Laughter echoed through the space of consciousness, carrying a hint of playfulness and absolute self-assurance.
He "looked" toward the center of the mental realm, where the will of Kaguya had coalesced into a majestic figure radiating a holy white light, yet harboring an aura of utter destruction.
Her white hair cascaded like a waterfall, and the Rinne-Sharingan adorned her forehead; within her pure white eyes lay nothing but icy murderous intent and unquestionable majesty.
"A will forged over a millennium... truly as heavy as a mountain, commanding awe."
Takuno's voice rang out clearly. His own consciousness took form as he faced Kaguya, the fires of a cool yet burning ambition blazing in his eyes.
"But it is not unshakable! As long as I can withstand this initial onslaught..."
He felt his own will holding firm against her overwhelming pressure; the confidence born of his formidable strength grew ever more solid.
"Ant! I shall say this one last time: get out of my body!"
The curve of Takuno's lips deepened, taking on a distinctly provocative edge.
He stared straight into Kaguya's eyes—burning with boundless rage—and delivered his reply, word for word, with unwavering resolve:
"You want me to leave?"
"That is not for you to decide!"
The moment the words left his lips, Takuno's consciousness ceased its passive perception and defense. Fueled by the ambition of a lifetime and an insatiable thirst for power...
He launched a counter-offensive, driving straight toward the ancient, powerful core of Kaguya's will!
The tranquility of the mental realm was shattered; an invisible war to determine the true master of this body—the vessel of the Progenitor of chakra—erupted with explosive intensity!
The space of consciousness was a realm of chaotic nothingness.
There was no light, no sound, no physical form—only the clash of pure wills.
In an instant, a torrent of will came surging forward.
It was Kaguya!
Kaguya's will was no mere mental energy; it was an entity forged from a thousand years of solitude and an endless, ravenous greed for chakra. It drove fiercely toward the "outsider," Takuno, carrying a resentment sharp enough to pierce the soul.
Takuno was instantly engulfed by this torrent of will.
Kaguya's will was omnipresent, its weight suffocating.
She held the absolute home-field advantage; this body was an extension of her power, and her will functioned like the very laws of this mental realm.
It sought to utterly erase Takuno's existence.
Takuno clearly sensed the "depth" of this will.
It was not merely a matter of raw power, but the weight of time itself.
A millennium of obsession and resentment formed the indestructible bedrock of Kaguya's will.
This profound accumulation endowed her will with unimaginable resilience and a corrosive nature, threatening to drag Takuno into a vortex of thousand-year despair, condemning him to eternal submersion.
Yet, Takuno's will did not collapse or dissolve instantly as Kaguya had anticipated.
Like an unyielding stone, he remained firmly anchored in the deepest recesses of Kaguya's consciousness.
The torrent of Kaguya's will—capable of crushing ordinary souls—slammed against the core of Takuno's will, only to encounter unimaginable resistance.
No matter how she marshaled her power to batter him, she could not fully expel this "foreign object."
Even more troublesome for Kaguya was her inability to devour him.
Her will attempted to break down and absorb Takuno's spiritual energy, assimilating it for her own use.
However, the core of Takuno's will seemed encased in an indecipherable "shell," possessing a toughness far beyond Kaguya's expectations.
This was not a case of his total power exceeding hers, but rather the "quality" of his will having reached an astonishing level of condensation.
It was fueled by an almost obsessive determination to "exist" and an absolute focus on his own "purpose."
When Kaguya's devouring force struck this "shell," it was like a giant wave crashing against a reef; though the reef was submerged, it remained immovable and undigestible.
In this moment, the mental realm became the stage for a silent struggle of wills. Leveraging the home-field advantage and a vast will accumulated over a millennium, Kaguya held the absolute upper hand.
Every surge of her will sought to utterly obliterate Takuno—that tiny speck of "dust."
Yet, this speck of "dust" displayed a resilience and an "indigestibility" that defied all reason.
He remained firmly lodged within the gears of Kaguya's will; he could neither be expelled nor consumed and erased.
Kaguya's rage seethed in silence; she felt a sense of obstruction and sacrilege unlike anything she had ever known.
Meanwhile, Takuno—bearing immense, crushing pressure—stubbornly maintained his existence within her domain, waiting... or perhaps... plotting.
This war of wills was devoid of gunpowder and smoke, yet far more perilous and lethal than any clash of ninjutsu.
"It's about time..."
Amidst his repeated struggles against Kaguya's will, Takuno suddenly opened his eyes.
He had realized that defeating Kaguya within her own consciousness—and thereby seizing total control of her body—was impossible; consequently, he had begun to devise an alternative strategy.
Now, he had found a method that suited his objectives.
His spiritual form suddenly began weaving hand signs.
The very next moment, a peculiar force began to spread into Kaguya's body.
This force was not merely aimed at wresting control.
He knew that even if he succeeded in suppressing Kaguya, he would be just as unable to erase her existence as she was to erase his.
Under such conditions, attempting to fully control a body imbued with the absolute power of the God Tree's fruit carried enormous risk.
What he truly craved was a transformation of "essence"—the fundamental nature of the God Tree fruit's power.
Thus, he did not actually need the whole of Kaguya; he needed only a part—even a mere fragment—of that body containing the God Tree fruit's power!
Just as the secret seal was completed, a sudden, drastic change occurred!
"Insolence!!!"
An unprecedented explosion of shock and rage erupted from within Kaguya's ethereal consciousness! She clearly "sensed" it—that foreign will actually dared to attempt a "severing" from within her sacred body!
This was not merely sacrilege; it was a direct threat and insult to the very essence of her existence!
Takuno's intentions were instantly laid bare.
He no longer sought control—he sought plunder!
He intended to dismember the body of the Progenitor of chakra and steal the supreme power—derived from the God Tree's fruit—that belonged solely to the Ōtsutsuki!
"A mere speck of mortal filth dares to covet my body?!" Kaguya's will roared, instantly shattering the delicate balance that had held them in check.
No longer content with merely trying to crush Takuno, she mobilized the chakra of her entire body—and even that of every living being in the ninja world bound by the Infinite Tsukuyomi—surging it madly toward the location of his consciousness.
She vowed to utterly annihilate this audacious thief, leaving not even a trace of dust behind!
Takuno felt a jolt of alarm.
He had underestimated Kaguya's absolute mastery over her own body and power, especially within this core domain.
His attempt to sever her power was like touching her most sensitive "reverse scale"—it instantly ignited the full force of her rage and might.
"As expected... it's not that easy." Takuno's will shuddered violently under Kaguya's furious onslaught, yet a gleam of excitement flashed in his eyes.
Kaguya's furious reaction proved the validity of his strategy.
Severing the power was a viable path; through this, he could achieve the crucial "qualitative transformation" he required.
The battlefield of their wills instantly transformed into an inferno; under the scorching flames of divine wrath, Takuno's "stubborn stone" of a will faced its true trial.
Buffeted by the boundless, overwhelming chakra of Kaguya, Takuno's consciousness felt as though it had been cast into the heart of a furnace.
It was an agony that transcended the physical realm; it felt as if every fiber of his soul were being torn apart by invisible divine flames, wailing in silent torment. Each surge of energy brought a burning sensation—as if billions of red-hot steel needles were piercing every nerve ending in his body—intense enough to shatter the mind of any ordinary mortal instantly.
Yet, within this inferno capable of melting even a will of iron, a smile—or rather, a twisted curve of the lips—forced its way onto Takuno's pain-contorted face.
It was no forced, hollow grin; it was an expression of near-pathological, fanatical excitement.
Pain? It was agonizing, of course.
The torment unleashed by this furious blast from the Progenitor of chakra far surpassed any physical injury.
But Takuno's nerves had long since been tempered to an extraordinary degree through repeated self-honing.
Memories flashed through his mind—countless instances of tearing fragments of his own soul away, a torture far more cruel than the "death by a thousand cuts."
Each procedure had been accompanied by soul-rending agony that cut to the marrow, as if carving away his very "self" piece by piece.
That soul-stripping anguish was a pure, ultimate "pain of existence"—no less intense than what he was enduring now.
He had withstood that agony more than once; in the solitude of his laboratory, driven by the pursuit of power, he had inflicted upon himself torments worse than death—and survived them time and again.
"Compared to that, what is this?"
The thought acted like a cold anchor, instantly steadying his consciousness as it teetered on the brink of collapse amidst Kaguya's violent energy.
Kaguya's power was as vast as a sea of stars, yet her attacks lacked the capacity to instantly annihilate the core of his will.
Thus, this pain—"merely" a sensation of burning destruction—remained within the limits of what he could endure.
Far from making him retreat, this agony served as proof that his strategy was working.
The more furious Kaguya became, and the more power she unleashed to crush him, the more it confirmed that his act of partitioning the core power of the God Tree's fruit had struck a vital nerve.
"Heh... Heh heh heh..."
A low, guttural laugh echoed through the inferno of his consciousness, carrying with it the taste of blood and the sparks of a clashing will. Takuno's smile grew increasingly ferocious, yet also increasingly pure.
"Rage, then, Ōtsutsuki Kaguya! Use your power to 'sear' me to your heart's content!
As long as you cannot kill me, this pain... serves as the most direct bridge to the core of your power!
I will endure it, I will analyze it, and then... I will take it for myself!"
In fact, the current situation was exactly what Takuno had hoped for.
Kaguya's choice played right into his hands.
For Kaguya had only two courses of action.
Either she could instantly detonate her chakra to crush this mortal, or she could engage in a protracted struggle for control within her own body.
Proud as she was, Kaguya would never tolerate a mere ant laying a finger on divine power.
Without hesitation, she chose the first option—to destroy the intruder using the most violent means possible!
In doing so, all the power Takuno had plundered would return to her; she might even gain more power from his disintegration.
Yet, that excruciating agony—enough to obliterate any soul—only caused Takuno's consciousness to flare with an even more blinding radiance amidst the chaos.
"Pain... is the very measure of the plunder!"
Far from resisting the chakra's onslaught, Takuno frantically plundered Kaguya's physical form—a body imbued with the power of the God Tree's fruit.
The more Kaguya concentrated her power to crush him, the more she loosened her grip on her own body, allowing him to perceive the flow of energy within her physical vessel with ever-greater clarity...
In a sense, his "plundering" was accelerating precisely because of Kaguya's "destruction"!
So, rage on—let the fury grow even wilder!
He would absolutely not let such a golden opportunity slip away!
Whatever failed to kill him would only make him stronger!
Within the realm of consciousness, Kaguya's furious will continued to ruthlessly crush Takuno's existence.
Every impact carried a pressure capable of shattering stars, intent on utterly erasing the ant that dared to desecrate a deity and intrude upon her primal core. Yet, as time wore on, she still failed to eradicate him.
"Impossible! A mere mortal... actually able to withstand my power?!"
Kaguya's voice shrieked within the mental realm, filled with incredulous rage and a trace of imperceptible panic.
She finally acknowledged a humiliating truth: in her current state, amidst this direct clash of wills, she could not completely kill Takuno!
If she could not crush him, she would stop him with everything she had!
Kaguya instantly shifted her strategy; her vast consciousness abandoned its fixation on destroying Takuno's core self, instead transforming into countless "pursuers" radiating a terrifying aura.
Like a white, ghostly swarm blotting out the void, they ceased trying to eliminate Takuno directly and instead lunged frantically at the scattered fragments of his will—the very fragments that were siphoning off her power.
The battlefield within the mental realm instantly transformed into a game of Pac-Man.
Takuno wove and dodged like a phantom, evading the encirclement of the pale pursuers spawned from Kaguya's will.
His objective was clear: to devour and plunder as many of the "dots"—manifestations of the God Tree fruit's power—as possible.
Takuno was in the mindset of someone with nothing to lose—the proverbial "barefoot man unafraid of the one wearing shoes."
Having forcibly integrated himself using the "Reverse Chimera Technique" with the sole aim of plunder, he had no path of retreat and no need to worry about preserving the integrity of Kaguya's body.
He devoured precisely, finding openings amidst the encirclement of Kaguya's will.
Kaguya, meanwhile, was forced to divert the bulk of her power into generating and controlling those pursuers, attempting to intercept or destroy the "dots" before Takuno could reach them.
Her vast consciousness was fragmented to guard the shards of her own power, inadvertently weakening the direct suppression she exerted on Takuno's core self.
This only fueled her fury; the pursuers' assault grew increasingly frenzied, leaving the mental realm dominated by the sight of Takuno—a figure dancing on the razor's edge, recklessly and frantically plundering power.
This ultimate contest of wills, unfolding within Kaguya's body, had entered a white-hot stalemate in a truly bizarre fashion. While being pursued by countless "phantoms," Gentoya greedily devoured every "bean" within reach.
Kaguya, meanwhile, spared no effort to erect a defensive perimeter, attempting to completely trap the thief within her domain and reclaim the power that was rightfully hers.