Chapter 48: IronBlast

"Your puppet can absorb Ninjutsu?" shouted Deidara, shocked as he saw his amazing explosion being absorbed by the tanky puppet. The Iwa Genin realized that this situation was bad. He couldn't use many of his big explosions as they were quite draining on his chakra reserves. And now that he knew the puppet could absorb his Ninjutsu-based attacks, he had no fast way to destroy it.

But more importantly, he still didn't know where Tekku was hiding. And at this rate, it was actually him who would run out of chakra first and become a sitting duck, easy to take out. Unfortunately, he had no easy way to take this puppet out, so he had to choose another method to win this fight.

This whole thought process only took a moment. At the same time, he realized something else. Deidara quickly formed some hand signs. "Earth Style: Earth Flow Burst!"

A wave of earth in front of Deidara burst out from the dirt of the arena, directly impacting the heavy metallic puppet's body, pushing it a few meters away while creating a small cloud of dust.

"I see. You can't absorb all Ninjutsu; you just created a technique to counter my art. I have to say, I am very impressed. But you forgot that in order to use the Explosion Release, I have to master Earth and Lightning to a decent level," gloated Deidara before he jumped back towards a collection of trees and created an earth wall in front of them for more protection.

With the dense ground, it would be hard for Tekku to attack him from below ground. With the additional defenses, the puppet would have a hard time attacking him directly, giving him enough breathing space to use his minuscule sensing abilities.

"What? How can this be?" His sensing technique's response was quite confusing. He couldn't feel Tekku from anywhere below ground. No, his chakra was instead coming from somewhere else. Before he could process the feedback, he had to refocus on the fight.

The earth wall Deidara created burst into thousands of pieces as the metallic puppet broke through it while accelerating fast forward. But the most shocking sight about it, which made Deidara freeze for a moment, the puppet was using Explosion Release coming in the form of small explosions from seals on its back, moving fast forward like an unstoppable projectile.

"Oh, come on! That's fucking cheating!" he shouted, annoyed as he realized that it was very hard to beat that puppet. No, not a puppet, it could be described as something else. "This whole heavy metallic armor that you disguise as a puppet is impossible to destroy without my explosions. Why don't you come out of it and let us compare our arts directly?" complained Deidara while dodging the impact from the puppet, which hit the position he just stood at moments ago, while flying a bit further without stopping, which Deidara noted.

"Why would I do that? My art is clearly superior if you can't overcome it!" replied Tekku from inside the metallic puppet with a smug voice.

Yes, this wasn't just some puppet he was remotely controlling. No, this was his first true puppet armor, IronBlast! A puppet he specifically created to work as armor with him, to counter Explosion Release users.

It had the ability to absorb any direct Explosion Release technique heading for it and store the Explosion Release chakra in its body for later use. The puppet could create explosions from different parts of its heavy body for acceleration and fast movement, but also for attacking purposes.

Besides that, it was also heavily armored with a metal alloy Tekku specifically created for this puppet to make it a bit lighter. This thing was very expensive and made quite a dent in his savings because for many parts he had to use Chakra Metal, which simply cost a fortune. Good thing he made quite a bit of money through sealing.

Unfortunately, it also had quite a few weaknesses. It couldn't be moved with just the power of chakra strings. It had quite a few mechanical parts inside to support the weight of the metal armor and the person controlling it from inside. It could only use Explosion Release if it had corresponding chakra absorbed and stored previously. Otherwise, it was just a very heavy walking tank with some hidden weapons and limited explosion capabilities from previously prepared explosive tags.

But its most major weakness was its massive chakra consumption to be powered. Although it had a lot of chakra storage seals filled with chakra, the shinobi inside also acted as a chakra battery since they didn't last long in an actual fight. That's why its main attacking capabilities were designed around the Explosion Release absorbed from others.

This puppet was a masterpiece of engineering and puppeteering in the Naruto world, but at the same time, only suitable for fighting Explosion Release users.

"Tch, I am almost out of chakra," muttered Deidara, as all these techniques took quite a lot out of him, as his mastery over Earth wasn't as high as explosion. "I have no other choice. If I can't destroy it, then I have to restrain it."

In a final attempt to win this fight and advance to the next round to become the ultimate winner of these Chunin Exams, as he was sure none of the others were as hard to fight as Tekku, he formed a row of hand signs again. "Here I come, Tekku. This will determine the outcome of the fight! Earth Style: Lithic Press!"

Four walls appeared around the puppet, trapping it inside. They were high enough for it to not be able to jump out of it with the puppet. When Deidara formed the last hand signs, two of the walls began to move towards each other as they began to press against the IronBlast puppet.

Having not enough time to try to climb out of the technique, Tekku inside the puppet was trapped as he needed his full strength to keep the walls apart. While he saw that Deidara was dangerously low on chakra. "As if that is enough to finish me off. Smart to adapt to my puppet and trying to trap me, but not good enough."

The puppet had absorbed quite a lot of explosion chakra. During the final moments of the fight, Tekku focused all of it into its feet. The central control unit that also this puppet had build in, allowed him to control the Explosion Release chakra that he absorbed precisely with the artifical Chakra Network. With a massive explosion released from it's feet, the ground and the walls broke apart, launching Tekku inside the puppet into the air directly towards an exhausted Deidara, who couldn't move fast enough.

With a strong punch directly into the face, Deidara was knocked out, while his last thoughts were about a particular technique in Iwagakure that he wanted for a while but the old man Onoki didn't want to give him. A Forbidden Jutsu that would allow him to infuse chakra into other things, making it hard for them to be absorbed as they were bound to a physical medium like clay, Tekku's Puppet probably had to touch it directly to absorb the Explosion Chakra. A perfect counter for a rematch he realized before the world around him turned dark.

Seeing that Deidara was knocked out, the proctor announced Tekku's win while internally contemplating his own existence, with sweat running down his forehead. 'Are these two really Genins? Even for geniuses, they are ridiculous strong. Maybe we shouldn't call every above-average-talented student in the academy a genius. they are lacking in comparison to these two monsters.'

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