Nagato stopped as well and fell silent for a moment, then let out a faint sigh. "So that's how it is," he murmured.
"What?" Obito froze, confused.
Buzz.
A sharp scream tore through the air, and Obito felt the hair on his body stand on end. His crimson Sharingan followed the sound, and with its powerful dynamic vision, he saw the figure at the gate.
That person had not entered the Underground Palace, or rather, he had come back out again.
Several shadow spikes shot out from behind Ryuji Hyuga. A ring of water exploded in front of him, turning into mist and leaving a pierced channel through the air, aimed straight at Obito Uchiha.
Obito Uchiha had not expected himself to become the target. The speed of the attack was beyond his expectations.
Still, "Meaningless."
The three tomoe of Obito Uchiha's Sharingan spun and transformed into the Mangekyo, activating Kamui's intangibility. The spikes struck like a storm, but only managed to tear his clothing as he vanished.
He reappeared elsewhere, but in the next instant another piercing sonic boom rang out. A gale from the shadow blade tore up the ground where he stood, dust rising several meters high as it cut across his neck.
There was no wound on Obito Uchiha's neck. He only stared coldly at the distant black shadow.
This was not unexpected for Ryuji Hyuga. The earlier slash had felt like passing through an illusion, cutting only layers of air.
"So this is the right eye Kamui's intangibility," he thought.
At that moment, Obito vanished again and appeared beside Ryuji Hyuga, trying to pull him into the Kamui space. A shadow-covered arm of Ryuji Hyuga turned into a blade, and he turned, the clean edge slashing toward Obito's head.
This time, Ryuji Hyuga saw it clearly. At the instant of contact, the blade sank in again without drawing even a drop of blood and passed straight through.
Obito also grabbed nothing. His hand passed through Ryuji Hyuga's body.
"Only when attacking do you Remove intangibility and become solid," Ryuji Hyuga thought. "And you can also use intangibility for short-range instant movement."
Without wide area or sustained attacks, Kamui was indeed hard to deal with. As long as he wanted to run, he could always escape.
As the blade passed through Obito's neck and Obito's grasp passed through Ryuji Hyuga, Ryuji Hyuga's eyes sharpened. "Got you."
A chain slid from his sleeve, ready to bind the man behind him when he became solid again. In the next instant, however, the shadow blade slashed toward Obito's neck once more.
Obito's expression darkened as he was forced to enter intangibility again. The blade passed through him, and the chain passed through Ryuji Hyuga's body as well.
Like a ghost, Obito kept searching for an opening, trying to pull him into the Kamui space. Every time he became solid, an attack met him and forced him back.
"What kind of Kekkei Genkai is this?" Obito's face under the mask grew darker.
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
The shadow blades slashed with terrifying speed. Yet the speed of Ryuji Hyuga's control was just within Obito's ability to react.
It was still not on the level of Minato Namikaze's space time speed, unable to seize the instant when Obito's body became solid. Finally, knowing the stalemate was pointless, Obito pulled himself into the Kamui space and vanished, reappearing beside Nagato.
Looking at the distant shadow, Obito Uchiha frowned. What was going on with that person?
The last time he felt this kind of suffocating helplessness was when facing Minato Namikaze. After only a few exchanges, his intangibility had been seen through.
Now, although this person could not hurt him like Minato Namikaze did, he had clearly understood the logic of his solid and intangible shifts. If this continued, neither side could touch the other.
"Are you going to run?" Nagato asked calmly. "Madara."
The face under Obito Uchiha's mask darkened, especially at that last name. Nagato's crippled body suddenly healing had already irritated him enough.
If he could not even deal with some unknown nobody, then he would truly have no standing before Nagato or within Akatsuki. With that thought, his expression hardened.
As space twisted into a vortex, his figure was pulled in and vanished again. This time, he did not reappear immediately.
Ryuji Hyuga simply stood there, his face hidden in shadow. In the next instant, countless blades flashed around him.
The ground was carved into savage trenches by endless black shadows, and even falling blood droplets were shredded into mist by the overwhelming blade light. The shadow blades did not stop, continuing to slash around Ryuji Hyuga as if they would go on forever.
Yet within this suffocating storm of blades, beneath the shadow of his wide robe, a figure appeared without a sound. Obito emerged from beneath him, as if climbing out of his body, rapidly leaving the Kamui space.
Mangekyo Sharingan gleamed with cold light as space twisted like wrung silk. An invisible and powerful pulling force appeared.
Obito had calculated it. With this person's reaction speed and control of shadows, he had one second.
He did not even dare appear behind him or touch his shadow. He was betting everything on that single second.
One second was enough. No one could resist that kind of twisted dizziness.
"It's over," Obito declared coldly as he looked at the distorted figure.
But just as he was about to pull him into the Kamui space, Obito did not see it. From the shadow beneath his own feet, a black figure rose in a grotesque way.
At the same time, those who had entered the Underground Palace earlier had no idea what was happening outside. Dust filled the air, along with a chill that seemed to seep from deep within the stone.
Occasional water droplets fell from an unseen height, echoing hollowly in the dim space. Inside the Underground Palace it was not pitch black, as glowing moss-like plants grew along the walls.
With Ninja vision, they could barely see their surroundings. Because of that, when they raised their heads and saw what lay ahead, the shock cut straight into their souls.
The first thing that filled their view was ten irregular columns arching upward like mountain ranges. No, they were not columns.
They were ten enormous tails.
The domed space was far higher than anyone had imagined, and the faint light barely outlined the shape of a colossal being. Stone-like skin covered twisted muscles, its massive body hanging like an inverted mountain.
Below it were four limbs with claws like ridgelines. A single crimson eye gazed down, as if freezing the soul, looking upon the tiny intruders across countless ages.
Even as a statue, it radiated suffocating pressure from the highest level of existence, the pressure of Zetsu. Vast, ancient, savage, and silent.
Yet what shook them even more than the statue itself were the ten tails raised high behind it, like divine pillars holding up the sky. At the end of each tail was a sphere, each glowing with a different strange light.
Like the most splendid offerings and trophies, they were bound and lifted by the tails. Soon, however, they noticed that the third highest tail held an empty black sphere.
"Ghost Shadow Mask?" Kakuzu read the inscription at the base of the tail.
Though he usually cared about nothing but money, reading ancient texts was one of his few other interests. Because of that, he knew that the item inside the sphere was called a Ghost Shadow Mask.
It seemed someone had taken it before them. After a brief silence, everyone vanished at once, rushing toward the other nine spheres.
Outside the gate, a sound rang out like tough leather being pierced by a blade. "Puh."
Obito spat out a mouthful of blood and stiffly looked down at his abdomen. Behind him, a black shadow shaped like a Ninja stood up, its arm piercing through his chest as blood poured out.
More importantly, the shadow writhed like a living thing, like a parasite feeding on his blood from within. Black Shadow Legion, Ghost Shadow Ninja.
"You…" The process of pulling his opponent into the Kamui space had been interrupted, and Obito Uchiha instinctively tried to turn intangible again.
In the next moment, blood burst from his body in sprays, enveloping him in red mist. The shadow inside him sprouted spikes, piercing his kidneys and punching holes through his lungs.
Each spike drank deeply of blood, growing greedily outward until they wrapped him like countless cold snakes. It was like a tree grown from flesh and blood, sprouting from within a human body.
Divine Art, Growth.
Unlike Wood Release, which could only act on plants, divine arts could act on all things. That naturally included the shadows of Ghost Shadow Ninja.
Coughing hard, his voice hoarse with shock, Obito Uchiha forced out, "Why?"
"Now, I've caught you," Ryuji Hyuga said calmly. "You can only move by pulling yourself into space time, or choose to make parts of your body intangible to pass through attacks."
"With the first, you bring everything on and in your body with you. With the second, wherever you are, you still have a shadow you cannot fully escape."
In the end, it was just an information gap. If Obito Uchiha had known his abilities, Kamui's intangibility would not have failed so easily.