the air and the spy wasted no time before following the strangle with a quick neck snap that turned the ninja's head sideways vertically and calmed his thrashing feet to a haunting dangle.
The battle-worn spy had hung himself atop a reel of intertwined steel wire strands attached to twin metal rods he shot out to each side of the arena and embedded inside the protective walls holding the spectator area suspended above the ground. By hanging on the steel wire with his legs, he had shot a loop of steel wire down to drag his target in for a close-distance kill, seeing no other choice but to eliminate the ninja with wild supernatural from the spy's point of view abilities.
Feeling somewhat somber about the battle's outcome, the spy pulled out a slick ascender gadget and attached it to the horizontal rope to reel himself quickly above the edge of the arena, where he could drop the hanging body down. The steel wire sang in tension while the humming gadget transported the pair across the entire arena cascading with blasts and shockwaves, carefully navigating around a few airborne Cursed Warriors and around a downed and busted statue of Five-Tails to swing and drop the deadweight out.
"Did you really just go for the kill on me?" a vocal question made the heart of even a veteran spy freeze up. When he gazed down, he saw only the turned head of his cargo that looked at him with a psychotic pair of eyes, having recovered from having his neck snapped in no time at all. "What happened to good sportsmanship?"
The reptilian predator's eyes flashed with an invisible shock that paralyzed the spy in place while his gadget still reeled him all the way to the outer edge of the arena. The Kusagakure shinobi shook and slipped out from his white kimono and a tight carbon fiber black vest while the stiffened and paralyzed spy reeled off, still clasping to the collar of the shed clothes. The snake-summoner flopped onto the edge of the arena, landing firmly on his feet while stretching out his back and snapping his neck to the left and right to readjust it to a position more natural for his modified snake-human anatomy.
The paralyzed spy reeled himself off to crash into the protective wall and fell down and out of the arena, still stiff from the genjutsu that the snake-user cast on him. The Kusagakure ninja flexed his pale-skinned body decorated with countless serpent tattoos and swung his arm to fend off an incoming assault of competitors that noticed him positioned by the outer edge of the arena, determined to eliminate him. The black snake tattoo on the right arm flashed with a blaze-colored glow before summoning a massive python that swiped its upper body like a club and deflected the incoming attackers while a snake appeared from an underground cavern and swallowed the Kusagakure serpentine ninja up whole, carrying him off to a safer and undisclosed location where someone else would have to find him again.
"At last, the inevitable clash between the ninja and the spies has begun! It has been a reoccurring rivalry in the recent years that threatened to shake up the very foundation of the eastern feudal system of the Great Countries! Round One seems to have gone favorably to the ninja, as Hikosuru Boha from Kusagakure eliminated the veteran spy codenamed KAITA!" the announcer declared another elimination. "One by one, the competitors of our battle royale are dropping! There are currently 143 competitors competing for the privilege of competing in the quarter-finals!"
"Hmmm… Man, this statue is a real eyesore, and it's taking all that space…" a rough-looking vagabond samurai with wild curly and dirty hair tied up into a standing stack of hair scratched his itchy head while staring at the fallen and exhausted statue that Mana's soul had been imprisoned into. "I should probably blast it outta here… Although… It wouldn't hurt to have one last smoke on it. It looks comfy."
Having settled on it, the samurai with a crude stubble vanished in a black and white blur and appeared on top of the statue's head, stretched out like a civilian having a time of their life at the beach as he lit up a pipe and began drawing in vile fumes into his lungs to puff it out into the sky without a care in the world while utter chaos was decimating the battlefield all around him.
A shade covered up the ever-present desert sun, making the vagabond abandon his hopes of enjoying himself and gaze skyward where a plucked ridge of debris was slowly plummeting toward him like a meteor. Without haste and grumbling like a grumpy senior, the samurai stood up and pocketed his pipe, placing his hand on the hilt of his sword. Frames of reality seemed to skip, producing a malfunctioning cut between one moment in time and another, while the swordsman calmly looked around, seeking the cruel soul that had tried slamming a colossal boulder chunk onto him and his deadweight piece of furniture.
A clamorous shockwave ripped through the arena, revealing a slender humanoid form with flappy wide ears on both sides and a curly, thin tail behind it. The slick texture of reflective obsidian had shiny green lights beaming from decorative patterns and mosaics decorating the Cursed Warrior. The lazy vagabond slipped his pinky into his ear while the airborne mound exploded into a shower of pinch-sized diamonds.
"Oh, hey… It's one of you guys. You were doing well. Not a single one of you got the boot yet, huh? Nice job…" the lazy-bottom nonchalantly complemented the thrashing colossal simian structure that slammed its fists at the ground and sent nearby combatants flying in all directions, forcing them to cower and hide from the thrashing threat.
Terrifying red flames splintered the arena, ripping through the surface and overflowing the underground caverns with uncompromising heat. The obsidian-textured cursed beast wound up its fist that pulsed with that same berserk red heat and thrust it in a punch that spanned a quarter of the entire ring, aiming to crush the vagabond samurai, to immolate him from within, or, at the very least, to fling him out of bounds in a single apocalyptic blow.
"You know I can slice each individual atom you're composed of, right?" the semi-bored vagabond swordsman mumbled to himself while adopting a sword-drawing stance in mid-air as the collision of the two forces came closer and closer. "Though, man… That's like thirty decillion atoms I've got to slice. Way to make me work out for no reason…"
The fist of the Cursed ape Warrior collided with the incoming hobo samurai, covering the entire arena in a flash of light and forcing the audience to collapse in their seats as a shockwave resonated throughout the whole continent, despite the best attempts of both combatants to focus all the residue force solely into the opposing contestant. Unlike countless resonant shockwaves plaguing the hectic battlefield with each passing second, this calamitous collision seemed to attract not only the attention of all the competitors and the terrified spectators, but even the Cursed Warriors themselves turned to one of their own that entered a fiery power struggle with the most unlikely of opponents.
A vertical red halo of blazing texture expanded, slicing the arena in half by the middle where the two opposing forces met. The heated red nova burst emitted by the punch of the Cursed Warrior engulfed the vagabond and reduced his already pitiful clothes to utter rags while covering his whole body in first and second-degree burns and sending him crashing into the protective wall encased in a bright white beam of pure heat at nigh light-speed. The triumphant Cursed beast Warrior pounded its chest and let out an artificial-sounding roar, full of static and ripping interferences and just about as far away from clean, natural noise as one could get.
"W-What a shocking elimination! This simian Cursed Warrior eliminated Genshi Scabbard, a famed and highly skilled samurai!" the announcer leaned over the rails, despite the heated atmosphere and ever-present danger to his life.
"This… This is unbelievable, that it is…" an awe-struck samurai with pink hair and dressed in a silken blue kimono stared at the chest-pounding colossal monster that had just eliminated a hidden ace of the samurai team.
"What is the matter, Hashin? Is a famed assassin terrified of some stone and flame?" Lord Mifune inquired the swordsman. Based on the expression of the samurai lord, the man whom the lord was speaking to disgusted the nobility of the Land of Iron, yet his skill with the sword had quite the opposite effect.
"If you have any ambition to win this tournament, you will order the rest of the samurai to not engage these monsters in battle, that you will," Hashin turned to the noble samurai lord with a desperate expression not befitting a cold and ruthless killer that had taken thousands of lives of both men, women, and children.
"Hm? This is a strange thing to hear from a butcher like you. If you don't feel incentivized to do your job, I can assure you that the Iron Shogun will pay dozens of times your normal rate, and surely putting a lifeless chunk of charcoal down like one of these ogres will make you sleep better at night than carving up a nursing home…" Mifune looked at the back of the blood-stained yet gentle in body and silk-smooth in skin killer.
"I have killed two-thousand nine-hundred and eighty people throughout my life. I've slain men, women, and children, I've done whatever it took to secure peace and preserve the old ways that kept the Land of Iron intact, that I have. You may not approve of my methods, Lord Mifune, but you know this to be true. I offered my life and I've thrown away my childhood to do what no other samurai had the guts to do, that I have. I've slain many people you might label as innocents, ninety-nine percent of my kills were more akin to executions than a fight, and rarely do my clashes last longer than a few swings of blades, that they do. Throughout my entire career, I've only failed to assassinate the target three times," Hashin said with a stone-cold face that left no place for doubt in the validity of his cold statistical claims.
"Your efficiency as a manslayer is well known to me, you needn't brag about it to me," Lord Mifune appeared more revolted by these facts than impressed by them by any means, though he reserved his composure.
"You do not understand yet, Mifune-dono, the target that I failed to assassinate three times throughout my career was this very vagabond–Genshi Kemumono, also known as Genshi Scabbard. He has repelled me every time we have met, that he has," Hashin pointed out, raising his arm to the burnt, bruised, and mangled man whom the Agbarah Sheikhate servants were hastily carrying off to the infirmary. "I'm sure that this hardiness led to the Iron Shogun choosing Genshi-san for the tournament, that it did."
Even though this revelation had visibly disturbed Lord Mifune, he quickly forced his composure to ooze back into him with a faked show of courage. "Who knows, butcher, if you actually committed to a sword fight once in your life and risked tainting these gentle, womanly hands of yours with scars and calluses of a true swordsman's hands, you'd have actually beaten this vagabond?"
The high-ranking officer in the Land of Iron samurai corps stormed off to engage in more battles while the chilled-to-the-core manslayer stared off into the indomitable dread of Cursed Warriors as they plagued the battlefield utterly unchallenged and merciless to anyone they met in battle.