The moment Itachi's fourth-stage Susanoo towered between heaven and earth, both halves of the Allied Shinobi Forces—stationed to the north and south—noticed it almost simultaneously.
To guard against a possible ambush by Akatsuki members hiding within the Land of Rice Fields, Kumogakure, Iwagakure, and Kirigakure had already sent messengers back to raise the alarm and put everyone on high alert.
The Six Paths of Pain had only arrived after Dodai, Ao, and Kitsuchi had departed. None of those three knew what had happened at the Five Kage Summit after they left.
So when they saw the colossal Susanoo, they assumed the negotiations had collapsed and the summit had erupted into open war. Without hesitation, they all made the same decision—lead their forces to reinforce their respective leaders.
But halfway there, every reinforcement unit suddenly felt the air grow unbearably oppressive, as though the heavens themselves were about to collapse.
Hovering high above the battlefield, the Deva Path, empowered by the Ten-Tails' immense chakra, unleashed the strongest Super Shinra Tensei in history.
Its power far surpassed the one that had destroyed Konohagakure in the original adult Sasuke timeline.
He intended to wipe out everyone present in a single blow—to kill the Five Kage and Higashino Makoto, the man universally acknowledged as the strongest shinobi alive.
As long as they died, Akatsuki's conquest of the world would have its greatest obstacles removed.
He would make these great hidden villages experience pain unlike anything they had ever known.
Boundless gravitational force came crashing down. Even before it reached the ground, everyone felt as though the sky itself were collapsing. The shinobi on the battlefield's outskirts sensed only the crushing weight and suffocating pressure in the air.
But those directly beneath Shinra Tensei were confronting the Rinnegan's true might.
The overwhelming pressure made it feel as though they had suddenly been transported onto a planet with gravity dozens of times stronger than normal. The air became so heavy and stagnant that they couldn't even lift a leg to run.
If Shinra Tensei were allowed to descend, it would instantly crush the small summit grounds into a massive crater, reducing everyone inside it to bloody paste.
This was the confidence Nagato had gained from wielding the Ten-Tails' power—the reason he dared challenge the Five Great Shinobi Villages.
Compared to the incomplete state he had once been in, he now believed he had become a true god.
But wasn't this just gravity manipulation?
Makoto simply smiled to himself. He might not possess the Rinnegan, but he could achieve the same effects as Shinra Tensei and Banshō Ten'in.
Planting his feet firmly on the earth, he raised both hands toward the sky and drove an overwhelming wave of repulsive force upward.
In an instant, two powers beyond human comprehension collided in midair.
As the air trapped within their opposing gravitational fields slammed together and scraped against itself at incredible speed, its temperature skyrocketed.
There were no flames.
No blazing fire filled the sky.
Instead, the superheated gases warped the very heavens, while countless atmospheric elements churned together into translucent ribbons of brilliant color amid the dense air.
It looked as though a magnificent aurora had suddenly appeared just above the battlefield.
Whether they looked upward from below or downward from above, all anyone could see was a world twisted by distorted space and painted with dazzling colors.
The light overhead shimmered like a dream.
Reality itself seemed folded into illusion.
Whether it was the Allied Shinobi Forces hurrying toward the battlefield or the several dozen people already present, everyone suddenly felt the crushing pressure ease.
They all looked up at the two men locked in their contest of power, utterly speechless.
This kind of power...
It had long since surpassed the realm of shinobi.
So Higashino Makoto of Konohagakure wasn't merely called the God of Shinobi.
He had truly stepped into the domain of the gods through sheer strength.
If those who possessed the Rinnegan could call themselves gods...
Then Makoto was a god as well—a being capable of wielding equal power without ever possessing the Rinnegan.
At this level, what they commanded was no longer ninjutsu, genjutsu, or taijutsu as ordinary shinobi understood them.
They were manipulating the very laws of heaven and earth—forces forever beyond the reach of mortals.
...
Far away, within the underground base beneath the Land of Rice Fields, Nagato had never expected Makoto to wield the same power he did.
The realization filled him with rage.
A god...
Should be one of a kind.
Faced with such an affront to his divine dignity, there was only one response.
He had to crush his opponent with overwhelming force and kill him on the spot.
Otherwise...
How could he ever claim the right to rebuild the world's order and create everlasting peace?
With that thought, Nagato frantically drew more and more power from the Ten-Tails through the black receivers that served as chakra transmitters, while simultaneously burning away his own life force to drive the Deva Path's Shinra Tensei to even greater heights.
He had never become the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki.
Trying to wield its power so recklessly naturally came at a price.
Nagato's once-vibrant crimson hair, which had only recently regained its healthy color, rapidly withered.
Strand after strand turned pure white.
The chuuni idiot...
Had gotten completely carried away.
Meanwhile, Makoto stood his ground without yielding an inch.
In Naturalization Mode, he seemed to merge with the earth itself, pushing his own power higher and higher without restraint.
With the gravity of the entire planet behind him, the amount of energy he could draw upon was practically limitless.
After so many years of training and insight, Makoto had long since realized that within the Naruto universe—or rather, throughout the entire multiverse—the highest form of power was the power of universal laws.
Space-time, matter, energy, and spirit...
Everything else was merely a lower-order manifestation of those fundamental principles.
In many non-supernatural worlds, however, the laws of the universe were completely beyond the reach of mortals.
Fortunately, in the ninja world, primordial natural energy served as the key to prying open those universal laws.
Its extraordinarily high inertia, however, made it incredibly difficult to control.
The Ōtsutsuki Clan, that race which roamed the cosmos, likewise couldn't wield primordial natural energy directly.
But countless generations ago, one of their ancestors had devised a method of converting it through the God Tree, allowing them to obtain chakra fruits and permanently alter the very nature of their existence.
From that day onward, the Ōtsutsuki possessed the Rinnegan—a remarkably convenient tool that allowed them to tap into the power of universal laws indirectly.
It was essentially exploiting a loophole in the rules of the universe.
Thanks to the legacy left behind by their ancestors, later generations no longer needed to train. Simply by growing naturally, they could wield a portion of that power.
Compared to them, Makoto's unusual soul had accidentally slipped into the system governing the universe itself.
Through his own training and understanding, he had climbed upward step by step until he reached its highest ranks.
He was basically the universe's small-town exam prodigy.
...
Although the clash of gravity appeared evenly matched, the victor was decided surprisingly quickly.
Nagato, who wasn't the Rinnegan's original owner, was the first to reach his limit.
Makoto, empowered by Naturalization Mode, overwhelmed him in one decisive surge, sending a tidal wave of repulsive force crashing toward the Deva Path.
Nagato desperately poured everything he had into preserving Yahiko's body.
The overwhelming repulsive force blasted him higher and higher into the sky until he became nothing more than a tiny black speck.
Everyone looked up in silence.
Deep down, the Tsuchikage, Raikage, and Mizukage all felt a rather shameful sense of relief.
Fortunately, they hadn't let their tempers get the better of them and started fighting earlier.
Otherwise...
Who among them could have withstood power like this?
Not even those who bore the title of Kage.
One gravitational attack like that, and everyone would have been flattened into meat paste.
Rasa muttered, "So this is the power of the Rinnegan... Truly terrifying."
Minato looked toward Makoto.
"So? Is it over?"
"Not even close," Makoto replied. "Those puppets have all been modified. Their bodies are far tougher than any human's."
High above, the Deva Path floated in the sky.
His robes had been shredded, and his body was riddled with damage, but fortunately he hadn't been reduced to a mangled corpse.
This wasn't an ordinary flesh-and-blood body.
Its injuries had no effect on its combat ability.
After stabilizing the Deva Path in midair, Nagato refused to accept defeat.
He drew upon his chakra once more, making one final desperate attempt.
Super Chibaku Tensei.
The Deva Path brought his hands together.
A black sphere formed between his palms, growing larger and larger until it reached its limit.
Then he hurled it downward.
He intended to seal away the entire battlefield—land and people alike—and cast it into space to become a second moon.
Watching the tiny black dot descend, Minato asked, "Is he coming down?"
Makoto shook his head.
"No. Something even more troublesome. That guy just refuses to give up."
As the black sphere came to a halt above everyone, a terrifying gravitational force erupted.
The earth trembled violently.
The ground split apart.
Chunks of shattered earth defied the planet's gravity, rising into the sky as they were drawn toward the black sphere.
Makoto, however, shot upward even faster, reaching the sphere in an instant.
How do you counter the Rinnegan's ultimate sealing technique, Chibaku Tensei?
Simple.
Itachi had already provided the answer in the original adult Sasuke timeline.
Destroy its core before it's fully formed.
Makoto threw a punch into empty space.
Guided by his will, natural energy condensed into countless gigantic fists of energy that relentlessly hammered a single point on the black sphere.
The technique resembled Kaguya's Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack, but it wasn't nearly as rigid.
His control was far more refined.
He could freely split the attacks apart for wide-area destruction or concentrate every ounce of destructive power onto a single point.
The black sphere shattered and disintegrated instantly.
Chibaku Tensei collapsed before it could fully form.
The floating masses of earth immediately fell back to the ground.
Makoto didn't stop moving.
He teleported directly in front of the Deva Path high in the sky.
Ignoring the disbelief in Pain's eyes, he thrust a palm into his chest.
Every black receiver connected throughout the Deva Path's body shattered and disintegrated, leaving only the few embedded in his face intact.
With that, Nagato was completely defeated.
He could no longer manipulate the Deva Path to mount any further resistance.
The connection between him and Yahiko's body, however, remained.
Makoto had deliberately left him with just enough of that link to allow one final conversation.