The night shone as brightly as day.

Under hikaru’s world-ending slash, the Three-Tails offered not the slightest resistance.

Even sound itself became strange in that moment—at once deafening and utterly silent.

The massive Three-Tails threw its jaws wide open in a soundless scream, its body twisting violently in agony.

It was hard to believe that this miserable creature was supposed to be one of the tailed beasts that stood at the pinnacle of the world.

hikaru remained calm.

He had already estimated the power of that slash.

When he first tested this technique, he had gained a decent sense of its upper limit.

Back then, he had not combined it with the Nine-Tails’ power.

But as someone who possessed Kurama, hikaru had always had a solid grasp of how far his strength could go.

He had more or less predicted what kind of destructive level Konohanasakuya-hime, his self-created Bloodline Elimination, would reach once combined with Kurama’s chakra.

And now, the result had fully met his expectations—

no, it had gone far beyond them.

Within that intertwined blade of gold and white, the Three-Tails’ body twisted and warped without end.

Cracks spread across it, one after another, visible even to the naked eye.

And once those cracks reached their limit—

the Three-Tails’ body shattered completely into pieces.

Even after cleaving the Three-Tails in two, the golden-white blade did not stop.

It continued to extend into the distance, as though it had no end at all.

Then—

Boom.

It was as though all the sound that had vanished finally returned to reality at once.

A thunderous roar shook the world.

Far in the distance, a towering mountain was split cleanly in half before everyone’s eyes.

The earth itself seemed as soft as tofu, cleaved open into a long, bottomless trench.

All the surviving Mist shinobi stood frozen, staring blankly at the scene.

They were truly terrified now.

No matter how brave they had been before, no matter how willing they had been to throw themselves forward when their homeland was under attack—

facing a being that seemed like a god made flesh, they still felt fear.

They still felt despair so overwhelming it crushed the soul.

At this moment, what they felt they were facing was not merely a shinobi.

It was a deity.

Or more precisely—

a terrifying asura.

This was a being they had no power to resist.

A being they had no right to stand against.

hikaru silently watched as Yagura Karatachi’s body fell from the sky and hit the ground.

Then his gaze swept across the Mist shinobi.

To his surprise, every one of them looked panicked and disheveled under that glance.

Quite a few even stumbled backward unconsciously.

Clearly, the battle between him and Yagura had utterly shattered what little courage remained in them.

"How truly insignificant," hikaru said softly, his tone almost mocking.

His voice was not loud, but carried by chakra, every single person heard it clearly.

The words instantly made the Mist shinobi’s expressions change.

Humiliation and anger churned through them.

But none of them dared move.

More than that—they no longer even had the courage to meet his gaze.

Seeing that, hikaru merely shook his head.

Then he stopped paying attention to them altogether and began walking toward Yagura.

His sensory perception immediately spread through the fallen Mizukage’s body, rapidly analyzing his condition.

Yagura’s state was terrible.

After taking hikaru’s slash, he was hanging on by little more than half a life.

If not for the fact that most of the damage had been borne by the Three-Tails, and that Yagura himself still enjoyed some of the defensive benefits of being a jinchūriki—

he would already have been sent to the Pure Land.

"But that strike also temporarily severed his connection to Obito," hikaru thought quietly, "and the chakra inside him is in complete disarray."

After examining Yagura for a few moments, he had already formed a rough understanding of the man’s condition.

The Three-Tails’ chakra was now chaotic to an absurd degree.

To be honest, even hikaru found it shocking.

It was difficult to imagine how anyone could survive with chakra inside their body in such a state.

But that was the thing about jinchūriki.

hikaru sighed inwardly, then shifted his awareness to his shadow clone.

That clone had gone to collect the Three-Tails’ scattered chakra.

After the lessons he had learned from White Zetsu tissue and Hashirama’s flesh, hikaru had become extremely cautious about planting chakra-derived "seeds."

Until he confirmed whether the key issue was one of quantity or quality, he intended to cover every possibility as thoroughly as he could.

His own purpose in fighting the Three-Tails was, of course, to obtain chakra directly from the beast.

But the shadow clone’s role was to gather the chakra that had dispersed outward from the Three-Tails during the battle.

hikaru intended to plant both.

Then he would compare the results between the two.

With that comparison, he could derive a much more precise answer.

That way, the next time he acquired material for planting, he would not end up wasting his effort only to discover afterward that nothing usable would grow from it.

He had already been burned by Hashirama cells and White Zetsu matter before.

That issue had to be solved.

"I have to say, you really disappointed me."

While his mind ran through those thoughts, hikaru finally spoke aloud.

"You became a jinchūriki, yet you can’t even properly bring out the power of a tailed beast. What a waste of my time."

As he spoke, he stretched out a hand and pressed it directly against Yagura’s abdomen.

With Kurama’s assistance, the Three-Tails’ chakra immediately began pouring into his body.

And at that moment, the surviving Mist shinobi slowly approached.

This time, however, none of them dared attack.

Even though they remained on high alert, fully armed, the fear in their posture was impossible to hide.

"Don’t worry. I’m not planning to kill him."

hikaru shook his head and spoke flatly.

"If I had truly intended to kill him, he would already be dead. Whether you were here or not would make no difference—because you are not capable of stopping me."

The words were spoken calmly.

But they were also undeniably true.

Perhaps because the power he had displayed was simply too overwhelming, every Mist shinobi believed him almost instantly.

Indeed—someone with strength like this had no need to lie to them.

To such a monster, they were probably not even worth deceiving.

Of course, hikaru had no idea that these Mist shinobi were practically taming themselves in their own heads, coming up with all kinds of ridiculous assumptions.

He had no time to care about that.

Once he had extracted enough chakra, he took out a sealing scroll and sealed the Three-Tails’ chakra inside it.

Then he stood up, stored the scroll away, and glanced once more at the gathered Mist shinobi.

But the moment he moved, all of them reflexively shifted into combat posture.

That reaction made him shake his head again.

Still, he quickly formed hand seals.

Then—

a giant maw suddenly opened beneath his feet.

Before the Mist shinobi could even understand what they were seeing, hikaru leapt into it—

and vanished without a trace.

The whole thing felt like a dream.

That man who had stood like a god of slaughter had simply left?

And yet the abyss-like trench, the ruin all around them, and the Fourth Mizukage still lying on the ground between life and death—

all of it told the surviving Mist shinobi one thing.

This had all been real.

They truly had been confronted by a being like a god.

Or perhaps, a demon.

"What a terrifying bastard..."

Standing in a scorched patch of earth not far from the battlefield, Obito cursed under his breath.

Too many things in this battle had gone wrong.

And because he had been controlling Yagura remotely, he had not been able to properly display either his own full strength or Yagura’s.

That was why he had chosen to force Yagura into tailed beast transformation without hesitation.

Originally, following Black Zetsu’s plan, he had intended to test the enemy a little longer before fully unleashing the Three-Tails.

But hikaru’s control over tailed beast power had gone far beyond anything he had imagined.

At first, Obito had assumed that this mysterious enemy’s state was merely a somewhat refined tailed beast chakra cloak.

Strong, yes—but only to a degree.

Yet the moment he saw the man casually compress a Tailed Beast Bomb to the size of a Rasengan, while still maintaining a level of power not inferior to Yagura’s own—

his understanding of jinchūriki combat was completely overturned.

Had jinchūriki combat always been supposed to look like this?

Not releasing the tailed beast outright, but instead wielding its full force through one’s own body?

But whatever the answer, what truly knocked Obito senseless was the way hikaru had answered his Tailed Beast Bomb with another, as if he were trying to kill them both on the spot.

Now Yagura’s condition had become utterly unstable.

The moment that devastating slash had landed, the Fourth Mizukage’s consciousness began violently resisting Obito’s control.

At the same time, even the Three-Tails itself started rebelling fiercely.

That damned beast had no intention of remaining obedient.

This forced Obito to pour in even more ocular power and mental effort just to suppress the situation.

If not for the modifications to his body—

if not for the Hashirama-derived power inside him—

he would likely have already collapsed.

And the one who had caused all of this did not seem to care in the slightest.

Not only had he crippled the Three-Tails—

he had then come directly after them.

Fortunately, Genji’s arrival had bought Obito a sliver of breathing room.

Without that intervention, he might truly have failed under the combined pressure of suppressing Yagura, restraining the Three-Tails, and avoiding that masked monster.

"That bastard is even more dangerous than we imagined," Black Zetsu said with a sigh.

"And I never expected that after so many years, someone like this would appear again—someone who can wield a tailed beast’s power to this extent."

"What do you mean?"

Obito asked through clenched teeth.

He hated that masked man to the extreme now.

"You’ve seen someone like this before?"

"A long time ago, there were people who could do something similar."

Black Zetsu immediately realized he had revealed too much, but he recovered at once.

"These are memories inherited from Madara. I’ll explain later if there’s time. For now, focus on dealing with this enemy."

Obito frowned but slowly nodded.

Black Zetsu glanced at him and quietly let out a breath of relief.

After seeing that masked man, he had become more certain than ever—

the world might truly still contain another existence comparable to his mother.

At the very least, these mysterious people had clearly inherited a power dangerously close to that level.

But Black Zetsu did not dare reveal anything.

He didn’t actually know the full truth of his mother’s past himself.

The only purpose for which he had been born was to free Kaguya from the seal imposed by her two unfilial sons.

Beyond that, he knew almost nothing.

So he did not dare gamble.

If he misjudged this, he might end up harming his mother instead.

"By the way," Obito suddenly asked, trying to steady himself, "what’s happening with that bastard now?"

Black Zetsu immediately switched his attention through a White Zetsu clone, searching for hikaru’s location.

He was curious too—where had that man gone?

But the next instant, his expression changed drastically.

"Watch out—"

Slash!

Before Black Zetsu could even finish speaking, a sharp blade flashed out and split him cleanly in two.

The white and black halves fell to either side of the ground, grotesque and unnatural.

The moment he saw that, Obito instantly turned intangible.

Only then did he notice a figure standing silently beside them.

It was the same mysterious masked man.

With one foot planted on the white half of Zetsu’s body, hikaru looked down at Obito and the split remains of Black Zetsu with cold indifference.

"Did you really think I couldn’t sense the two of you, hiding like sewer rats while controlling that Three-Tails jinchūriki?"

hikaru said calmly.

To be honest, he himself was a little surprised.

He remembered Black Zetsu as someone with excellent perception.

Yet this time, he had been ambushed in one blow.

Still, hikaru could not be bothered dwelling on it. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

The result had already been achieved.

"I think you’re the rat here," Obito snapped, glaring at him as his Mangekyō spun.

"Hiding behind mystery while using Konoha’s power. What a method."

"And who told you the Nine-Tails’ power belongs to Konoha?"

hikaru raised a brow, then laughed softly.

"Ignorance is the greatest flaw a person can have.

"Self-righteous arrogance is the second.

"Unfortunately for you, you have both.

"Which makes you a man who is both ignorant and foolishly fearless."

As he said this, his eyes flicked briefly toward the White Zetsu half pinned underfoot—

then toward the White Zetsu-enhanced half of Obito’s body.

He could not deny the greed in his heart.

There was simply too much useful material right in front of him.

And it would have been stranger not to feel greedy.

Without hesitation, hikaru stabbed a kunai through the White Zetsu half on the ground, pinning it firmly in place.

Then his gaze sharpened.

The chakra inside him exploded outward.

Obito and Black Zetsu’s remaining half both changed expression at once.

They knew all too well how terrifying this man’s strength was.

Even though Obito could phase through attacks, his speed and offensive power were monstrous.

One slight failure in Obito’s reaction time, and it would be over.

Thinking this, Black Zetsu began sinking underground immediately, abandoning all thought of retrieving the White Zetsu corpse.

He had to be careful.

If this man caught him, he was dead.

Obito, on the other hand, remained silent.

He wanted to face everything calmly.

But after seeing how badly Yagura had been beaten through remote control alone, he could not stop the chill rising in his own heart.

Buzz—!

hikaru did not waste a single word.

A cold slash of steel passed across Obito’s neck in an instant.

Fast as a ghost, hikaru had already crossed past him in one motion.

As an ANBU shinobi, even after growing so strong, hikaru still retained his habits.

Especially his instinct for seizing openings—

if his opponent gave him even the smallest lapse, he would strike without hesitation.

Unfortunately, this strike produced the same result as before.

The blade passed through Obito’s neck without touching anything solid.

"Oh? Physical attacks don’t work?"

hikaru pulled back in a blur and spoke with deliberate curiosity.

"So it’s not illusion...

"No. If it were genjutsu, I’d have noticed.

"In that case, you really do have a rather interesting little secret."

"You think you understand the power of the Uchiha?" Obito said coldly.

"A rat like you never could.

"I’ll send you somewhere appropriate—

a place that truly suits you."

Obito had every reason to be furious.

It was not merely because hikaru had beaten Yagura half to death through the Three-Tails.

It was because hikaru had turned their own scheme against them so completely.

By the time this was over, even if Yagura survived, his condition might be too ruined for him to remain Mizukage.

And if Yagura died instead, that would be even worse.

Either way, Obito’s ability to continue destroying Kirigakure from within using the Mizukage identity would be crippled.

To him, that was intolerable.

At heart, Obito was still not the man he would later become.

He had only inherited Madara’s legacy for around two years.

Two years was not enough to turn a boy who had once been the academy dead last into someone truly mature, rational, and calculating.

That kind of transformation required time.

Still, he had no choice but to steady himself now.

He had to deal with this monster in front of him.

"Ready?"

hikaru suddenly asked.

"I’m coming."

The moment the words fell, a streak of golden chakra flashed right in front of Obito—

and a blade slashed down toward him again.

"What the hell happened outside?"

Inside a wooden house on the far side of Kirigakure, Mei Terumi struggled out of the wreckage.

Locked inside this cursed cabin all this time, she had no idea what was happening beyond it.

But she knew one thing.

Something catastrophic had happened tonight.

The constant tremors.

The suffocating chakra filled with destruction.

Especially that final thunderous blast that had shattered even this cabin—

no matter how she looked at it, nothing about it was good.

Though, in a bitter irony, she also had that blast to thank.

Without it, she had no idea when she might have gotten out.

She silently tested her chakra.

The seal was still there, but it had weakened considerably.

From that alone, she could tell that the masked man had indeed never intended to kill her.

But that did not mean Mei felt the slightest gratitude.

She knew he had kept her alive for a reason.

And after all the Mist shinobi he had slaughtered—

after killing Ao, her closest companion—

how could she possibly feel anything but hatred?

If she ever got the chance, she would kill him herself.

Taking a deep breath, Mei staggered to her feet.

As the seal continued fading, more and more of her chakra returned.

It was still not much, but enough for movement.

She jumped upward in one motion and landed atop a tree.

She needed to figure out where she was first.

But the moment she climbed to the tallest tree in the area, what she saw in the distance left her frozen.

The mist over Kirigakure had thinned considerably.

And the Mizukage Building—

which should have been standing in the center of the village—

was gone.

What remained was only fire.

And there was more fire farther away too.

Even from this distance, she could tell the village had suffered terrible destruction.

"What... happened..."

She murmured in disbelief.

But only for a second.

Soon she regained herself, gritted her teeth, and raced forward.

The village was large, and her chakra reserves were still far from ideal.

But none of that mattered now.

She pushed herself at full speed.

Even as her body grew weaker and weaker, she refused to slow down.

She didn’t know how much time passed before she finally reached the center of the village.

What relieved her slightly was that the core area had not been devastated as badly.

But the people in the streets all looked deeply shaken.

And behind them were groups of shinobi covered in wounds.

Many others lay on stretchers, unable to move at all.

Still more lay motionless on the ground beneath plain white sheets.

The sight made the unease in her heart grow even worse.

Only when she spotted Genji, walking with obvious difficulty, did she finally feel even the slightest sense of reassurance.

"Elder!"

Suppressing her inner panic and confusion, Mei ran over.

"Mm? Mei? You’re alive?"

Genji looked at her in surprise.

Then he forced out a weary smile.

"That’s good. That’s good..."

"Elder, what happened?" Mei asked quickly, seeing his condition.

At once, she understood.

This disaster was even more serious than she had imagined.

Genji let out a deep sigh.

He glanced at the surrounding shinobi, all equally low-spirited, then gave a bitter laugh.

"This time..."

He paused.

"Kirigakure is in real trouble..."

"Fire Release: Bomb Blast Dance!"

Obito retreated to a safer distance and rapidly formed hand seals.

The next instant, flames swirled together with Kamui’s twisting space, forming a bizarre vortex-like firestorm.

But facing that attack, hikaru didn’t even blink.

Wrapped in golden chakra, he leapt forward.

Just as the spinning inferno was about to reach him, a black Tailed Beast Bomb formed in his hand.

The black sphere smashed straight into the firestorm.

The flames were instantly shredded apart by the sheer density of his chakra.

Once the fire was gone, the Tailed Beast Bomb kept flying straight toward Obito.

Yet Obito did not dodge.

And hikaru’s body passed right through him.

"Wood Release: Cutting Sprigs Jutsu!"

The moment hikaru phased through, Obito spun around.

Countless wooden spikes extended from his arm and stabbed viciously toward hikaru’s back.

"Oh? Taking the initiative now?"

hikaru still had the leisure to comment.

He swung his blade at once toward Obito’s arm.

Unsurprisingly, Obito phased again, and the slash missed cleanly.

hikaru didn’t care.

With a single sidestep, he jumped aside, secretly formed a one-handed seal behind his back, then stood still and looked at Obito calmly.

"So the limit is five minutes?"

That one sentence instantly sent a chill down Obito’s spine.

"The first time, you made your move after a little over four minutes. I thought it might’ve been coincidence.

"The second time, same thing.

"So your intangibility limit is five minutes."

"You really do just talk nonsense."

Obito answered with forced calm.

His chakra remained on high alert, as if he could attack at any time.

"You think you are? Someone who can understand everything and see through everything?"

"So I guessed right again."

hikaru smiled lightly, utterly unconcerned.

"Very well. Then the game ends here.

"My objective this time has already been achieved.

"I’m disappointed, but either way, it’s time for me to leave."

"You think this place is somewhere you can enter and leave whenever you want?"

Obito stared at him coldly.

He truly could not understand what hikaru meant.

Had this man really come all the way here just to beat the Three-Tails’ jinchūriki half to death?

Even so, after being pressed down by hikaru’s overwhelming presence for so long, Obito no longer wanted things to continue like this.

He had inherited Madara Uchiha’s name.

He was the one meant to change and save this world.

Wasn’t he?

"Really?"

hikaru stood there with both arms folded.

His tone carried faint amusement, yet remained as arrogant and indifferent as ever.

"In that case..."

Before the sentence even finished, he charged straight toward Obito.

The blade was gone.

In his right hand, a black Tailed Beast Bomb had formed instead.

Seeing that, Obito’s mind flashed back to an earlier scene.

That memory struck him hard.

With a furious roar, he charged toward hikaru too.

The distance between them was not small, but to shinobi of their level, it vanished in an instant.

hikaru’s eyes locked on Obito.

Without hesitation, he shoved the Tailed Beast Bomb straight toward Obito’s head.

But Obito was already prepared.

He remained in Kamui intangibility—

and thrust the kunai in his hand toward hikaru’s abdomen.

"This kind of mistake..."

Obito roared inwardly.

"I already made it once. I will not make it again!"

Yet at that very moment, another figure suddenly appeared beside him.

A flash of steel cut through the air.

And Obito realized, in disbelief, that his right arm had been severed clean off.

hikaru himself had already landed safely on a nearby treetop.

The one beside Obito had been a shadow clone.

hikaru calmly looked over, released the shadow clone, then fixed his cold gaze on Obito.

"So then..."

His voice was flat. Unhurried.

"Do you agree?"

He paused, the corner of his mouth lifting beneath the fox mask.

"Or oppose?"

◇ One bonus Chapter will be released for every 150 Power Stones.

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