Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

Kirigakure Military Crushed!?

Powerful and confident steps tore through the overgrown parts of the Kusagakure forests. Men and women of Iwagakure were quite firm, strict and always to the point. Usually, they took no luxury of enjoying their surrounding especially now that the surrounding was so completely different from their home. Iwagakure was a place where winds from the mountains carried rains of small rocks, a rocky country founded in a sweet spot surrounded by mountain ranges that provided natural protection. This ancient strategy of finding a safe place to live in an eye of stormy and sky-high mountains worked - even the Lightning Lord found his safe-house in the surroundings of the Inari mountain range in the Lightning Country desert.

The lands of the Grass village were completely overgrown, once in a while, the thick and endless forests ended but only to reveal a giant ravine. For a first time traveler, the entire landscape would've probably started to remind more of "land of ravines" or "land of bridges" as the grass was a rather unimpressive detail to make a name out of. 

The dense forests that one wouldn't have been wrong to call a jungle were unrivaled by any other country. Still, the bare-chested figure of a middle-aged man with overflowing white hair and blood red facial tattoos encouraged his men to walk faster and make wider and more confident steps the more the jungles of Kusagakure resisted. It seemed like no tree branches and no insects even hurt the man or bothered him at the very least. His step remained firm and strong no matter for how long he walked.

That would've been the man's downfall as with one loud slurping and breaking sound he stepped into some strange stony construction built from rotten wood. The Kaguya man curiously stared at the round hive that he had stepped into as his men lost all of their cool.

"Oh no, run, Tsuchikage-sama! These are the infamous Kusagakure killer hornets!" the men started shouting as swarms of the insects covered the already brief patches of visible sky and made the entire forest area black. Their buzzing sounded almost like some sort of intricate machinery working at full power. These were the killer insects that a clan of insect using mercenaries had discovered and used to their full extent during the war. 

While their usage of these hornets was relatively successful the insects were rather uncontrollable even using their own pheromones and were known to rebel and attack even their own masters. Iwagakure had enough trouble in the war as it was, the last thing they needed was a clan of idiots sending hornets that were just as likely to attack their own men as it attacked the enemy... That period was shameful to Iwagakure history as it was back then during the warring days that the country slipped into hardships.

The hornets kept trying to sting the Tsuchikage, thousands of the hand-sized insects trying to penetrate his skin. None of them prevailed, with each bite the insect just fell powerless to the ground as their own mandibles gave in and shattered. The man known as the Tsuchikage just arrogantly watched as the problem of the overly aggressive swarm of killer hornets just killed themselves trying to leave a dent in the man's skin. While his clothes did give in and the insects left many holes not even a scratch remained on his skin, it was almost like an autumn leaf had fallen on the man's skin - it felt like a tickle if anything else. 

"Well... I guess the stories of the lethality of these insects were widely exaggerated, let's go, men, it's safe now." the Kaguya turned back at his men who kept staring at the man.

Despite the men having endless opportunities to know the man's seemingly infinite strength and durability, they ended up surprised each time. In so many years of this man's presence in the leading position, not a single time he felt challenged by anything - the knives of the assassins broke when plunged into his chest, the man won every wrestling tournament of many that he himself organized to improve the bombing Iwagakure economy. At some point, those tournaments just ended up being "who can last the longest against the Tsuchikage" sort of competitions as no wanderer from any country managed to challenge the man properly.