His report interrupted the turbulent thoughts churning within the Third Hokage's mind. Hiruzen's gaze sharpened, every distracting thought instantly suppressed. After a brief moment of consideration, he spoke: "End this quickly! We cannot let them send out any signals or calls for reinforcements."
"Yes, sir!"
The moment the order was given, the Third Hokage shot forward like a bolt of lightning, his figure turning into a blurred streak of black light weaving through the dense forest.
Behind him, eight hundred elite shinobi silently dispersed like shadows, transforming into an invisible net that descended upon the Kumogakure squad, still completely unaware that disaster was about to fall upon them.
Yet the inexplicable unease in the Third Hokage's heart had not faded. If anything, it only grew sharper with every beat of his heart.
But he knew that no matter what awaited him ahead, he had no choice but to continue forward.
...
Within the mountain forest, fierce winds howled in every direction, every cutting gust carrying murderous intent skyward!
Azure winds and crackling lightning intertwined into a deadly web. The clang of colliding blades rang out endlessly as countless Kumogakure shinobi surged forward like a black tide, wave after wave crashing toward the lone figure at the center.
Danzō moved like a violent gale, fighting and retreating within the encirclement, constantly shifting positions. Though he had already resolved himself to death, he was by no means a reckless fool.
More than anyone, he understood that this battle had never been about victory from the very beginning.
It was about delaying them.
The longer he held them back, the greater that brat's chances of escaping.
Even so, the Kumogakure encirclement was visibly tightening. The space he could maneuver within grew smaller and smaller, and every dodge became increasingly perilous.
"How much longer until Troy-sama arrives?!" one Kumogakure commander shouted with a grim expression as he stared at the figure within the battlefield.
He was clearly surrounded from all sides. Clearly alone. Clearly blind in one eye, his vision heavily impaired.
And yet that man seemed to grow fiercer the longer he fought, more savage the more he killed. In this short span of time alone, nearly another hundred of their comrades had fallen beneath his blade.
"The signal was sent three minutes ago!" the subordinate beside him hurriedly replied. "We only need to hold him here until Troy-sama arrives!"
"Good!"
The commander nodded before turning his gaze back toward the battlefield, cold killing intent erupting in his eyes.
"Even if we fail to catch Higashino Shinichi today, we will still leave this Darkness of the Shinobi buried here forever!"
...
Splurt!
Within the battlefield, Danzō twisted aside once more to evade an incoming strike, then drove his blade backward through the throat of a would-be attacker. Warm, sticky blood splattered across his face.
He no longer knew how long he had been fighting.
Nor how many enemies he had killed.
He only knew that under the relentless assault of Kumogakure shinobi—whose numbers had risen from over a thousand at the beginning to more than two thousand now throwing themselves at him without pause—his body had already accumulated countless wounds.
Deep wounds. Shallow wounds. Bleeding wounds. Charred wounds.
Some were cuts left by blades. Others were scars burned into him by ninjutsu.
Once the number of shinobi reached a certain scale—ten, a hundred, a thousand, even ten thousand—the difficulty no longer increased through simple addition, but through geometric escalation.
After all, not everyone was Senju Hashirama or Uchiha Madara, monsters capable of overcoming the many with the few, suppressing an entire nation and a great hidden village through sheer individual power alone.
For ordinary shinobi, numbers often determined life and death itself.
In the current shinobi world, if one were to ask who could endure the longest beneath the encirclement of a shinobi army and carve out the most glorious battlefield achievements—aside from Namikaze Minato, whose Flying Thunder God Technique made him impossible to pin down, the only answer was likely the Third Raikage.
Even if his strength could not necessarily be called the unquestioned greatest among the Five Kage, the body known as the "Strongest Shield" granted him an almost invincible margin for error.
To the vast majority of shinobi in the current era, and against the overwhelming majority of attacks, he was like an immovable mountain untouched by mosquito bites. Nothing could shake him in the slightest.
But Danzō was different.
Even after resolving the knot in his heart, even after his will had undergone a complete transformation, even if his current strength was enough that even the Third Raikage could no longer ignore him, the reality before him remained cruelly clear.
Even if the Third Raikage were surrounded by an army of over ten thousand and assaulted without regard for casualties, he could still battle continuously for three days and three nights.
But Danzō, trapped here by two thousand Kumogakure shinobi, might not even last half an hour.
Because his margin for error was far too small.
Every incoming kunai. Every descending ninja blade. Every ninjutsu launched at him—he had to pay attention to all of them. He had to dodge. He had to block.
Because every single one of those attacks was capable of inflicting real damage upon him.
He was not only far inferior to the Third Raikage in defense—his strength, speed, and reflexes also fell short of the Third Raikage's.
The only things he could rely upon were the combat experience accumulated over decades, his near-transcendent mastery of Wind Release, and that blazing fire of hot blood that had rediscovered its original conviction and refused to extinguish itself until the very last moment!
"Hah…"
Danzō let out a heavy breath. White mist condensed in the frigid night air as his lungs burned like fire. His arms trembled faintly from the endless swinging of his blade, while the dizziness brought on by blood loss began crashing against his consciousness in waves.
And yet the hand gripping his sword remained as steady as stone.
His gaze swept across the crowd surging toward him once more. Suddenly, the corner of his mouth twitched upward into a curve that could hardly be called a smile.
"Come."
He muttered softly, though whether he was speaking to the enemy or to himself was unclear.
"Let me experience what sensei felt back then."
The moment those words fell, instead of retreating, he charged forward a step.
His right hand slashed out with the blade at blinding speed while his left hand rapidly formed seals mid-charge.
The edge of his sword was just about to strike the two Kumogakure chūnin rushing at the front—when, at that exact instant, an unmistakably real sense of danger exploded within his heart.
Right side!
The direction that had become a complete blind spot due to the loss of his right eye!
Storm Release: Laser Circus!
A laser beam wrapped in pale arcs of lightning tore through the night like a bolt splitting the heavens apart, firing from the blind angle outside his field of vision at almost teleportation-like speed!
The attacker was none other than Kumogakure's elite jōnin—Troy. He had already arrived with reinforcements, and the instant he appeared, he unleashed a silent killing strike!
Danzō's heart trembled violently. Instinctively, he tried to twist aside and evade—but the two Kumogakure shinobi before him suddenly lunged forward like madmen, disregarding their own lives entirely. Using their bodies as shackles, they forcibly blocked off his path of retreat!
Shhk!
At the critical moment, Danzō violently twisted his body. The Storm Release beam grazed past the outer side of his left arm, instantly carbonizing his sleeve as scorching pain ripped through flesh and skin alike. His body stalled for the briefest instant.
Before he could even steady himself—
Lightning Release: Lightning Snake!
Lightning Release: Lightning Sphere!
Lightning Release: Lightning Spear!
Blinding bolts of lightning crossed in from every direction, illuminating Danzō's surroundings in a deathly white glow.
He had no time to breathe. Relying purely on battle instincts honed through decades of warfare, his body continuously twisted and shifted within fractions of a second, narrowly evading another wave of attacks.
But at the instant he sidestepped a Lightning Sphere—
dozens of unusually shaped square shuriken suddenly tore through the air along bizarre trajectories!
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Danzō's sword traced a semicircular arc, colliding violently against the incoming shuriken. Sparks exploded in every direction as he deflected every single one of the dozens of square blades.
And at that moment—
three even larger square shuriken shot toward him simultaneously from three vicious blind angles!
Danzō abruptly shifted his footing, his body flashing left at high speed. The shuriken barely grazed past his skull, the sharp wind severing several strands of hair at his temples.
Then something bizarre happened.
The three shuriken he had just evaded suddenly froze midair.
As though seized by some invisible force, their trajectories violently twisted. Defying all laws of physics, they carved sharp angular turns through the air before slashing toward his position once again!
At the same time, an eerie and overwhelming pulling force suddenly erupted from the sword in Danzō's right hand!
It felt as though countless invisible hands were gripping the blade, dragging it toward a certain direction. In that instant, his sword swing uncontrollably stalled for half a beat.
Magnet Release: Sparrow Bee Twin Blades!
This was Troy's signature ninjutsu, a technique divided into two stages.
The first stage involved touching either the enemy or their weapon, planting a magnetic mark.
The second stage ensured that once marked, the target could no longer escape the attacks of his magnetized ninja tools!
And during that brief moment of blocking earlier, the sword in Danzō's hand had already been branded with an invisible magnetic imprint without him ever realizing it.
Not good!
Danzō's pupils contracted violently. Without hesitation, he prepared to release the sword hilt at once.
But in the span of that single blink—for an ordinary person, it was nothing more than the gap between breaths.
Yet for shinobi fighting amidst the chaos of the battlefield—especially for Danzō, who was being relentlessly besieged from all sides—he had already lost far too much time.
"Die!!"
Several black figures that had been waiting for this opportunity erupted from the blind spot on Danzō's right side like black lightning.
Gripping ninja blades, their sword light carried icy killing intent as they slashed down with full force toward the neck he had completely exposed due to that momentary delay in movement!
Slash!!
Cold light flashed past.
Blood exploded into the air.
A severed arm still clutching a katana traced a tragic arc through the air before crashing heavily into the pool of blood below with a clang.
…
"Third-sama, all targets have been dealt with!"
The Konoha shinobi reported to the Third Hokage gathered at the center.
Hiruzen stood there holding the Adamantine Staff, five shattered Kumogakure corpses lying at his feet. Yet his expression seemed strangely absent-minded, his gaze fixed upon the distant darkness as the inexplicable unease within his heart grew ever more violent.
Hearing the report, the Third Hokage was just about to speak when the Adamantine Staff in his hand suddenly trembled. The deep voice of the Monkey King Enma rang out from within the staff itself: "Hiruzen! That brat Shinichi is summoning me!"
The Third Hokage's eyes sharpened. Without even pausing to think, he immediately said: "Hurry and go!"
"Got it!"
The moment the words fell, the Adamantine Staff exploded into a cloud of smoke and vanished.
Almost simultaneously, the Aburame Clan jōnin, Aburame Shinobu, hurried forward and spoke in a grave voice: "Third-sama! I've established contact with members of Shinichi's unit!"
The Third Hokage spun around abruptly, his voice urgent.
"Where are they now?!"
...
Meanwhile.
Danzō staggered backward, his left hand clamped tightly over the wound where his arm had been severed, blood still pouring endlessly through the gaps between his fingers.
At the final critical moment, although he had tilted his head aside and avoided the fatal strike aimed at his skull, his right arm had still been severed cleanly from the shoulder!
He lowered his head and glanced at the empty space where his right shoulder used to be before slowly lifting his blood-covered face to look toward Troy's icy gaze in the distance, as well as the layers upon layers of Kumogakure forces surrounding him, their killing intent boiling ever more violently.
Am I going to die?
The dizziness brought on by massive blood loss was flooding over his consciousness like an icy tide.
And yet, at this moment, there was not the slightest trace of fear within him.
Instead, a faint smile of relief appeared on his face.
Even that lingering anxiety from before—wondering how he should face his teacher once they met again—had now completely vanished.
He truly had committed many wrongs throughout his life.
He had hidden himself within darkness and strayed far away from the light…
But none of that mattered anymore.
The rest could be left for his teacher to judge.
With that thought, Danzō slowly drew a deep breath. Yet the vision in his only remaining left eye grew increasingly blurry and unstable.
Even so, he still stood straight-backed without collapsing.
Even though he no longer possessed the hand capable of wielding a sword.
"Kill him," Troy coldly ordered.
The moment the command was issued, countless Kumogakure shinobi surged forward once more like black tidal waves crashing toward that solitary figure.
And then—a terrifying pressure descended from the heavens above, vast as an ocean, heavy as mountains, violent as heavenly fire, instantly enveloping the entire battlefield!
"What?!"
Every Kumogakure shinobi froze simultaneously. Even Troy's pupils contracted violently as he looked upward in shock!
"Watch out!"
As the strongest among them, Troy reacted the fastest. Even while shouting the warning, his hands were already flying through seals like flashes of lightning.
The next instant—a colossal pitch-black pillar, thick as a mountain and so long its end could not even be seen, tore through the night sky carrying a shrill scream that ripped apart the atmosphere itself along with an overwhelming aura of destruction as it crashed downward toward the Kumogakure army surging at Danzō from the front!
Savage! Fierce! Tyrannical!
Before the pillar even arrived, the terrifying wind pressure had already slammed into the ground first. The earth collapsed and split apart beneath the force as soil and rock overturned like raging waves, while entire stretches of forest snapped apart and were blasted backward!
And at that critical instant, Troy's jutsu was completed!
Storm Release: Storm Dragon Light Wave!
He thrust both palms forward, and a gigantic dragon composed entirely of pure white laser light roared through the air. Its jaws opened wide as it charged directly toward the descending shadow of destruction!
Light and shadow.
Lightning and staff.
Collided violently beneath the night sky!
BOOM!!!
The violent explosion transformed into a blinding sphere of incandescent white light that instantly expanded and detonated!
The horrifying shockwave, mixed with countless blazing fragments of white energy, swept outward in a massive ring, directly blasting dozens of Kumogakure shinobi from the front ranks into the air while shattered stone and broken trees scattered wildly like a storm of debris!
In an instant—dust and smoke surged skyward like a tsunami, blotting out the stars and moon, swallowing all sight!
And within that sky-covering storm of smoke and chaotic energy that had yet to disperse, a tall figure holding a long staff descended steadily onto the battlefield like an immovable rock, standing at the center with his back facing Danzō.
"Hiruzen?"
Danzō's vision had already become increasingly blurred. Staring at the staff-wielding silhouette faintly visible amidst the chaos, he subconsciously blurted out: "How did you…"
However, as the smoke gradually settled and dispersed, and the intense light slowly faded away—little by little revealing the outline of that figure's back—the remaining pupil in Danzō's left eye suddenly contracted violently.
And then he cursed aloud in fury.
"You bastard!!!"
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