Pakura softly clicked her heel on the sandy ground under her, channeling her chakra, and instantly with a scorching hot white flash, the ground around her was instantly turned into a glassy area, preventing Rasa from mixing his golden dust with the sand on the ground and sneaking it near her.

"I am growing tired of cutting you up." She crossed her hands under her chest in a condescending manner, "Are we finally going to fight seriously?" ​​

The second she said that, a massive twenty-foot tall wave of golden dust rose from the sands behind her in a blink of an eye, viciously lunging at her as if it was a hungry beast.

Pakura turned her head, inwardly praising Rasa that he attacked from behind rather than head-on as was seemingly the norm nowadays, and lifted her hand with her fingers ready for a snapping motion, aiming at the avalanche of golden dust... 'So he used our little foreplay to substitute sands under the ground with his golden dust, leaving only a thin layer of sand on top of it as camouflage, huh?' Pakura thought as she snapped her fingers sending a rapid wave of her special scorch chakra forward with incredible velocity.

The tsunami of Golden dust met a supersonic wave of scorching heat, briefly blinding the observers as white flash spread through the battlefield as fast as it disappeared, leaving only a massive semi-liquid lump of smelted gold of the size of the Hokage monument in Konoha behind that was quickly cooling off and hardening, making Rasa's chakra have a lot of trouble as he tried and failed to manipulate it.

Pakura, still standing in the same spot, looked at the mountain of gold she helped to create and a small smile appeared on her usually stoic face. The deed was a whole lot harder and impressive than it looked, to be honest. Too much heat and the gold would need more time to harden into a somewhat solid form, giving Rasa enough time to pull it effortlessly back into small grains of gold. That would not cause many problems for him. Too little heat and the tsunami of golden dust could have bypassed her scorch release, reaching her. That was not ideal either.

Pakura was indeed quite proud of herself and the feat of chakra control she displayed by making sure the veritable mountain of gold would cool off quick enough that Rasa would be hard-pressed to get it combat-ready again.

"You know..." She turned around, straight in the direction where Rasa was hiding underground, "I trained a lot with the help of my husband to perfect my Scorch Release. The second I showed him how I use it... he actually berated me for an entire week for wasting so much chakra on maintaining balls of it for offense when I could just as easily use it in quick succession of rapid waves of scorching heat to instantly vaporize my enemies in a surprise attack." A nostalgic smile appeared on Pakura's face, "I won't try to play with you, Rasa." She gently shook her head.

For a second, the world stopped for Rasa. And then... it happened. An almost invisible wave of heat flooded the area in front of Pakura with such a speed, people barely noticed before its effects became apparent. Sand changed to glass, golden dust transformed into searingly hot pieces of precious metal, the very air shimmered and blurred from the heat, catching fire that extinguished itself only to again combust in quick succession all over the area where the scorch release hit. Instantly, one-fourth of the arena was changed to a superheated scorching hell that made even the audience far away sweat like pigs, feeling the scalding heat caress their skin.

Pakura didn't get much reprieve after her attack. Three spinning tendrils of golden dust burst forth from the ground, two on her sides and one behind her, razing their path towards her in an attempt to shred her to pieces now that Rasa knew the person standing there was the real Pakura. In his opinion, no clone could release such a devastating Jutsu.

Jumping slightly to the side and tilting her body to the left at a precise moment, Pakura barely evaded the first drilling tendril that promptly smashed its tip to the ground on her right side, gouging a good junk out of it. Turning her body to the right, the second tendril barely missed her, also smashing into the ground near her, blocking her from escaping to the left.

Sensing the danger behind her, Pakura instantly threw her body to the ground, causing the last tendril of golden dust to barely miss, passing by above her now-duked head, smashing to the ground behind her, blocking her last path of retreat. Pakura's hands impacted the ground as she channeled massive amounts of her chakra into it.

Before Rasa could order the tendrils to attack the now cornered Pakura, the ground around her became a peculiar mix of glass with liquid, quickly solidifying gold embedded into it while the three still spinning and twisting tendrils of golden dust connected to the ground slowly started to be smelted, fusing grains of the golden dust together. First, the parts near the ground became liquid and then hardened at a pace visible to the human eye, this as if in chain reaction spreading through the massive tendrils creating twisted pillars with a spiral-like pattern all over them reaching high up in the air.

Before anyone could marvel at the newly created golden masterpiece, Pakura jumped up on top of one of the now solidified tendrils of pure gold, creating small scorching balls of the size of a small pebble around herself as her hands locked in a tiger hand seal while the corners of her lips tugged up into a playful smirk.

"Scorch Release: Scorching Rain!"

Rasa only got a brief bad premonition before Pakura started blanketing the battlefield with her balls of scorching doom in a splashing manner. She didn't target him but her attack was even worse than if she did. He couldn't safely evade in fear of jumping straight into another scorching ball. He could use Kawarimi as it was a bit disorienting afterward for a second. A second that could be quite fatal considering Pakura was madly cropping the entire battlefield with her Jutsu of mass destruction.

As if possessed, Rasa started madly shielding himself with his golden dust, dragging it from the ground and having it intercept the small balls of scorch release, in turn turning into a liquid state that was dastardly hard to control for him. With every ball blocked, he lost control of some of his gold dust which, unlike sand, wasn't easily replenishable on the battlefield. Rasa had no time to spend converting the liquid gold back into golden dust as Pakura relentlessly continued her Jutsu, making him jump right and left while putting his dust in between his body and the balls.

Two minutes later, the panting Rasa stood in the devastated arena, sweating not much from exertion as from the heat around him while the sandy ground now sported many blotches of glass or puddles of liquid gold, in some instances even both fused in a peculiar mix.

It wasn't just Pakura's Jutsu that raised the temperature in the surroundings. The gold in some of the puddles was basically boiling and bubbling, releasing waves of heat into the air. Even the already solidifying parts released a lot of heat, making the air scalding hot. The glass and sand around were almost too hot to stand on...

Rasa simply felt as if he was burning alive, his lungs screaming in protest as if the oxygen in them was smoldering him from inside, his skin tempered under the constantly hot sun of the Wind Country actually blistered and reddened, he felt teary-eyed but his eyes were far too dry for any tears to appear, the underside of his nails were irritating him to no end while his hands shook. His clothes unpleasantly clung to his body due to the heat and sweat, weighting him...

Rasa now completely understood that Pakura's biggest weapon was not the direct attack but the torturous discomfort she could cause with her heat. He fought a hard battle against his own wits, keeping his focus on his opponent who despite the massive chance to strike seemed content to just watch him suffer.

Despite all the agony he was going through, Rasa was far from finished. Noting his chakra reserves are still eighty percent full, he channeled some of it into his body to calm it down, make the heat more bearable, and prevent further damage, no matter how small.

For a minute, Pakura just stared with a raised eyebrow at Rasa as he regained his breath, appreciating and relishing both the direct and indirect damage her technique caused.

"Huuu, still as honorable as ever, I see." Rasa dryly commented with a raspy voice, his face scrunched in both concentration and barely restrained agony, trying to sound mocking. Not that it actually worked since he looked miserable.

Sure, he was capable of channeling his chakra into his body to alleviate the effects of the heat but he was no scorch user. Pakura could stand in the center of her scorch ball and be completely fine, regarding it as a sunbathing experience. She long ago perfected protecting her body with her chakra against the effects of her own Jutsu. By now, there wasn't much heat, flames, or high temperature could do to her. Rasa, despite growing up in the deserts of the Wind Country, couldn't state the same.

At his taunt, Pakura only regarded him with a sweet smile, "I already told you that you suck at taunting, Rasa." She narrowed her eyes with delight. "In fact," She paused, creating suspense...

Rasa didn't even manage to blink as blood spurted from his neck, feeling the cold steel only after it long left his neck. His eyes widened in utter shock and bewilderment, uncomprehendingly staring at the stream of his blood dirtying the ground in front of him, he fell to his knees.

"Did you really think I only willy-nilly shot my Jutsu at you, foolishly hoping you would somehow die?" Pakura asked in a voice laced with amusement, "You are standing exactly where I wanted you. Exactly where I stood at the start of this fight. Me being a ninjutsu specialist doesn't mean I need to end the fight by using ninjutsu, idiot. Knife to the neck is much more efficient."

The last thing Rasa saw before dying was Pakura's cold smirk that could freeze even the scorching dunes of the Suna's desert as his ears registered a small, barely audible pop behind him followed by a small burst of white smoke.