Chapter 96: The Price of Hope
THUD—
A muffled, sickening impact echoed across the devastated battlefield. A streak of fading green light traced a dying arc through the dim air before plunging into the earth with a thunderous crash.
KABOOOOM!
The collision was catastrophic. The emerald chakra shroud around the middle-aged Clan Leader shattered like glass, dispersing into harmless motes of light. His body, no longer protected, carved a deep furrow into the ancient ground before coming to rest at the bottom of a newly formed crater. The impact site was a scar on the lunar landscape—a depression dozens of meters wide, surrounded by a web of cracks that stretched hundreds of meters in every direction, spiderwebbing through the stone foundations of Hamura's legacy.
At the crater's center, the Clan Leader lay motionless, his white robes torn and stained, his borrowed power extinguished. He did not move.
Uchiha Akira's Sharingan swept over the fallen figure. A brief assessment confirmed the obvious: alive, but completely spent. His attention shifted.
He did not immediately press deeper into the lunar stronghold. Instead, his form swirled and vanished into the intangible refuge of Kamui.
He waited. Let the fear marinate. Let the desperation build.
When he reappeared moments later in the same spot, his spiritual perception expanded outward like a net.
Under the mask, his lips curved into a satisfied smile. "Just as I predicted. With their champion defeated, they have only one sanctuary left."
His senses painted a clear picture: a group of panicked chakra signatures, moving with desperate speed, all converging on a single point—the floating island, the temple that housed the Great Tenseigan. Hamura's shrine. Their last bastion.
"Of course. Where else would they flee?"
He allowed them a head start. It was by design.
In the next instant, he materialized directly in the path of the fleeing group.
They skidded to a halt, faces draining of what little color they possessed. These were not warriors; they were administrators, scholars, caretakers of a dying legacy. Through their connection to the Great Tenseigan, they had witnessed every moment of their Clan Leader's brutal defeat. They knew, with visceral certainty, that this masked demon was beyond them.
One of them, an elderly man clutching a ceremonial staff, began to tremble. His voice was barely a whisper, a prayer to ancestors long passed. "Lord Hamura… if your spirit yet watches over this sacred place… grant us safe passage to your temple. Protect our hope…"
The old man was the same one who had appeared at the Hyuga compound. His name, Akira would learn, was Shinri—Elder Truth.
Shinri forced his aged spine straight, pushing down terror with the brittle weight of duty. He turned to the cluster of his people. "Hirokichi. Maki." His voice, though thin, carried authority. "You two will take Toneri to the ancestral temple. He is not merely a child—he is the culmination of our bloodline, the hope of the Ōtsutsuki. You must protect him." His gaze swept over the remaining, terrified faces. "Everyone else. We stay. We delay the enemy. We buy them the time they need."
"Understood, Elder Shinri!" A young man and woman, barely out of adolescence, responded immediately. Their faces were pale, but their resolve was absolute. Without hesitation, one of them—the woman, Maki—gently but swiftly took a bundled infant from the arms of a sobbing middle-aged woman.
Then they ran. Not in cowardice, but in sacred duty. They flew toward the floating island, toward the temple, clutching the baby Toneri.
"We must hold him!" Elder Shinri roared, the first green orb of chakra already forming in his weathered hand. "He must not reach the temple!"
A golden streamer shot toward the masked figure. Then another, and another. The remaining lunar Ōtsutsuki, eight in total, unleashed everything they had.
"Haha…" A low, amused chuckle emanated from behind the mask. The invader moved like a phantom, phasing through attacks, deflecting others with lazy swipes of a kunai. His single visible eye, however, was fixed on the distant, shrinking figures of Hirokichi and Maki. "That infant… he seems exceptionally precious to you. I confess, my interest is piqued. I merely came to observe the fabled Ōtsutsuki. Now, I wonder… what unexpected treasure might I uncover?"
His words were calculated poison. The desperation in the defenders' attacks spiked to outright frenzy. They knew he was toying with them, knew their efforts were futile, but they had no choice.
He let them exhaust themselves. He watched the two carriers approach the base of the floating island, nearing the temple's threshold.
Perfect. The farther they went, the more isolated they became. And distance meant nothing to him.
"Enough of this," he announced. "Kamui."
He vanished mid-attack, leaving the eight defenders stabbing at empty air. Their attacks collided with each other in a cascade of wasted energy and cries of alarm.
A heartbeat later, he rematerialized directly before the sprinting Hirokichi and Maki.
ZZZZT!
A crackling arc of black lightning, precise and measured, struck both young Ōtsutsuki in the chest. Not lethal—he was careful—but sufficient. They were hurled backward, their grip on the infant torn loose by the sudden, violent impact.
The bundled baby arced through the air, silent for a moment before a thin, startled cry escaped. It fell, not toward the ground, but into the waiting arms of the masked invader.
Uchiha Akira looked down at the infant in his grasp.
The baby's skin was pale, an almost luminous white. His hair was a soft, bluish-white—the same shade as the ancient progenitor, Kaguya Ōtsutsuki. On his small chest, just below the neck, nine black magatama were arranged in a natural pattern, as much a part of him as his skin or breath. His eyes were closed. Not merely shut—the lids were slightly sunken, the sockets empty.
Born without eyes.
'Ōtsutsuki Toneri,' Akira confirmed silently. 'So this is the messiah of the lunar clan.'
The baby squirmed, his thin cries escalating. Akira paid it no mind. With precise, gentle chakra manipulation, he completed his primary objective—extracting a minuscule sample of tissue, stored instantly in a sealed vial within his Kamui dimension.
"Release him!" Elder Shinri's voice was a ragged scream, the old man having pushed his borrowed power to its limit to close the distance. His body flickered with unstable green energy, the telltale signs of dangerous overdraw already showing on his aged features.
"Do not be alarmed," Akira said calmly, his tone almost conversational. "If I become… nervous… my control may slip. That would be unfortunate for the child."
Shinri froze mid-stride, his attack dying in his hand. His face cycled through fury, despair, and a deep, bitter shame. His voice trembled with barely contained rage. "You… a descendant of the Sage of Six Paths… sinking to this? Using an infant as a hostage? The Sage's world is a failure. It breeds only filth like you."
Akira tilted his head, genuinely unbothered by the condemnation. "I am merely curious. What makes this particular infant so valuable?" He glanced down at Toneri. "He seems unremarkable. The only peculiarity I note is his lack of eyes."
Elder Shinri's expression flickered—relief, quickly suppressed. The invader didn't know. He couldn't perceive what the Great Tenseigan revealed. Toneri's true nature, his impossibly pure bloodline, remained a secret.
But even as Shinri felt a sliver of hope, he also felt a pang of contempt. This descendant of the Sage, for all his power, was ignorant. He could not sense the chakra that marked Toneri as nearly the equal of Hamura himself.
The records of their clan spoke of this: the luminous skin, the pale hair, the sacred magatama—these were the physical markers of the pure Ōtsutsuki lineage. Toneri displayed them all. And when they had verified his potential through the Great Tenseigan, the confirmation was absolute. He possessed genuine, undiluted Ōtsutsuki chakra.
Unlike themselves—the faded, thinned-blood descendants—Toneri was the real thing. Give him a suitable Byakugan, and he would awaken the Tenseigan in months, not years. He would wield the power to judge and remake the world. He was their only hope.
And now that hope was clutched in the hands of a monster.
(End of Chapter)
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