Afterward, another corpse was pulled from the shattered earth.
The poor bastard had terrible luck. Who knew what kind of position he'd been lying in underground, but Hayate's slash had split him clean in half at the waist. He'd been bisected before he even had time to write the word "tragic" across his face.
Including him, there were eight bodies in total—two standard four-man squads.
What the hell had these people been thinking? Eight men daring to sneak behind the Allied Forces' lines to attack the wounded? Did they seriously think the rear was occupied by nothing but medical ninja and injured soldiers?
Just then, someone shouted, "Hayate-sama, we've found something!"
Hayate and the deputy commander, Monga, walked over.
The enemy Hayate had cut in half had been pieced back together, and the White Zetsu body wrapped around him was still desperately trying to regenerate.
But something seemed to be preventing the severed wound from healing.
Underdeveloped White Zetsu possessed little independent consciousness, acting mostly on simple instinct to cooperate with its host. Yet now it had actually detached itself from the ninja it had been protecting, its pale face twisted in obvious pain.
So these things could feel pain too.
Monga, one of Ōnoki's most capable elite jōnin from Iwagakure, frowned.
"Strange... Could this be the effect of your senjutsu power, Hayate?"
Hayate didn't answer immediately. Instead, he examined the other seven wounded enemies.
The result was the same.
The White Zetsu bodies covering them couldn't regenerate, nor could they heal the humans inside.
"So that's it. Senjutsu chakra is highly effective against these things."
Hayate had grown up alongside Makoto. The two were as close as real brothers, and Hayate had also been among the earliest group to begin Natural Energy Training.
Unfortunately, unlike Minato, he lacked exceptional talent, and unlike Naruto and Sasuke, he hadn't been born with overpowered ancestors living inside him. His progress had always been relatively slow. Even after all these years, he still hadn't reached the third stage—Constant Sage Mode.
Fortunately, he had mastered the second stage.
The moment he detected the enemy earlier, he had instantly entered Standard Sage Mode. Naturally, the power he had used was senjutsu chakra from Makoto's True Sage system.
After years of spreading and refinement, the secondary white natural energy had spread throughout the shinobi world. Among all forms of natural energy, it now accounted for more than the combined share of the Three Great Sage Regions. It ranked second overall, surpassed only by the natural energy corrupted by the God Tree.
Monga couldn't help but marvel.
"Amazing... So this is the power Higashino Makoto-sama created?"
For one of Iwagakure's strongest ninja, genuine envy welled up inside him.
His own strength ranked among the best in Iwagakure, yet he couldn't even come close to touching Hayate.
And as far as he knew, Gekkō Hayate wasn't even considered first-tier in Konohagakure.
Which meant that the renowned Iwagakure elite, Monga, would be little more than roadside fodder if judged by Konoha's standards?
Thinking about it that way...
The current Konohagakure was truly terrifying.
Hayate answered honestly.
"That's right. This is the Sage Mode of Konoha's True Sage system."
Monga asked, "Are there many people in Konoha who can use Sage Mode? If there are, this war will become much easier."
"Not many. But Konoha's True Sage system is rather unique. As long as someone has undergone Natural Energy Training, even if they can't enter Sage Mode, their chakra will still carry some of these special properties."
As soon as he finished speaking, Hayate made a decision.
He turned to the Intelligence Division.
"Send word to the front lines and every combat unit immediately. Have them fight alongside Konoha ninja."
...
In truth, Hayate didn't even need to issue the order.
The Allied shinobi fighting on the front lines had already begun adopting that strategy on their own.
Observation and battlefield analysis were what ninja did best.
Many had noticed that after certain Konoha ninja wounded an enemy, those enemies would retreat underground—but their injuries never completely healed. When they resurfaced to continue fighting, the wounds were still there, only somewhat smaller.
As time went on, more and more enemies began deliberately avoiding Konoha ninja altogether, focusing their attacks on the other four great villages instead.
At that point, everyone understood.
The power Konoha ninja wielded dealt uniquely effective damage against these enemies.
Many people found themselves thinking the same thing.
We're all ninja. We all train chakra. So why the hell are you Konoha people so ridiculously overpowered?
Oh... right. You guys are basically sages.
Never mind, then.
Perfectly understandable.
Still insanely jealous.
But it was far too late to start learning now.
The only thing they could do was cling tightly to the Konoha ninja around them and keep fighting.
Thus, across every battlefield, without waiting for orders from above, shinobi from every village naturally began gathering around the nearest Konoha ninja.
At this point, the shinobi on the battlefield no longer cared which village they came from or what grudges they once held. They reorganized themselves around Konoha ninja, making them the spearhead of every squad.
A battle that had already begun tilting in the Allied Forces' favor now shifted even faster.
The White Zetsu body army, already struggling to hold its ground, found its situation growing even more desperate.
Led by the overwhelmingly stronger Konoha ninja, the Allied Forces swept away the chaos and advanced relentlessly. The White Zetsu body army was forced onto the defensive, steadily retreating across the vast semicircular front while desperately trying to hold the line.
It wasn't until the Five Kage, following behind the combat divisions, appeared on the southern battlefield that the enemy's morale finally collapsed.
The break began at a single point before spreading across the entire front.
At a time like this, lofty ideals about changing the world couldn't compare to the value of staying alive.
More and more people abandoned the fight and fled toward the base.
Some even threw down their weapons on the spot, dropped to their knees, and surrendered.
At moments like this, the depth of their faith in Nagato became obvious.
Those who surrendered were shallow believers.
Those who ran were ordinary believers.
Those who kept fighting while watching how things unfolded were true believers.
As for those who continued charging forward without the slightest concern for their own lives...
They were fanatics.
Using an even more suicidal fighting style than before, they desperately tried to slow the Allied Forces' advance, buying time for their comrades to escape.
Not only that...
They even slaughtered the companions who had surrendered.
And before killing them, they always shouted something first.
"You shameless bastards! You've betrayed God's teachings!"
"You're no longer followers of God! Die!"
"In the Angel's name, I shall destroy you!"
The Akatsuki really did have an Angel.
That would be Konan, who was usually seen flying around on paper wings.
The moment the surrendered shinobi saw kunai flying toward them, they snapped.
They had surrendered because continuing to fight meant certain death.
But if surrendering got them killed anyway...
Then what the hell had they surrendered for?
These people had feared death from the very beginning. To save themselves, they had no choice but to pick their weapons back up and turn them against their former comrades.
This time, fighting for their own lives, they were even more ruthless than before.
The problem was that, to the Allied Forces, you were only a prisoner if you surrendered.
The moment you picked up a weapon again, you became an enemy.
Who the hell cared which side you claimed to be on now?
The unfortunate surrender faction ended up accepted by neither side, and one after another, they fell beneath attacks from both.
Once those traitors—rejected by everyone—had been eliminated, the battle continued.
But there were simply too few fanatics left.
Before long, they were either killed or captured.
...
Smoke still lingered across the battlefield.
The ground was a complete mess, scarred everywhere by the destruction left behind by ninjutsu.
The fighting had come to a temporary halt.
As expected, every Allied Forces combat division had emerged victorious.
South of the Akatsuki base, the Second Combat Division—commanded by Darui, one of the Fourth Raikage's most trusted subordinates—had been responsible for that sector.
At the moment, Darui had already led half of his main force in pursuit of the retreating enemy while clearing any remaining threats nearby.
The rest stayed behind to clean up the battlefield and process the prisoners.
The wounded, including injured enemies, were sent to the medical corps for treatment.
The Allied dead were carefully gathered and organized so that each village could later reclaim its own fallen.
As for the enemy corpses, they were piled together in one place.
Nearby stood a small group of prisoners under guard, while the supervising shinobi collected the White Zetsu bodies.
These things possessed incomplete consciousness, but they were unquestionably living organisms and still posed a certain degree of danger.
As a result, nearly all of them were destroyed immediately.
Only a handful of live specimens were kept and distributed among the various hidden villages for research.
The air was thick with the stench of blood.
Fresh blood continued to pour from the mound of corpses, almost forming a small river.
The prisoners stared blankly at the scene.
Those people...
Had once been their friends.
Their classmates.
Their comrades.
Now they were all dead.
That...
Was war.
There was no such thing as war without bloodshed.
The Five Great Hidden Villages had suffered plenty of casualties as well.
The Five Kage stood there now.
Though they mourned the loss of their own shinobi, little emotion showed on their faces.
They had all lived through the Great Ninja Wars.
Scenes like this had long since become familiar.
Ōnoki, the Tsuchikage, had even survived all three Great Ninja Wars since the founding of the hidden villages.
Rasa, the Fourth Raikage, and Minato had each fought in two.
Even the youngest among them—Terumī Mei and Higashino Makoto—had participated in the Third Great Ninja War.
On the battlefield, death was the most common thing of all.
Every shinobi who survived a war would eventually ask themselves the same question.
How could this meaningless game of slaughter ever be brought to an end?
But more often than not, they died during a mission...
Or in the next war...
Before they ever found an answer.
Ōnoki had been right.
Without bloodshed, nothing would ever change.
But sometimes...
No matter how much blood was spilled, it meant nothing.
Because the rules governing this world never changed.
The blood of shinobi was merely the sacrifice that kept those rules—and the game itself—going.