"So she really can enter full tailed-beast transformation after all?"
Yahiko, who had been ruthlessly blown away by the golden storm, extended a mass of vine-like branches from his body. As agile as Kushina's Adamantine Sealing Chains, they swung through the forest like a monkey vaulting from tree to tree, allowing him to land steadily atop a distant treetop.
As he stared at the completely golden Nine-Tailed Fox, whose mere swaying tails made the earth tremble, his pupils shrank slightly.
Nagato, watching the same scene through the Six Paths puppets, and Konan, who had already stabilized herself and flown even higher into the air, both wore shocked expressions as well.
The mountain-sized Nine-Tailed Fox before them reminded them both of the wooden Buddha statue Yahiko had summoned before.
Even though Nagato had mastered the Six Paths techniques and now wielded rule-based powers like attraction and repulsion, Madara Uchiha was still alive, which meant Nagato still couldn't sense the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path. At most, he currently stood at the threshold of the super-Kage tier, able to use the Preta Path and his other abilities to hard-counter Onoki and the Third Raikage, both of whom stood at the summit of the Five Kage.
But compared to Yahiko—who could don Tobi's armor and use the Wood Golem Technique—and Kushina Uzumaki, who could enter Nine-Tails Chakra Mode and unleash a pseudo-Perfect Susanoo-like "full tailed-beast transformation," there was still a clear gap in strength.
The two of them were equivalent to Naruto and Sasuke in the final battle against Six Paths Obito: true super-Kage-class monsters.
So once again, they felt the kind of gap that belonged to an entirely different dimension.
Whether it was because of the original timeline's karmic bond, or simply because Nagato took his commitments very seriously, he snapped back to himself even faster than Yahiko. He immediately controlled the King of Hell Path puppet and followed the signal transmitted through the Yin-Yang Release black receivers, body-flickering toward the corpse of the destroyed Preta Path.
Kushina noticed Nagato's movement at once. Her Mind's Eye of the Kagura also picked up his target, and her golden pupils narrowed slightly.
Could it be that those corpse puppets could be revived?
The moment that thought surfaced, Kushina instantly realized the truth.
Of course. Those puppets were made from corpses. And the six of them all had completely different abilities. Orochimaru-sensei and the others had only gathered fairly complete information on the Deva Path, the Preta Path, and the Asura Path. As for the others, all they knew was that they were skilled in using the five elemental ninjutsu.
Maybe those other three also had unique powers. One of them might be able to restore or revive destroyed puppets.
And the one she had just "killed" was the puppet capable of absorbing chakra and ninjutsu. The reason Kushina had taken it out first was because she had judged that her own "full tailed-beast transformation" would likely be countered by that absorption ability.
Now that she saw what Nagato was trying to do, Kushina immediately confirmed her suspicion.
She absolutely could not allow him to revive that puppet.
The instant she reached that conclusion, Kushina—seated inside the head of the giant Nine-Tailed Fox like a pilot in a mecha—immediately made the fox open its mouth and form an enormous golden sphere of energy.
The sphere spun at high speed in an uneven, violent rotation, while a shuriken-shaped cyclone whirled around it.
This was clearly a Tailed Beast Bomb-class technique—
Sage Art: Wind Release: Massive Rasenshuriken.
Kushina's "full tailed-beast transformation" was not, in the end, a true full tailed-beast transformation.
Without Kurama's cooperation, even with her top-tier chakra control, Kushina could at best form a Rasengan-sized Tailed Beast Bomb in human form.
But to use an actual Tailed Beast Bomb in this false "full tailed-beast transformation" state—a move only a perfect jinchuriki could truly unlock—was still impossible, even after Kushina had entered Nine-Tails Chakra Sage Mode and pushed her chakra control to the absolute ceiling of mixed Otsutsuki bloodlines.
Because a Tailed Beast Bomb was simply too large.
And on top of that, it was a rare S-rank ultimate technique that contained both Yin and Yang properties. Balancing those together with ordinary chakra made it even harder to control.
So instead, Gojo Yoru had simply instructed Kushina to use Sage Art: Wind Release: Rasenshuriken—or Sage Art: Wind Release: Massive Rasenshuriken—while in full tailed-beast form.
After all, the Rasengan had originally been modeled after the Tailed Beast Bomb. Its difficulty in both training and execution was incomparably lower than that of a true Tailed Beast Bomb.
And once the Rasengan evolved into the Rasenshuriken, its destructive power had already reached the level of an S-rank ultimate technique.
As long as she could condense a Rasenshuriken to the size of a Tailed Beast Bomb, its power would not only fail to fall below a Tailed Beast Bomb's—it would become even more terrifying than a bomb that was "just" a massive explosion.
After all, Wind Release: Rasenshuriken was a ninjutsu that killed cells.
And chakra itself came from the body's hundred-trillion-plus cells.
Even if someone somehow survived being hit by a Wind Release: Rasenshuriken, their potential and lifespan would still be severely reduced.
Even Naruto Uzumaki could not bear that kind of recoil. Before the technique was perfected, Tsunade had placed it in the Forbidden Scroll category, deeming it a prohibited jutsu.
Thanks to her oceanic chakra reserves, her top-of-the-shinobi-world chakra control, and the help of Gojo Yoru—who knew the future plot inside and out—Kushina had developed this alternate "Tailed Beast Bomb" very smoothly.
"ROAR—!"
A single roar generated a physical shockwave that rolled backward like recoil.
The giant Rasenshuriken, enormous enough to match a tailed beast, spun through the air like an alien spacecraft, hurtling toward the Hell Path and the corpse of the Preta Path.
The instant he saw that, Nagato's expression changed dramatically.
He didn't need to test it. One glance was enough to tell him that an ordinary Almighty Push could not stop something on this level.
Rule-based power might be capable of dimensional suppression, but that did not make it invincible. It still had to obey the universal law that everything had something capable of restraining it.
A normal Almighty Push might be able to block it, or even blow it apart.
But it absolutely could not fully neutralize it or completely scatter all the energy inside it.
And once that Rasenshuriken exploded, the blast radius would probably be measured in kilometers.
Unless he could maintain the repulsive output continuously, blowing it apart himself might well amount to suicide.
But if he simply allowed that massive Rasenshuriken to erase the Hell Path, which could revive the Six Paths puppets, along with the Preta Path—the most cost-effective puppet after the Deva Path, and the only one among them capable of countering Kushina's full tailed-beast form—Nagato was deeply unwilling to accept it.
Maybe it was because he was still young. Maybe it was because his combat experience was still not mature enough.
Faced with that choice, Nagato made an extremely reckless decision.
"Almighty Push!"
He poured an enormous amount of chakra through the Yin-Yang Release black receivers into the Deva Path. The Deva Path thrust both hands forward, unleashing a hurricane-class repulsive storm that reduced every tree across several kilometers in front of it—and the mountain-sized Rasenshuriken along with them—to dust, scattering them into the heavens and earth.
From Yahiko and Konan's perspective, it was almost instantaneous. The moment the Deva Path faced forward, a dust cloud several kilometers across exploded outward, and when it cleared, a terrifying trench remained.
Their exchange had happened with incredible speed. Whether it was Kushina forming and firing the massive Rasenshuriken, or Nagato charging and unleashing that circular, diameter-wide Super Almighty Push, it had all happened within only a few seconds.
In that brief span, Yahiko had still been hesitating between using Deep Forest Emergence to bind Kushina or summoning the Wood Golem to fight her directly.
As for Konan, she was basically just watching from the sidelines the whole time.
Now that she had started harboring certain feelings for Lord Yoru, she had no desire to offend the official number one woman at his side.
If she hadn't been worried about disrupting Yoru's plans, she might even have wanted to drag Nagato into defecting on the spot and helping Kushina instead.
And besides, the Six Paths puppets were only corpses anyway. It didn't matter how much damage Kushina did to them.
Whoosh—boom!
Nagato's recklessness was quickly punished.
More precisely, he had never fought a giant beast before, so he instinctively assumed that something so huge would naturally lose agility.
He had never imagined that the Nine-Tailed Fox Kushina had formed would possess both monstrous power and incredible speed.
At almost the exact instant the Deva Path used Super Almighty Push, Kushina's Mind's Eye of the Kagura found the opening. She made the Nine-Tailed Fox leap up like a golden mountain, soar over the Deva Path's head, and land solidly—
then stomp the Hell Path flat in one step, while both Nagato and the Hell Path itself were still reeling in shock.
Immediately after that, the Nine-Tailed Fox raised one paw and formed another gigantic Rasengan. The blue-white sphere of energy quickly shifted to orange-red, clearly infused with Fire Release nature transformation.
Fire Release: Massive Rasengan.
The fox slammed the gigantic Rasengan into the ground, blasting out a crater like a meteor impact. The earth inside was scorched black, covered in burn marks, and white steam was still rising from the pit.
The trees, animals, and the Hell Path and Preta Path puppets that had originally been within that crater's range had all been reduced to ash. They could no longer be revived.
Watching the remaining Six Paths puppets, all of them stunned, Konan—still floating in the air with her hands in her pockets—quietly shook her head inside.
Though his power had undergone a huge leap in level, Nagato was still too green.
When controlling the Six Paths puppets, his real body could not unleash its full power and could not carelessly enter the battlefield either.
His original body was actually stronger than any single Six Paths puppet. After all, he could personally use all Six Paths techniques, making him nearly all-purpose.
But if he did that, he would lose the shared vision of the puppets. He also wouldn't be able to coordinate as easily with them or unleash all those effortless five-element combination attacks.
The day Nagato could truly split his attention perfectly—combining overwhelming personal power with an overwhelming team-style combination—he would absolutely become the strongest person beneath Lord Yoru.
At that point, even Konan herself would be no match for him.
But right now, Nagato still needed to grow.
Yahiko seemed to be thinking something similar.
In less than a few minutes, Nagato had already lost two Six Paths puppets, and one of them had been the Preta Path—the very puppet that could have countered full tailed-beast form.
At last, Yahiko stopped hesitating.
Borrowing Tobi's Wood Release chakra, he slammed his hands together and shouted:
"Wood Release—Wood Golem Technique!"
Rumble—!
The earth shook violently. The ground, already flattened or blasted into cratered wasteland by the battle, once again erupted with huge masses of trees.
And these trees were several times larger than natural ones.
But they did not form rows of forest. The moment they burst from the earth, they seemed to melt together like liquid, merging into a giant wooden Buddha statue with a hundred arms.
The hundred-armed Buddha attacked Kushina the moment it appeared.
Kushina answered without the slightest hesitation, making the Nine-Tailed Fox rise upright and clash with it head-on.
The instant their fists collided, the resulting shockwave rolled through the forest like a hurricane.
Even Konan in the sky and the Deva Path were ruthlessly blown away.
The Deva Path tried to use Universal Pull to drag Kushina herself out from inside the Nine-Tailed Fox.
But it quickly realized it could not.
No matter how absolute rule-based power might seem, it still could not reach through and pull out what was inside.
Otherwise, in the original story, Six Paths Obito or Six Paths Madara could have shattered Naruto and Sasuke's complete tailed-beast form and Perfect Susanoo with a single Universal Pull.
Since Universal Pull could not break it, then unless the Deva Path used Planetary Devastation or Super Almighty Push again, it too had no real way to threaten Kushina anymore.
Watching the two giant "mecha" battling, the Deva Path flew up beside Konan and asked,
"Konan-sama, should we go all out and help him?"
If Konan said yes, Nagato would immediately send his real body into battle.
He still wasn't skilled enough at controlling the Six Paths puppets. Their combined strength was nowhere near equal to his true body.
If his real body took the field, he could use the Preta Path again and absolutely provide Yahiko with serious support.
But he still wanted Konan's approval first.
Konan said blankly, "Let's watch a little longer. We still don't understand his full strength well enough."
"If he can't even beat the Nine-Tails jinchuriki and still needs the three of us to join forces, then his dream is a joke. We can repay him in other ways, but we can't join him in facing a combination like the space-time shinobi and the Nine-Tails jinchuriki."
"Otherwise, once the space-time shinobi turns his eyes on us, even nine lives wouldn't be enough."
Nagato found that very reasonable.
So the two of them flew to the top of a taller tree and watched like spectators, observing a battle they could barely even interfere in—a duel from another dimension.
Even from that distance, the collision of the two giant beasts made their eardrums ache. At times, the shockwaves threw up massive clouds of dust that left them unable to open their eyes, forcing them to use Wind Release and repulsive force to blow the dust away.
After a dozen or so exchanges, Kushina Uzumaki and Yahiko both began to use ninjutsu.
Using the Nine-Tailed Fox and the hundred-armed Buddha as mediums, the two of them unleashed heaven-shaking elemental jutsu on such a scale that Konan and the Deva Path had to keep retreating farther and farther away.
Nagato, a genuine master of ninjutsu, suddenly found himself thinking that his own skill in ninjutsu was perhaps not all that impressive after all.
If he did not have the Preta Path's ninjutsu absorption and the Deva Path's power to repel everything, then against ninjutsu on this level, all he could do was run.
And while Kushina Uzumaki and Yahiko were locked in that otherworldly battle, the other battlefields—which had likewise gone straight to white-hot intensity from the opening—were each displaying their own terrifying methods as well.