Chapter 78.1- One Thousand Hands

“They’re in the village” Uraume said as we reached the bottom of Iwa’s mountain.

“Still in combat?” I asked

“Yes. Some duo— a woman and a man are holding off the Raikage now but his people are securing the rest of the village.” She said.

“Good. We’ll be right in time to fuck them in the arse”

“Language” She scolded and Uzume barked a harsh laugh.

I turned to them. The army I’d brought here. It was time.

“Kumo is inside Iwa right now. The village is being taken. Now, we’re no friends of Iwa, and we’re no friends of Kumo either. What do you say we go in there and fuck em both in the arse” Uraume’s facepalm was drowned by the cheers.

“Victory or Death” I said and then I turned to the mountain.

“Race you to the top” I heard Uzume whisper and then she was gone, climbing the first few feet in a matter of seconds. I chuckled. If She thought this would go any better for her than the last time we raced, then she was wrong. I allowed the nature chakra I’d been storing away in my seal bleed into my reserves, giving me the barest edge of sage mode, and I was off.

I practically flew up the wall. My hands only paused for seconds on each hand hold, each one acting as a platform for me to throw myself up and further upwards. Uzume did her best to preserve her lead… for a few seconds. And then I was past her. And seconds letter I was at the top of the mountain. She joined me close to half a minute later. I looked back down with my byakugan and noted that we had left the army in our dust…by a lot. They weren’t even a quarter of the way up. I could make out the deadpan on Uraume’s face as she climbed with one hand. I tossed her a wink I knew she’d see and the flat expression on her face, if it was possible, somehow got even flatter.

“Do we wait for them?””

“We have to. If we go in there half-cocked, they’d bury us in numbers. I’d ordinarily not care much about that, but with the Raikage out and about, it’s always best to be safe rather than sorry.” I said.

She nodded. I dropped to the floor in the lotus position. There was nature energy aplenty here, and it was best I filled up my seal as much as I could. Thankfully, Kurama hadn’t minded the modifications made to his seal to allow it function as a sort of strength of a hundred seal for nature energy for me. I used it for storing pure nature energy rather than nature chakra because it meant I could feed the nature energy into my system at whatever ratio I wanted to create various degrees of sage mode.