Kisame Hoshigaki strode atop the rolling waves, Samehada gripped in his hands as he charged straight at Uchiha Itachi. Itachi drew a kunai in response.
"Kisame, stop," Itachi said calmly. "You can't win against the entire shinobi world."
"Heh… that's not necessarily true," Kisame sneered. "Out of the nine tailed beasts, we've already captured eight. Only the Nine-Tails remains. Judging purely by numbers, we're the ones with the advantage now. Itachi, I have to say—your timing for defecting was terrible."
Kisame brought Samehada down in a massive cleaving strike. Itachi was sent flying, and while still airborne, he unleashed Fire Release, hurling a volley of shuriken at the same time. Each shuriken was wrapped in flames, greatly amplifying its destructive power.
But water naturally suppressed fire.
With a single Water Dragon Bullet Technique, Kisame effortlessly shattered Itachi's attack.
The moment Itachi landed, just as he was about to form seals again, a sharp pain stabbed through his eyes. His entire body went numb, his movements stiffening.
At the same time, Samehada crashed down from above, aiming straight for Itachi's head.
"Brother!"
A massive Susanoo hand reached out from the side, knocking Samehada aside. Yet upon contact, a chunk of the spectral hand was viciously bitten off.
A grinding, chewing sound echoed from Samehada. Its body swelled visibly, growing thicker—more like a massive club than a blade.
"Sasuke, be careful!" Itachi shouted. "That's Samehada—the Great Blade of the Hidden Mist, one of the Seven Ninja Swords. It devours chakra! Don't use Susanoo against it!"
By now, Itachi felt increasingly drained. Forget activating the Mangekyō—he was struggling even to maintain his three-tomoe Sharingan.
"Brother… what's wrong?"
Ignoring Kisame and Samehada entirely, Sasuke rushed to Itachi's side, worry etched across his face.
"This is the price of an incomplete Mangekyō," Itachi said weakly. "Prolonged use doesn't just lead to blindness—it causes severe damage to the body itself. It seems… my time is running short."
Sasuke's expression changed dramatically.
He had heard that the Mangekyō carried the risk of blindness, but within the clan, only Rokuro and Uchiha Izumi had possessed it before. Especially Rokuro—Sasuke had often seen him casually use the Mangekyō, even traveling with Susanoo.
Nothing about Rokuro suggested bodily damage, leaving Sasuke with no real concept of the Mangekyō's side effects.
But now, seeing how frail Itachi looked, Sasuke's heart ached.
In the original timeline, Uchiha Itachi had only fallen gravely ill on the eve of the Fourth Great Ninja War. During Orochimaru's Konoha Crush, when Sasuke was around twelve, Itachi's eyesight had begun to decline—but he hadn't been this weak. That created the illusion that Itachi's Mangekyō was far more durable than Sasuke's.
The truth was simpler.
Itachi avoided using the Mangekyō whenever possible. Even during missions, he would let Kisame handle most of the fighting while he conserved his strength.
That frugal approach was what truly prolonged his Mangekyō's lifespan.
Sasuke, on the other hand, had gone all out the moment he stepped onto the stage—constantly fighting high-level opponents. Going blind so quickly was inevitable.
In this world, due to Rokuro's intervention, the Akatsuki began collecting tailed beasts several years earlier. As a result, Itachi had also entered a high-consumption combat state far earlier, overusing his eyes.
The current Uchiha Itachi was even weaker than his original self on the eve of the Fourth War—so weak that he could no longer defeat Kisame.
And so, Sasuke naturally took over the fight, becoming Kisame Hoshigaki's opponent. The two immediately clashed.
Meanwhile, the central army—the Land of Fire defensive line—was also assaulted by the White Zetsu horde.
Twenty thousand five hundred versus twenty thousand.
The Allied Shinobi Forces were outnumbered by five thousand, yet they held the advantage in overall strength.
As the battle progressed, they gradually gained the upper hand.
On the battlefield, four-tailed Naruto rampaged through the White Zetsu ranks. Having endured his previous berserk incident, the Asura power within Naruto had further awakened. At this stage, he could almost fully command the Nine-Tails' strength.
The four-tail chakra cloak manifested effortlessly, with virtually no side effects.
"Naruto, be careful," Neji warned, staying close behind him. "Don't push too deep. Don't forget—you're the enemy's primary target."
"Haha! These white monsters are nothing," Naruto laughed. "Killing them is as easy as chopping radishes!"
As he spoke, a Rasengan formed at the tip of each of his four chakra tails. The tails stretched like giant hands, slamming the spinning spheres into four White Zetsu torsos and blasting them away.
Neji, meanwhile, danced through the crowd with the Hyūga Gentle Fist. Wherever he passed, White Zetsu collapsed—no visible wounds on their skin, yet the struck areas caved inward, their insides reduced to pulp.
Just as the two youngsters were carving through the battlefield, Neji suddenly rushed to Naruto's side, grabbed his arm, and leapt upward.
In the next instant, the ground beneath Naruto turned to sand. A massive sand hand surged upward, reaching for Naruto and Neji—more precisely, for Naruto.
"Leave it to me!"
Neji hurled Naruto away, then flipped midair and struck out with an Eight Trigrams Air Palm, shattering the incoming sand hand.
As he descended, Neji unleashed several more Air Palms, blasting the ground beneath himself and around Naruto's landing zone.
Amid flying rubble, the two landed steadily. Around them, over a dozen craters half a meter wide scarred the ground.
"What was that, Neji?" Naruto asked belatedly. "Was that a sneak attack?"
Naruto scanned the area, then turned toward a point about twenty meters to their front-left.
There, a figure carrying a gourd slowly emerged from the ground.
He looked young—about the same age as Naruto and the others. His expression was cold, his short red hair vivid, and on the left side of his forehead was a crimson kanji: "Love."
"This guy… why does he look kind of familiar?" Naruto tilted his head, unable to place him.
Neji recognized him instantly.
"He's the deceased One-Tail Jinchūriki—the Fourth Kazekage's son, Gaara."
"Oh—right, right!" Naruto exclaimed. "So… he's dead? A puppet or something?"
"No," Neji replied. "Didn't our master say there's a forbidden technique that can revive the dead in a different form and enslave them?"
Naruto scratched his head. "Rokuro-nii mentioned way too many forbidden jutsu… let me think… It's called… Rea—Reanimation?"
"Correct. Edo Tensei. He was revived with it—and he's not an ordinary reanimation. I can see One-Tail chakra inside him. This is an Edo-Tensei Jinchūriki."
Hearing that Gaara had died and still couldn't escape the fate of being a Jinchūriki, Naruto felt an immediate sense of empathy. His expression grew solemn.
At that moment, an explosion sounded in the distance.
Turning his head, Naruto saw a man spewing magma, launching indiscriminate wide-range attacks—White Zetsu and shinobi alike were all targets.
"That's the Four-Tails Jinchūriki, Rōshi," Neji said grimly. "He's been revived as well."
As Neji spoke, Rōshi cut off their retreat.
Just as Naruto and Neji braced themselves for a two-on-two battle against the Edo Jinchūriki, a female shinobi with dragonfly-like wings on her back descended from above—
The Seven-Tails Jinchūriki.
In an instant, the situation shifted.
Two versus three.
END OF CHAPTER
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