His vision spun.
As the world stopped spinning, Menma's ice-cold face glaringly filled his sight. Identical figures standing in front of and behind him triggered a sudden, terrifying realization in his mind.
Shadow Clones.
Adamantine Sealing Chains.
Flying Thunder God?!
In that split second, Hiruko understood exactly how Menma had slipped past his eyes.
"Bastard!"
Pure madness flashed in Hiruko's pupils.
"Storm Release!" He slammed his palms together.
First, he fully unleashed his Steel Release, forcibly hardening his body to block the Sword of the Thunder God from piercing any deeper.
Immediately following that... the destructive power of Storm Release erupted.
Rumble!!
He detonated the Storm Release right on top of himself, engulfing his own body in the blast.
"!"
Feeling the sharp, lethal energy latching onto him, Menma's expression shifted.
He had no choice but to forcefully yank out the Sword of the Thunder God.
Clang! Menma dropped into a defensive stance to block the head-on assault.
Bang! The raging lightning crashed down.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Menma mirrored the attack, channeling his own Lightning Release jutsu through the Sword of the Thunder God.
"Lightning Release: Thundercloud Frenzy!"
Rumble!! The two massive surges of lightning collided head-on, the shockwaves fracturing the air itself.
"!"
Even Menma felt a sharp jolt of numbness wash over him, his body involuntarily shuddering.
Losing half a beat of momentum, Hiruko gritted his teeth and triggered his Swift Release, desperately trying to use the opening to create some distance.
In that fraction of a millisecond...
Menma only had time to twist his body.
Bang! Spinning mid-air, he drove his right foot ruthlessly into the side of Hiruko's abdomen.
The crushing impact couldn't be instantly negated. Hiruko was launched backward like a cannonball.
Bang! He plowed a deep trench into the earth before violently smashing into a massive tree nearby.
"Cough... cough..."
The devastating, back-to-back strikes forced Hiruko to uncontrollably cough up blood. The clothes around his abdomen were completely soaked crimson.
Feeling the intense paralysis and bone-deep agony, Hiruko's face twisted into an unprecedentedly ugly scowl.
He had to think of something. If this kept up, he was absolutely going to die.
Clutching his bleeding abdomen, Hiruko's mind raced through a dozen desperate plans. He knew he couldn't just sit here and wait for death.
Biting down hard on his lower lip, he prepared to weave another set of hand seals.
But in that split second...
He noticed Menma standing in the distance, completely motionless. The boy was just standing there coldly, looking down at him with a mocking sneer.
Hiruko froze.
Suddenly, a bone-deep chill gripped his heart. Just as he tried to move...
Clang! Without warning. From beneath the ground.
Right where Hiruko was standing, two golden chains violently erupted from the earth, accompanied by a sharp, deafening metallic ringing.
Hiruko's face drastically paled.
But it was far too late to react. Heavily wounded, his reaction time was fatally delayed by a fraction of a beat.
Clack clack clack! The striking golden chains flawlessly bound him. The moment they wrapped tightly around him, radiating that unique chakra fluctuation, Hiruko felt the flow of his own chakra violently grind to a halt.
Stripped of all power to resist, every drop of color drained from Hiruko's face. Infinite despair, rage, and resentment flooded his eyes.
"Bastard! Bastard! Let me go!! You piece of shit!!"
It was the pathetic picture of impotent fury.
Menma turned a completely deaf ear to the screaming. Wearing a look of pure apathy, he casually strolled up to Hiruko.
"Genjutsu: Demonic Illusion - Hell Viewing Technique."
He wove a quick seal.
The genjutsu activated directly, projecting the illusion straight into the window of Hiruko's mind.
It certainly wasn't an overwhelmingly powerful genjutsu, but against an enemy with zero room to resist and a heavily damaged psyche...
Hum! The mental intrusion seeped in effortlessly.
In less than a second, Hiruko plunged into the illusion's control. His eyes glazed over, before violently dilating with absolute, abject terror.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
Following a bloodcurdling, agonizing scream... Hiruko's head slumped to the side. He dropped into a deep, death-like coma.
The Hell Viewing Technique.
It was the most direct, foundational genjutsu in existence, designed to drag a target's deepest, darkest fears to the surface. Generally, those with unbreakable willpower easily shrugged it off. But for someone like Hiruko—who appeared powerful on the outside but was completely hollow on the inside—this jutsu was pure kryptonite.
Especially while physically restrained. The jutsu magnified his internal terror to the absolute maximum.
Broken physically and utterly shattered mentally, Hiruko had completely lost all capacity to resist.
'Kurama.' Stepping right up to Hiruko, Menma placed his right hand gently on the man's head and called out quietly in his mind.
"Hmph. You brat. All you ever do is boss me around!"
Inside the mindscape, Kurama opened his massive crimson fox eyes, letting out an annoyed snort with a visibly displeased expression.
"Heh, the capable do more work, Kurama. If I could search this guy's brain myself, I wouldn't bother you. But I can't. Genjutsu interrogation always leaves room for errors. You know my plan—I desperately need the core mechanics of the jutsu inside this guy's head," Menma replied with a light chuckle.
"Hmph!" The Nine-Tails snorted again.
But he still cooperated, directly releasing a surge of his chakra.
As the strongest of the nine Tailed Beasts, and an entity that had absorbed an immense amount of humanity's malice, the Nine-Tails knew exactly how to play with human minds. While casually searching memories wasn't his primary skillset, invading the mind of an unresisting, broken target was incredibly easy for him.
Hum~ The chakra flowed outward, completely blanketing the area.
Following a faint vibration, Menma slowly closed his eyes, sinking his own consciousness into the link.
It was a memory dive similar to Inoichi Yamanaka probing the Animal Path Pain's corpse—only vastly more precise and comprehensive.
In less than a minute...
"So it's already progressed to this stage. Heh. Very impressive, Hiruko-san. I truly appreciate the jutsu you've left me."
Menma opened his eyes, visible joy flashing in his pupils. Since this was still over a year ahead of the original timeline's events, Menma had been slightly worried that Hiruko's Chimera Technique wouldn't be fully developed yet.
But based on the memories he just scraped, while it wasn't one hundred percent complete, it was resting comfortably at the final step.
His fluid use of Swift Release, Steel Release, Dark Release, and Storm Release was the best proof. Hiruko had perfectly decoded the cellular structures and genetics of the shinobi possessing those bloodlines. Then, using the Chimera Technique, he had seamlessly fused their cells and DNA into his own body, granting him unrestricted access to their Kekkei Genkai.
However, at his current tier, there were still occasional moments of cellular rejection. It required further stabilization and fusion.
Hiruko's recent research involved cross-referencing different biological materials to smooth out those flaws. The complete theoretical framework was already stored safely inside his brain. He was only missing the final trials and execution.
Menma was perfectly happy to take over the heavy lifting from here.
Next, after looting the two most important scrolls from Hiruko's body and confirming they contained the core data and research notes on the Chimera Technique, Menma raised the Sword of the Thunder God, aiming the tip directly at Hiruko's heart.
Squélch! The blade plunged ruthlessly into his chest.
"!"
"Urgh!"
As his heart was pierced, even through his comatose state, the sheer agony forced a look of absolute pain onto Hiruko's face. In an instant, Menma casually twisted the blade, shredding the heart into mincemeat. Hiruko's life force rapidly drained away.
Squélch! As Menma pulled the blade out and retracted the Adamantine Sealing Chains...
Hiruko's body collapsed limply to the ground, blood rapidly pooling out to soak a large patch of earth. His final breath faded into the wind.
Another highly ambitious, mid-tier villain boss met his end at Menma's hands. Looking down at Hiruko's bleeding corpse, a faint, complex emotion surfaced in Menma's eyes. Honestly, this was the first time Menma had actively murdered someone purely out of his own selfish desires. In all his previous battles, there had always been an element of self-defense, political necessity, or objective conflict. But Hiruko? He died simply because Menma wanted what was in his head.
The selfish, all-consuming desire to grow stronger.
But then again, that was simply the norm in this world.
Profit? Hatred? No one's hands were truly clean. In a world like this, a word like 'justice' was just an incredibly sick joke.
Perhaps that worldview seemed a bit extreme. But it was the tragic, undeniable reality of their existence.
Menma pulled an empty sealing scroll from his robes, rolled it open, and rapidly wove a set of hand seals.
"Seal!"
With a faint flash of light, Hiruko's corpse vanished from the ground, perfectly sealed inside the scroll. As the first person to successfully utilize the Chimera Technique, his body held immense research value.
The man had fused four distinct Kekkei Genkai without suffering catastrophic biological rejection. Menma's upcoming experiments needed to be built upon that exact physiological foundation. In truth, the absolute best-case scenario would have been to keep Hiruko alive and force him to actively assist with the experiments.
After all, Hiruko was the jutsu's original creator. His intimate knowledge and mastery over the Chimera Technique couldn't be rivaled. Having him around would have drastically streamlined the fusion trials, and he could have handled the microscopic adjustments vastly better than Menma could. In the current era, Menma figured only Orochimaru—if he fully dedicated himself to it—could possibly surpass Hiruko in this specific field.
Doing it himself, even with Hiruko's memories and hard data as a crutch, meant the final results might not hit absolute perfection.
But keeping Hiruko alive simply wasn't a viable option.
How was he supposed to reliably leash a man with that level of twisted, boundless ambition?
Unless he had Shisui Uchiha's eyes—then it would be doable. Kotoamatsukami might not be invincible, but it would have been more than enough to mind-control Hiruko.
Lacking that god-tier tool, Menma had to scrap the optimal solution and settle for the next best thing.
'Let's hope the subsequent experiments go smoothly,' Menma thought silently, slowly exhaling a breath of stale air.
Tucking the specialized sealing scroll safely into his robes, Menma turned and walked away from the battleground.
And in that exact moment...
"!"
Without warning. From a location several miles away...
Menma suddenly detected an incredibly faint trace of chakra.
It was so faint it almost didn't exist.
"This is... could it be?!" Menma's expression shifted drastically as a sudden thought violently flashed through his mind.
The next second.
'Kurama!' He shouted internally.
Hum! He instantly transitioned into the Nine-Tails Chakra Mode, brilliant red-gold light flaring off his body.
Pushing his sensory network to absolute maximum output and layering Kurama's Negative Emotion Sensing over it... that previously ghostly wisp of chakra became intensely, undeniably clear.
'The signature of Wood Release. Yeah, it's definitely that thing!' Menma's eyes sharpened into slits. He hard-locked onto the coordinates.
Boom! His chakra exploded. Accelerating to maximum velocity, he shot directly toward the hidden observer. In the blink of an eye, he arrived at the location—a seemingly quiet, utterly empty patch of wilderness.
Menma let out a cold laugh.
"Earth Release: Earth Collapse Jutsu!"
Rapidly weaving signs, he slammed his hands into the dirt.
Rumble!! The ground violently shattered, layers of earth and bedrock being brutally ripped open. From the massive, exploding fissures...
A completely pale, humanoid figure was blasted high into the air. Golden eyes. Pitcher-plant-like appendages encasing its lower half.
Was it not Obito's most capable lieutenant—White Zetsu?!
"Oh my, oh my. I was being so careful, but you still spotted me? Tsk, tsk. I suppose that's the legendary Uzumaki bloodline for you!"
Even though one of its arms had been blown off by Menma's attack, the White Zetsu clone was still wearing a wide, goofy grin. It looked at Menma, feigning a look of exaggerated annoyance and shock.
"What the hell are you?! Why are you spying on me?!"
Menma forcibly suppressed the violent urge in his chest. Glaring at the White Zetsu with icy lethality, his chakra flared thicker and heavier.
"What am I? Hehe, I guess you'll just have to figure that out yourself. As for spying on you? I was actually here for the guy you just killed. A shame... what a real shame..."
White Zetsu shook its head back and forth, acting as though it were a living, breathing human being, replying with that same infuriating, cheerful grin.
It completely ignored Menma's practically physical killing intent. And it was no wonder.
At the end of the day, White Zetsu wasn't human. Honestly, whether it even qualified as a living creature was highly debatable. After all, this thing was manufactured!
How could something like that possibly experience real, biological emotions?