The masked man's head was pounding.
With his intangibility, he could casually ignore harsh environments, but the two monsters chasing him were literal "zombies."
Their Edo Tensei bodies completely bypassed physical exhaustion and were entirely immune to harsh environments, too.
Even if he plunged straight down to the bottom of the ocean floor right now, it would be useless.
Those two would just follow him into the trench.
They were as terrifyingly stubborn as superglue.
What the hell was he supposed to do?
Just as the masked man was desperately trying to calculate a tactical countermeasure, another lone explosive tag suddenly drifted through the air, phased harmlessly through his chest, and detonated.
The masked man's brain clicked instantly.
Tobirama had deliberately herded him to the seaside.
The Second Hokage hadn't unleashed his full arsenal back at their previous location simply because it was way too close to Amegakure.
If a full-scale battle broke out there—especially one involving an infinite chain explosion like Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags—it would have caused massive collateral damage to the civilian population.
So the Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags hadn't actually fizzled out earlier.
The Second Hokage had actively chosen not to trigger the chain reaction.
'I was careless,' the masked man realized bitterly.
He had been way too focused on securing a clean getaway and totally failed to read the tactical map.
If he had realized that earlier, he should have sprinted straight toward the heart of Amegakure.
That way, he could have exploited the civilians to shake the two Hokage off his tail.
Even if he couldn't completely ditch them, he could have forced them to hold back their heavy artillery.
Now, things were incredibly messy.
If his gut was right, he was about to personally experience the full payload of the Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags.
"Hm?"
Just as the masked man swept a hyper-vigilant glare across his surroundings, he suddenly felt the surface tension beneath his feet vanish.
A sickening sense of weightlessness hit him.
What was going on?
Was he actually so stressed out that he messed up the most basic, academy-level water-walking technique and slipped into the ocean?
The masked man glanced down in utter confusion, only to discover that the rippling sea surface beneath him had somehow split right down the middle out of thin air!
The seawater itself was actively peeling apart, transforming into endless, individual explosive tags that began violently drifting toward him.
'What the hell was this?!' The masked man's eyes widened in sheer shock.
'This entire sea was a fake?!'
Wait.
This specific technique didn't look anything like Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags.
It looked way more like that woman's signature ninjutsu!
The masked man snapped his head up.
Sure enough, Konan—who had already fully activated her Paper Person of God Technique—was hovering high in midair, staring down at him with dead cold eyes.
The masked man's heart instantly sank like a stone.
Naturally, he had stockpiled extensive combat intel on every single member of the Akatsuki.
In this specific paper-cloak state, when it came to absorbing raw physical attacks, Konan was functionally no different from him while his intangibility was active.
She didn't need to worry about the point-blank explosive tags damaging her at all.
She was basically... a living, breathing version of the Edo Tensei!
Connecting those dots, the masked man shot a frantic glance toward the Senju brothers standing on the opposite shore.
If the Edo Tensei's and Konan hadn't shown up at the exact same time, he probably never would have connected their abilities in his entire life.
But now...
What was the ultimate, glaring weakness of the Edo Tensei?
Sealing jutsu.
The Edo Tensei zombies were functionally immortal and indestructible, but they could be suppressed and sealed away.
Similarly, Konan was completely immune to physical damage, but at the end of the day, she wasn't truly intangible.
She possessed a physical mass that could be touched, which meant she could also be sealed.
But...
The masked man let out a bitter, exhausted laugh.
Knowing exactly how to counter a threat and physically having the means to pull it off were two entirely different universes.
How the hell was he supposed to simultaneously seal these three monsters right now?!
The explosive tags continued to drift, phasing harmlessly through his intangible body and violently detonating just inches away.
Compared to the original timeline, this version of Konan had evolved drastically.
Her explosive tags were no longer just massive, overwhelming firework displays meant to carpet-bomb the sky and earth.
They were hyper-concentrated, pinpoint-targeted explosions.
That was exactly one of the core characteristics of the Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags.
Forget the fact that the jutsu could endlessly summon fresh, brand-new explosive tags into existence.
Even if Konan strictly relied on the finite payload currently hidden in this fake sea, the detonation timer would stretch infinitely beyond the pathetic ten minutes he could endure.
"I already know your intangibility caps out at a strict five-minute limit. So, originally, I prepped six hundred billion explosive tags right here to execute ten minutes of non-stop, continuous explosions just to completely eradicate you."
Konan slowly drifted downward, her cold voice easily cutting through the roar of the blasts.
In any combat scenario, when someone voluntarily leaked highly classified intel to an enemy's face, their ultimate goal was usually to completely crush the target's spirit before physically killing them.
However, it was a known cliché that villains died specifically from talking too much.
If the executioner failed to properly control the pace of the battle, running their mouth often became the exact catalyst for their grand plan falling apart.
But the second the masked man heard those specific words, he immediately understood that today's nightmare absolutely could not be resolved through normal tactics.
Fortunately, he had proactively stuffed an ordinary, spare Sharingan into his left eye socket, specifically reserved to trigger Izanagi in a worst-case scenario.
Only...
The masked man secretly cursed himself. 'Why the hell didn't I prep a few more spare Sharingan?'
Forget transplanting a dozen into his arm like that freak Danzo.
Even just casually stuffing a few loose eyeballs into his pocket would have been infinitely better than this!
If Konan had come alone, he might still have had a slim chance to burn Izanagi and pull off a brutal, unexpected counter-kill.
But now? He had two unkillable zombie Hokage actively watching from the sidelines.
Even if he managed to assassinate one by surprise, how the hell was he supposed to survive the rest?
"I also know you hold Izanagi in reserve—a jutsu that can rewrite reality and turn all fatal harm into an illusion."
"?!"
The masked man had been frantically racking his brain for a viable escape route, but the millisecond he heard Konan say that, he was completely paralyzed by shock.
How the hell did they know that?!
Was it that backstabbing bastard Itachi...?
Or was it the Second Hokage, the guy who made an entire career out of obsessively dissecting Uchiha anatomy and jutsu?
It didn't matter.
Since the other side already knew his trump card, they had absolutely prepared a hard counter for it.
"You have Izanagi. I have Makoto, and the combined backing of everyone else in Amegakure! Six hundred billion explosive tags is only the strict physical limit of what this specific geographical area can hold. It is absolutely not my limit." Konan's deadpan delivery made the masked man's face instantly darken beneath his mask.
'Is this seriously how Akatsuki members are supposed to talk?' he thought.
'Aren't Akatsuki members all supposed to be edgy, independent lone wolves? Why is she suddenly preaching about the power of friendship and 'everyone's help'?'
What's next?
Was she going to start screaming about "The Will of Rain" or shouting cliché crap like "Until the rain stops, I will not die"?
"However," Konan continued, "simply blowing you to pieces like this seems a little too merciful."
"Even if we scoop up your remains, use Edo Tensei to resurrect you, manually code pain sensation back into your corpse, and mind-control you into selling yourself in the red-light district... even that wouldn't actually make me feel much better!"
"????????????????????????????"
The expression beneath the masked man's mask completely stiffened.
For the very first time, he realized with utter horror that Konan possessed the terrifying traits of someone who looked angelic on the outside, but was pitch-black and utterly unhinged on the inside!
How the hell could she casually describe something so sadistically twisted with such a calm, completely indifferent face?!
Was this the direct result of spending too much time hanging around that pervert Jiraiya?
"To completely destroy someone's spirit before executing them, there is a specific person I want to invite out to meet you." As Konan spoke, she gently waved her arm.
The swirling tempest of paper violently parted, creating a clean, suspended pathway over the sea.
'Someone wants to meet me?'
'Could it possibly be... Rin?'
A sickening, suffocating sense of dread suddenly gripped the masked man's heart.
However, his panic abruptly halted.
Because the person who slowly stepped into view absolutely wasn't Rin.
A pair of glowing, crimson Susanoo wings flared behind the figure, instantly proving the newcomer couldn't possibly be her.
"Who is she?" The masked man stared at the unfamiliar Uchiha Hikari in genuine confusion.
Because neither Black Zetsu nor White Zetsu had ever fed him a single scrap of intel regarding Uchiha Hikari—and because he had never actively investigated the deep, obscure lore of the Uchiha clan himself—the masked man's depth of knowledge regarding this specific era might actually have been worse than an average civilian walking the streets of Amegakure or Konoha.
"Uchiha Hikari. A legendary shinobi from the early Warring States period. She was known as the ultimate 'weapon' of the Uchiha clan. But the person I actually want you to meet isn't her. It is the person she specifically brought with her." Konan delivered the brief, chilling introduction.
Immediately afterward, a second figure slowly descended right beside Uchiha Hikari, landing perfectly on the suspended paper platform Konan had constructed for her.
"This is the person I wanted you to meet."
"A shinobi of the Uchiha clan from the very end of the Warring States period—Uchiha Chiri."
Konan coldly introduced the Edo Tensei to the masked man.
The resurrected Uchiha kunoichi had vibrant purple hair styled almost identically to Class Rep Sumire Kakei from the Boruto era!
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