With a wet, tearing sound, the Fifth Kazekage, Gaara, was ripped apart along with the sand that had risen to defend him automatically.
It happened in less than a blink. Before anyone could detect where the attack had come from, much less what shape it had taken, the last of the Five Kage had already fallen into a widening pool of blood.
The highest powers in the ninja world had been erased as casually as someone swatting flies.
Across the real shinobi world, time seemed to stop.
Five Kage—killed in an instant.
That incomprehensible power, that despair so complete it seemed to seep into the marrow, made the soul of everyone watching tremble.
In Kumogakure, the Fourth Raikage watched his future self split cleanly at the waist, and the lightning chakra erupting from his body immediately went berserk. His office blew apart in a storm of sparks and shattered wood.
In Iwagakure, in Kirigakure, in Sunagakure, every Kage-level fighter felt the same biting cold crawl up their spine.
Inside the tower in the Land of Rain, Nagato went completely rigid. Every shred of confidence, every trace of the arrogance he had wrapped around himself as a "god," was smashed apart, leaving behind nothing but a vast and blank confusion.
Was that also a power of the Rinnegan? Then why didn't its owner know it?
At the Ninja Academy, Naruto stared at the version of himself in the sky—the one who had butchered the Five Kage like a demon descended from heaven—and all around him, his classmates looked at him with naked terror.
For one dizzy second, it felt to him as though the entire world was stepping back and leaving him behind. This had to be some kind of joke. A prank. A nightmare staged for him alone.
And in the heavens, time seemed to freeze on the battlefield at the very instant the Five Kage died.
Blood hung thick in the ruined air. The shattered battlefield had become a graveyard, and the five figures who had once represented the summit of the ninja world were now nothing more than cooling corpses.
Then, after that tiny, deathlike pause, a roar split the silence—a wounded beast's cry torn straight from the lungs.
"Naruto—!!!"
***
Sasuke Uchiha dragged himself upright from the rubble, his eyes bloodshot, his face twisted with rage so violent it bordered on madness.
"I'm going to kill you!"
The Complete Susanoo surged back into existence.
This time it was even more solid than before. Purple chakra burned around it like towering flames, and the gigantic armored warrior gave off the pressure of something born to destroy worlds.
At the same time, black flames of Amaterasu slithered over Susanoo's weapon like venomous serpents. Under Kagutsuchi's shaping power, the searing black fire stretched and split, becoming a rain of deadly arrows.
Sasuke had cast everything onto this one strike. The giant sword of Susanoo, wrapped in annihilating black flame, tore open the earth as it slashed down toward Naruto.
At that moment, Sasuke Uchiha stood at the absolute peak of what the ninja world could offer. It was power enough to make any enemy fear him.
Yet Naruto Uzumaki, floating in the air before that nation-breaking attack, did not even change his expression.
"A pointless struggle."
His voice was quiet. Almost bored.
He barely moved.
The distortion of Shinra Tensei wavered around him, and the Amaterasu flames that should have incinerated everything were brushed aside and blown apart with effortless ease.
At the same time, the power of the Asura Path gathered in his palm. A beam of energy greater than a Tailed Beast Bomb erupted forward and smashed into Susanoo's giant sword head-on, blasting it apart.
The force of the collision was so violent that even the massive Susanoo staggered backward. The illusionary force of the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan vanished the instant it touched Naruto's Rinnegan, dissolving without so much as a ripple.
The gap in power between them was no longer something that could be bridged with skill, courage, or resolve. It was a canyon with no bottom.
Every effort Sasuke made—every forbidden technique, every eye art, every desperate gamble—turned pale and laughable in front of Naruto.
Naruto had not even drawn deeply on the full power of the Rinnegan. He was only using its most basic abilities, yet Sasuke's all-out assault looked like a child flailing against a storm.
Then Naruto moved.
He crossed space like a ghost and appeared in an instant at the brow of the Perfect Susanoo, directly in front of the crystal protecting Sasuke's true body.
Sasuke jerked his head up in shock and found himself staring straight into those cold, purple ripple-patterned eyes.
"Sasuke, you're too weak."
Naruto raised one hand and clenched it into a fist. Then he punched.
No huge burst of chakra. No blinding light. No grand, earthshaking display.
Just one clean, simple punch.
Crack. Crack.
In Sasuke's despairing gaze, the crystal of Susanoo shattered like glass under a hammer. The giant skull behind it splintered apart in the same instant.
The force punched through and slammed brutally into Sasuke's chest.
"Puah—!"
Blood burst from Sasuke's mouth. The sound of bone breaking rang out with cruel clarity as his sternum caved in.
His chakra collapsed at once, and the Complete Susanoo let out a shrill, mournful cry before it broke apart into countless drifting motes of purple light.
Sasuke was thrown from the sky like a broken puppet. He crashed into the ground hard enough to kick up a wave of dust and broken stone.
When the cloud finally began to thin, his dying body was left exposed in the ruins. He struggled to lift his head and look at the figure descending toward him, but his sight had already begun to blur.
***
The real shinobi world was silent from top to bottom.
They had lost.
The allied army gathered from the strength of the entire ninja world, together with Uchiha Sasuke and the Five Kage, had been utterly annihilated.
This was not merely defeat. It was the kind of despair that crushed every thought of resistance.
Sasuke lay in the rubble, blood soaking the earth beneath him. He tried to rise, but even standing had become an impossible thing.
Above him, Naruto floated in the air and looked down at the friend who had once mattered most to him. His voice was colder than winter metal.
"Sasuke, you can't beat me. This is your… last chance."
Sasuke coughed up another mouthful of blood. He forced his reddened eyes open, locked them on Naruto, and used what remained of his strength to roar back, "Naruto… someone will stop you! Destroying the world… you can't do it!"
Naruto laughed.
It was the kind of laugh that sounded as if the whole idea were too ridiculous to deserve anger. It was mockery, arrogance, and a loneliness so deep it had curdled into cruelty.
"Stop me?" he repeated, amused. "The Five Kage are dead. You've fallen too. Who else?"
His smile widened, sharp and merciless.
"Who else can stop me?"
Sasuke did not answer. He only glared back with eyes that still burned, unyielding even at the edge of collapse.
***
And then—
A voice rang out, passionate and fierce, like the first ray of sunlight cutting open the dawn.
"Me too!"
Naruto's smile faltered just slightly.
He turned, surprise flickering across his face for the first time, and looked toward the speaker.
A man in a tight green jumpsuit stood not far away, thick brows drawn hard, posture firm despite the smoke curling around him.
In the ruins and drifting dust, his figure did not look tall. It did not look imposing. But there was something about it that felt as if it would never retreat, not even in the face of the end.
"Oh? Guy-sensei." Naruto recognized him at once. His tone remained light, even teasing. "In such a hurry to die? Wouldn't it be better if I killed you after I'm done here?"
Might Guy paid no attention to the taunt.
His eyes moved first to Sasuke, barely forcing himself to stay upright through sheer stubbornness, then to the five Kage lying cold in the distance.
He drew in a slow breath, and when he spoke, his voice was steady with a resolve that felt older than the battlefield itself.
"Father… this is the moment."
"The Eight Gates Formation…"
"Open!"
Boom—!
Blood-red steam exploded out of Might Guy's body.
It was not chakra, but something purer and more terrifying—life itself, burned to the limit and released in one overwhelming eruption.
The violent pressure blasted the smoke and dust away from around him in an instant, baring the ruined battlefield once more.