“Regroup!” Kido said to the other three Penguin Ninjas while he pulled Gaeru with him.
“Let go of me, Honourable Penguin! It is not the time to fall back yet!” Gaeru mistook the regrouping as a sort of retreat when it was pretty obvious that they still have the upper hands in the situation. With the penguin’s ninjutsu, they could force open those Salamander’s defences wide open.
But because of the retreat, the Salamander’s mini domes of spikes took the opportunity to force their invaders to the centre of the inner bailey.
The Salamander Commander Knight became even more ballsy when he noticed that the frog’s special weapon was useless against metal.
“So as long as he could not have a hit or kill his weapon cannot activate, huh? Kind of useless of a weapon. As for those penguins, they might be annoying, but the arrow attacks from behind the cover of our shield dome formation proved to be formidable in scaring them.” The Commander Knight said to himself as he decided to appear out of the dome to demonstrate the superiority.
“Do not worry, Froggie. We have something more fun, just follow us for now.” Kido said as he clapped his flippers once more and a wall of mud and sand emerged from the ground. The other ninjas did the same, forming a box to protect themselves. It provided them with a temporary reprise from the constant shots coming from the multiple shield dome formation.
“Do not falter! If we can push them, we can kill them! Avenge our dead!” The Commander Knight was eager to remove the threat before the Salamander King arrives at the scene. If he managed to kill them, he would have three magic wielding penguins and a frog carrying a magic imbued sword as a tribute to the Salamander King to feast upon.
“Any injuries?” Kido performed a quick check on his teammates to ensure they could continue with the next phase.
“Just mere scratches.” One of the penguins commented as it started to unroll a long scroll it had behind its back. The other penguins were also doing the same except for Kido.
Gaeru felt that the penguins had some plan in defeating this current shield domes formation they encountered. It was true, his blade was broken to the point that Masamune was unable to damage their heavy armour. But as long as there was physical contact with the body, Masamune could absorb at least a portion of their blood and wreck havoc to them.
Unfortunately, the living weapon had an inherent time limit on the duration the blood of its enemies could be contained before releasing it. Any longer than 10 seconds, Masamune would automatically be absorbed whatever blood it took in which Gaeru would then be unable to unleash any attacks.
The odd thing was the more Masamune absorbed the blood of his enemies, the durability of the blade worsens. It reduces not only the sharpness, but Gaeru had seen how the metal at the side of the sword broke apart. So upon learning such a constraint during his travels, Gaeru always tried to release any pend up blood energy within it to reduce the chances of it breaking. (There were definitely instances where he could not have done so, and hence the condition of his current sword.)
While the penguin ninjas were chanting the lengthy inscriptions of their ten metre long scroll, arrows were being shot into the boxed up monsters which they voluntarily enclosed themselves in it. Luckily, Kido was the one in charge of blocking all incoming projectiles by parrying, grabbing, or whatever means possible to not disturb the chanting.
Gaeru assisted too by using its tongue to grab some of the projectiles as well. Still, Kido was more perceptive in predicting the shots’ trajectory, which made the frog swordsman respected the Penguin Ninjas even more and showered Kido with compliments.
“Preparations are complete, Kido!” The Penguin Ninjas said in unison the moment the scrolls glowed a little.
“Get your ass at the centre Froggie! We might not have the Totem of Atem like Sage Hamatarou, but we have our very own enlargement Jutsu!” Kido smiled as the penguin performed a roundhouse kick to reflect one of the arrows away.
“Aye!” Gaeru did not fully understand the plan Kido created, but the veteran penguin ninja later admitted that he was improvised the plan along the way. They initially created the sand walls to show weakness, hoping that it would spur them to break formation. Kido understood that destroying the mini dome formations one by one would prove to be straining and they need to conserve energy should they wish to fight against the Salamander King.
Thus, the penguins pretended that they had no way of destroying their shield wall domes.
It indeed prompted the Salamanders to be cocky, and even though they were still in their mini shield dome formations, many relaxed their guard when the Salamanders could not see what was in front of them.
A sudden poof of large smoke emerged within the box of sand walls, and the Salamanders shortly fell back, finally considering that it might potentially be a trap. However, their current formation reduced their mobility tremendously, and the Salamanders were not as used to it since they hardly used it for battle.
Before they knew it, a large blade came forth from the smoke, splitting the sand walls into two and attacking anything within range.
Both Gaeru and Masamune had grown at least ten times larger, proving to be a giant similar to the monsters they had previously encountered. This sudden transformation shocked the Salamander troops as most were still in the process of moving, resulting in them to be unprepared for the attack.
A number were smashed sideward by the enlarged Masamune, and it instantly absorbed whatever blood it came into contact with. At the same time, Kido and the rest of the ninja penguins perched themselves onto the giant size frog and began to throw shurikens and kunais to the exposed flank of the Salamanders.
There was also an additional surprise to the penguin attacks. Out of the three Jutsu scrolls, two were used on Gaeru and Masamune, allowing them to be of a colossal size to deal an immense amount of damage to the heavily armoured Salamanders within the inner bailey. As for the last scroll, the Penguin Ninja cast it similarly to an aura spell, enhancing any projectiles thrown by his fellow comrades.
So the size of the kunais and shurikens that were thrown immediately expanded to such a dangerous size that one hit instantly kill a heavy armoured Salamander. Even if it was not dead with a direct hit, Kido was confident that death was at its side with the impact from the amplified projectiles.
This sudden turnaround from the enemies made the Salamanders panicked even further when they found out that enormous weapon swipe killed their Commander Knight who was conceited enough to leave his shield dome formation to check the status of the Sand Walls.
Their remaining Salamander Captains tried to rally whatever troops but even now the arrows and crossbow bolts were ineffective against the Giant Frog. (His skin got thick enough to ignore them) To Gaeru, the desperate attempt to rain bolts proved to be meaningless.
“Come out now, Salamander King! Come out now and face the wrath of the Frog Village!” Gaeru’s booming voice was enough for the surrounding castle walls to vibrate. He needed the King to appear as soon as possible before Masamune absorbed most of the blood he attained or else he had to waste it towards the castle.
The Frog Swordsman did not dare to underestimate his upcoming opponent but yet desperately hoped he could finish him in one shot.
