Ashura Ōtsutsuki POV – The Pure Lands
Time, in this place, was not a river. It was a tapestry. A vast, shimmering weave of all that had been, all that was, and all that could be. I, Ashura Ōtsutsuki, sat within its silent loom, a thread long since woven into the pattern, yet forever feeling the pull of the living threads still being spun.
My meditation was deep, a connection to the chakra of the world, to the endless, gentle pulse of life and connection that had been my legacy, my burden, my joy. But lately, a new thread had appeared in the tapestry. No, not new. It was an ancient thread, the dark, brilliant silver of my brother's chakra, but it was not alone. It was intertwined with a vibrant, stubborn crimson—my own legacy—and with strands of a color I had no name for, a color that spoke of logic, order, and a will from beyond the stars.
Indra Uzumaki-Uchiha.
My gaze, spiritual and unbound, focused on that nexus of threads in the living world, in a realm of impossible life and savage beauty they called the Gourmet World. I saw him, my distant descendant a hundred generations removed, and yet… not. For the chakra that powered his heart was not just the blood of my line, passed down through the Uzumaki and Senju. It was the chakra of my brother, Indra. The original. The first son. It had reincarnated, as it always did, seeking a vessel of bitterness and lonely power.
But it had found him.
And he had not broken. He had not become another iteration of the lonely prince, seeking validation through domination. He had taken that proud, brittle, creative lightning and… grounded it. He had woven it into a community. He had used it to build shields, not just swords. He was Indra Ōtsutsuki's heir in power, but in spirit… he felt like one of mine. It was a paradox that should have been impossible. The cycle was built on dichotomy. My brother's legacy of solitary genius versus my legacy of communal will. They were not meant to blend. They were meant to clash, to create the friction that powered the wheel of hatred, generation after generation.
And yet, there it was. A fusion. A sovereign.
And beside him… her.
My focus softened, settling on the girl, Rias Uzumaki. Her chakra was a brilliant, warm gold, threaded with Uzumaki vitality and something else… a destructive, resonant potential that hummed like a plucked string. But recently, something profound had bloomed within her. A deep, verdant, nurturing green. A power I knew intimately, a power that had been my father's before it was mine.
Wood Release. True Wood Release.
Not the mimicry of Hashirama Senju, fueled by my diluted chakra and desperate will. This was the real thing. The power of creation, of life-force given form. The power to nurture forests, to heal lands, to give life, not just manipulate it.
She had awakened it not in a moment of desperate defense, but in a moment of profound understanding, of connection to the very essence of the living world around her. She had faced an ancient Ent, a creature of primordial wood, and instead of fighting its life-force, she had harmonized with it. She had understood it.
In that moment, a fragment of my own legacy, a ghost of the philosophy I had tried to instill, had sparked to life within her. She wasn't just using Wood Release; she was embodying its principle: strength through nurturing, power through connection.
I watched as, in the present moment of that strange world, she stood before a grove of trees she had just grown from barren stone. Her hands were outstretched, her eyes closed, a small, wondering smile on her face. Indra watched her, his own expression one of fierce pride and deep, analytical curiosity.
The sight sent a pang through my spectral heart. Not of jealousy, but of a memory so old the edges had worn smooth, yet the center still ached.
________________________________________
Memory – A Clearing, A Thousand Years Ago
I was failing. Again.
My latest attempt at a Ninshū technique—a simple chakra-linking meditation to help a group of farmers share strength during the harvest—had sputtered out. The chakra flows had tangled, resulting in a minor field fire we'd had to scramble to put out. I sat in the charred grass, covered in soot, frustration and shame hot in my throat.
A shadow fell over me. I didn't need to look up. I knew the precise, crackling aura.
Indra: "Another 'communal effort,' little brother? It looks more like communal arson."
His voice wasn't cruel, not exactly. It was… detached. Amused by the inefficiency of it all. I glared up at him. He stood there, pristine in his simple robes, not a hair out of place. Behind him, floating in the air, was a perfect, complex geometric shape of solid lightning—a chakra construct he'd invented to calculate stellar movements. It was beautiful, and utterly useless to anyone but him.
Ashura: "At least I'm trying to help people! What does your… your sparkly math puzzle do for anyone?"
Indra's smirk faded a fraction. The lightning construct dissolved. "It understands," he said quietly. "It finds patterns. Order. The world is chaos, Ashura. Father's Ninshū preaches connection, but to what? To more chaos? To more people who can't grasp the simplest chakra transformation?" He looked at my soot-streaked face, and for a fleeting second, I saw not condescension, but something else. Frustration. "You try to lift them all up, and you just get pulled down into the mud with them."
He turned to leave, then paused.
Indra: "Mother would have liked your stubbornness. The way you keep getting up. She always said… the strongest trees grow from the dirt, not the clouds."
He walked away then, leaving me stunned. He almost never spoke of her. Our mother, Kaitō. Her death had been the fracture point. The before and after. In the before, Indra's lightning had been playful, bright. He'd show me little chakra-fireflies, or make his hair stand on end to make me laugh. He'd sit with Mother for hours, explaining his ideas, and she'd listen, her eyes sparkling, asking questions that weren't about utility, but about beauty.
After she was gone… the light in his chakra hardened. It became a tool. A weapon. A means to prove something. To Father. To the world. To her ghost.
And Father… Father retreated into his work, into the burden of the world. He gave me, the struggling, needy one, his time, his patience. He gave Indra, the brilliant, independent one, his expectations, and his unspoken fear.
I remember the day it all shattered. The day Father declared me his heir.
We stood before him, in the great hall. Indra had just demonstrated a new Ninshū technique of his own design—a way to purify water on a vast scale using coordinated lightning chakra. It was breathtaking. Complex, elegant, powerful. It could have saved entire regions from drought.
Father had watched, his Rinnegan eyes unreadable. He'd nodded, said, "A masterful display of control, Indra."
Then he'd turned to me. I'd just managed, after weeks of trying and with the help of a dozen fellow disciples, to create a small, communal barrier that could deflect wind and rain. It was clumsy, inefficient compared to Indra's solo work.
Father placed a hand on my shoulder. "But this… this embodies the true spirit of Ninshū. The willingness to work with others, to share strength, to protect the community. Ashura… you will be my heir."
The world went silent. I saw the light in Indra's eyes—not the playful light, not the hard, focused light—die. It was snuffed out, like a candle in a vacuum. He didn't shout. He didn't protest. He just looked at Father, then at me, his expression emptying of everything.
He'd left that night. The next time I saw him, it was on a battlefield. His eyes, which had once held lightning-fireflies, held only the Mangekyō Sharingan's cold, lonely pattern. The brother who spoke of our mother's love for stubborn growth was gone, replaced by the man who believed strength was the only truth, and strength was always alone.
________________________________________
Present – The Pure Lands
I let the memory fade, the old grief a familiar hollow in my being. I had spent a thousand years watching our chakra reincarnate, watching our heirs fight the same battle, make the same choices. Madara and Hashirama. Sasuke and Naruto. Always the same dance: lonely power versus communal will, never understanding, always clashing.
But this…
I looked back at the living thread of Indra Uzumaki-Uchiha. He had the power. The ultimate power of my brother's line—the Mangekyō, the genius, the creative fury. But he was not alone. He was bound, heart and soul, to his village, to his mother, to his friends, to Rias. He used his power to build a community so strong it could protect itself. He was the tree, but he was also the soil, the rain, and the sun for everyone around him.
And Rias… she had awakened my power. Not through bloodline dilution, not through desperate circumstance, but through philosophy. Through understanding. She had the will to protect, the heart to nurture, and now, the power to create life. She was the embodiment of the ideal I had fought for, the legacy I had wanted to pass on.
But she wasn't fighting against Indra. She was fighting with him. She wasn't trying to prove his way wrong; she was complementing it. Her Wood Release wasn't a counter to his lightning; it was the earth that grounded it, the forest that grew in the fertile ground his storms created.
They weren't heirs of Ashura and Indra, destined to clash.
They were partners. A new synthesis.
Father's greatest failure was seeing our paths as mutually exclusive. He thought to choose one was to reject the other. He feared Indra's power without the balance of a connected heart, so he chose the heart and rejected the power, not realizing he was sending Indra into a deeper loneliness.
This boy, this Indra from another world, had solved Father's dilemma by accident, by the sheer force of his own chosen identity. He had accepted the power and cultivated the heart. He had taken a brother's legacy and made it his own, then found a partner who embodied the other brother's dream.
For the first time in a millennium, I felt not the grinding inevitability of the cycle, but the fragile, terrifying thrill of its end. The wheel wasn't just broken; it had been repurposed into the foundation of something new.
I sent a whisper of thought, not to them, but to the ancient beings who watched over them—Garuda and Airavat, whose memories were even longer than mine.
You chose well, I thought, the sentiment echoing my father's earlier blessing but from a different place. You chose not a wielder of chaos or a prophet of connection, but architects of a new world. Guard them. Not as weapons, but as the gardeners of a future we could only dream of.
In the Gourmet World, high on a cliff overlooking the newly-created grove, the great eagle Garuda, perched on a peak, shifted his head. His ancient eyes, which had seen the Ten-Tails rage and the Sage's grief, seemed to look right through the dimensional veil, meeting my gaze for an instant. A slow, deliberate blink. An acknowledgment.
Below him, the two young architects of a broken cycle were about to have a conversation. I settled back to watch, a grandfatherly presence filled not with regret, but with a hope so profound it felt like a new kind of chakra.
________________________________________
Gourmet World – The Primordial Weald, Cliffside
The air still hummed with the residual life-force of Rias's creation. The grove of tall, vibrant trees stood where minutes before there had been only jagged, grey stone. Their leaves shimmered with a faint inner light, and the air around them was cooler, sweeter. Small, glowing mosses were already beginning to spread at their roots.
Rias stood with her back to the grove, looking at her hands as if seeing them for the first time. Her spear, now a hairpin again, was tucked securely in her crimson hair. She was breathing deeply, steadily, but her eyes were wide with a mixture of awe and confusion.
Indra watched her from a few feet away, his arms crossed, his Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan deactivated. His analytical mind was working, filing away every sensory detail—the chakra signature of the trees, the change in local atmosphere, the precise biochemical shift in Rias's own cells. But beneath the analysis was a deep, warm current of pride and concern.
Indra: "The photosynthetic efficiency is off the charts. You're not just creating cellulose and lignin; you're weaving chakra directly into the cellular structure. It's a self-sustaining life-matrix. This isn't Mokuton, Rias. This is… something purer."
Rias finally looked up from her hands, her gaze finding his.
Rias: "It… didn't feel like making something. It felt like… asking. And the world answered." She gestured weakly towards the grove. "I felt the Ent's life-force, so old, so deep. It wasn't hostile. It was just… tired. Lonely. Guarding this place for eons. I showed it my memories—of Kumo, of our home, of growing things in the gardens with mother. I showed it what life could be, not just what it had to guard. And it… shared. It gave me the pattern."
She walked slowly to the nearest tree, placing her palm against its bark. The tree seemed to lean slightly into her touch, a soft, green glow pulsing from the point of contact.
Rias: "It's alive, Indra. Truly alive. Not a chakra construct. Not a technique. It will grow. It will reproduce. It will become part of this world's ecosystem." She turned back to him, her expression vulnerable. "What does this mean? How do I have this? I'm an Uzumaki. We have strong life-forces, chakra chains, sealing… not this. Never this."
Indra walked to her, his own hand coming up to rest over hers on the tree bark. He focused, his senses expanding. He felt the tree's slow, mighty pulse. He felt Rias's chakra intertwined with it, not as a master, but as a source, a benefactor.
Indra: "It's not a bloodline limit. Not in the conventional sense." He paused, choosing his words with the care of a scholar dissecting a universe-altering theorem. "When I awakened my full Mangekyō powers, I didn't just get space and time manipulation. I gained… insight. Into lineages. Into the flow of chakra legacies. Your chakra signature has always had a unique resonance, Rias. A warmth, a stubborn, nurturing solidity. I attributed it to your Uzumaki vitality and the unique Gremory-Fanalis fusion from the summoning."
He met her eyes, his gaze intense but soft.
Indra: "But when you faced the Ent, when you connected with that primordial life-force… it acted as a catalyst. It resonated with a latent potential within you. A philosophical legacy, not a genetic one."
Rias: "Philosophical legacy?"
Indra: "Ashura Ōtsutsuki. The younger son of the Sage. His power wasn't just Wood Release; it was the ideology behind it. The belief that true strength comes from bonds, from nurturing, from the will to protect and grow a community. His chakra reincarnated through the Senju and Uzumaki, but it was always diluted, always mixed with human will and trauma. Hashirama Senju's Wood Release was a powerful echo, but it was still a technique, born from war and a desire to end conflict."
He squeezed her hand gently.
Indra: "You… you weren't trying to fight. You weren't trying to prove anything. You were trying to understand. You offered connection to a lonely guardian. You showed it memories of home, of growth, of peace. In that moment, you weren't just an Uzumaki kunoichi. You embodied the core of Ashura's philosophy—the strength of empathy, the power of shared will. The world, through that Ent, recognized it. And it gave you the key. Not just to a kekkei genkai, but to the source of it."
Rias stared at him, the implications sinking in like stones in a deep pond. The wind rustled through her new grove, a sound like a gentle sigh.
Rias: "So… I'm not the reincarnation of Ashura. Naruto is, or his chakra is…"
Indra: "The chakra, the spiritual energy, likely resides with Naruto. He is the designated vessel for that cycle. But legacies aren't just about chakra. They're about will. About choice. The Sage didn't just pass down power; he passed down a debate. A way of seeing the world. You, through your actions, your heart, have aligned yourself so perfectly with one side of that debate that the universe itself… conceded. It granted you the practical expression of that philosophy."
A slow smile spread across Rias's face, wonder replacing confusion. "The Wood Goddess…"
Indra: "A title earned. Not inherited." His own smile turned wry. "It seems we are a pair of paradoxes, my love. I, the reincarnation of the elder brother who seeks solitude, have built my life around community. You, with no claim to the younger brother's blood, have become the living embodiment of his ideal."
Rias leaned her forehead against his shoulder, the tree bark rough beneath their joined hands. "It's terrifying, Indra. This power… it's so big. It wants to grow. I can feel it itching in my palms. I look at a bare patch of earth and I see a forest. I look at a wounded animal and I feel its cellular structure, know how to mend it." She pulled back, her eyes searching his. "What do I do with this?"
Indra: "What you've always done. Protect. Nurture. But now, you have a new set of tools." He gestured to the grove. "This is more than a weapon. This is logistics. This is sustainability. Imagine applying this to the Land of Lightning's most arid regions. Imagine healing the scars left by tailed beast battles. Imagine creating living fortifications around Kumo that grow stronger with time." His eyes lit with the familiar fire of strategic planning. "Your Wood Release, combined with my barrier tech and the Summoning Network… we could create a living, breathing, intelligent defense system for the entire nation. Not just a shield, but a thriving ecosystem that protects its inhabitants."
The sheer scale of the vision was daunting, but it was also exhilarating. It wasn't about conquest; it was about cultivation. It fit.
Rias: "And in a fight?"
Indra's expression sobered. "In a fight, you become the ultimate battlefield controller. You can create forests to obstruct, entangle, and obscure. You can grow wood clones with a fraction of your chakra that are indistinguishable from the real thing. You can heal allies instantly, regenerate tissue. And, if necessary…" He looked at the trees again. "A tree that can grow in seconds can also constrict with the force of a vice. A living root system can sense vibrations, detect intruders. Your power is the definition of area denial and support."
He cupped her face in his hands, his thumbs brushing her cheeks.
Indra: "But remember the source, Rias. This power came from understanding, not dominance. From offering peace, not imposing will. If you use it only as a bigger club, you'll lose the heart of it. You have to stay you. The woman who gets frustrated with paperwork, who loves spicy food, who worries about her team, who makes a home with me. That's the anchor. That's what makes this power sacred, not just another weapon."
Tears welled in Rias's eyes, not of fear, but of profound understanding. She nodded, leaning into his touch.
Rias: "I will. I promise." She took a deep, steadying breath. "So, training regimen? I assume you already have a 200-point plan."
Indra chuckled, the tension breaking. "A 347-point plan, actually. Phase one involves you trying to grow a single, specific medicinal herb from the Elemental Nations here, in this alien soil. We need to test adaptability, chakra cost, and spiritual resonance. Phase two—"
Rias groaned, laughing. "Of course you do. Can phase one wait until after dinner? I think creating a forest from nothing burns more calories than a week of S-rank missions."
Indra: "Priorities noted. And approved." He looked past her, at the serene, glowing grove. "We should name it."
Rias followed his gaze, a soft smile touching her lips. "Ashura's Stand? Too pretentious."
Indra: "The Heartwood Grove?"
Rias: "Better." She was quiet for a moment. "He's watching, isn't he? Ashura. And your… your predecessor."
Indra's gaze grew distant. He could feel it too, a gentle, observing pressure from the fabric of reality itself. Not intrusive. Just… present. Like elders watching children play with a precious, long-lost heirloom.
Indra: "Yes. I believe they are."
Rias: "Do you think… he's happy? The first Indra? Seeing what you've done with his legacy?"
Indra was silent for a long time. He thought of the cold, lonely genius in his memories, the brother who saw connection as a weakness, who believed his father's love had to be earned through solitary achievement.
Indra: "I don't know if 'happy' is the word. I think he'd be… confounded. Perplexed. He'd analyze my choices, my systems, my bonds, and he'd try to find the flaw, the point of selfishness, the hidden gambit for personal power." Indra looked down at his own hands, then at Rias, at the grove, as if seeing the invisible threads connecting them all. "And I think, after a millennia of analysis, he might finally not find one. And that… that might be the closest thing to peace his spirit has ever known."
The twin suns of the Gourmet World began their descent, painting the sky in hues of violet and orange that danced with the green luminescence of the new grove. High above, Garuda gave a soft, echoing cry that sounded like a benediction. Somewhere deep in the earth, a rumble that was not a quake but a contented sigh from Airavat vibrated through the stone.
In the Pure Lands, Ashura Ōtsutsuki watched the scene fade as the living world turned towards night. He saw Indra summon cooking supplies from his Inner World with a flick of his wrist, saw Rias laugh as she tried to help and nearly set the portable stove ablaze with an over-enthusiastic spark of her own chakra. He saw the easy intimacy, the shared purpose, the lack of the desperate, brittle tension that had defined his own relationship with his brother.
A single, spectral tear, not of sorrow, but of a grief finally transmuted into hope, traced a path down his cheek. It evaporated before it could fall, its essence returning to the great tapestry.
You did it, brother, he thought, sending the words into the void where his brother's restless spirit might still linger. You finally created something perfect. Not a technique, not a weapon. A successor who took your genius and gave it a home. And he found a partner who took my dream and gave it roots. The debate is over. They've written a new answer.
He closed his eyes, a true, deep peace settling over him for the first time since a clearing, a thousand years ago, where a big brother made a lightning-puzzle and mentioned their mother in a rare, unguarded moment.
The cycle was silent. The storm had built a garden. And in that garden, under alien stars, two young gods were making dinner, arguing about the best way to season giant scorpion tail, and planning how to use their world-breaking powers to plant more trees.
The future was no longer an echo. It was a song they were composing together, and for the first time in forever, it sounded like a lullaby, not a war cry.
[System Notification: Divine Acknowledgment Received. Philosophical Legacy Synchronized. Template Synergy Update: Ashina Uzumaki – 80%. Reason: Bearer of the clan's will has awakened a primal, nurturing power aligning with Uzumaki vitality and resilience. New Synergy Pathway Unlocked: 'Heart of the Forest' – boosts regenerative and life-force techniques when in natural environments or defending 'home' territory.]
[System Notification for Rias Uzumaki: Title 'Wood Goddess' solidified. Authority over plant-life and life-force manipulation recognized by primordial world-spirits. New Ability Unlocked: 'World-Singer's Grove' – can create a permanent, sanctified grove that acts as a chakra wellspring and safe haven, tied to her will. First Grove established: 'Heartwood Grove' (Gourmet World).]
Gourmet World – The Chronos Marsh Borderlands, Three Weeks Later
The air above the Chronos Marsh shimmered with temporal distortions. Patches of ground aged centuries in seconds, while floating islands of crystal hovered in perpetual stasis. Indra and Rias moved through the unstable landscape with practiced caution, their senses extended to detect the subtle ripples of time-field anomalies.
Indra's journal—a holographic data-pad linked directly to his neural interface—floated beside him, recording observations.
Discovery #658: Chrono-Bloom Fungus. Grows in reverse; begins as a decaying husk and matures into a vibrant, time-releasing spore pod. Contains peptides that can locally accelerate cellular regeneration by 300%. Sample Collected.
Discovery #659: Stasis-Shell Snail. Secretes a temporal mucus that creates a personal time-dilation field, allowing it to move normally while the world around it slows. Defense mechanism against predators. Observation only; extraction deemed unethical.
Rias, walking a few paces ahead, her senses now deeply attuned to life-forces, paused. She placed a hand on a twisted, silver-barked tree that seemed to vibrate at a different frequency than the air around it.
Rias: "This one's sad. It's stuck in a loop. Sprouting, growing, flowering, then rewinding to a sapling again. It can't break the cycle."
Indra moved beside her, his Sharingan activating. He saw the temporal chakra knot around the tree's roots—a natural, weak point in reality where the marsh's distortions had become self-sustaining.
Indra: "A localized temporal recursion field. Fascinating. The tree's biological processes are caught in the eddy." He raised his data-pad. Discovery #660: Weeping Silverwood. Subject to involuntary temporal recursion. Suggests some flora in the Marsh have adapted to, or become trapped by, the ambient Dialga-energy. Potential for chrono-botanical study.
Rias: "Can we free it?"
Indra considered, his mind running calculations. "A precise application of my Dialga Decree could disrupt the recursion, but the shock might kill it. The kinder method would be to transplant it into your Heartwood Grove. Your Wood Release life-force might stabilize its temporal signature."
Rias nodded, already kneeling and placing her palms on the ground near the tree's roots. "Let's try. I don't like leaving it like this."
As she began to gently coax the tree's root system, singing a soft, wordless melody of growth and stability she'd instinctively developed, Indra kept watch. His Eternal Mangekyō scanned the temporal currents. The Marsh was a web of fragile realities. His Palkia-granted spatial senses tingled, feeling the strain in the local dimensional fabric. It was like walking on glass over an abyss.
Suddenly, the air ten meters to their left cracked. Not with sound, but with a silent, visual shatter. A black fissure, jagged and depthless, ripped open in mid-air. From it poured not darkness, but a negative light—a blinding, anti-radiance that hurt to look at. The gravity around them warped; Indra felt lighter, then impossibly heavy.
WARNING: Natural Dimensional Rift Detected. His system flashed. Energy Signature: Unstable. Composition: Antimatter & Degenerate Space-Time. Threat Level: Cataclysmic.
"Rias, back!" he shouted, body flickering in a crackle of lightning to her side.
The tree she was working on, caught in the edge of the rift's gravitational shear, was unmade. It didn't burn, break, or vanish. Its molecules simply ceased to interact with the positive matter universe. It turned into a cloud of inert, neutral particles that dissipated like smoke.
The rift pulsed, a hungry maw. The anti-light intensified, and from its core, a sensation of profound, predatory nothingness reached for them. It wasn't a pull; it was an erasure of the space they occupied. The ground beneath their feet began to de-cohere.
Indra grabbed Rias, wrapping her in a spatial fold using Palkia's power, attempting to teleport them a kilometer away. The chakra surged, space bent—and then snapped. The rift's degenerate field interfered, destabilizing his technique. Instead of a clean jump, they were violently shunted sideways, directly towards the rift's event horizon.
"HOLD ON!" Indra roared, channeling chakra into a desperate Susanoo manifestation. The amethyst and cobalt armor of the Storm Monarch erupted around them, a skeletal hand clutching Rias protectively to its chest. He poured power into its legs, trying to push against the erasure of space itself.
For a moment, they hung in equilibrium, the Susanoo's feet carving trenches in the disintegrating earth. Then, with a silent, universe-swallowing gulp, the rift expanded. The anti-light washed over the Susanoo.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying. The chakra construct, a manifestation of spiritual energy and will, began to cancel out. It didn't shatter; its edges fizzed and dissolved into static. Indra felt a feedback burn through his neural pathways, a pain of un-creation.
The Susanoo failed.
The last thing he saw was Rias's face, determined not fearful, her own chakra flaring—a brilliant gold and green aura of life-force pushing against the anti-light. Her hand reached for his.
Then, the negative luminance consumed everything.
________________________________________
The Distortion World – Antimatter Zone
Consciousness returned in a flood of wrongness.
Indra's first sensation was absence. The absence of up, of down, of air, of light, of sound. He was floating, but there was no medium to float in. He existed in a non-space. His body screamed in silent agony—every cell felt alien, opposed. He was made of matter. This place was not.
He forced his eyes open. His Eternal Mangekyō activated automatically, its light a desperate, familiar comfort in the utter void.
He wasn't in darkness. He was in inverse. The "sky" was a swirling, impossibly deep violet, shot through with streaks of anti-light that looked like cracks in reality. Below him (was it below?) stretched a landscape that defied physics. Islands of black, crystalline rock floated at impossible angles, connected by waterfalls that flowed upward, sideways, and in spirals. The "water" was a viscous, mercurial fluid that reflected not light, but the absence of it. The air—if it could be called air—was thick with a silent, pressing hostility. This was a realm where the laws of his universe were suggestions, at best.
SYSTEM CRITICAL ALERT.
Host has entered a high-order dimensional plane: [The Distortion World – Antimatter Corridor].
Ambient energy is antithetical to host's biological and chakra composition. Cellular decay rate: 0.8% per minute. Chakra suppression: 94%.
Warning: Prolonged exposure will result in complete molecular negation.
Indra pushed past the system's dire message, his training and sheer stubbornness taking over. Rias.
He tried to move, to turn his head. The motion was sluggish, wrong, like moving through solidified nothing. With immense effort, he managed to look to his side.
She was there, floating a few meters away. Unconscious. A sphere of faint, flickering green light—the last vestiges of her Wood Release life-force—encased her like a dying ember, fighting the ambient negation. It was the only color in this inverted hellscape. She was alive, but her chakra was guttering out.
A wave of cold, primal fury cut through the disorientation. This place was killing her. It would unmake her. The thought was unacceptable. It violated the fundamental law of his existence: Rias is mine to protect.
The fury triggered something deeper than chakra. It tapped into the core template that governed his very being—the blueprint of a sovereign who commands reality. His system, interfacing with the alien laws of this dimension, began a frantic, automatic recalibration.
[TEMPLATE SYNCHRONIZATION INITIATED.]
[Analyzing ambient dimensional laws…]
[Detecting primal authority signature: 'Distortion', 'Antimatter', 'Renegade Space'.]
[Cross-referencing host template library…]
[Match found. Latent Template Detected: GIRATINA (The Renegade).]
[Context: Giratina. Sovereign of the Distortion World. Banished for its violence, it rules a mirror dimension where conventional physics are overturned. It embodies antimatter, gravitational singularity, and the violent reformation of space. Template Compatibility: 41%. Alignment: Sovereignty over broken realms, defiance against established order, protective fury.]
[Conditions for Awakening Met: Host's physical form is within the Distortion World. Host's will to protect is catalyzing a fusion of Template authority with local dimensional laws. Host's existing affinity for Space (Palkia) and Time (Dialga) provides a foundational triad.]
[COMMENCING FORCED SYNCHRONIZATION.]
Agony, a thousand times worse than the feedback from the rift, exploded in Indra's mind. It wasn't physical pain; it was the pain of his concept of self being rewritten. The orderly, architectural genius of Victor Von Doom clashed with the chaotic, primordial sovereignty of Giratina. The proud, creative lightning of Indra Ōtsutsuki flared against the alien, antimatter darkness.
Images, sensations, mandates flooded him:
The loneliness of a realm apart. The fierce, territorial pride of a ruler whose kingdom is oblivion. The power to twist gravity, to sculpt antimatter, to exist where existence should not. A roar that was the sound of space itself tearing.
He screamed, but no sound left his lips. In the silence of the antimatter zone, his body began to change. His skin crawled with phantom sensations of scales. Shadows around him deepened, not from lack of light, but because they began to absorb the inverse light of this world. The edges of his form grew indistinct, phasing in and out of reality.
And within him, in the mental spaces where his powers resided, three new presences stirred.
They were not like Garuda or Airavat—ancient, external allies. These were born from him, from the fusion of his Ōtsutsuki lineage, his System templates, and the devouring power of the Gourmet World now reacting to this dimensional crisis. They were Gourmet Devils, but not of flesh or appetite. They were devils of Concept.
In the chamber of his mind dedicated to Time, a form coalesced. It was serpentine, armored in blue metallic scales that gleamed with the light of dead stars. Its eyes were diamonds of compressed eternity. It did not move; it was movement, the very essence of sequence and duration. The Dialga Gourmet Devil. It regarded him, not with loyalty or submission, but with the cold acknowledgment of a fundamental force now housed within a worthy vessel.
In the chamber of Space, another form manifested. A being of sleek, pearl-white and magenta armor, elegant and severe. Its wings were folded starlight, its claws could part dimensions. It existed in all places within its domain simultaneously. The Palkia Gourmet Devil. Its gaze was spatial calculation, assessing the stability of the realm and finding it wanting.
And in a new, raw, screaming chamber of Distortion, a third and far more violent presence erupted. A draconic form of black and gold, six ghostly wings fraying at the edges into non-existence, six legs ending in rending claws. Its body was covered in spear-like protrusions, and a crimson, jagged crest adorned its head. It thrashed against the walls of his psyche, roaring with the fury of broken physics, of inverted truths, of the exiled sovereign. The Giratina Gourmet Devil. It was rage, it was defiance, it was the terrifying power to make the world wrong.
The three devils turned their attention outward, to the hostile dimension seeking to unmake their vessel. They did not speak in words. They issued a Decree.
THIS REALM IS AN AFFRONT. (Dialga)
ITS GEOMETRY IS FALSE. (Palkia)
IT WILL BE BENT TO OUR WILL. (Giratina)
Indra's body slammed back into a cohesive form. The cellular decay halted. The chakra suppression shattered. His eyes flew open. The Eternal Mangekyō was still there, but swimming within the crimson pools were new, phantom shapes—the faintest outlines of a dial, a pearl, and a distorted cross.
He drew a breath. There was no air, but it didn't matter. His lungs processed the antimatter-infused void, his cells converting the hostile energy into a new, terrifying power source. Antimatter Chakra. A volatile, annihilating energy that demanded perfect control.
[TEMPLATE UPDATE: Giratina – 45% Completed.]
[Reason: Survival-based synchronization within native dimension. Host's will to protect has overridden dimensional incompatibility.]
[New Affinity Unlocked: Antimatter Manipulation (Novice). Warning: Unstable. Contact with positive matter will cause annihilation reactions.]
[New Affinity Unlocked: Distorted Space Navigation (Novice). Host can intuitively navigate non-Euclidean and degenerate spaces.]
[Gourmet Devil Awakening: Dialga (Conceptual), Palkia (Conceptual), Giratina (Conceptual). These entities represent the internalization and gourmet-world adaptation of host's Mangekyō authorities. They enhance existing abilities and provide instinctive understanding of their domains.]
Indra ignored the system messages. He had power. Now, he needed to apply it.
He willed himself to move. Instead of swimming through nothing, he commanded the distorted space around him to bring him to Rias. The world twisted, and he was beside her in an instant. Her protective green sphere was paper-thin.
Gently, he placed a hand on the sphere. His new antimatter chakra was lethal to positive matter, but he wasn't trying to inject it. He used his Giratina-granted affinity to feel the distortion field around her, to smooth it. He created a tiny bubble of normalized space, a pocket of reality where the laws of their home universe weakly held. Her sphere stabilized slightly.
"Rias," he whispered, his voice strange and echoic in the void.
Her eyelids fluttered. She saw him, saw his eyes blazing with new, terrifying depth. "Indra… your eyes…"
"Later. Can you stand? We need to find stable ground."
She nodded, pushing through the debilitating wrongness. With his support and the protective pocket he maintained, they "swam" towards the nearest floating island of black crystal. It was the size of a small house, hovering at a 70-degree angle. They landed on its surface, gravity reasserting itself in a localized, dizzying field that pulled them towards the island's center.
Rias immediately knelt, placing her hands on the crystal. Her brow furrowed. "No life. Not even potential for it. This isn't rock… it's crystallized negation."
Indra was scanning the horizon, his enhanced senses mapping the insanity. "This is a pocket dimension. A parallel reality with inverted physical laws. We fell through a natural rift. A weak point between our dimension and this… this Distortion World."
Discovery #661: The Distortion World (Antimatter Zone). A parallel dimensional plane exhibiting non-Euclidean geometry, antimatter dominance, and degenerate space-time. Native physics are hostile to positive matter lifeforms. Primary Observation.
As he logged it, a new, predatory awareness brushed against his senses. It came from the "sky"—a vast, amorphous shape of deeper darkness moving against the swirling violet. It had no distinct form, just a central, pulsing void surrounded by tendrils of erasing light. It moved with a silent, hungry intent, and it was heading towards their island.
SYSTEM WARNING: Native lifeform detected.
Designation: Void Predator (Provisional).
Capture Level: 2000+.
Analysis: Apex organism of the Antimatter Zone. Composed of concentrated antimatter and spatial instability. Feeds on dimensional energy and any positive matter incursions. Capable of localized reality cancellation.
Rias felt it too, her life-force senses recoiling from the absolute anti-life emanating from the creature. "Indra…"
"I see it." His mind was cold, clear. The fear was burned away by the furious energy of his new templates. This thing was a threat. It was in his territory. The Giratina Devil within him roared in challenge.
The Void Predator descended. It didn't fly; the space between it and the island simply compressed. A tentacle of anti-light, thicker than a tree trunk, lashed out, not to strike, but to touch the edge of the island.
Where it made contact, the black crystal didn't break. It un-existed. A perfect hemispherical scoop of the island vanished into neutral particles.
The creature was consuming their footing.
Indra pushed Rias behind him. "Stay within the pocket I create. Do not use positive chakra offensively. It will fuel its annihilation reaction."
"What are you going to do?"
"Introduce myself," Indra said, his voice dropping into a register that vibrated with primordial authority.
He stepped to the vanishing edge of the island. The Void Predator focused on him, sensing the dense, complex energy he now radiated—a mix of positive chakra and the newborn antimatter affinity. It was confusing, intriguing. Another tentacle, this one tipped with a flickering event horizon, speared towards him.
Indra didn't dodge. He raised his hand.
Antimatter Decay Shield.
A disk of swirling, dark-purple energy, shot through with gold cracks, appeared before him. It was not a barrier of matter or chakra, but a localized field of controlled antimatter decay. The Predator's tentacle touched it.
There was no explosion. The tentacle's tip began to rapidly, silently disintegrate, not into nothing, but into a harmless, diffuse energy that Indra's shield absorbed. The Predator recoiled, the first hint of something akin to surprise emanating from its form. It was used to being the only source of unmaking in this realm.
You are not the only sovereign here, Indra thought, the Giratina template thrumming with satisfaction.
The Predator solidified, pulling its form into a more concentrated shape—a vast, floating maw of cascading void-light. It opened, and a beam of pure negation, a river of anti-light, poured forth. This was its true attack—a Reality Cancellation Beam.
Indra knew a direct shield wouldn't hold. He needed to redirect, to use the Distortion World's own rules.
He crossed his arms, focusing on the two other Devils now awake within him.
Palkia: Spatial Laceration.
Dialga: Temporal Stutter.
Space in front of him folded, creating a maze of mirrored dimensions. The beam hit the spatial fold and fractured, its energy split into a hundred weaker streams. At the same time, Indra imposed a rapid, looping time-stutter on the beams themselves, causing them to flicker in and out of phase, further diffusing their power.
The majority of the negation energy splashed harmlessly against the twisted geometry of the Distortion World sky. But some still came through. Indra took a step back, his boots grinding on the crystal.
Time to go on the offensive. He couldn't use most of his ninjutsu; the elemental chakra would be negated. He needed a weapon that existed between states.
He summoned his Storm Monarch Susanoo. The majestic, armored giant materialized around him, but it was different. The amethyst and cobalt light was tinged with the same dark-purple and gold crackle of his antimatter shield. It flickered visually, phasing in and out of solidity.
[Susanoo Evolution: 'Phantom Monarch' Form Accessed.]
The Susanoo can now partially phase into adjacent dimensional layers, becoming intangible to physical and most energy-based attacks in the primary dimension. In this form, it can interact with spatial and temporal anomalies directly.
The Void Predator, sensing a shift in the scale of the threat, unleashed a barrage of smaller, faster negation orbs.
Indra willed the Phantom Monarch forward. The orbs passed through it as it phased out, then it solidified, its great sword—now crackling with unstable antimatter energy—swinging in a devastating arc. The blade didn't cut the Predator's form; it carved a rend in the space the Predator occupied.
The creature shrieked, a soundless vibration that made the very island tremble. A portion of its amorphous body was severed, not from itself, but from the dimensional coordinates it inhabited. The severed part drifted away, dissolving into the background chaos.
It was hurt. And it was angry.
The Predator collapsed in on itself, becoming a dense, black hole-like singularity. The gravitational pull became immense. The island they stood on started to break apart, chunks of crystal flying into the consuming darkness.
"Indra, the ground!" Rias called, maintaining her footing with effort.
He had to end this. Now. A direct hit with his new, unstable antimatter chakra could cause a chain reaction. But he had an idea—a fusion of all three new authorities.
He dropped the Susanoo, landing beside Rias. He placed a hand on the crystal beneath them, channeling not chakra, but a command to the Distortion World itself, guided by the Giratina Devil.
This is my territory. This ground is mine.
The crumbling crystal stabilized, the gravitational pull lessening around their immediate area. He looked at the black hole predator, then at Rias.
"I need a conduit," he said quickly. "Something to focus and deliver a payload of ordered reality into its core. My antimatter chakra is too chaotic."
Understanding flashed in Rias's eyes. She didn't question. She raised her hands, and from her palms, not wood, but a dense, crystalline seed formed. It was forged from her life-force and her Ashura-granted understanding of creation. It was a seed of Positive Reality.
"Will this work?" she asked, her voice strained.
"Perfectly." Indra took the seed. It glowed warmly in his hand, a stark contrast to the cold wrongness around them. He then focused inward, calling on all three Devils.
Dialga: Imprint a temporal lock. The seed will exist in a state of 'perpetual creation' for 1.2 seconds after delivery.
Palkia: Encase it in a spatial paradox shell. It will be everywhere and nowhere until the shell breaks.
Giratina: Load the shell with a charge of Controlled Annihilation—antimatter chakra tuned to resonate with the seed's positive energy, creating a targeted reality-rewriting cascade.
The process took less than a second. In his palm, the glowing seed was now encased in a shimmering, geometric shell of impossible angles that hurt to look at. It hummed with devastating potential.
The black hole predator, sensing the concentration of opposing energies, began to move away, trying to destabilize and flee into the deeper distortion.
"Oh no, you don't," Indra growled. He drew back his arm and, using a precise application of distorted space, threw the shell not through the air, but through a shortcut in reality.
The shell appeared inside the event horizon of the predator's black hole form.
For a moment, nothing. Then, a flash of white.
Not anti-light. Pure, blinding, positive light. It was the sound of creation screaming.
The black hole convulsed. From within, geometric cracks of gold and purple light spiderwebbed out. The gravitational field inverted, then snapped. There was a silent, concussive POP as a sphere of normalized, positive-matter space—about ten meters in diameter—bloomed at the heart of the predator, before immediately being crushed and swallowed by the re-asserting laws of the Distortion World.
When the light faded, the Void Predator was gone. In its place drifted a slowly dissipating cloud of shimmering, neutral gas—the only remains of a titanic annihilation event.
Silence returned to the Antimatter Zone.
Indra let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. The Giratina Devil within him settled, purring with territorial satisfaction. The Dialga and Palkia Devils withdrew, their task complete.
Rias slumped against him, exhausted. "What… what was that?"
"A localized reality bomb," Indra said, his own adrenaline fading, replaced by deep weariness and the profound shock of what he'd just done. "We fused your power of creation with my new… affinity for un-creation. In a place like this, the clash reset the local physics where the predator existed. It couldn't survive in a bubble of our reality, however brief."
He helped her sit, maintaining the stable pocket of space around them. The immediate threat was gone, but they were still stranded in a hostile universe.
[SYSTEM UPDATE: Host has defeated 'Void Predator (CL 2200)'.]
[Significant data on antimatter biology and dimensional combat recorded.]
[Giratina Template: 47%. Dialga/Palkia Conceptual Devils: Synchronicity +12%.]
[New Ability Unlocked: Dimensional Phasing (Susanoo).]
[New Ability Unlocked: Antimatter/Reality Bomb (Fusion Technique – requires 'Seed of Creation' or equivalent positive-matter focus).]
Discovery #662: Void Predator Biology. Antimatter-based lifeform. Functions as a spatial/temporal scavenger, maintaining cohesion through a personal singularity. Weakness: Introduction of concentrated positive reality causes catastrophic collapse. Specimen neutralized.
For the next several hours, they rested on the dwindling island. Indra used his new intuitive navigation sense to chart a path. The Distortion World had a logic, a twisted flow. Gravity rivers led to stable(ish) plateaus. Anti-light storms could be avoided. He identified landmarks—a perpetual cyclone of inverted water, a fortress of jagged, floating tombstones, a silent forest of crystalline thorns that sang with dimensional harmonics.
Discoveries #663-750 were logged in a frantic, meticulous rush as they began a desperate trek:
#665: Gravity Moss. Grows on the underside of floating islands. Manipulates local gravity fields to access nutrients from the "sky." #689: Paradox Piscine. A fish that swims through the mercury waterfalls. Observed moving backwards in time along its own life-path. #702: Whisperstone. Black crystals that record and play back spatial distortions—echoes of past gravitational events. #721: Shadow Bloom. A flower that absorbs anti-light and emits a faint, positive light scent, creating tiny sanctuaries of normalcy. (Rias cultivated a few, using her power to help them grow; they became crucial for mental respite.) #738: Flux Bat. A winged creature that navigates by emitting tiny spatial ripples, echolocating in a realm without sound. #750: The Sky-River. A vast, flowing conduit of distorted space that seems to connect different sectors of the Distortion World. Hypothesis: Following it may lead to a weaker dimensional boundary.
It was at the banks of the Sky-River—a river of shimmering, non-Newtonian fluid that flowed upwards into a vortex—that Indra found what he was looking for. His Palkia senses tingled. The dimensional fabric here was thinner, strained by the constant flow.
"Here," he said, his voice hoarse. "The river is putting stress on the barrier between dimensions. If we can ride the confluence, and I can force a temporary counter-distortion with my new powers… we might be able to punch a hole back to our reality."
Rias looked at the terrifying, beautiful vortex. "Might?"
"It's the best chance we have. Staying here is a slow death sentence. Our bodies are adapting, but we're still positive matter intruders. Eventually, the world will reject us completely."
She nodded, trusting him utterly. "What do you need me to do?"
"Be my anchor," he said, taking her hand. "Your life-force, your connection to positive creation, is the beacon I'll aim for. I'll handle the distortion."
They waded into the edge of the Sky-River. The fluid was cold and warm simultaneously, offering no resistance yet feeling solid. Indra focused, drawing on the triad of Devils within.
Giratina: Feel the weak point. Bend it. Make an exit.
Palkia: Calculate the exit vector. Target: Chronos Marsh, plus/minus 5km.
Dialga: Stabilize the transition. Ensure we arrive at the same temporal coordinate we left, plus travel time.
He raised his free hand, clawing at the air before the vortex. His fingers crackled with dark-purple and gold energy. He wasn't tearing space; he was convincing it to realign. He poured his will, his antimatter chakra, and the sovereign authority of a Renegade template into the spot.
The air screeched—a real, physical sound of reality protesting. A crack of blinding white light, a tear back to the positive matter universe, began to form.
"NOW!" Indra yelled, wrapping Rias in a protective layer of phased Susanoo energy.
They leapt into the vortex, towards the screaming tear. The Distortion World roared in displeasure around them. Tendrils of anti-light tried to pull them back. Indra's Gourmet Devils roared back, a chorus of defiance: They are ours! You cannot keep them!
The white light consumed them.
________________________________________
Gourmet World – Chronos Marsh, 200 meters from original rift site.
The air split with a sound like a thunderclap inside a vacuum. Two figures tumbled out, landing hard on the soft, temporal-moss-covered ground. The tear in reality snapped shut behind them with a final, dampened pop.
The familiar, chaotic, but positive time-energy of the Chronos Marsh felt like a warm blanket after the absolute zero of the Distortion World. The air was sweet. Gravity pulled down, not sideways.
Indra lay on his back, gasping. Rias was curled beside him, breathing heavily. They were both covered in a fine, shimmering dust that was the last remnants of neutral particles from their transition.
After a long moment, Rias spoke, her voice small. "We're back."
"Yes," Indra breathed. He activated his system, running a full diagnostic. Cellular decay: halted. Chakra reserves: 31% and stabilizing. Antimatter contamination: 0.8% (residual, stabilizing). Template stability: nominal.
He sat up slowly, looking at Rias. She sat up as well. They stared at each other, seeing the changes.
His eyes still held the Eternal Mangekyō pattern, but the phantom outlines of the dial, pearl, and cross were faintly visible if one knew to look. His aura felt different—sharper, deeper, with a hidden, volatile edge.
Her eyes, always vibrant, now held a depth of green that spoke of ancient forests and resilient life. Her aura was a powerful, nurturing warmth, but with a core of unbreakable will.
"You have new… things inside you," she said softly. "I can feel them. Like ancient storms, but… they're part of you."
"Gourmet Devils," he confirmed. "Of Concepts. Time, Space, and… Distortion. They awoke in that place. To survive." He reached out, touching her cheek. "And you were my anchor. Your creation against that world's un-creation."
She leaned into his touch. "What does this mean, Indra? For us?"
He helped her stand, looking around the Marsh. The natural rift was gone, healed or moved. The Weeping Silverwood was gone, unmade. But the world was whole.
"It means," he said, his voice gaining strength, "that our arsenal just expanded into realms we didn't know existed. I can navigate distorted space. I can phase the Susanoo between dimensions. I can, with your help, create weapons that rewrite local reality." He met her gaze, his own fierce with renewed purpose. "It means the Akatsuki, Obito, Black Zetsu, any threat that comes for our home… they're not just facing shinobi. They're facing sovereigns who have walked in the world behind the mirror and learned to break its rules."
A ghost of a smile touched Rias's lips. It was a tired smile, but it held the steel that had grown in her since awakening as the Wood Goddess. "So we keep going. We train. We master this. And we go home."
"Yes," Indra said, summoning his data-pad. The entries for Discoveries #661-750 glowed steadily. A map of an alternate dimension's ecosystems, a testament to their survival. "But first, we need to find a safe place to rest, integrate these changes, and for you to try growing a new Heartwood Grove here. I have a feeling the plants from the Distortion World's sanctuaries might have… interesting properties when grown with your power."
As they turned to leave the Marsh, Indra cast one last look at the spot where the rift had been. The Distortion World was out there, a silent, inverted echo of reality. And a part of him, the part that was now Giratina's heir, acknowledged it not with fear, but with a sense of grim ownership. He had survived its heart. He had bent its rules. It was no longer just a death trap; it was a territory, a potential resource, and a stark reminder of how far beyond the shinobi world their destiny now stretched.
High above, Garuda circled, having felt the violent dimensional discharge. His keen eyes saw the new depth in Indra's chakra, the resolved strength in Rias's. He gave a cry that was both a welcome and a salute to warriors returned from a place even he would think twice about entering.
The journey was far from over. In fact, it had just fractured into infinite, terrifying, and glorious new dimensions.
[CHAPTER 61 END.]
[TEMPLATE STATUS UPDATE:]
- Indra Ōtsutsuki: 88% (Enhanced by survival against existential negation).
- Victor Von Doom: 86% (Incorporated dimensional sovereignty & antimatter research).
- Giratina: 47% (Awakened. Basic affinities unlocked).
- Dialga/Palkia Conceptual Devils: Synchronicity High. Abilities integrated into core power set.
[RIAS UZUMAKI STATUS:]
- Wood Goddess Authority: Consolidated.
- Ashura Philosophical Legacy Sync: 85%.
- New Ability: 'Sanctuary Seed' creation.
- Combat Role: Evolved to Full Support/Reality Anchor/Battlefield Control.
**[NEXT OBJECTIVE: Recover, integrate new powers, continue Gourmet World training with focus on dimensional stability exercises and life-force/antimatter synergy. Time until return to Elemental Nations: ~2.5 months.]
End of Chapter – 62.