Rin's feet dangled helplessly in the air.
She was pinned against the rough bark of the tree, her left arm hoisted high and fixed to the trunk by the thick, white webbing. Her posture was awkward and highly vulnerable, though she was not in immediate mortal danger.
"Rin!" Kakashi let out a low shout. He instantly pushed his headband up, revealing the two-tomoe Sharingan. The world immediately slowed down in his vision, his powerful kinetic sight ready to capture the enemy's next micro-movement.
His body coiled, assuming a sprinter's stance to dash for the rescue.
"I'm fine, I'm just stuck!" Rin shouted hurriedly.
She struggled fiercely, but the webbing was entirely unnatural. It felt as if she were bound by industrial steel wire. Not only did she fail to break free, but her struggling caused the restraint on her wrist to constrict even tighter.
Gritting her teeth, Rin drew a black kunai from her hip pouch.
CLANG!
She stabbed the white spider thread with all her might, but the collision produced the sharp, ringing sound of metal clashing against metal. The thread was pushed into a slight arc by the blade, but it absolutely refused to pierce.
'It's impossible to cut?!' Rin felt a jolt of shock. This was her first time encountering such an anomaly. What exactly was this material? Was it a Kekkei Genkai?
"Hehehe. Don't waste your effort, little girl," the six-armed ninja, Hibiki Kido, laughed cruelly. "The tensile strength of my spider silk is absolute. It wouldn't snap even if you tied it between two charging elephants."
Kiyohara watched Hibiki closely.
Beneath the six-armed ninja, the abdomen of the massive, furry brown spider was constantly wriggling. Every few seconds, it birthed dozens of fist-sized spiders, dropping them into the canopy to join the ambush.
'Six arms that hang naturally like spider legs. Dark brown skin. Secretion-based webbing...' Kiyohara's mind raced, connecting the dots to the canon lore. 'He looks exactly like Kidomaru from the Sound Four.'
"You must be from the Six-Armed Spider Clan of the Land of Rice Fields," Kiyohara stated flatly.
The Land of Rice Fields was a small, impoverished buffer country bordering Konoha. It was so insignificant it didn't even have a hidden ninja village yet. It was a chaotic region filled with mercenary clans and rogue ninja.
'It won't be until Orochimaru defects that he manipulates the local Daimyo, slaughters his way to the top, and establishes Otogakure—the Hidden Sound Village—right over their heads,' Kiyohara recalled.
"Heh. So a Konoha brat has actually heard of us?" Hibiki's cruel smile widened, enjoying the vigilant gazes of his prey.
Standing atop his massive summon, his six arms crossed over his chest, he spoke with a hoarse, arrogant drawl. "That's right. I am Hibiki Kido. Remember the name, lest you end up in the Pure Land and have no idea who to complain to."
His gaze swept over the pinned Rin, the calculating Kiyohara, and finally locked onto Kakashi's scarlet left eye. His greed instantly flared.
"You ninja from the Great Nations start wars for your own profit, and we small nations get caught in the meat grinder," Hibiki sneered. "Farmlands destroyed. Trade routes cut. If we don't find ways to make some extra blood money on the side, how are we supposed to survive?"
He licked his lips. "A lone Konoha squad will fetch a fantastic price on the black market... especially one carrying a Sharingan!"
Even though Hibiki found it strange that Kakashi only possessed one Sharingan, he didn't care. A single Uchiha eye was worth a fortune to underground researchers.
"Ninja Art: Spider Binding!"
During the pause in his monologue, Hibiki's cheeks puffed up. He instantly spat out a massive, expanding net of white webbing directly at Kiyohara and Kakashi.
Both boys reacted instantaneously, leaping backward to avoid the sticky snare.
Kakashi's hands flew through a sequence of seals, slamming his palms onto the dirt. "Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall!"
A thick earthen barricade erupted from the ground. The spider web slapped heavily against the stone, instantly creating a massive, depressed crater in the rock face. The kinetic force behind the web was tremendous.
'Crack. Crack. Crack.'
Behind the wall, Kakashi rapidly calculated his remaining chakra reserves. He had never fought a trapper like this before; the information gap was dangerous. He had already burned chakra on one Chidori and the Earth Wall.
'My remaining chakra is only enough for two and a half Chidori. I can only use it at full power twice more!' Kakashi concluded grimly.
The next moment, Kakashi dashed out from behind the wall. His Sharingan locked onto Hibiki. He leaped into the canopy, using the high-altitude descent to maximize his kinetic acceleration.
Seeing Kakashi charge, Kiyohara provided covering fire, forming hand seals to launch a spear of compressed iron sand as a feint.
"Spider Nest Flower!"
Hibiki spat out multiple, concentrated globs of webbing at the descending Kakashi. In the air, the globs expanded like blooming white flowers.
In Kakashi's Sharingan vision, the incoming webs moved in slow motion. He activated the Chidori, using the screeching blade of lightning to violently shred through the incoming nets.
However, this tactic exposed the fatal flaw of the Chidori.
Extreme, linear speed makes it incredibly difficult for the user to change direction mid-charge. The Sharingan's kinetic vision allowed Kakashi to see the traps clearly, but physics dictated he couldn't dodge them all while moving at top speed.
Hibiki's six arms were a blur. White threads were connected to all thirty of his fingers. He was manipulating thirty independent, high-tensile wires simultaneously!
He wove nets of varying sizes, toughness, and stickiness in mid-air, layering them across Kakashi's linear flight path. Kiyohara's covering iron spear was effortlessly caught and bound by the webs, the magnetic force neutralized by the sheer tensile strength.
Kakashi's Chidori was initially unstoppable, tearing through three layers of webbing in a shower of sparks and shredded silk. But the sheer volume and density of the traps finally bled away his momentum, drastically slowing him down.
More importantly, Hibiki's micro-control was flawless. While Kakashi was shredding the nets above him, several thin, nearly transparent threads had silently snaked up from below.
'No—too late!'
As Kakashi landed on a thick branch, the threads violently whipped around his ankles.
Rip!
Kakashi twisted mid-air to dodge, but his right wrist was instantly snared by a thick cable of silk. The piercing chirp of the Chidori died abruptly as the lightning was smothered.
Bang.
Kakashi was yanked backward, his right arm slammed against a tree trunk and tightly cocooned to the bark.
"Hoo..." Hibiki panted slightly, popping a military ration pill into his mouth. He hadn't dared to be careless against a suspected Uchiha, using his ultimate combo right from the start.
"It seems you aren't very good at casting Sharingan illusions, brat. I worried for nothing," Hibiki let out a grim laugh.
He refined his chakra, channeling it down the threads connected to Kakashi.
"Spider Cocoon!"
This was a lethal capture technique. The sticky threads began wrapping rapidly around Kakashi's entire body like a mummy. Once fully encased, the target is completely immobilized. By injecting extra chakra, Hibiki could contract the silk, literally crushing the victim to death inside the cocoon.
"Kakashi!" Rin screamed.
Kakashi's eyes hardened. His free left hand instantly drew a kunai, channeling raw chakra into the blade until it glowed white-hot. He slashed fiercely at the threads binding his right wrist. Relying on the brutal, close-quarters kenjutsu he learned from the White Fang, Kakashi actually managed to sever several of the hardened threads.
"It's useless!" Hibiki laughed triumphantly. "These threads are forged from my bodily fluids mixed with highly condensed chakra. Once they hit the air, they harden to the density of steel! Do you think you can cut faster than I can weave?!"
All of this happened in the blink of an eye. From Kakashi's initial charge to his current entrapment, only three seconds had passed.
"Kiyohara! Kakashi! If you can't break his guard, you should retreat!" Rin shouted desperately from her tree. She knew Hibiki's primary goal was to capture them alive to sell them; there was no immediate danger of execution.
"No, Rin. This enemy isn't inherently strong; we just lack intelligence on his trap mechanics," Kakashi grunted, his Ninken forming a defensive perimeter below him to intercept the smaller spiders.
Kakashi looked down at Kiyohara. "Kiyohara. I've figured out his casting habits. Help me buy five seconds to break this cocoon. Then I can finish him."
"Alright. I'll stall for a few seconds," Kiyohara replied mildly.
Honestly, Kiyohara felt it wouldn't even take five seconds.
The only reason Kakashi was struggling was the information gap. Hibiki was a big fish in a small pond. Relying on his clan's obscure Hiden ninjutsu, he arrogantly assumed shinobi from the Great Nations were nothing special.
Hibiki's combat strategy was tactically sound: neutralize the team's medic first, then trap the team's primary damage dealer (the Sharingan user).
But Hibiki had made one catastrophic miscalculation.
He had completely ignored the third member of the squad. He didn't realize Kiyohara was also a Kekkei Genkai wielder.
At this moment, staring up into the canopy, Kiyohara no longer viewed Hibiki as a human being. He viewed him entirely as a walking bag of cash and military merit points.
"The corpse... excuse me, the military merit is talking," Kiyohara murmured softly to himself.
"Huh?" Hibiki frowned, looking down at the dark-haired boy. 'Is there something wrong with this brat's brain?'
He stomped his foot, ordering his massive summoned spider to crawl rapidly down the trunk to devour Kiyohara.
"Magnet Release: Magnetic Field Rotation."
White steam exhaled from the corners of Kiyohara's mouth.
Having fully inherited the Radical Spirit's legacy, Kiyohara flawlessly tapped into the ambient magnetic field of the earth beneath his feet. He integrated the planetary magnetic force directly into his own cellular structure, artificially amplifying his physical kinetic output to terrifying levels.
Kiyohara's figure simply vanished.
The giant spider's eight compound eyes darted frantically, trying to locate the target that had just ceased to exist in its field of vision.
'Damn it, how can this guy's base speed be so fast?!' Hibiki panicked, unable to track Kiyohara's afterimage.
"Since I can't see you... Spider Nest Domain!"
Hibiki frantically wove hand seals, spitting out a massive, omnidirectional web that covered the entire forest floor. To Hibiki, these webs acted as an external nervous system. Because the threads were hollow and pumped full of his chakra, he could detect the microscopic vibrations of the air currents around them.
"Directly below!" Hibiki suddenly screamed, commanding his giant spider to attack.
But Kiyohara was already there.
He materialized directly beneath the giant beast's thorax. A massive, jagged gauntlet of ultra-dense black iron sand condensed over his right fist—a magnetic variation of the Iwa Spirit's Rock Fist Technique.
With the explosive kinetic force of the Magnetic Field Rotation driving his muscles, Kiyohara jumped and delivered a devastating uppercut straight into the beast's lower jaw.
BANG!
A deafening sonic boom echoed through the mountains.
In the stunned, disbelieving eyes of Kakashi, Rin, and Hibiki, Kiyohara's magnetic punch forcefully hammered the multi-ton giant spider over thirty feet straight up into the air!
Suspended in mid-air at the apex of his jump, Kiyohara casually flicked his wrist. The massive iron gauntlet dissolved, instantly reforming into a jagged, ten-foot-long black spear.
"Magnet Release: Iron Sand Giant Needle!"
With a ruthless swipe of his arm, the heavy black spear shot upward, completely impaling the airborne spider through its abdomen.
POOF!
The giant beast let out a gurgling shriek before exploding into a massive cloud of white smoke. Having received catastrophic, lethal damage, the Summoning jutsu was violently dispelled.
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