The shadow of the armored wooden giant loomed over Urashiki's soul like absolute darkness.
That casually posed question was not a choice. It was the pronouncement of a god, decreeing the final fate of an insect.
"Y-You... you monster!"
Fear ultimately overwhelmed rage and malice.
Urashiki's twisted face held only the most primal terror of death.
The golden wings on his back beat frantically as his entire body transformed into a bolt of golden lightning, not charging toward Akashi Sora, but rocketing toward the sky!
Run!
I have to escape from here!
Escape from this monster!
Escape from this horrifying world that completely defies all my intelligence!
[Run?]
[The game isn't over yet. How can the boss leave early?]
Atop the armored wooden giant, Sora didn't even bother to lift his gaze. He merely let a bored thought drift through his mind.
He raised the wooden giant's sky-obscuring right hand.
The blade,"Ame-no-Habakiri," condensed from the right eye's dōjutsu Ugo no Mei · Banri Ikku ,traced an orange-red arc through the air.
There was no earth-shattering display.
No air-rending shriek.
Where the blade passed, space itself became like a canvas slashed by a red-hot iron, leaving behind a pitch-black, continuously twisting and extending fissure!
That streak of golden light crashed headlong into this "severed" space.
Like a high-speed train colliding with a cliff that had materialized out of thin air.
Urashiki's form froze grotesquely in mid-air.
His upper body still maintained the posture of rocketing upward.
But his lower body remained forever behind that black fissure.
No blood.
No viscera.
His body, along with the very space he occupied,had been cleanly, conceptually, bisected.
"Huh..."
Urashiki looked down, staring in disbelief at his vanished lower half, and at the spatial rift continuously expanding at his waist.
Life. Chakra. Even consciousness itself. All were being madly devoured by that rift.
[How fragile.]
Sora clicked his tongue, feeling somewhat bored.
He raised the wooden giant's left hand.
In the palm condensed from the left eye's dōjutsu Kōkō Sanrei · Ban sō Kin'yū., a deep, light-devouring black vortex slowly opened.
It aimed directly at Urashiki's upper body, which was about to be completely consumed by the spatial rift.
"No..."
Urashiki uttered his final, despairing, feeble syllable.
Immense suction surged forth.
His upper body, along with the shattered spatial fragments surrounding it, was effortlessly "scooped up" by that enormous hand, which then slowly closed.
Everything returned to nothingness.
Between heaven and earth, only the towering armored wooden giant remained, alongside the slowly healing spatial rift.
An Ōtsutsuki, a being who proclaimed himself a god,had been... erased.
Not a single trace of his existence remained.
Rumble...
The colossal armored wooden giant began to disassemble.
The orange-red Susanoo armor coating its surface dissolved into specks of phosphorescent light, scattering into the air.
The massive body constructed of Wood Style reverted to countless branches, orderly retracting back underground.
The forest destroyed by the battle, nourished by the Wood Style chakra, began to regenerate at a speed visible to the naked eye, bursting with renewed life.
Moments later, aside from a few irrecoverable craters on the ground, the ravaged battlefield appeared as if nothing had ever happened.
Sora's figure descended gently from mid-air, his feet landing steadily on the soft earth.
He patted nonexistent dust from his clothes, stretched, and a series of satisfying cracks echoed from his joints.
"Ah... done."
He exhaled deeply, his face once again adorned with that disarmingly cheerful smile.
"Cleaning up is such a pain."
But no one responded.
The entire forest was deathly silent.
Not far away.
Boruto sat slumped on the ground, mouth agape, pupils dilated, drool dripping unnoticed.
His brain had completely crashed, overwhelmed by information far exceeding its processing capacity.
Uchiha Shisui,the ever-confident, ever-composed genius hailed as "Shunshin no Shisui",was leaning against a tree, his forehead drenched in cold sweat.
The way he looked at Sora was filled with reverence, along with... a sliver of relief at having survived a catastrophe.
Relief that this village's Hokage was Akashi Sora.
Relief that he stood on the same side.
As for the middle-aged Sasuke, he stood rigidly in place, like a statue weathered for a thousand years.
In his sole remaining eye, the power of the Sharingan and Rinnegan had long receded, leaving only an endless, bottomless emptiness.
His understanding of reality, at this very moment, had completely crumbled and shattered.
Wood Style.
Perfect Susanoo.
A spatial displacement even more domineering than Amenotejikara.
A single slash that cleaved through space itself.
All the power he had gained, all the pinnacles of the shinobi world he had witnessed throughout a lifetime of struggling through hatred and agony...
Before this man, it all seemed like a laughable, childish game.
He finally understood.
Why the Uchiha of this world submitted so willingly.
Why the Itachi of this world had worn such a relieved expression.
Because, in the face of absolute, godlike power, all conspiracies, all hatred, all struggle were utterly meaningless.
This man did not stand at the pinnacle of the shinobi world.
He was the pinnacle of the shinobi world.
He was the maker of rules.
"Oi, what are you all spacing out for?"
Sora's voice shattered the deathly silence.
He slipped his hands back into his pockets and strolled over leisurely.
"The battle's over. Time to pack up and head home."
He stopped in front of Boruto, bent down, and waved a finger before his eyes.
"Kid, snap out of it. Any more daydreaming and your drool's going to soak your clothes."
Boruto jolted violently, snapping back to his senses. Seeing that smiling face before him, he scrambled backward in terror, only stopping when he bumped into middle-aged Sasuke's leg.
"M-Monster..." He pointed at Sora, stammering the word.
"Rude," Sora clicked his tongue, straightening up. His gaze shifted to the still-silent middle-aged Sasuke.
"Alright then, traveler from another world."
The smile on Sora's face turned somewhat playful.
"Having now witnessed our Konoha 'fireworks display,' how do you feel?"
"Don't you think it's time we discussed... going home?"