The sky over the northern mountains of the Land of Lightning.
Smoke curled from shattered towers, the ground was torn as if giants had fought there. Panic swept the outer quarters, alarms wailed, walls shook, and soldiers scrambled through ruined streets. But in the heart of the chaos, there was only one sound that silenced all others.
Footsteps.
Heavy. Metallic. Measured.
Thoom. Thoom.
Each step rang like a war drum, echoing against the cliffs surrounding the Hidden Cloud.
Hajime strode forward through the debris of the outer compound, a monstrous silhouette of steel and fury. His power armor was scarred but unbroken, its plates darkened from heat, claw marks, and shattered steel weapons that had failed to pierce his defenses. At 2.32 meters tall in full armor, he loomed like a walking dreadnought. Steam hissed from the vents along his gauntlets. The twin psychic eye-slit in his helm glowed icy blue.
But there was no psychic pressure.
No force field. No illusions. No cannon bursts.
He had disabled them all.
For now, Hajime fought with only one thing
His body.
He wanted this test.
To feel the limits of what he had built.
A squad of Kumogakure shinobi surged from the barricades, casting lightning-based jutsu and summoning chakra-charged blades. Their jonin captain shouted orders.
"Raiton: Lightning Net Formation, now!"
A crisscross of high-voltage threads flared in the air, arcing between chakra tags placed along the walls. A crackling cage of plasma surrounded Hajime.
He didn't slow down.
Zzzzttt!
Electricity lashed across his armor as he walked straight through it.
The lightning danced across his chestplate, then flickered and failed. The seals etched into his armor dispersed the current harmlessly.
"Impossible!" a shinobi shouted.
A second wave came, faster this time, four jonin charged their fists with Lightning Fangs, chakra surging into sharpened claws of crackling blue-white plasma.
They struck together.
CRACK!
The blows landed, on his torso, shoulders, helmet, and did nothing. The armor didn't buckle. It barely flinched.
"You're joking," one gasped.
Hajime answered with movement.
He surged forward, his momentum like a rolling avalanche. His halberd remained strapped to his back. He didn't need it.
His right fist came first.
BOOM.
A shinobi caught a punch to the ribs and vanished in a mist of blood and shrapnel, leaving only his lower body. Another threw a Raiton kunai, only for Hajime's arm to sweep sideways, swatting it aside like a toy before he grabbed the man by the throat and hurled him into a wall.
"Fall back!"
Too late.
Hajime hit their line.
They weren't enemies now.
They were targets.
His boot tore through the ground with a blast of raw kinetic force, each step leaving ruptured earth. His charge was too fast for something so heavy. A third squad came in from above, Lightning Rain Technique, dozens of kunai falling from the sky.
Hajime raised one arm, and ran through it.
The kunai shattered on contact, some ricocheting off his pauldrons and helm. He jumped upward and landed in their midst with a blast that shattered stone tiles.
One sweep of his armored arm crushed a shinobi into the ground.
Another took a shoulder-charge and spun midair like a ragdoll before slamming into a support pillar.
A final jonin tried a Lightning Clone, hoping to bait a misstrike.
Hajime simply walked through it.
It popped uselessly.
...
Within minutes, more than two dozen elite Kumogakure shinobi were incapacitated, broken, or dying.
And Hajime never stopped walking.
...
Then came the true challenge.
A surge of demonic chakra pulsed across the battlefield. Flames curled up like claws. The pressure was suffocating.
From the rear of the compound, walking through embers and arcs of wild chakra
Yugito Nii.
The Two-Tails jinchūriki.
Her eyes gleamed with vertical slits. Her limbs glowed with ghostly fire. Behind her, Matatabi's ghostly form roared, outlined in jagged chakra flame.
"You're the one they warned about," Yugito growled.
Hajime said nothing.
She launched forward, her speed near blinding, claws extended, burning with blue lightning and spectral flame.
Hajime didn't dodge.
He responded.
His muscles bulged inside his armor, psychic biomancy activated as his dense tissues surged. His sinews hardened, strength augmenting beyond the limit of even taijutsu elites. The armor groaned and creaking, like the armor will break next second, the seams flexing to accommodate his expanding power.
Yugito struck.
Her claw raked his helm
CLANG!
Hajime didn't flinch. He caught her by the forearm with one hand.
Her feet left the ground.
"I!" she started to say.
He cut her off with a blow.
Unstrapping his halberd, Hajime didn't ignite the blade, he used the blunt side. He twisted his torso with biomechanical force, swinging the halberd like a titan wielding a steel beam.
BOOOOM!
The shockwave shattered windows hundreds of meters away. Yugito was launched like a cannonball, flying through trees and stone, bouncing twice before smashing into a cliffside, carving a crater on impact.
The image of Matatabi flickered and faded.
She didn't get up.
...
Around Hajime, silence reigned.
Scouts and defenders who had dared to watch froze in terror. They had witnessed their jinchūriki, feared, respected, cast aside like a training doll.
Hajime's gauntlets hissed with steam. The armor's plating had held, though faint cracks lined his right vambrace.
He had tested his body.
And it had passed.
He looked down at the battlefield. Debris smoldered. Blood mist floated in the air.
But he had not used a single psychic technique.
Not a shot from his gauntlet cannon.
Not a flicker of illusion or telekinetic force.
Only raw, refined, terrifying strength.
A soft wind passed over the burning ruins of Kumogakure's forward military base.
But no one moved.
They had seen the beast within the steel.
And he was still standing.
End of Chapter 92 – The Beast Within the Steel