Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

A Suspect Again

By Mana's estimates, Endo may have had around three more minutes until his muscles recovered enough for a burst of speed needed for a successful substitution. That left her with around one and a half minutes before she can start focusing on the environmental clues for a prediction where her friend would substitute himself off to and which object he would use. The battle had stripped him quite bare, meaning he will most likely need an object that already exists. An alluring and outstanding piece of debris, perhaps?

Endo knew too well that Mana had him beat in terms of ninjutsu. If he overextended himself by attempting a ninjutsu attack, he'd end up hit by one many times stronger before he completes him as a comeback, in addition, he may just as easily end up stuck inside of a crippling illusion that costs him the entire duel. In terms of options, Endo was trapped and had only one viable approach to this fight.

Emboldened by her advantage in terms of viable strategy, Mana sprung into action, eager to disable the threat from her opponent and defuse his ambition to become the best. Endo followed his own thirst for violence triggered by Mana's attempts at weaving hand seals. It was a viable and legitimate fighting style to go for interrupting the hand seals with ninja tools and other mid-to-long-range attacks. However, if one performed said interruptions non-stop throughout the entire battle, it made one predictable.

As Endo's body stretched and leaned out, his arm shot forward, releasing a handful of shuriken rushing to Mana while Endo himself raced through hand seals. It might have seemed like utter madness to perform a ninjutsu attack faster than someone with some of the grandest sleight-of-hand abilities in the entire world, however, Mana knew immediately what Endo's game was–his jutsu only needed a couple of seals, which was why he even attempted this interruption to begin with.

"Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Murder!" Endo yelled out. He must have been quite skilled with the technique, as it was a standard Lightning Release ninjutsu used around the world. Being rather educated on the matter of various ninjutsu techniques, it was like a student attempted to surprise their professor with a proverb of their own native language to Mana. And yet, Endo surprised her by having adapted this jutsu to only require two instead of five hand seals it usually took to perform it.

"Wind Release: Faith's Judgment Jutsu!" Mana chanted out as a ring of accumulating dust a few meters wide spun around Endo the moment the first spark left his fingers. Before Endo's field of Lightning Release chakra could even reach out toward the ninja magician and attempt what its name implied, the spiraling ring of dust enveloped Endo and lifted him off the ground, scattering the Lightning Release technique of his employ through the natural weakness of the nature transformation. The coils of lightning snapped like twigs, tugged in all directions, and snuffed out.

Endo attempted to ignite his Sword of the Thunder God from within the rising whirlwind mayhem that he found himself stuck inside of. He had a precious few seconds to decide on what he'd do before Mana's technique began its adverse effects and he had chosen his actions poorly as, despite his best attempts at igniting his blade, the powerful gale of a turbulent cyclone kept the Lightning Release inert in the blade and effectively neutered it.

That was when a flesh-rending sound made Endo widen his eyes long before he even felt the pain. By the time the painful twinges of a sharp cut reached Endo's brain, another slice of the razor winds found its mark, spilling his blood inside the gale. Faith's Judgment was for all intents and purposes a torturous technique, it was hard for the wind to cut deep enough for a lethal cut and most people would have passed out long before the blood loss and the sum of the thousands of cuts it performed would have killed them. It was a soul shaver meant to drive the hardy opponents to the shores of surrender.

Mana, however, fostered no false hopes of ever hearing Endo mutter those words, or scream them for that matter. The man's willpower surpassed his own vitality and Mana would in no way be surprised to see his body continue fighting long after his own death just because of how crazy his innate fighting instincts were. Even now, with more and more blood-letting cuts opening up all over his body, Endo was wrapping steel wire around a kunai for a makeshift grappling hook that would reel him away from the torturous zone and get him back into the fight.