Drip, drip!
Cold water droplets splashed onto her face. Fu weakly opened her eyes. This feeling, where even lifting a finger felt difficult, was truly awful.
"Chomei, how are you?" she asked in her consciousness.
"I'm... alright..."
Whether it was an illusion or not, she felt a sense of powerlessness in Chomei's voice.
"What happened to you?!"
Within her spiritual space, Fu's pupils violently contracted when she saw Chomei's condition. Chomei was a beetle-like Tailed Beast with six wings and one tail. The first time they met, Fu had instantly fallen in love with Chomei's transparent, beautiful wings. But the emaciated, dull-winged beetle lying prone in the spiritual space now, its body shrunk by half, bore no resemblance to the overwhelmingly powerful and majestic creature she remembered.
Tap, tap~
The sound of light footsteps approached from behind. Fu turned, her eyes filled with terror. "Why are you here?"
"Entering your spiritual space without permission, how rude of me." Otsutsuki Urashiki offered an apologetic smile. "But this big beetle's chakra is very important to me. I hope you can understand."
"I can't understand!" Fu glared at him furiously. Even if her reactions were slow, she understood now: Chomei's current state was entirely his doing.
"Well, that's truly regrettable."
"Fu... run! Run quickly!" Chomei's weak voice reached her ears. But with her spiritual space already invaded, where could she possibly run?
A sharp pain shot through her physical body, and Fu lost consciousness again, vanishing from the spiritual space.
"Thank you for your hard work," Otsutsuki Urashiki said, looking at the weakened Chomei collapsed on the ground. "After all, your chakra is very important to me."
"Bastard!" Chomei let out an enraged roar, forcefully condensing a Tailed Beast Bomb in front of it, causing its already frail body to shrink even further.
"Wasting chakra? Not a good child." Otsutsuki Urashiki's eyes instantly transformed into pale red Rinnegan with nine tomoe. Several black rods descended from above, severing the chakra input channel, and the Tailed Beast Bomb instantly disintegrated.
A few breaths later.
ROOOAR!
Chomei's miserable shrieks echoed throughout the sealed space.
Otsutsuki Urashiki looked with satisfaction at the chakra pill in his palm, tilted his head back, and swallowed it.
"...Truly delicious." He licked his lips, savoring the taste. One Tailed Beast had brought such a terrifying boost to his strength. If he could refine all nine Tailed Beasts into pills...
At this thought, his eyes lit up. Even if he were to re-grow a God Tree fruit, he would have to hand over most of it. But refining the nine Tailed Beasts into pills and directly consuming them, although slightly less effective than pills made from the God Tree fruit, would yield a far greater net benefit than growing the fruit.
He looked up at the girl suspended in mid-air, already on the verge of death, and retracted the red fishing line.
Thud!
The girl's body slammed heavily onto the ground.
"My apologies," Otsutsuki Urashiki said, but not a trace of apology could be seen on his face.
Walking out of the cavern and seeing the bright, sunny landscape, he felt a wave of pleasure wash over his body and mind. Not just for the present, but for his future.
Whoosh!
In the distance, a Tailed Beast Bomb several meters in diameter came whistling through the air, crashing down in front of him.
Otsutsuki's expression changed drastically. His eyes instantly shifted to pale red Rinnegan with nine tomoe, and a spatial rift had just begun to tear open before him when the pitch-black Tailed Beast Bomb erupted in a dazzling white light. The newly formed rift was instantly obliterated.
BOOM!
Vegetation, hills, the cavern... countless features of the landscape vanished into smoke and dust amidst the terrifying explosion.
Atop the head of a golden, mountain-sized Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, three figures stood, silently watching it all.
"This..." Uchiha Sasuke stared at the scene, utterly shocked. Any budding self-satisfaction he'd felt was instantly snuffed out by this sight.
"So this is an Otsutsuki?" Naruto said, arms crossed, his brow slightly furrowed. "Their life force is truly tenacious."
"How did you know he was here?" Future Sasuke asked, puzzled. Just a short while ago, they were racking their brains trying to find Urashiki's location. Yet, in such a short time, Naruto had pinpointed the enemy's position and set up an ambush.
Naruto merely smiled at him, not revealing that Tailed Beasts could communicate telepathically. Perhaps in another world, Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke were the closest of friends. But in this world, he and Future Sasuke were merely... friends.
Future Sasuke didn't press the issue. For Naruto to have become a missing-nin and attained his current level of strength in such a short time, he certainly wouldn't reveal his trump cards so easily.
In the center of the circular crater, Otsutsuki Urashiki, his skin cracked and almost charred black, struggled to prop himself up. He glared at the distant golden fox, roaring savagely, "You lowly, inferior creatures!"
He slowly raised his arm, pieces of brittle, charred skin flaking off and falling to the ground. The ever-clearer pain was like barrel after barrel of high-purity gasoline being poured onto his burning rage.
Pluck!
He gouged out his own pair of pale red, nine-tomoe Rinnegan from their sockets and put them into his mouth.
"Crunch..." The grinding of teeth, the bizarre chewing sensation, gradually drove his mind into a frenzy. Terrifying chakra erupted from his body. The earth itself seemed unable to bear the horrific pressure, cracking into a spiderweb of fissures.
As if feeling the power increase wasn't enough, he then raised the red fishing basket from his waist and the fishing rod, now broken in two, to his mouth. The two implements fused into a deep red ball of chakra light, which he swallowed.
Bzzzz!
Empowered by his eyes and weapons, his chakra seemed to reach some kind of limit.
Crack... crackle... His charred skin emitted faint sounds—cracks, crumbling, then chunks falling off... Large pieces of blackened skin dropped from his body to the ground, replaced by pale, smooth, newborn skin.
With a tearing sound, a slit suddenly ripped open on his forehead, and golden light shot out from within. Immediately after, countless golden lights instantly enveloped his entire body.
"When an Otsutsuki consumes their own eyes, their appearance changes, and their strength increases dramatically." Future Sasuke recalled his battle with Otsutsuki Momoshiki. When he and Naruto had pushed that guy to his limit, he had done the same thing.
"Can you interrupt it?" Naruto asked. A golden chakra tail whipped forward, and amidst the sonic boom cloud, a Flying Thunder God Kunai was precisely shot next to the small, golden figure.
Swoosh!
In an instant, Naruto's figure appeared beside Otsutsuki Urashiki, his Kusabimaru blade coated with a large amount of Wind Style chakra.
"Not sure..." Only then did Future Sasuke finally answer.
"So fast!" Uchiha Sasuke exclaimed, once again shaken to his core.
Splurt!
The longsword danced, and an arm, still radiating golden light, flew into the air.
"AAAAHHH!!" Otsutsuki Urashiki let out a bloodcurdling scream.