Chapter 51: Chunin Exam Finals

The climactic Final Match had finally started, and the excitement in the air was palpable. Tekku wasted no time in springing into action; he swiftly retrieved his Storage Scrolls to summon one of his stronger Puppets. He already had an idea of how to take care of Akatsuchi, since his fight with Hana gave him quite a bit of insight. She actually pushed him to fight seriously.

Akatsuchi was undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with, particularly when it came to his defensive prowess. But like most Earth Style-focused Shinobi, he was a bit lacking in offense. The only dangerous thing was his strong punches when he used Earth Style: Earth Fist to cover his hands, empowering his already formidable physical punching power.

However, there was one particular Puppet in his arsenal that could completely counter Akatsuchi's offensive abilities. And there was nothing he could do with Earth Style techniques below the A-Rank. With a big white cloud of smoke, his IronBlast Puppet appeared in front of him, its back opened while Akatsuchi was rushing at him with his fist covered in brown stone.

Before Akatsuchi could even reach punching range, IronBlast was already closed around him, protecting him with the heavy iron armor of the puppet shielding him. With a loud metallic dong, Akatsuchi's stone fist hit the Puppet in the center of its chest but left no visible damage on it.

"Heh, it seems you can't break my defense," mocked Tekku from inside his Puppet. As long as he was inside this Puppet, he would be safe from Akatsuchi's attacks. But this Puppet had a big disadvantage; it cost a lot of Chakra to operate, and its own stores were already quite empty. It could only move slowly and was basically a sitting fortress protecting Tekku.

"Well, I can just wait here until you come out. Let's see how long the audience is willing to wait," replied Akatsuchi calmly.

Of course, Tekku wouldn't sit around and wait for his opponent to beat himself. His movement was just limited with the ground still being hard to move on as a consequence of Deidara's Jutsu. Which made it also unusable for Akatsuchi, that was good.

His standard strategy was to fight from a distance or a safe position, as he didn't specialize in Taijutsu, unlike Akatsuchi with his specific Earth Style. The Arena only gave limited possibilities for such a strategy, so Tekku had to create his own cover.

A compartment on each of IronBlast's metallic arms opened, revealing a scroll on each side. To be specific, a storage scroll that unfolded automatically, showing 5 seals on them. With ten white puffs of smoke, ten Puppets appeared in the Arena.

With the help of the Central Control Unit of IronBlast, he connected to its Chakra Network, using it to create Chakra Strings from each of the Fingers of the Metallic Puppet controlling the 10 Crash Test Dummies.

"Let's see how long you will be able to fight if you are under constant attack from every side," announced Tekku as he revealed his current limit in how many Puppets he could control at the same time. Eleven if he took control over the IronBlast Puppet with his Green Secret Technique: Puppeteering of the Six Paths.

It would have been perfect if he could move IronBlast to be more involved in this fight, but he simply didn't have the Chakra reserves. A weakness an opponent with stronger attacks could abuse. Good that these were only Chunin Exams.

He had already considered adding alternative Fuel Sources to his Puppets, but none of them were really practical in the long term. Yes, this world had Oil and used it. Although only in limited capacity since the extraction process was quite expensive and limited. Others simply lacked the resources, like rare earths for solar power, or were far too impractical and crude like Coil.

No, Chakra was the way to go. He just had to find a way to generate it without relying on the Human body, either through his own Chakra reserves or by absorbing a technique. He already created a Chakra generator that generated power through fire, but it still relied on either Attacks or Fuels that were impractical.

His ten summoned Crash Test Dummies began their assault from every side. Similar to his fight with Akemi Akamichi, Akatsuchi was quite good at defending himself from the combined assault of the Puppets. He relied on Earth Walls to block off attacks aimed at his back while defending in the front.

But this completely turned into a defensive battle for him, draining his Chakra reserves with each assault, while Tekku's own Chakra reserves remained as full as in the beginning, since each of the Puppet had already Chakra stored inside.

Crash Test Dummies were his most common Puppets, since they were cheap to make and mostly only required Wood that he gathered from the forest, and some basic Ninja Weapons in addition to some sealing supplies. The most expensive part was the Chakra Control Unit, for which he already created a mass production cycle in his Laboratory. So Tekku had prepared a small army of this disposable Puppet type and filled them with Chakra every day since he created them.

The assault on Akatsuchi's defenses continued relentlessly. Each time he hit a Puppet in the center of the body, the fine control of Tekku was so good that they would split into smaller parts, invalidating the physical force of his punches before even targeting him with the hidden blades attached to all limbs.

By the time he figured out he could destroy the Puppets with a well-aimed punch into the center of their heads, and they would stop moving. This was where the Central Control Unit was, the biggest weakness of these fragile Puppets. Once destroyed, Tekku couldn't control them with one string anymore. Akatsuchi was already far too exhausted when he realized that.

With his exhaustion so clearly visible, the Puppet assault began to become fiercer as the Puppets began to use explosive tags to destroy the Earth Walls Akatsuchi created to defend some directions. And each Puppet that was destroyed was quickly replaced by another one summoned from one of the Scrolls hidden in IronBlast's arms, which seemed to have no end.

Being surrounded by Puppets that struck him again and again, with cuts all over his body, and feeling the paralyzing effect of some kind of poison, Akatsuchi had no choice as he couldn't win this fight. There were just too many of them. "I give up. He is very hard to beat in a one-on-one fight."

This was the realization that Akatsuchi had. Tekku was becoming a walking army. One either needed a surprise attack to take him directly out, a strong offensive attack to break through his defenses, which wasn't impossible, that Iron Puppet wasn't an impenetrable shield, or a group of Shinobi to overpower him through numbers.

Hearing that the Iwa Genin had given up, the Konoha Jonin responsible for the Finals arrived in the middle of the Arena, and under loud applause from the watching crowd, he announced, "Akatsuchi from Iwagakure forfeits! Winner of this Fight, and with it of this year's Chunin Exams, Tekku the Puppet Master from Konohagakure."

Under the loud applause of the Konoha civilians, Tekku raised his hands into the air while thinking, 'Damn, now I need to build something new as everyone knows how I fight. But that was already a calculated Risk. Good that Jonin Exams aren't a public thing.'

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