Chapter 37: Facing the Fang
The swordsmanship exam had three sections to it. First, a demonstration match using bokken (wooden swords of similar weight and size to the real ones) or dulled blades. In our case, I gave my examiner a seal which would lock the location of the sword when the blade was about to cut flesh or bone. That way we could go all out without worrying about death, and use our usual swords to do so.
The second part was a controlled, chakra-free duel to score light wounds. Internal strengthening and speed-enhancing techniques were allowed, but nothing else. The threat of death was part of this test, so safety seals weren't allowed in this section.
The last part was a full on, (certain) chakra techniques included, kenjutsu match. We were meant to avoid death or maiming, but this exam was one of the most dangerous. There were two full jonin-level medic-nin on standby, and each had a chunin medic assistant. Even then, this exam was known to have a relatively high injury and death rate.
The thing that made my swordsmanship exam so interesting was my opponent. I was up against the White Fang, Hatake Sakumo himself. He was Konoha's greatest practitioner of kenjutsu techniques, partially due to his family's unique White Chakra Blade style. Unlike most kenjutsu styles which focused on enhancing a blade, the White Chakra Blade extended a “perfect blade” formed from chakra given some base blade. Senju Tobirama's Sword of the Thunder God was actually inspired by the Hatake Kenjutsu. While the White Chakra Blade allowed conventional kenjutsu techniques, just using the super low-weight and sharp White Chakra Sabre, it excelled most as a nin-kenjutsu style, combining no-tell, high speed ranged attacks with sword-combat. Funnily enough, my own chakra-based wind-variant of the Whirling Sword style was somewhat similar.
I decided that I didn't want to risk my heirloom blades, and so I was using my secondary swords for the fight. They were practically identical to my actual swords, with the same weight and shape, but were seal-swords rather than seal-enhanced chakra-conductive metal. Sakumo, likely due to the chakra free sections of the test, was also using a full katana rather than his typical white tanto that had led to his moniker of “Konoha's White Fang”. We bowed to our examiners and each other, and began the demonstration match.
There were a few different ways a sword fight tended to go. The first, and most brutal, was the type of fight you saw on the battlefield. Two swordsmen met, and they tried to cut through each other as quickly as possible. The faster, stronger, more skilled and luckiest survived; the other died. These fights were quick and decisive, but carried a much higher risk when facing enemies that were of similar skill levels. Such combat was most frequent when killing as many people as possible in as short a time as possible was the focus on both sides, and endurance was a factor. Advancing troops drove combatants together, and forced victory or being trampled or surrounded and cut down. This was the kind of fight practiced by heroes and soldiers on the battlefield.
The second type of fight was the kind you tended to see in a duel between similarly skilled opponents. They started further away, and tried to lure their opponent into making a mistake large enough to allow a decisive blow to be struck without taking one in return. Most of the fight occurred at longer ranges, and the fighters often withdrew several times as the clashes were inconclusive. Sometimes, they would ramp up the fight slowly, varying tempo and force to get a better read on their opponent without giving away their own secrets, tricking the enemy into a set expectation and then pulling out a sudden acceleration or zero-range technique at the critical moment to achieve victory. Musashi Miyamoto's Sparking Stone, one of the few techniques actually described in his Book of the Five Rings, was one such technique; it called for a sudden reinforcement of the blow at the moment of impact, without any tells, to break the guard and wound the enemy. This was the kind of fight that inspires story and song.
The third type of fight was almost totally foreign to Konohagakure and the Elemental Nations as a whole. This was the sport-spar. Think of it like Western Olympic Fencing. The objective was not to kill or incapacitate your opponent without receiving a blow of your own, but rather to do so first. It was practically suicidal to practice that way as an actual combatant, since far too often both sides would end up striking a killing blow at nearly the same time.
My first match against Sakumo, the demonstration match, was closest to the second type of fight. We weren't trying to crush the other as quickly as possible, but to pull out all of our opponent's skill and demonstrate our own to the examiners – after all, Sakumo may not have been up for promotion, but he was still being seen fighting by his peers. Our purpose was to have a beautiful fight, rather than just to win it.
I could tell within moments that he was a better swordsman. My own style relied on using things like super-dense wind-flow, setting up openings to launch my chains, and distracting the enemy at crucial moments by flaring my Presence. Sakumo surely used those techniques too. But where my footing was almost perfect, his was perfect. Where my reflexes were trained within moment, his were a fraction of a moment. He was stronger, a bit faster, and just more experienced. Not for nothing was he the greatest Kenjutsu master in a village with thousands of superhuman killers.
To put things in perspective, I might have ranked in the top one percent with the sword, even better with chakra; he was in the top five Konoha-affiliated swordsmen without chakra, period. With chakra, he was the best. If I could have faced him all out, and surprised him by tanking a hit to my armor while launching a full out strike using elemental manipulation, chakra chains, and a territory-control seal array, I might have been able to take him.
As it was, well… I put up a fight, and learned more in that match than I had over months of practicing.
We opened up with the basics, at a relatively slow speed. My overhead slash was diverted with the minimum of effort, and I slid next to his retaliatory thrust, guiding his sword away from my torso with the body of my sword, then giving it a slight push and trying a to catch him in a horizontal sweeping slash.
As he stepped back, my sword just brushing his clothing. I extended in a lunge, trying to catch up to his retreating body. He dropped into a middle guard, caught my sword in a blade-lock, and began to go for a disarm. I twisted and disengaged, grinning as we each stepped back and prepared for another clash. The whole exchange had lasted less than two seconds.
We met again and again, ramping up our speed and power and pulling out flashier techniques and combinations. Fifteen minutes in, I was covered in sweat and breathing heavily, and was inordinately pleased that I had managed to get Sakumo sweating at all. I had switched from the fairly standard techniques to the faster, if more energy intensive, movements and sweeping blocks of the Whirling Sword. I had definitely come out the worse for our exchanges, but I could sense that Sakumo was impressed. I had at least managed a few touches of my own, including a few with my hands that would have allowed me to plant a killing seal. The judge called out the stop, and we disengaged and bowed before deactivating the seals that kept our swords safe.
There was a five minute break between the demonstration match and the live-steel duel. The next match was best two of three. The purpose was to make sure the examinee's skills didn't degrade when there was the actual threat of death. It also meant that I had five minutes to come up with some sort of strategy to score at least one point on Sakumo. But without chakra-techniques beyond internal reinforcement being allowed, I really didn't have anything I could think of.
With my time ticking down, I remembered something that was “so crazy it might just work”. The suicidal technique of Shirou Emiya from Fate/Stay-Night.
In actuality, his style was pretty shitty against any properly experienced fighter. The idea of leaving openings to force a certain battle-progression has always been a technique, and quite well known to most high level martial arts fighters. As such, there are a number of ways to defeat the technique. First, and most obvious, was to force the opponent to attack, and win in the counterstrike. This avoided the ability to be forced into a certain attack pattern. The second, also basic, was to attack however you please anyways. So what if there was a weakness you can take advantage of? If you were truly that much faster, stronger, more conventionally skilled, then just attack. Attack as you please, and break through his strength. Or third, quite simply being better at that sort of martial mind game than the opponent was.
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Unluckily for me, my opponent was quite capable of all three approaches. So if I wanted to win, I had to not just appear weak, but actually become weak.
Again, we faced each other, and saluted our judges and opponent. Sakumo kept position in guard, as did I while we maneuvered. I was pretending to be more affected by the psychological pressure of facing a superior swordsman than I actually was. Eventually, as my feet slid into position, I flared my reinforcement and attacked.
I was fast, furious, powerful. Our blades met once, as he deflected my slash with a parry. A second time, as I knocked his counter-thrust off line to the left of my body. A third time, as he tried to cut me with a horizontal slash; I blocked and used a diagonal footwork that resulted in our keeping contact and spinning in a circle as I tried to disengage. A last, fourth time as he began to withdraw, then instead doubled down with his strike, breaking through my guard and leaving a cut on my upper left arm. It wasn't dangerous, but did weaken the arm significantly.
We disengaged, and as my sleeve soaked in blood my arm healed. That was perhaps the greatest advantage from Kurama’s waking; he was able to do part of the work of filtering his chakra, and had improved how effectively I healed. But I pretended that it was still wounded, still weak.
I fixed up my uniform, making sure that it was just so, and made sure that neither my katana's sheathe nor my wakizashi would impede my movement. Both were organized on my left hip for a right-hand draw; generally, the wakizashi was a backup for places where politeness required you to remove your main sword (such as at the dinner table) or used in tight spaces. While some dual-wielding techniques existed, they were more typical of a samurai than a ninja.
Both ready, and with Sakumo seemingly content to wait on me, I prepared to attack again. I moved into range, and attacked with a right-footed forward-stepping slash aimed at his shoulder on my right. It was a blow that used the right side more than the left, and kept him thinking my injury was still an issue. He blocked, shifting my sword further to the right.
Just as predicted, I thought with a vicious grin.
Rather than disengaging as he'd suspect, I extended my step into a lunge, bringing me in close. I let my sword go with my right hand, and began dropping my body to lessen the pressure on my sword enough that I could stay in contact using just my left handed hold. As I did this, I used an Iaijutsu technique with right hand on my wakizashi, a rapid-draw lateral slash aimed at his stomach.
Sakumo's eyes were full of his shock at the situation as he tried to dodge. Time seemed to crawl, a side effect of the mental-reinforcement technique I was running to improve my reaction speed. And I could tell that my wakizashi was going to just miss.
Despite everything, Sakumo was just too good. So, as he was springing back and slightly to my left, I released the wakizashi, flinging it after him. It caught him as his feet were leaving the ground, and sliced through the muscle just below the ribs on his left flank. It was only barely more than a scratch, but it counted. Ecstatic and smiling broadly, I recovered my footing from my attack as one of the stunned judges declared my point.
The third and final point, Sakumo decided to be on the attack. He attacked mercilessly, ruining my guard with a flurry of powerful blows. Soon he knocked my sword into a totally useless position and leveled his blade across the side of my throat with a faint grin before I could recover. His message was pretty clear; I wouldn't be getting an inflated head. Despite my defeat, Sakumo was kind of like Hanzo the Salamander. I might not have beaten him, but even giving him a fight was enough to be seen as badass.
Again, we had a five minute break before the third stage of the exam. This time, it was an all-out kenjutsu match. One round, one winner. Ninjutsu or genjutsu using hand-seals and sealing were forbidden, but attacks that used chakra through the sword and Battlefield Presence were allowed, as were certain classes of nin-kenjutsu, including techniques like Hayate's Dance of the Crescent Moon from canon Naruto, or Hatake’s own chakra-blade techniques.
This meant that I actually had a chance. I was close enough to Sakumo in speed, and not so much weaker, that he wouldn't be able to crush me in an instant. Which meant that I'd be able to deploy the full weight of my Death Experience as we closed.
Sakumo was a true monster, veteran of over a hundred battlefields and thousands of life-or-death moments. Given time to acclimate, he was likely among the very few that might be able to stay combat effective at close range to my field, even when it was focused onto him. But the first time he felt it, at point blank range? That was a different matter entirely. I hypothesized it would be able to cripple even the Hokage for a moment, enough to secure victory. Until I faced a similar enemy in a true life-or-death struggle, this was my best chance to test that theory.
Unlike the previous rounds, I could now use my kenjutsu style in its full glory. While I was capable with a sword, it was largely a hobby that helped train speed and physical fitness in a way that was at least somewhat useful; in real combat my sword was something between a prop and a focus for the weight of my Presence and Elemental Channeling. My goal, when using the sword, was not to face an enemy as an opposing ninja, but to represent the full fury of a god. Most enemies would fall to chain and seal and jutsu; the remainder would be cut down as they cowered at my approach. It was a style designed both to be effective and to overawe.
As I prepared to face Sakumo that last time, I started to flare my chakra. At first, the examiners and Sakumo noticed the weight of my chakra on their senses with a bit of surprise. But I just kept building, and building, and building until the air around me was starting to waver due to the metaphysical force of my being on reality. Soon the judges, jonin all, were visibly struggling to maintain chakra levels high enough not to be incapacitated.
I grinned at Sakumo, and surrounded myself with a dense shell of wind, focusing it so heavily on my sword that it looked and felt to people's senses like I was carrying a hurricane. But, for all the chakra I was outputting, more than Sakumo and the three judges could as a group, I had perfect control. There was no great wind, no leakage. And that, to those who really knew what mattered, was probably the most terrifying thing of all. In response Sakumo's sword lit up like a brand with a bright, white chakra.
Half a minute into my preparations, a squad of ANBU arrived then said something into their communicators before retreating to the edges of the training ground. Clearly my rampant chakra had worried Village Security. I would have laughed if it weren't so inappropriate.
Instead, I just continued in raising my chakra level, expanding my bubble of chakra around myself and making my wind denser and sharper. While expensive in terms of chakra, a bubble of your own chakra around you acted as a form of limited omniscience within that space. It was a high-level technique, and one that was popular among upper-level swordsmen. It was also a way to forcefully impose higher levels of Presence and limit the Presence to a certain space.
“Hatake-san, you should prepare yourself for my Presence. It is typically crippling on first exposure. I've been looking forward to being able to test it on you since I heard you were assigned as my evaluator.”
He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Normally you don't warn your opponent about that kind of thing, Uzumaki-san,” he replied in a smooth baritone.
“I value the experience of how the technique fares against such a high-level opponent more than I would value beating you due to lack of preparation,” I answered. While I was being truthful, I was also playing to the judges a bit; that foresight could help when the board review my application.
He just nodded. Eventually, one of the judges came forward, sweating at the combined pressure caused by my massive chakra flare and Sakumo's own more tightly focused aura that he was using to prevent my flare from affecting him.
“Begin!” called the judge from a safe distance.
That instant, I slammed on the Death Experience, keeping the limit of my area of effect as tight to myself and Sakumo as possible. Sakumo, already in motion, froze for a full second, so stunned that his chakra control failed and his blade extinguished.
In a battlefield, with the chaos and team-mates to cover for him, he might have survived such a failure. In a duel, at our range, and using our level of ranged chakra-flow techniques? A second was an eternity. I made it clear to the judges that I was taking my time as I positioned myself just to his side and struck.
My wind-flow flew right past Sakumo, doing nothing but ruffling his clothes. The forest behind him was not so fortunate, with a forty yard long cone of trees of earth blasted apart, shredded in the storm of my elemental blade. I sheathed my katana and stepped back as a stunned judge called the match in my favor.
Sakumo and I bowed to the judges and each other, then he approached me. Luckily he didn’t seem upset at his loss.
“I would never have believed anyone, let alone someone of your age, could create such an overwhelming presence,” he praised. “Your sword skills are impressive too; when you're in the village, you should call on me to spar or practice.”
That was a pretty big compliment from the White Fang. Being invited to spar like that meant that he recognized my abilities, not just as a promising student of the blade, but as an actual opponent. I bowed fairly deeply.
“That is a great honor, thank you,” I answered. He laughed outright and shook his head.
“You managed to beat me. I think we could both gain from the experience.”
“Very well, Hatake-san. I'll look forward to it!” I replied with a grin.
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Later, I heard through the grapevine that this fight had netted me another sobriquet. Apparently one of the other top jonin had heard that Sakumo lost to a fourteen-year-old chunin in a full-on sword match and decided to tease him a bit.
One of the judges was there too. “Had you been there, you would have understood,” he said. “Sakumo-san didn't face a simple ninja in that match.”
“If he didn't face a ninja in that match, what did he face?” the shit-stirring Jonin then asked.
At this, the judge and Sakumo were quiet for a moment before Sakumo gave an answer.
“I faced a Wicked Storm.”