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Chapter 64: Rakshasa's Toll
"Armament Haki: Rasengan!"
The technique was a brutal hybrid. The swirling, chaotic blue sphere of chakra, born from relentless practice and instinct, was now encased in a shell of pure, hardened will—Level 4 Armament Haki, dark as a starless night and veined with deep crimson.
Akazuchi had committed everything to his defense. His entire body had transmuted into a statue of dark, grainy rock, the pinnacle of Iwa's defensive earth ninjutsu—an unmovable mountain made flesh.
BOOM!
The impact wasn't a collision; it was an imposition. The black sphere didn't hit; it insinuated itself against the stone chest. For a split second, the two opposing forces—the unyielding earth and the rotating annihilation—held in a terrible equilibrium.
Then, the Haki did its work. The shell of Armament coating the Rasengan didn't just protect it; it actively attacked. As the spiraling chakra gnawed at the surface, the Haki seeped outwards from the point of contact, a network of inky black cracks spider-webbing across Akazuchi's petrified torso with terrifying speed.
"Burst."
At Ragnar's mental command, the invasive Haki threads constricted.
CRACK-SHATTER!
The "indestructible" rock armor didn't just break; it exploded off his body in a cloud of dust and stone shards, leaving behind vulnerable, human flesh.
And the Rasengan's core, now unimpeded, drilled inward.
The sound was wet and final. The spiraling force didn't just puncture; it churned, mulching organs and bone into a ruinous pulp within the cavity of Akazuchi's chest. A shockwave of force exited his back, tearing his uniform and spraying a mist of red onto the mud behind him.
HACK—COUGH!
A torrent of blood, thick and dark, erupted from Akazuchi's mouth. His eyes bulged, wide with a horror that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with incomprehension. He looked down at the ruin of his midsection, at the grotesque, concave mess where his rock shell and his body had been.
"Who... are you?" he gurgled, the words bubbling through the blood. It was the last, desperate question of a soldier who needed to put a name, an identity, to the force that had erased him.
Ragnar was silent. There were no grand speeches, no justifications. They were shinobi of opposing villages in a war that was just beginning. There was no good, no evil here—only survival, and the will of the village one served. To offer this dying man any comfort would be the deepest insult.
But perhaps, to let him die with a clearer mind... Ragnar's hand rose. With one finger, he hooked the bottom edge of his Rakshasa mask and tilted it up, just enough.
Akazuchi's fading vision focused on the revealed sliver of face. His heart, or what was left of it, gave one last, agonized thump.
Young.
Impossibly, terrifyingly young. Not the grizzled veteran, the legendary ANBU captain he had imagined. Just a boy with cold, focused eyes set in a face that had no business being on a battlefield of this magnitude.
The betrayal of that expectation was his final thought.
Yama flashed, a silver-and-black arc in the gloom. Akazuchi's head separated from his shoulders, joining his partner in the mud. The expression of stunned horror remained etched on his features.
The rain fell, beginning its long work of washing the new blood into the old.
Ding!
Slain: Iwagakure Jonin, Oishi. EXP +1,500.
Slain: Iwagakure Jonin, Akazuchi. EXP +1,500.
Total EXP: 6,300 / 50,000.
A soft, chime-like sound, audible only to Ragnar, marked the transaction of his grim work. Simultaneously, a glow coalesced in the air before him—a lustrous, solid-gold treasure chest, hovering just above the ground. There was no time to open it now. With a thought, he willed it into the storage space of his system.
The battle was over.
He stood amidst the silence that was somehow louder than the fight. Eighteen chunin, two jonin. Extinguished in a fraction of the time it had taken to battle Kiri's team. He wasn't even winded. The truth was undeniable: every brush with death, every drop of spilled blood, tempered him. He emerged stronger, sharper, more efficient. This was the brutal arithmetic of his growth.
The rain continued its indifferent tattoo, diluting the scarlet pools, seeking to cleanse the valley of the evidence. It failed. The earth was a charnel house. Bodies and parts lay strewn in a grotesque still-life, a hellish garden cultivated by Ragnar's hand. Yet he stood at its center, pristine. Not a single drop of blood marred his ANBU blacks or the red accents of his uniform. He was like a dark star, a point of absolute void around which carnage orbited but could not touch.
In the distance, Team Nine remained frozen. Since Captain Swiftfire's futile Great Fireball, they had been rendered spectators, their skills—mind probes, insect swarms, kenjutsu—utterly irrelevant before the scale of violence they witnessed. The reality was still settling into their bones, cold and heavy.
Dead. All of them.
His strength… it's not just promising. It's arrived. Elite ANBU captain level. Maybe higher.
He's not a rookie. He's a weapon. A natural disaster in human form. 'Hell's Rakshasa'… the name fits too well.
Ragnar turned. The hollow eyes of his mask found them. He began walking back through the rain.
Moonlight Swiftfire found his throat tight, his captain's authority shriveled to ash. He was about to force words out, to reassert some semblance of command, when Ragnar spoke first.
"Tidy up the battlefield, Captain," Ragnar said, his voice carrying the same calm, flat tone he'd used throughout. "It's time for us to leave."
The order was delivered with the casual certainty of someone stating the obvious. It wasn't a challenge to authority; it was a simple bypassing of it, born from the new, unspoken hierarchy established by blood and power.
Swiftfire's body stiffened, then relaxed all at once. The fight left his shoulders. "Yes," he said, the word quiet but clear.
The three veteran ANBU moved, beginning the grim work of searching bodies for intel, confirming kills, and noting clan markings. They worked with a new, subconscious deference. Ragnar did not command them, but his presence—the silent, watchful Rakshasa standing guard—now dictated the rhythm. In the shinobi world, strength commanded respect. It was an ancient, unforgiving law.
Seizing the moment of privacy, Ragnar focused inward. Curiosity pulled his consciousness to the newly acquired golden chest within his system's space. It hovered in the mental void, radiating a magnificent, enticing light. The last Gold Chest had given him the Phoenix Fruit. The potential here was equally staggering.
With a thought, he commanded it to open.
The lid lifted silently. A warm, golden glow spilled out, not blinding, but profound. As the light receded, a single item floated at the bottom: a rectangular card edged in glittering gold leaf.
He willed it into his hand. It was cool and smooth. The image on it was unmistakable: a tall, flamboyant man with pointed sunglasses and a perpetual, crooked smirk, draped in a feather coat. A name and information flowed into his mind.
Character Card: Donquixote Doflamingo.
Type: One-Time Use, Designated Summon.
Usage 1: Summon the Warlord of the Sea, Donquixote Doflamingo, for one (1) hour. The summoned entity will obey the host's commands absolutely.
Usage 2: Do not summon. Instead, fuse with the card. The host inherits all abilities, techniques, and mastered powers of Donquixote Doflamingo for fifteen (15) minutes. Abilities vanish when duration ends.
"Huh," Ragnar murmured to himself, the sound lost under the rain. "Different from the last Emperor summoning card."
The Shanks card had been a random draw from the Four Emperors, with no fusion option. This was a designated, guaranteed summon with an alternative use. The key difference was specificity. One was a gamble on raw power; this was a precise, if slightly less overwhelming, tool with versatile application.
Doflamingo. Not on the level of a Yonko in raw Haki or conqueror's spirit, but a nightmare in his own right. A Devil Fruit awakened to a terrifying degree, masterful string manipulation that blurred the line between paramecia and reality itself, and a cunning, ruthless intellect.
A new trump card. Not for raw annihilation like Shanks's projected presence, but for a situation requiring precise, controlled, and utterly devious chaos.
He smiled faintly behind his mask and willed the card back into his system storage. The rain on his shoulders felt a little lighter. The path ahead was drenched in blood and shadow, but his arsenal of lights in that darkness continued to grow.
(End of Chapter)
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