Lee nodded vigorously beside them, wearing the look of a man who had suffered enough.
"Akira, those sweet lines of yours are giving me goosebumps."
Akira shot Neji an irritated look, thinking the guy really didn't understand a thing.
All he was trying to do now was find some way to make Yūgao smile a little more.
Only Akira knew just how completely her heart had shattered after Hayate Gekko's death.
Especially during those hopeless three years, he had heard that she had gone looking for him again and again, only for him to seem as though he had vanished from the world.
Every time he thought about it, a quiet but persistent guilt rose in his chest.
Back when he had still been keeping a low profile and building strength in secret, a great deal of the precious training material he relied on had been gathered for him through Yūgao's efforts.
To Akira, the weight that woman carried in his heart was impossible to measure.
Someone who had once shown him that much kindness had gone through the darkest stretch of her life without him there.
No matter how he looked at it, that was something he had handled badly.
The four of them moved quickly, and before long, the dark outline of the Land of Demons appeared at the edge of their vision.
The moment they neared the capital, a suffocating sense of siege and panic hit them head-on.
At the city gates, fully armed soldiers stood waiting with spears crossed, stopping the four of them on the spot.
Fortunately, Akira had come prepared. He casually produced the scroll personally signed by Tsunade, and only then did the soldiers hurriedly and nervously let them through.
The moment they passed inside the gate, the scene before them made all four of them frown.
The streets were packed with civilians desperately building defensive fortifications, hammering, hauling, shouting over one another in total disorder.
In truth, everyone knew those defenses would be no sturdier than paper in front of the Ghost Army.
Still, they were the only comfort people had left. If they could buy even one extra second, they would take it.
All of their hope rested on one legend.
As long as the priestess could seal Mōryō once more, peace would return to the Land of Demons.
After passing through the dust-filled streets, the four of them finally arrived inside the solemn and imposing palace of the priestess.
Guided respectfully by Taruho of the guard, they were quickly brought before the one they had come to see.
But the instant the priestess sitting above caught sight of Akira's face, her entire body went rigid.
"Akira-san?"
This priestess, Shion, spoke with a tone of stunned familiarity that made it sound as though she knew him well.
Akira froze for the briefest moment, running back through his memory at high speed, certain that this was the first time in his life he had ever met the girl.
Shion, however, paid no attention to court etiquette. She rose directly from her seat, gathered her skirts, and hurried down toward him, her voice trembling.
"It really is you, Akira-san?"
Akira nodded politely, a trace of confusion in his eyes.
"That's right. But Lady Priestess, we've never met before, have we?"
Behind him, Yūgao, Neji, and Lee exchanged baffled looks, each of them wondering what in the world was going on.
Taruho, standing off to the side, suddenly seemed to realize something.
No wonder, when news of Mōryō's return had first reached them, Shion-hime had been frightened but not completely consumed by despair.
So this was why.
Perhaps the man before them was the one from the prophecy, the key figure destined to turn everything around.
Thinking back to the moment Mōryō first rose again, Shion had nearly broken down completely.
It made sense. Sealing that monster was not merely dangerous. It was something that usually cost a life.
The previous priestess, Shion's mother, had given up her own life to seal Mōryō away.
If a creature like Mōryō could be dealt with casually, then it never would have nearly wiped out the world in the first place.
Shion stared fixedly at Akira, and for the first time in a long while, a true smile bloomed on her face.
"In my dreams, Akira-san appeared before me. You were the one who saved me."
At that, Akira more or less understood the situation, but he still chose to act as though he didn't.
Turning slightly, he looked at Taruho and asked, "What exactly is going on here?"
There were some cards that simply could not be laid on the table too early. If he acted as though he understood prophetic abilities too well, it would only invite suspicion.
Taruho quickly stepped forward to explain.
"Akira-san, our Lady Priestess possesses an incredibly accurate gift of prophetic dreams. Her visions have never once been wrong."
Akira put on an appropriately surprised expression.
"That ability sounds a little unfair, honestly."
Still, he was clever enough not to ask what the prophecy actually said.
Judging by the way Shion looked at him, like someone gazing at the answer to all her prayers, the ending was probably a happy one.
The truth was that Akira's own understanding of Mōryō only went as far as the original story. He knew that in the end, Naruto and Shion had been the ones to stop it together.
But in that original version, Mōryō had seemed oddly underwhelming, nowhere near as terrifying as a so-called world-ending demon king should have been.
Akira quietly suspected that the creature's real strength was deeper than what it had shown, and that it was almost certainly hiding a final trump card.
Still, for the Akira of today, helping Shion shove that thing back into its seal should not be too difficult.