Chapter 50: The Unfathomable Abyss(Bonus Chapter)
The path here had been paved with corpses. The Kiri assassination squad. The Kumo infiltration team and their monstrous captain. Now, an enemy from within his own village. A gauntlet of blood and lightning that had stretched Ragnar's mind, body, and spirit to a fraying point.
The killings had layered upon him, a grim patina that left him feeling hollow and numb. But the cold engine of his will never stuttered. Kill or be killed. That was the first and last law of this world. Sentiment was a luxury for the dead. He had not survived the annihilation of his home, the scorn of the academy, the crucible of ANBU, to become fertilizer for some Uchiha's grudge.
He would not be erased. He would burn his name into this era, and no clan, no village, no war would stop him. If heaven had no path, he'd walk through hell. If hell had no gate, he'd carve one open with the blade in his hand.
The air grew thick with the Uchiha's cold, predatory chakra. Uchiha Chino. A full jonin. The difference between him and Armani was one of style, not scale. Armani had been a force of nature, a thunderstorm. This man was a scalpel, honed by grief and the Sharingan's cruel insight.
Ragnar's body was a leaking vessel of pain. His chances in a straight fight were near zero. A mutual kill was the optimistic scenario.
Think.
An idea, born of desperation. The Platinum Treasure Chest. The reward for defeating a Kage-level threat like Armani. He hadn't had the strength to look before. Now, it was his only conceivable lifeline.
He focused inward, accessing his system space. To the outside world, he simply stood still, eyes distant. Uchiha Chino watched, a faint, contemptuous smile on his lips, in no hurry. A cat with a mortally wounded mouse.
The chest materialized in Ragnar's mental view. Platinum, ornate, radiating latent power. He willed it open.
A seam of brilliant light appeared. The lid lifted, revealing not an item, but a single card suspended within. It was edged in glowing platinum, and its surface swirled with chaotic, majestic energy, depicting no clear image, only shifting impressions of immense power and sovereignty.
The knowledge flowed into him.
Four Emperors Summoning Card.
Effect: Randomly summons one of the Four Emperors of the Sea. The summoned entity will unconditionally obey the host's will for a duration of ten minutes.
A summoning card. A Yonko. Ten minutes.
The calculation was instantaneous. Any of the Four Emperors existed on a scale of power that dwarfed conventional understanding. Compared to the Kage of this world… it was an unknown, but the potential was catastrophic. Ten minutes was more than enough.
This is it.
He didn't hesitate. In the privacy of his mind, he gave the command.
Use. Summon now.
The platinum card in his mental grasp dissolved into a cascade of brilliant, white motes of light. They swirled and vanished.
He waited. A second. Two.
Nothing.
The forest remained as it was. The ruined clearing. The oppressive Uchiha. The silent Kushina. No rift in reality, no titanic presence, no sudden salvation.
…Delay? A trap? Did it fail?
A cold trickle of true despair, the first he'd felt since the system awakened, threatened to seep in. Had he gambled his last hope on a dud?
Uchiha Chino's patience evaporated. The theatrical pause was over. The murderous intent he'd carried from Konoha, nurtured since finding his son Shirou's hidden grave, crystallized into motion.
His purpose was naked. Here, in the wilderness, far from the Hokage's gaze and ANBU's shadows, he could indulge in vengeance. The dead tell no tales.
With a soft, metallic shing, he drew the long ninjato from his back. The blade was a sliver of captured moonlight, plain but lethally refined. The air around it seemed to grow colder, the promise of a quick, clean kill.
Ragnar stopped waiting for miracles.
He closed his physical eyes. He could not risk a direct look into the triple tomoe Sharingan, not in this state. He didn't know if his Conqueror's Haki could shatter a jonin-level genjutsu from a prepared Uchiha. The risk was annihilation.
The world didn't go dark. It transformed.
Observation Haki: Full Perception.
The greyscale landscape of intent, energy, and life force painted itself over his blindness. He could see Uchiha Chino's cold, focused malice as a pulsating scarlet core. He could sense the tension in the man's muscles, the minute shifts in his stance. He could feel Kushina's terrified, warm presence behind him, a small, bright point of worry.
"Closing your eyes? A wise, if futile, precaution," Uchiha Chino remarked, his voice dripping with condescension. He began to circle, his steps silent on the littered ground.
"Ragnar…" Kushina whimpered, hating her own helplessness.
"Don't move," Ragnar ordered, his voice a low monotone. His hand found Yama's hilt. The demon blade answered his touch with a faint, hungry tremor, a whisper of violet energy coiling up the scabbard.
Shing. He drew it. The sound was different from Chino's blade—darker, deeper, a note of finality.
"Hm?" Uchiha Chino paused, his Sharingan focusing on Yama. A collector's interest flickered amidst the hatred. "That sword… its presence is unique. Unrecorded in any of the known scrolls of famous blades. For such a treasure to be sullied by a child's hand… a pity. It will look better on my wall, after I take it from your corpse."
He exploded into motion. No warning. Pure, efficient violence.
A simple, perfect iaijutsu draw. A crescent of silver light cut through the darkness, aimed to bisect Ragnar at the waist.
Ragnar didn't see it with his eyes. He felt the cutting intent a microsecond before the muscles fired. Yama, guided by Haki-instinct, came up in a diagonal parry.
CLANG!
Sparks, white and black, erupted where the blades met. The impact jarred Ragnar's broken ribs, a white-hot spike of agony. He grunted but held.
The dance began.
Uchiha Chino was a master. His taijutsu, enhanced by the Sharingan's predictive sight, was a flawless, flowing offense. Every slash was precise, every feint believable, every recovery instantaneous. He pressed, a relentless storm of steel.
Ragnar defended. He was slower, heavier with injury. But his defense was not based on sight. It was based on knowing. Observation Haki read the intent behind each move a fraction before the move itself. Yama became a blur of black and purple, meeting each strike not where the blade was, but where it would be. It was a desperate, clairvoyant ballet. Sparks flew in a constant storm. The sound was a rapid, deafening cacophony of shrieking metal.
"Impressive," Chino admitted through gritted teeth, his Sharingan spinning wildly, trying and failing to find a predictable pattern in Ragnar's blind defense. "Your 'strange power'… it lets you sense me. But sensing and reacting are different!"
He disengaged a half-step. His free hand flew through a single, practiced seal.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
The inferno that erupted from his mouth was not the academy-standard version. This was a Jonin's fireball—denser, hotter, a rolling sun of annihilation that lit up the entire clearing and stole the breath from the air.
Ragnar planted his feet. He couldn't dodge and protect Kushina. He poured the dregs of his Armament Haki into Yama. The demon blade drank it greedily, turning a deeper, more absolute black.
He didn't swing a technique. He simply put all his remaining strength, all his will to survive, into one vertical cut.
SWOOSH—!
A single, vertical line of darkness split the world. It met the rolling sun of fire and cleaved through it. The fireball parted like a crimson curtain, the two halves roaring past Ragnar on either side, setting the already broken trees ablaze. The black slash continued, carving a deep, smoking trench in the earth towards Uchiha Chino.
The Uchiha's Sharingan whirled. He was fast, twisting his body aside with preternatural grace. The black energy missed him by inches, but the residual cutting intent tore a gash in his flak jacket. He stared at the devastation—the split fire, the trench in the ground—with genuine shock.
But the cost for Ragnar was catastrophic. The effort emptied him. His Haki flickered and died. The black sheen vanished from Yama. He doubled over, vomiting a stream of dark blood onto the scorched earth, his grip on the sword faltering.
"I see," Uchiha Chino said, his voice cold with final understanding. "Strong on the outside, ruined within. That was your last gasp."
He raised his ninjato, point aimed at Ragnar's heart. No more games. No more fireballs. A simple, quick thrust to end it.
He lunged.
Suddenly, the space between them… warped.
Not with light or sound, but with a profound, existential pressure. The air didn't move; it became heavy, syrupy, like the depths of the ocean had been transplanted into the forest.
Uchiha Chino's perfect thrust slowed, then stopped, as if the atmosphere itself had solidified around his blade.
From the shadows behind Ragnar, a figure stepped forward. He hadn't appeared; he simply was, as if he'd been standing there since the beginning of time and had only now decided to be noticed.
He was immense, not just in height but in presence. He wore a simple, open coat, revealing a chest crisscrossed with old scars. His hair was wild, dark. One arm ended in a iconic, red prosthetic. In his other hand, he casually held a gleaming, white naginata.
He didn't look at Ragnar. He looked at Uchiha Chino with an expression of profound, almost bored, disinterest.
His voice, when it came, was a low rumble that vibrated in the bones more than the ears.
"Hey," he said. "You're kinda botherin' my nap. You mind givin' a guy some face and shuttin' up?"
Uchiha Chino froze, his Sharingan recording every impossible detail, screaming a warning of danger so profound it bypassed thought and went straight to primal terror. The Three Tomoe spun uselessly, unable to process the sheer, unmitigated aura of the man who had just spoken.
Ragnar, slumped on the ground, managed to tilt his head back. Through blurred vision, he saw the silhouette, recognized the prosthetic, the weapon, the overwhelming, lazy dominance.
The summoning hadn't failed. It had been precise.
The card had summoned "Red-Haired" Shanks.
And the ten minutes had begun.
(End of Chapter)
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