Ten Guardian ninja moved as one, unleashing the same sealing jutsu together. None of them were on Danzō's level—he alone could lock down over five hundred meters—but sealing one or two hundred each wasn't a problem.
Combined, their range spread across more than a full kilometer.
Two elite Guardian ninja vaulted high into the air, ready to cut Arata off if he tried escaping upward.
In an instant, Arata was boxed in completely—above, below, front, back, every escape path sealed tight.
And the moment his forces began their coordinated assault, Sarutobi Sasuke immediately pulled Hiruzen back with him.
Hiruzen, the Hokage himself, swallowed hard as he watched. He couldn't help admiring the terrifying precision of his father's methods.
First came the mind-binding jutsu—Root of the Heart—ensnaring all twelve Guardian monks and driving them willingly to their deaths.
Then came the Reverse Four Symbols Seal, a jutsu taken from the ruins of a destroyed clan years ago. No one had used it since, because casting it cost the user their life.
And it required years of training in sealing arts—no one could learn it overnight.
That meant Sarutobi Sasuke had been preparing this day for a very, very long time.
Hiruzen, who was the first to ever learn the jutsu from Sasuke, had never once imagined it could be used on this scale.
Thinking it through now—
With a jutsu like this, they might even kill a super-Kage-level opponent outright…
if they caught him off guard.
Of course, Arata already knew everything they planned—thanks to his Observation Haki, sharpened to its limit. So the trap wouldn't hit as hard as Sasuke hoped.
Still watching the Guardians move into formation, Hiruzen couldn't help thinking about the Uzumaki clan's sealing arts.
The Reverse Four Symbols Seal was merely one of Uzumaki Mito's "wedding gifts," so to speak. The Uzumaki possessed countless other seals far more dangerous.
Like the Eight Trigrams Seal, used to bind Tailed Beasts. Mito kept that one locked so tightly under her control that Hiruzen had never once dared make a move against her…
and so he'd had no chance to arrange for a pleasant, obedient jinchūriki of his own.
Looks like dealing with the Uzumaki is something I'll have to move up the list…
Hiruzen muttered to himself.
Arata watched the Guardian Twelve without a flicker of surprise. He'd already seen everything seconds beforehand.
Sasuke had prepared the exact same jutsu Danzō once used—the Reverse Four Symbols Seal.
In the original timeline, Danzō nearly killed Uchiha Sasuke with it. If Tobi hadn't intervened with Kamui, the brat would've been sealed alive.
The seal exerted a gravitational pull, making it nearly impossible for anyone caught within to move freely.
The only true counter was space-time ninjutsu.
Killing the caster didn't matter; the moment they triggered it, their life was already forfeit and the seal would continue expanding.
And now… Arata counted at least ten of them casting simultaneously.
That meant, if they controlled their spacing correctly, they could cover nearly a kilometer in every direction.
Even Arata's lightning-charged speed would never outrun that just by moving.
So he did exactly what Obito once did:
He activated Kamui the instant the seal triggered.
Spatial ripples shimmered around him—
And in a single blink, Arata vanished from the center of the sealing formation.
Sasuke and Hiruzen, busy retreating, didn't see a thing.
Nor did they expect Arata to possess a space-time ability at all; earlier, no one had dared approach him closely enough during the fight with the Kumo forces to witness Kamui.
With Arata gone, the twelve Guardians completed their seal.
A wave of inky blackness—like spilled tar mixed with gravity—flooded nearly a kilometer of terrain. Everything it touched, from stone to sand to insects beneath the soil, vanished instantly, pulled into the void.
Then, just as quickly as it came, the seal collapsed.
All that remained were the twelve corpses.
Where Arata had once stood was now a perfectly circular crater—hundreds of meters deep—like a meteor impact site, except the edges were unnaturally smooth.
Far away, Sasuke and Hiruzen turned back and froze at the sight of the devastation.
Hiruzen swallowed again.
The seal might not match a Tailed Beast Bomb in scale, but anything caught inside was simply dead on contact. There was no surviving it.
"Father… those twelve… you must've prepared them for years."
That pulled Sasuke out of his thoughts. He frowned.
"Only a few years. This was my final trump card. If this couldn't kill Arata… then our clan is doomed."
They had openly declared war on Arata today. If they failed here, the Sarutobi clan would be wiped out.
Hiruzen had strength, Sasuke had peak Kage-level power—but Arata, after today's battle, was clearly beyond even that. Even together, they wouldn't fare any better than the Third Raikage.
By all logic, Arata's chakra signature had vanished. That should've meant he was sealed—
but Sasuke's instincts screamed otherwise.
A vague, oppressive dread pressed on his heart.
Not intuition. Not sixth sense.
Something deeper. Something that had saved him many times.
The most recent was decades ago—when Uchiha Madara first unleashed his Susanoo.
Sasuke had run the moment the feeling hit him. That alone had spared his life.
Now, that same instinct clawed at him again.
"Use the jutsu—now! Something's wrong with Arata!" Sasuke barked.
Hiruzen froze, but respect for his father drove his body to move. He pulled out a scroll.
"Reverse Summoning Jutsu!"
A burst of white smoke—
Hiruzen vanished from the battlefield entirely.
And at that exact moment—
Arata's Lightning Armor Second Gear form appeared right in front of Sarutobi Sasuke.
He wasn't injured in the slightest. Lightning still roared around him, undiminished.
A massive Thunder God Sphere spun in his right hand—larger than any he'd formed before.
"It's over, Sasuke."
The Thunder God Sphere shot forward—
and exploded less than a meter from Sasuke's face.