Chapter 78 - 78 (1/2)

A few days later, the Sand and Stone went to battle, and Konoha didn't interfere. Although they won the last battle, they still had close to a 1000 injured people. They were in no shape to keep fighting.The Stone thought that they could take advantage of the Sands latest defeat and beat them completely. What they didn't expect was they actually rose up and resisted them.

This actually ended with the Stone suffering a heavy defeat, and even the Tsuchikage's son was severely injured in a Sand ambush.

Over the course of those days, Ryo never seemed to get off his feet. There were too many injured in the camp, and as head of the medical team, he had no time to rest.

After a few days of hard work, he finally finished treating the wounded. He sighed of relief as he was lying in bed ready to sleep.

Jiraya had wanted to speak to him ever since the battle ended. However, he kept finding him being too busy to be bothered.

But when he found out that he had finished treating the wounded, he rushed to his tent and pulled him out of the bed!

”Hey Jiraya san! What are you doing?” Ryo was confused and hated the fact that Jiraya disrupted his rest.

”I wanted to talk to you for long time now. Come with me.” After he finished his words, both went outside the camp to the desert.

”What do you want to talk about? And why did we have to go so far?” Ryo didn't understand.

”Kid, I have two questions for you. First: What was that technique with which you guided the lightning? And second, Why did you let Pakura go?” Jiraya's tone was unusually serious. After all, letting a strong enemy go was no trivial matter.

”Well I'll tell you about that technique. It has many requirements. One needs the presence of a c_u_mulonimbus cloud, and there must be the friction necessary for it to produce lightning…” Ryo went on explaining the use and disadvantages of Kirin. Jiraya was disappointed as he thought that it could be more readily available for use.

”So what happened to make you deliberately let Pakura go? Don't think that no one noticed it. You know well about the perception capabilities given by Sage mode!”

”Jiraya san, I let Pakura go on my own term, and that's because I need her in my plans. That plan is something I'm not willing to discuss.” Faced with Jiraya's insistence, Ryo had to say the truth.

”What plans are so mysterious? You're just a stinky little kid!” Jiraya looked at Ryo's eyes and was not buying the whole deal.

”Old man, you're really troublesome!” Ryo wasn't that polite responding to him.

Jiraya was still 34 at that time. He hated being called an old man so much that he raised his hand to Slap Ryo's head.

Ryo sensed it coming, and he dodged to the side.

”You little smug! [Wild Lion's Mane Justu]!” Jiraya was angry and felt somewhat insulted. His hair stretched out and reached for Ryo.

Just as the hair was reaching him, Ryo managed to throw an Ice Scalpel. When Jiraya thought that he was about to be caught, Ryo teleported towards it.

”Flying Thunder god… or no! This is your Ice Teleportation? So that's what you've been working on for so long with Sakumo San!”

”Oy, Jiraya san, seems like you can't catch me anymore!” Ryo laughed provocatively.

”It seems that's you made a great progress this time around! But still, you're still far!” As he finished talking, Jiraya formed his hand seals and a swamp formed below Ryo.

It all happened to fast. Ryo couldn't find time to escape and was caught by the infamous Swamp of the Underworld.

”Jiraya San, aren't you forgetting about my Ice Release? Mud has a lot of water in it!”

Of course, Jiraya had that thought out already, and wasn't going to let him escape so easily. A fireball was already on its way to Ryo.

The latter made an Ice Wall to block it. Then he froze the swamp and managed to get away.