Rasa attacks Zoro without chitchatting any longer. He places his palms on the ground and then gold dust suddenly erupts out of the ground. The gold dust creates a massive wave that moves toward Zoro.
Zoro lines up his swords horizontally, creating a horizontal line with them. He lowers his stance and waits for the big gold dust wave to arrive. Then when the wave almost arrives, he swings his swords while spinning his body.
"Kalasutra Great Dragon Twister!" (Kokujo O Tatsumaki!)
A massive blade tornado appears because of Zoro's skill. He makes it fly toward the incoming gold dust wave and both attacks are clashing. Zoro's Dragon Twister is destroying Rasa's gold dust wave, but the heavy gold dust wave also weakens Zoro's Dragon Twister.
Both attacks clash for a while until they destroy each other. Rasa frowns because he is trying to gauge Zoro's power with that attack and Zoro is actually stronger than he already thought.
"So you really can control gold. Well, at least now I know who hogs all the funds from your country. You complained that your village doesn't have enough funds, but here you are using all the gold. I bet all the gold that you've just used is enough to fund your village for a few years." Zoro smirks, still trying to ruin Rasa's image.
"What are you saying? The gold dust is everywhere in the desert. They're even available in normal soil, just deep underground. I just take them out from beneath the surface with my jutsu. They aren't given by the country." Rasa looks at Zoro as if looking at an idiot.
"Is that so? Then can't you just mine them and sell them to fund your village so you can increase your shinobi's quality and offer cheaper services because you already have a lot of money? Ah, right, it's your ability, so you don't need to share it with your village. You are the Kazekage, after all. Everything the village has is yours, but what you have is your own, not the village's. Only unimportant people need to offer everything they have for the village and for you. Sigh, imagine all the wealth you can get from this amount of gold. But well, I guess you need them to make your jutsu more fancy. After all, the 3rd Kazekage only used iron that looks dull even though it's harder than gold. But I guess because you are weaker than the 3rd Kazekage, you need to at least look different, that's why you use gold to look rich. Who cares if your village is poor if you are rich, right?"
Zoro is always confused whenever he hears that Sunagakure is having financial problems when their Kazekage literally uses gold for his ninjutsu. He always wonders why they don't just mine the gold and sell it because it surely will give them lots of money.
Though he doesn't know and doesn't want to know the reason, he knows that it's a good point to ruin Rasa's image. His goal is to make Rasa suffer even after this war ends because killing him now is difficult.
Despite his bravery of challenging a whole hidden village by himself, Zoro knows that winning is another matter. It's difficult to win and he doesn't really want to destroy this village because no matter how bad a village is, they will be needed in the future when the 4th world war comes.
That's why Zoro mostly targets Rasa because his real enemy here now is Rasa and the village's higher ups who framed him. If Rasa as the Kazekage is dragged down the mud, then he surely will try to bring the others down with him.
"Your mouth is really slick, kid. But if you think you can stop me with just that, then you are mistaken."
Rasa makes some hand seals and creates a big gold triangle that floats in the air. It's the same technique that the 3rd Kazekage used, but it's made out of gold instead of iron.
Then Rasa launches it toward Zoro who doesn't dodge. Well, he can't dodge because Rasa grabs his feet with the scattered gold dust to make sure he will get hit by the gold triangle.
Zoro coats his swords with Armament Haki and blocks the gold triangle. He actually stops it on the spot, thanks to Rasa's gold dust that holds his feet so he doesn't get pushed back because the sand ground can't hold the pushing force.
"Hmm, this is not that strong." Zoro says it before slicing the gold triangle into pieces, making Rasa frown.
"W-what the hell? He cuts it like butter. Just what's with that guy's strength?" A senior shinobi can't believe what he sees because he knows Rasa's gold jutsu isn't as soft as a cake.
They get even more surprised when Zoro lifts his feet, breaking the gold dust that holds his feet easily. Though what they don't know is he needs to use Advanced Haki to break it because it holds him very firmly.
Then suddenly, Zoro charges toward Rasa. He finally goes offensive after being defensive for a while.
"He's coming. Back off!" Rasa orders his men to back away because they will just get in his way.
"Three Sword Style: 1080 Pound Phoenix!"
Zoro shoots a powerful energy cannon made out of 3 spiralling energy blades that are intertwined with each other. Rasa blocks it with a gold wall, but the rotating blade cannon breaks it apart quite easily.
So Rasa increases the gold dust and pushes it forward, creating a big strong gold wave to counter Zoro's blade cannon. Gold dust flies everywhere for a while because of Zoro's attack that scatters the gold while destroying it.
His 1080 Pound Phoenix almost breaks through Rasa's gold wall. If Rasa didn't change his stationary gold wall into a gold wave, then it would have been pierced for sure.
It seems to hurt Rasa's pride because now he seems really angry. He was fine when Zoro talked badly about him, but now he is angry when his prided jutsu was losing and he was forced to change his technique.
Zoro continues to attack Rasa, now at a closer distance. He spams a lot of slashes, forcing Rasa to be on the defensive. His attacks are powerful enough to break Rasa's gold walls, so Rasa can't change to offensive when Zoro is still attacking.
The Suna shinobi can't believe their Kazekage is forced to defend all the time. After all, no matter what they think about him, it's a fact that he is currently the strongest shinobi in their village, yet a young man is pushing him this far.
'I see. He doesn't have something like Gaara's Ultimate Defense that protects him automatically, so he needs to actively protect himself. Maybe that's why Orochimaru can kill him easily in the story. It was a sneak attack that Rasa never expected, so if he has Gaara's Ultimate Defense, then maybe he would at least block Orochimaru's sneak attack and there would be a decent fight because there's no way Rasa can't fight Orochimaru.'
Zoro is sure that someone at Rasa's caliber should be able to give Orochimaru a decent fight and even injure him. But Rasa was stupid enough to not take precaution against Orochimaru and died easily until he rotted in the desert.
Though now Zoro quite understands why Rasa could die easily in Orochimaru's hands. This guy is too confident with his power and thinks his plan will always work.
Most likely, he didn't trust Orochimaru, but he believed Orochimaru couldn't do anything to him. That's why he got assassinated so easily by the snake man before the chuunin exam.
Fighting against arrogant and prideful opponents like Rasa is Zoro's favorite type of battle. It's always fun to defeat them and crush their pride. But it's also a reminder for him to not be overconfident and always try to improve himself.
Zoro keeps attacking Rasa and now they are already face to face. Fighting Zoro so closely forces Rasa to concentrate on his defense. He keeps controlling the gold dust around him to block Zoro's swords.
Without his tons of training weights, Zoro's movements are very fast and strong. His Observation Haki also helps him predict Rasa's attacks and he can dodge them quickly with his speed before they hit him.
Rasa tries to attack Zoro with the gold dust that he shapes into weapons. He mostly shoots them from the ground or uses them to attack Zoro from behind. But Zoro always dodges them and when he can't dodge, he protects his body with Armament Haki and Rasa's attacks can't pierce his skin.
The battle keeps getting fiercer. Zoro is surrounded by gold dust that is used to attack him, but he can defend well while still being able to attack Rasa and forces the 4th Kazekage to put all his mind into this battle.
No one can interrupt their battle because they can't find a way to join. But then, Zoro suddenly senses something and changes his attack. He spins his body while swinging his swords to create a massive Dragon Twister.
"Three Sword Style: Kalasutra Great Dragon Twister!"
He breaks the gold dust around him and pushes Rasa back quite far. But he doesn't chase Rasa and instead sends a big vertical slash to his left. It cuts the desert, creating a very deep cut as it moves and then it cuts the giant boulder quite far from his position.
Rasa is confused seeing Zoro attack an empty place. That is until he sees 2 figures standing near the cut boulder. The 2 figures stand wearing black cloaks with red cloud pictures.
Zoro is really annoyed. "You motherfuckers again."
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
!! NEW!!
Read up to +40 CHAPTERS ahead in my patreon page.
patreon.com/creampuffs69
Chapter 123. Losses
Please like and support this book too if you like it, thank you