"The net is closing."
The faintly glowing blue projection screen reflected in Selene's azure eyes.
The first to bring good news was Artoria's Round Table Knights.
Under the increasingly fierce assault of the knights, Edo Tensei Senju Hashirama, Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Five Kage—who had barely recovered some strength—and the reserve shinobi forces stationed at headquarters were successively destroyed.
The dead were dead, the wounded wounded, the sealed sealed, the captured captured. In short, the main force and leadership of the Allied Shinobi Forces had been wiped out. Even the samurai from the Land of Iron who came to join the fray were blasted into ashes by over a dozen light cannons.
At present, Artoria's latest report mentioned a new third party that had entered the battlefield. Their strength was considerable, and battle had already been joined. Of the five identified, four had already surrendered, with one still resisting.
Selene glanced at the image. "Oh?"
That pale-skinned, black-haired man with snake-like eyes radiating a sinister aura—Orochimaru? The other four—a red-haired bespectacled woman, an orange-haired brawny man, a white-haired youth with shark-like teeth, and a black-haired spiky-headed boy with Mangekyō Sharingan glaring fiercely.
Uchiha Sasuke and his team, Taka?
So it was them.
Selene's finger paused over Orochimaru's portrait. "No resistance at all, immediately chose to surrender?" she mused. "Quite pragmatic. Very much like Orochimaru."
After a brief thought, she circled Orochimaru's image and stopped paying further attention.
The Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan user Sasuke was indeed formidable, but trying to flee with three burdens and one "entertainment serpent," or even win and overturn the Round Table Knights led by Artoria? That was far too ambitious.
Even if the Round Table Knights somehow faltered, weren't there still Durandal's Valkyries and the Sisters of Battle?
That would be more than enough for Sasuke to handle.
The second to report mission success were Momonga, Bastieu, and Doberman, leading the Empire's auxiliary legions.
Including the Five Great Shinobi Nations, the major resistance in the capitals and hidden villages of the Land of Rain, the Land of Waves, the Land of Grass, and the Land of Waterfalls had all been subdued. The forces were now expanding toward inner cities along national borders, transitioning into stabilization and mopping-up operations.
In the Land of Lightning, the assault on Kumogakure was entering its final stage. Konohagakure, perhaps, was now the fiercest remaining point of resistance.
The third message was an unexpected one.
It came from Fu Hua, commanding a mixed detachment of "Immortal Blades" and multiple Valkyrie squads.
They had discovered a hidden organization located on the edge of the shinobi world—obscure, but possessing formidable strength.
It was called—Kara.
They not only found entities resonating with the same wavelength as the God Tree, but also several individuals bearing the powers of the Ōtsutsuki Clan.
After intense combat, Fu Hua's forces destroyed Kara's millennia-old base, annihilating nearly all inner members present. During her duel with Kara's leader, named Jigen, she also uncovered a deeply hidden parasitic entity.
The host had been parasitized and controlled by a transcendent being, marked with a black rhombus-shaped seal. From that mark, Fu Hua sensed an aura profoundly akin to the God Tree's chakra.
She immediately concluded that the being parasitizing Jigen was one of those Selene referred to as the "Tree-Planting Clan."
The Ōtsutsuki Clan.
At the same time, taking advantage of the Fourth Shinobi World War and the Ten-Tails' distraction of surface surveillance and interference with the fleet's macro sensors, Kara had secretly hidden a God Tree sapling—a juvenile Ten-Tails—within an interdimensional pocket deep in their base.
Watching the footage transmitted by Fu Hua's unit, Selene rubbed her chin thoughtfully.
"This God Tree… its fruit looks much more appetizing..."
Unlike the withered, spiky, dull-colored Ten-Tails on the war front—its form dry, skeletal, and shriveled—the God Tree sapling Kara had hidden was of exceptional quality.
Plump, radiant, smooth, and ripe-looking—positively luxurious.
By sheer reflex, Selene nearly issued an imperial command to micro-direct Fu Hua to retrieve it immediately when—pop—she smacked her hat brim lightly.
"I'm not me right now," she murmured, massaging her temples beneath the shadow of her visor.
Her current identity wasn't that of the Empress—it was that of an Overseer.
Assuming her position as Major General Pandia von Lorraine of the Imperial Guard, she sent Fu Hua a congratulatory letter, with an appropriate reminder phrased in the tone befitting an Overseer. Only then did Selene reluctantly tear her gaze away from the screen—and the lush, enticing white glow upon it.
"'Karma,' huh..."
Selene regarded both Jigen and the Isshiki Ōtsutsuki hidden behind him with little more than idle curiosity.
This bunch—if one were being polite—could be called a mysterious force operating from the shadows. If not, they were nothing more than a gang of half-dead cripples and disillusioned outcasts from the fringes of the shinobi world.
Apart from Jigen, the vessel of Isshiki Ōtsutsuki, the rest were all trash.
This point in time was not after the Fourth Shinobi World War, when tension between nations had eased, technological exchange had begun, secret research had become available for civilian use, and the world had entered an age of explosive scientific progress—when ninja tools and cutting-edge technologies flourished.
Kara had not yet reaped the dividends brought by the end of the war—the coming of peace, globalized shinobi markets, freer population flow, the lifting of technological restrictions, the clearing of war's dark clouds, and the ensuing technological boom.
Otherwise, if the shinobi world still descended into a world war every decade or so, with shinobi slaughtering one another endlessly, then the later influx of wealthy merchants and scientists who funded and developed Kara's technology would never have occurred.
In times of war, those in power were shinobi, the speakers of authority were shinobi, and the enforcers of violence were also shinobi. The scenario, years later, where a merchant swaggered into a village to issue commissions and stood equal—or even superior—to a Konoha jōnin, would have been utterly impossible.
During the previous three Great Shinobi Wars, anyone acting like that would've been cut down on the spot. No one would hesitate.
Why bother with formal missions when looting and framing were quicker ways to profit?
In short, Kara resembled those modern protectionist organizations that only found fertile ground in later, more civilized times. In an age of imperialism and colonial conquest, they simply had no soil to take root.
And the current shinobi world was at the tail end of precisely that imperialistic, colonial era. Only after the Fourth Shinobi World War would Kara's golden age arrive.
Right now, judging purely by personnel quality, they were probably inferior even to the early Akatsuki.
They had no right to step onto the stage of history yet.
Fu Hua's assault, commanding Imperial forces, was nothing short of a dimensionality reduction strike.
Aside from the inner members who could barely resist thanks to the blessing of Ōtsutsuki power, the outer members were all slaughtered in the very first engagement.
Selene watched the battle as though she were viewing a play. She saw the inevitable outcome—Jigen's defeat, and the incomplete Isshiki Ōtsutsuki being forced to manifest.
His body was covered in black markings, twin horns sprouting from his head, and yet the "Jigen" form struggled helplessly under Fu Hua's relentless strikes of Chunxin Fist and Taixu Sword Qi, barely holding his ground.
Both sides' martial techniques contained traces of the Gentle Fist and Inch Fist styles. Selene could tell that Fu Hua was satisfied—she was drawing out every ounce of Isshiki's strength, using him as a whetstone to sharpen her own edge.
After a while, Selene lost interest.
Different schools, she mused. The kind of "flourish" in this hand-to-hand combat was not the sort of flourish she appreciated.
Closing the live feed from the frontline, Selene turned her attention to the progress on other battlefronts.
Right on cue, another combat unit reported successful completion of its mission.
It was Gino Weinberg's Knightmare humanoid combat unit, alongside battlefield hunters such as Cú Chulainn, Hassan of the Cursed Arm, and Fiel Nirvalen—specialists who sought out enemy elites and commanders to eliminate or entangle them; assassins of the battlefield, essentially.
The reanimated predecessors of Konoha—Second Hokage Senju Tobirama and Fourth Hokage Namikaze Minato (now lacking the Yin Nine-Tails)—had both been captured and sealed after being overwhelmed by sustained barrages of firepower and relentless pursuit.
Among the Konoha upper echelon that Tobirama and Minato managed to teleport away via Flying Raijin and Body Flicker techniques, half were slain mid-battle by Imperial hunters and Knightmare pilots.
As for the Nine-Tails' jinchūriki, Selene found no detailed report—only a brief note: "Lost the Nine-Tails. Attacked amid shinobi infighting. Critically wounded. Current whereabouts unknown. Status unconfirmed. Our forces are pursuing."
After reviewing the key updates from the major fronts of the Shinobi World campaign, Selene assessed the war's endgame.
As things stood, the Kaguya Ōtsutsuki sealed on the moon had no chance of release.
Durandal would never allow Obito Uchiha—now the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki—the opportunity to cast Infinite Tsukuyomi. The man's defeat was already apparent.
"So then," Selene murmured, "since all the valuable resources in this world have already been unearthed, it's about time I..."
"Fire Style: Fire Dragon Flame Bullet!"
A sudden, aged roar split the air. A wall of fire erupted skyward, the air and wooden structures groaning in protest as searing heat surged forth—a blazing inferno rolling toward Selene, who sat upon Konoha's wall.
Bathed in orange light, Selene's expression darkened.
From beneath the rubble, a group of Anbu shinobi crept out, mouths agape as they unleashed torrents of flame toward her. Silently, Selene raised her hand. Repulsion—boom, rumble, rumble!
In an instant.
Flames, dirt, mud, shattered walls, and debris quaked violently, surging outward in a sweeping wave. Screaming Konoha shinobi fled the rebounding heat, collapsing in agony as the scorching fire burned their flesh or burying them beneath trembling ruins.
"C-Commander..."
Such an uproar could hardly go unnoticed by the Imperial troops still sweeping through the village. When they saw that those peasants had attacked the very Overseer in charge of combat merit verification, they trembled and hurried to the crumbling wall, bowing in apology.
"No harm done," Selene waved her hand. "Carry on with your mission. Eliminate all remaining resistance in the combat zone swiftly."
"Yes, ma'am!"
It was a battlefield, after all. Sitting atop a high vantage point naturally made her a target for enemy attacks. Selene wasn't so petty as to take out her irritation on mere foot soldiers.
Rising to her feet, her transcendent vision caught the faint gleam of eyes peering from beneath a pile of ruins several kilometers away—a tunnel entrance. Surrounded by several shinobi stood an unshaven old man and an aged woman.
Those two Konoha advisors? Still alive? Remarkable.
Meeting the gaze of those Byakugan scouts, Selene gave a little wave, almost in greeting. As the shinobi stared back in horror, she lifted her head slightly, gazing toward that direction with quiet thought.
"Transmit the order: final offer of surrender."
"Those who surrender now will be spared and sent to prisoner camps. One hour from now, anyone remaining within Konoha's boundaries—kill without exception."
With that brief interlude concluded, she lost interest in Konoha's situation. Heads and trophies weren't worth stealing credit from her soldiers.
King to king. General to general. Soldier to soldier. She naturally sought her own counterpart—the Overseer.
Would Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki be handled by Durandal... or by Selene herself?
After reviewing the situation across all fronts of the Shinobi World, she reached her decision.
The Overseer had found her proper opponent—one befitting her rank.
The lingering chakra still flowed through the world, tied to the watching Sage of Six Paths.
Swallowing the elixir and unfurling the extracted chakra of Indra's reincarnation, Selene steadied her spirit and descended into the hazy Pure Land of the shinobi world.
"Ah... a visitor from beyond the stars. Are you the beings my mother feared so deeply?"
Before Selene could fully observe this so-called Pure Land, an aged sigh resonated through her mind. The other side had initiated contact, bridging the realms with startling clarity.
She looked toward the source.
Within the crevices of the Pure Land's deepest void, above a sea without foundation, floated an old man with horns upon his brow, eyes closed in meditation.
"So you finally stop hiding," Selene said coldly. "To appear before me means you've accepted your death, haven't you?"
"A man already dead has no fear of dying," came the solemn reply.
Opening his glowing Rinnegan, the Sage's tone was heavy.
"It was your decision that compelled me to meet with you, Outsider. When you chose to grant Konoha's innocent people a path to live, I chose to abandon resistance."
"I know your kind's methods. The Ōtsutsuki... yours is a solution born of desperation."
The Sage of Six Paths was no fool. He could see the gap in power. To truly enrage these beings from beyond the stars would mean the end of the shinobi world.
With compassion in his voice, he sighed. "Thousands of years ago, my war with Mother inflicted scars upon this world that can never be erased. There must not... be a second time."
"In every war, it is always the people of the shinobi world who suffer most."
"Outsider, can you truly promise me this?" he asked, locking his gaze upon Selene.
"I can."
Her lips curved faintly as she bit down softly, unflinching. Selene extended her hand—the Ōtsutsuki Alchemy Sigil flared to life.
Its meaning was clear:
Do it yourself.
—
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