The puppets and Rei awkwardly stared at each other for a while.
When Rei decided to attract the attention of the puppets, he did so because he knew he could handle it and this way, he wouldn't have to look through the unknown structure in order to round up all enemy combatants. Now, they would come to him.
Despite such thinking, Rei was still astonished at the sheer number of puppets present in the initial wave. 'There must be a lot more puppets than I predicted.' Rei off-handedly thought without any worry. After all, be it thousand or even a million of average ninjas, in front of bijuu they were all just a slight nuisance.
These puppets might be a bit stronger than normal chunins from what he saw so far, but there was no threat of fuinjutsu and since they were puppets, even unexpected ninjutsu was not likely to appear during the fight. At Rei's current level, this was honestly nothing worrisome.
The puppets had apparently enough of the staring contest as they as one jumped toward Rei, intending to swarm him with their numbers.
Seeing the wall of wooden bodies approaching him at high speed, Rei inwardly sighed before slowly unsheathing his sword. In an instant, an electrical current sparked to life on the edge of the said blade and with one fluid movement, Rei jumped backward, away from the entrance to the castle.
The door he kicked away was quite massive and as such, many of the puppets would be able to pass through. But on the other hand, the entrance was also a nice choke point.
Rei swung his blade, sending a crescent-like cutting edge made of lightning element at the approaching puppets that were about to pass through the entrance, and therefore were very densely concentrated in one area. The elemental attack made short work of any puppet it passed through, decimating quite a sizable number of them at once.
'And just as intended, the castle has more or less no scratch whatsoever either.' Rei mentally hummed in satisfaction as he watched the smoking entrance. From what he could see through the smoke, some puppets clearly survived the attack and were getting up but most of these were in some way damaged.
It was then a sound of breaking glass attracted Rei's attention upwards, causing him to widen his eyes and inwardly cringe at the damage caused to the windows of the castle as a multitude of puppets jumped through them, trying to surprise attack Rei.
Stepping back, Rei swung his blade upwards, casting a Lightning Dragon Jutsu on the blade at the same time and directing it with the swing above himself. The dragon made of pure lightning chakra coiled in the air, cutting and burning any puppet that landed onto its body, only dissipating when no more puppets jumped out of the windows.
Thanks to the Lightning Dragon, no puppet landed in Rei's immediate vicinity, creating a small radius of the puppet-free zone around him.
Such a show of skill would surely freeze Rei's attackers in fear, awe, or something else if they were humans but unfortunately, puppets had no feelings and as such, they didn't hesitate at all. Not even a second lasted after their landing and they were yet again leaping at Rei while surrounding him with a volley of yellow balls they sent at him.
Rei didn't remember what these balls were supposed to do from the anime. That said, he was not about to find out by letting them hit him. Tapping his feet on the ground, he imbued his chakra into it and made it rise into a rocky shield all around him, enhancing it mostly from inside with his chakra to prevent the rock from being sent at him as splinters. He had a nasty feeling the balls were some kind of bomb...
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Rei didn't even manage to finish that thought when a loud booming sound reached him as his rocky shield shook, showing some minuscule cracks. Now that created a frown on Rei's lips. It wasn't really that threatening to him but he reckoned this army of puppets would be able to take down most forces of a hidden village back home if they attacked it head-on. They certainly had enough firepower if their concentrated attacks could create cracks on rock enhanced with his chakra while he put some effort into it.
Sighing, Rei made his chakra in the rock erupt towards the outside, sending his rocky shield back at the puppets as dangerous shrapnel, tearing through their wooden bodies, again creating a safe zone all around the motionless Rei.
With the time for gauging the enemy's power over, Rei decided to move first as he channeled lightning chakra through his body. Blurring towards the spot with three puppets standing close to each other, he appeared in front of them, already swinging his sword, bisecting all three of them at the waist before they could react.
Rei knew being bisected would not hinder puppets as much as it would humans so he made sure to pump his lightning chakra through the puppet the second his blade entered it, frying all internal mechanisms responsible for the movement of the chunks of wood.
These three puppets would not be getting up anytime soon.
Rei didn't have a lot of time to celebrate though. With his enhanced nervous system, he easily noticed three yellow balls of energy flying at him, causing him to jump upwards, evading them as they exploded.
The air was no safe zone either, however, and Rei found himself under the fire of yet more puppets. Spinning in the air, Rei created a ball of spinning lightning chakra around himself, letting the yellow energy balls explode on it. Not unlike kaiten of the Hyuuga clan, the spinning lightning chakra redirected the explosive energy away from Rei, shielding him.
As Rei landed, he huffed, 'So... they would fire at me even if I was near their allies, huh? Guess the puppets are expendable enough for that.' He realized.
'Don't forget to leave some un-fried for research purposes!' Pakura telepathically reminded him, her voice somewhat worried. Not for him. She was worried for the puppets. After being fried from inside out, they had no worth to her!
Chuckling to himself, Rei sent her an understanding feeling before springing into action again, evading yet another volley of yellow exploding balls from the puppets.
'Clearly, they realized I am a dangerous foe up close and decided to focus on ranged attacks.' Rei realized that the puppets had some basic intelligence if they could do such a thing. Looking at the thousands of puppets all around him, Rei wryly smiled, 'This will take a while, won't it?'
'Well, it's not as if you didn't need the exercise, is it?' Konan's smirking voice resounded in his head.
Rei rolled his eyes and increased the amount of lightning chakra coursing through his blade, "Yes, yes. Laugh it up, woman." He grumbled before jumping back into the fray.