Reika tried to slow him as soon as she saw him moving again, using different tactics, this time, choosing to conserve chakra and use deception, weaving her chakra into the ground.
"Ice Release: Frozen Grip."
Frost licked up around Gorō's ankles, snapping to bind him, but his lightning flicker tore through the hold before it could harden.
She then pivoted again and began casting a sheen of frost over the clearing.
"Ice Release: Ice Floor."
The ground glazed beneath his feet, slick and treacherous.
But again, he simply burst through, legs charged with lightning, each stride cracking the ice apart like glass.
She tried to spam those techniques in all kinds of sneaky ways to help Kimimaro and Saya, who were already engaging him in close combat simultaneously ahead, but it never worked the way she thought.
Against his speed and adult Elite Jonin honed physique, her simpler binds meant nothing.
Gorō didn't hesitate anymore. Jagged bolts leapt from his palms like fangs of pure white, tearing the clearing open.
The knives of light gouged earth and ice alike; several cultists nearest the line vaporized where the beams cut.
The shock sheared through Kimimaro's traps, collapsing the nearest earth spears into splinters of flying stone.
Kimimaro lunged, planting his feet into the wounded soil.
The world narrowed.
He felt the first true heat of the fight then.
He'd known speed; he had not expected this scale of output.
He'd underestimated the breadth of Gorō's arsenal.
"Lightning Release — Lightning Rat Violent Quake!"
Spinning discs of whirling electricity screamed outward, homing with ugly intelligence.
They slammed into Reika's carefully placed ice clones, at some point, shattering them into shards that sprayed like glass.
Several cultists caught full on by the discs were thrown like ragdolls and did not rise.
Reika's breath came thin, efficient.
She pressed her palms, and the air condensed.
"Glacier Wave!" she snapped, driving a freezing sweep that tried to catch the discs and force them to lose speed.
This was one of her strongest techniques.
The wave roughed the bolts, turning some into useless sparks, but the rest found purchase, carving a jagged lane through the formation.
The ring buckled; chants stuttered.
Saya charged, scythe a red arc.
She had already tasted his blood and twisted it with that first cruel touch; now she pushed that advantage.
Her weird, unconventional bukijutsu strikes blurred, but each swing also came with a cruel oversurge of sensation through Gorō's nerves, as she also used her remaining hand to torture that wooden doll symbolizing him.
He staggered, fists clenching as muscle spasm followed muscle spasm, not full paralysis, but a grinding bias toward misstep against that scytche.
Kimimaro, meanwhile, planted heavier traps now on top of finally revealing his Kekkei Genkai fully and attacking him in close range.
He forced into blunt counters: Mud Pit Technique underfoot to swallow a footfall, Earth Flow Spears erupting to snag and slow, compressed Rock Projectiles fired at timing gaps.
He layered water clones, one to bait a foot, another to lash a Water Whip at a knee, all in a desperate choreography to interrupt the flicker bursts.
Gorō roared a single wordless sound and answered with raw, concentrated force.
"Lightning Release — Bullet: Powerful Breath!"
A blinding bolt lashed forward like a thrown core of storm.
It punched a corridor straight through Kimimaro's integrated field, water vapor blasted to steam, earth shards exploded out, cultists thrown back in a spray of blood and rain.
Many cultists fell in that bolt alone, bodies exploded into smoke and torn cloth.
The formation was pierced; half the ring spun into chaos.
Kimimaro hit the ground hard, tasted copper in his mouth, and felt his bones ringing with the impact of lightning that was not his.
He'd never been this pinned.
Every jutsu he'd layered so far had been met and shredded or outpaced.
Gorō's flicker returned time after time, faster than the eye.
Kimimaro's breath came in short bursts.
This slight doubt and urgency had the bitter tang of iron.
Kimimaro saw it clearly; the man had realized that the cultists, weak as they were, were the true source of most of his problems in this battle.
So he just targeted them easily thereafter.
So, every time Kimimaro, Saya, or Reika slipped free, it was the cultists who paid the price, and now half the formation was already shattered.
That was what gnawed at him.
He had underestimated this opponent more than he could afford to in his first truly serious battle in this world.
Even slowed by the cultists' ritual gnawing at his nerves and Saya's closer-range cursework using his blood as a more precise medium, the man was still fast enough to evade.
He also regularly slipped past Kimimaro's Dance of the Camellia, Dance of the Willow, and even the defensive spikes of the Dance of the Larch.
At the same time, he read Saya's three-bladed scythe, her wild feints and unpredictable arcs fueled by blood-amped speed and chakra-enhanched power, all while weathering Reika's ranged ice assaults and the layered traps Kimimaro kept throwing into the field.
That was what unsettled Kimimaro most.
'So this is an adult elite jōnin, experience, insight, and physical supremacy fused into one...'
Every time it looked like Gorō was about to be pierced, even if his reaction came a fraction late, his speed bailed him out.
He adjusted mid-motion, found patterns in their offense over time, and lived through it.
Injuries piled on him, shallow cuts from Saya, bone gashes from Kimimaro, but nothing vital.
In return, lightning recoil burned across Kimimaro's bones and Saya's arms, the two of them grinding through pain, pushing past scorched nerves and seared flesh.
Neither side yielding, both bleeding, but the margin of survival always hanging by his speed.
'Our best chance is if he burns through his chakra soon…' That was the only path Kimimaro saw for now, watching the man push forward at such a reckless, more agressive pace.