This harsh reality was the first ti the shinobi of Agakure truly felt powerless.
They had prepared for this war for so long—pushing their nation to the brink, practically exhausting all their resources—hoping that, amid the scheming and rivalry of the great nations during the Second Great Shinobi War, they could seize a piece of fertile land under the leadership of their peak Kage-level leader.
Yet all those ambitions shattered before the absolute strength of a great nation.
After all, the enemy they were facing now was a force of Konoha shinobi that had already fought Iwagakure and Sunagakure in succession and suffered heavy losses. And even under those conditions, Agakure had not rely failed to gain an advantage—they were being cut down and scattered.
From the beginning, Hanzō of the Salamander had never expected them to suppress Konoha. His order had simply been to hold the line and maintain a stalemate.
Now it was clear that even such a seemingly modest goal had been wishful thinking.
In truth, Hanzō had likely predicted this long ago. Otherwise, he would never have issued such cautious instructions before the battle even began.
As a veteran of countless wars, he understood that even in decline, the Land of Fire was still a giant—a starving cal was still larger than a horse.
The reason Agakure dared to strike at Konoha at all was because Hanzō had planned every step beforehand.
For example, he considered the alliance between Iwagakure and Sunagakure inevitable. Their opponent was Konoha—the strongest shinobi village in the world. No single nation could shake it alone. Even with Hiruzen secretly leaking information about Konoha, fighting separately would never be enough.
Thus, cooperation between the two nations was unavoidable.
That was why, at the start of the war, Agakure had chosen to sit back and watch the tigers fight. They contracted their defenses entirely, fortifying only around Agakure itself, even abandoning much of the Land of Rain and allowing the three great nations to battle over it freely.
They did not interfere.
They did not even attempt to rescue their own civilians.
Because Hanzō knew that if Agakure wanted to rise, they needed overwhelming advantage—and joining the first wave of direct conflict would cripple them imdiately, leaving no chance to act later.
Their strategy from the beginning had been simple:
Let the three great nations fight each other to exhaustion.
Then, once they were all weakened, Agakure would strike like thunder and crush them one by one.
Ordinary mid-level shinobi could never accomplish this alone—but Hanzō had absolute confidence in his own strength.
His greatest trump card was his terrifying poison, capable of covering an area nearly ten kiloters wide.
Ordinary poison users might spread toxins over a few hundred ters at most. Compared to Hanzō, they were insignificant.
The destructive power of this jutsu rivaled even a Tailed Beast Bomb.
It was precisely this ability that made even nations possessing tailed beasts wary of provoking Agakure. After all, no matter how strong a jinchūriki was, they were still human—and poison could still kill them.
Not every nation possessed a dical genius like Tsunade capable of neutralizing Hanzō's toxins.
A Tailed Beast Bomb might devastate a few kiloters at most. Without complete transformation, covering a ten-kiloter radius was nearly impossible.
And a poison fog on that scale was not sothing ordinary Wind Style techniques could disperse. Normally, a powerful A-rank or S-rank wind technique could blow away poison mist—but Hanzō's poison resembled a natural weather phenonon.
Only thousands of Wind Style users working together might disperse it.
No nation in the current shinobi world possessed that many.
That was why Hanzō earned the title of "Demi-God."
It wasn't that his one-on-one combat ability equaled half of Hashirama's power—but that his large-scale destructive capability rivaled the monsters at the Super Kage peak.
Until soone found a way to completely counter his poison, numbers ant nothing.
To kill him, one needed elite shinobi with high-level antidote capabilities and at least peak Kage-level chakra. Otherwise, victory was almost impossible.
This was why the Three Sannin—each already possessing strength not inferior to early Kage-level fighters—were still being suppressed by Hanzō.
His poison was simply too troubleso, and it consud almost no chakra, giving him a natural advantage in prolonged combat.
Later, when Pain defeated Hanzō with ease, it wasn't because Hanzō had been overrated. Rather, Pain's true body never entered the battlefield, and the Six Paths were corpses—completely immune to poison.
Hanzō's greatest weapon had been perfectly countered.
Under such circumstances, defeat was inevitable.
And by then, Hanzō had already entered old age, his strength naturally declining.
Back at Agakure's temporary camp, chaos reigned.
Wounded shinobi were everywhere.
Yet despite the disarray, the rain shinobi still wore determined expressions. Fear had not yet taken root.
Because they still had one pillar of support—
Hanzō of the Salamander.
Though no one dared approach the battlefield too closely, the endless poison mist still hanging in the air proved that Hanzō remained in control.
As long as he held the advantage, the losses of their mid-level forces did not matter.
Once Hanzō freed his hands, Konoha's forces would surely face annihilation.
At the sa ti, they were deeply shocked by the strength of Konoha's three elite jōnin.
Hanzō was the Demigod of the shinobi world—countless elite jōnin had fallen before him, and numbers ant nothing against his poison.
Yet Tsunade and the other two had not fallen quickly.
Instead, the battle had dragged on until now, with no clear victor among the four.
Even so—
Everything was still proceeding within Hanzō's plan.
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