Chapter 51.3- One Thousand Hands

The explosive one came my way again, but it was a distraction for the snakes to get me from behind. I smirked and jumped backwards before pulling the string of the bow, captivating seals that my grandmother had painstakingly etched along its form. It took my pure chakra and converted it to lightning nature Chaka, creating a lance of plasma that tore straight through one of the snakes that had been moving to ensnare me.

Sure I could have done something like that with my rasenshuriken or even God’s arrow, but both of those not only took longer to form and thus release, but they were loud and flashy. This bow could channel about three quarters as much destructive force, except that it coalesced it all into a single arrow that moved as fast as lightning. That might not have been impressive to someone who could move as fast as me, but most shinobi here would struggle to avoid or even react to something like that.

Tellingly, Chiyo pursed her lip and detached the chakra string connected to the serpent, sending it spearing underground instead, where it disappeared after a few seconds. She began sending the rest of the puppets at me, movements even quicker and more dexterous than before. I realized the paradox now. The more puppets I eliminated, the more options she lost, but the more useful the puppets that remained became. It was impressive that she could split her focus between up to 10 puppets at the same time, but you couldn’t cheat biology for long, and the truth was that the human brain wasn’t meant to focus on so many things at the same time and removing them would help her direct more attention to what remained.

How interesting. I spun into a backflip to avoid the spider that jumped at my position and jumped forward to engage the one with blades for its hands in blistering taijutsu— was it bojutsu in this case since I used my bow as a staff to block arcs of his blade? It moved faster now, blades coming from the most unorthodox of angles as it took advantage of its unusual constitution to fight in a way that would have stumped most others. Except that I’d been being drilled to become the most dangerous taijutsu user in the world since I was in nappies. I weaved to the left to prevent the left blade from arcing at me and stepping into its space. The right came, but I used the chance to duck and weave until I was right behind it. And then it stabbed one of its blades straight through its own chest to get at me. I blocked the attack with my bow, Hashirama-made wood not even straining to block the metal weapon. I teleported to the marker I’d left in front of it while it was in that position and fired two quick arrows into each limb. Before I could loose the killing blow, the explosive one had canisters in my surroundings.