Aside from her desire to kill Takuno as quickly as possible, she gave no thought to anything else!
Consequently, a frenzied chase ensued above the shattered mountain range; streaks of pale light and spatial phantoms darted about, with every collision triggering a cataclysmic roar that shook the heavens and earth.
Needles made of rabbit fur poured down like a torrential storm, gouging deep trenches into the earth, while the massive fists of the Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack smashed down, instantly pulverizing mountain peaks into dust.
Takuno's figure flickered erratically amidst the folds of space; he pushed his Sarutahiko ocular technique to its absolute limit, narrowly—yet successfully—dodging every single attack.
After this cat-and-mouse chase had continued for some time, Black Zetsu—lurking within the shadow of Otsutsuki Kaguya's voluminous sleeves—finally sensed something amiss.
It watched as its mother launched reckless, frenzied attacks, each earth-shattering technique consuming a massive amount of chakra.
Meanwhile, the cunning Takuno used his spatial abilities to constantly evade, expending negligible energy himself.
If this continued, the balance of power would shift disastrously, leading to unimaginable consequences!
"Mother! Please, calm down!" Black Zetsu's hoarse, anxious voice cut directly into her consciousness, which was currently in turmoil from her blind rage.
"That despicable thief—the 'Collector'—only stole about twenty-five percent of your power! You still hold the absolute advantage!
He is deliberately provoking you to drain your strength! Don't let him lead you by the nose!"
Kaguya's violent assault faltered for a moment; a flicker of confusion crossed her nine-tomoe Rinne Sharingan, only to be instantly swallowed up by an even deeper fury.
Yet, Black Zetsu's shout did manage to stir a glimmer of reason back into a mind that had been almost entirely consumed by the obsession to "reclaim her origin."
Seeing this, Takuno raised an eyebrow; he steadied his stance and turned his gaze toward Kaguya's sleeve with a look of intrigued amusement.
This Black Zetsu... wasn't it the same one from the original story that constantly messed things up at critical moments, sabotaging both Madara and Kaguya?
How had it suddenly become so sharp, offering a piece of advice that was remarkably lucid—and perhaps even pivotal? It seems that witnessing firsthand her mother being outmaneuvered, her power fragmented, and her plans failing one after another...
...had instilled genuine fear even in this thousand-year-old schemer, forcing him to cast aside his foolish arrogance and seriously consider a countermeasure.
"Hmph, there's some truth to that." Takuno's voice held a hint of mockery; he was speaking as much to Kaguya as he was responding to Black Zetsu.
"Ōtsutsuki Kaguya, you possess immense power, yet you act like a child who's had their candy snatched away—doing nothing but wailing and flailing your fists.
Even Black Zetsu understands the current situation better than you do. How long can you keep up this meaningless venting?"
His words struck a nerve, hitting the very point where Kaguya's reason—recently stirred by Black Zetsu—was most vulnerable.
The pale streak of light that had been furiously pursuing him finally came to a complete halt.
Kaguya hovered in mid-air, her voluminous sleeves fluttering despite the lack of wind; though her terrifying aura remained immense, it no longer poured out with the unrestrained wildness it had before.
She glared fixedly at Takuno, as if she could crush him to dust with her gaze alone.
An eerie silence temporarily descended upon the battlefield.
Black Zetsu's intervention had unexpectedly brought the chase to a standstill.
What would follow? A colder, deadlier game of wits, or merely the brief calm before the storm?
A cryptic smile played on the corners of Takuno's mouth as he looked at Kaguya—or rather, at Black Zetsu, who was concealed within her sleeve.
"And one more thing: who told you my power is actually inferior to Kaguya's?"
Takuno's words, laced with clear provocation, left Black Zetsu momentarily speechless and thrown into a state of confused thought.
Mother's power was greater than Takuno's... wasn't that a given?
This thought swirled within the consciousness it had formed from Kaguya's will.
Tracing back to the source, Takuno had plundered only a small fraction of her essence—a mere twenty-five percent in total.
Yet Mother—even after that fragmentation—still firmly held three-quarters of the power; she was the absolute dominant force! More immediate evidence lay right before its eyes: during that lightning-fast pursuit, Takuno had been forced to flee in a disheveled manner, relying solely on his bizarre space-time abilities to dodge his mother's "Rabbit Hair Needles" and "Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack."
That hardly looked like the posture of someone with superior power.
It was clearly the desperate struggle of someone outmatched!
If he were truly stronger than his mother, why would he have been chased down like that? Black Zetsu's logic was crystal clear.
To Black Zetsu, Takuno's current provocation seemed like nothing more than a bluff—a psychological tactic born of insufficient power, intended to cloud his mother's judgment.
Yet, this seemingly sound deduction stirred a strange ripple of unease within Black Zetsu.
For it recalled the very nature of "The Collector," Takuno—a figure who never played by conventional rules.
From the cold indifference with which he first revealed the method to resurrect Yahiko before Nagato, to the interest he showed while watching Obito merge with the Ten-Tails, and later, the unfathomable way he fused with his mother's body to forcibly seize her essence...
Every move Takuno made fell precisely outside the scope of its grand plan, repeatedly upending its expectations and steering the situation toward an abyss beyond its control.
It could be said that every "unexpected move" of his ultimately introduced variables that were disastrously unfavorable for both itself and his mother.
He was like a master chess player who could always place a piece at a seemingly hopeless juncture, throwing the entire game into disarray.
So, what about this time?
Was his blatant declaration that his "power might not be inferior to his mother's" truly just a bluff?
Or was this... merely the prelude to another trap he had meticulously orchestrated?
Did he still harbor some hidden ace capable of completely overturning the balance of power?
An ominous premonition instantly engulfed Black Zetsu's core, which was formed entirely of shadows.
It stared fixedly at the newly formed body of Takuno hovering in the distance; that figure, wearing an inscrutable smile, now appeared incredibly dangerous in its eyes. It even began to wonder: had its success in persuading its mother to halt her attack actually played right into another one of his schemes?
At that moment, Takuno let out a soft chuckle and stretched—acting as if no one else were even there.
"It is time to move on to the next stage."
Upon hearing this, Black Zetsu's eyes widened.
Just then, Takuno made his move.
He slowly raised his right hand, fingers slightly splayed, as if reaching not into empty air, but through an invisible veil.
His arm slid into the void without the slightest resistance; the movement was fluid and natural, akin to retrieving a personal item from another dimension.
When he withdrew his hand from the void, his palm seemed to be tightly clutching something invisible yet vitally important.
Without a moment's hesitation, he pressed that hand directly against his eyes.
His palm lingered over his eyelids for a brief instant.
When Takuno moved his hand away and opened his eyes...
The Byakugan—inherited from Kaguya and symbolizing a pure bloodline—were gone!
In their place were his signature, one-of-a-kind eyes!
In his left eye, six pitch-black tomoe swirled and shifted slowly, as if alive—the classic Six-Tomoe Rinnegan!
His right eye was a vast expanse of azure, deep as a starry cosmos—his unique Tenseigan!
The return of these eyes was no mere change in form.
The instant he opened them...
BOOM!
An indescribably terrifying aura exploded outward, centered on Takuno!
His presence was amplified to an infinite degree; it was as if he had instantly transformed from a "being possessing power" into the very embodiment of "power itself"!
The aura was so overwhelming that even Kaguya—whose energy had been surging with rage—stilled, her pupils contracting sharply.
As for Black Zetsu, it felt as though its very thoughts were frozen by this pressure, and a terror rising from the depths of its soul spiked to its absolute peak! At this moment, not only had Takuno reclaimed the form of power most fundamental and perfectly attuned to his being, but his aura was also several orders of magnitude more formidable than when he had suppressed Madara by fusing with the essence of the Divine Tree.
His heterochromatic eyes—holding the powers of both Samsara and Reincarnation—locked calmly onto Kaguya, as if silently declaring that the "experiment"—or rather, the "plunder"—that was uniquely his own was about to enter its final stage.
Yet, he did not immediately rush toward Kaguya.
Amidst that suffocating pressure, an ominous black aura surged forth from Takuno's body without warning!
"What is this...?!"
Under the horrified gazes of all present, that roiling black aura condensed and took shape with astonishing speed.
Skeletal frame, Tenketsu, flesh and blood, armor...
In the blink of an eye, a colossal black figure, towering between heaven and earth, stood upon the battlefield!
"Susanoo?!"
Hashirama gasped in shock; he was intimately familiar with this ultimate ocular jutsu of the Uchiha clan.
Madara's world-shattering Complete Body Susanoo had once been one of his most formidable adversaries.
Yet, the Susanoo before them was vastly different from any version known to Hashirama, Tobirama, or even Kaguya and Black Zetsu!
It was pitch-black, as if forged from the deepest shadows and the void itself; patterns that seemed to absorb all light flowed across its armor.
Even more chilling was the fact that it did not appear to be merely an inanimate giant of energy.
The instant it fully materialized, a violent, ferocious, and terrifying aura swept across the area, causing everyone present to involuntarily catch their breath, their hearts feeling as though they were being clenched by an invisible hand!
"ROAR!!!"
A deafening roar—one capable of tearing the very soul apart—erupted from beneath the black Susanoo's menacing faceplate!
As the roar rang out, its massive form trembled slightly, and the contours of its muscles—clad in heavy armor—heaved under the eerie, shifting light. It was as if a ferocious beast had finally broken free from its shackles, greedily breathing in the air of freedom and itching to unleash a desire for destruction that had been pent up for eons!
"Is... is this really Susanoo?" Tobirama's voice was heavy with unprecedented gravity and disbelief.
"It... it seems to have a life of its own! A soul!"
He had never seen a Susanoo that felt so "alive"; the will contained within that roar was far more than the mere product of a jutsu.
For the first time, a look of distinct confusion—and a trace of subtle wariness—appeared on Kaguya's pale face.
As the Progenitor of chakra, she understood the nature of chakra-based constructs better than anyone.
Yet, the life force and frenzied will radiating from this black Susanoo defied her understanding of what a "jutsu" could be.
What struck her as even stranger was a sense of affinity she felt toward the construct—as if it were a part of herself.
Takuno hovered within the diamond-shaped crystal at the center of the black Susanoo's forehead, the corners of his mouth curling upward.
He calmly gazed down at the battlefield—plunged into a momentary, deathly silence by the presence of this "living" Susanoo—as if admiring his own crowning masterpiece.
After savoring the expressions of frozen shock and disbelief on everyone's faces, Takuno smiled faintly.
He slowly raised his hand and placed it against the pitch-black Susanoo, which was pulsating with a violent, living energy.
Hum!
At his command, the indestructible black Susanoo began to writhe like a living creature; the energy armor forming its body receded like a receding tide.
The core within was finally revealed to everyone's sight.
In that instant, time seemed to stand still. Hashirama's pupils contracted sharply;
A look of shock, like a crack forming on a frozen surface, appeared on Tobirama's icy face;
At the edge of the deep crater, the shadowy mass of Black Zetsu writhed violently, emitting a silent, piercing shriek;
Even Kaguya—who had just barely calmed down from her rage and was being dissuaded by Black Zetsu—saw her Byakugan lose focus for an instant as she stared fixedly at the "core" revealed after the Susanoo dissipated.
It was, unmistakably, a Ten-Tails!
It lay curled up; though its size seemed slightly smaller than the Ten-Tails Kaguya knew, the violent, pure chakra fluctuations radiating from it were undeniable!
It was firmly encased and imprisoned within the pitch-black Susanoo.
"Ten... Ten-Tails?!" Tobirama's voice was dry with disbelief.
This completely upended everything they knew! Takuno was actually harboring a Ten-Tails?
No one could fathom how Takuno came to possess a second Ten-Tails.
After all, there was only one God Tree, and logically, there should only be one Ten-Tails.
"Impossible!" For the first time, violent emotional turmoil rippled across Kaguya's pale face.
Gone was her earlier cold indifference and rage; in their place were deep bewilderment and a trace of imperceptible fear.
"The God Tree is my own manifestation, and the Ten-Tails is the root of that tree—unique in all the world! You... you thief! What manner of sacrilege have you committed against the essence of the God Tree?!"
Although Kaguya knew there were other God Trees in existence, the Ten-Tails before her was undeniably part of her God Tree!
Black Zetsu, meanwhile, let out a hoarse scream, as if he were being strangled.
"Collector! What exactly are you trying to do?!"
Takuno hovered in mid-air, an oppressive, suffocating aura radiating from his body.
He gazed calmly down at the stunned crowd and at Kaguya—who was bracing herself as if facing a mortal threat—while the corners of his mouth curled into an enigmatic smile. "The only one?" Takuno's voice was calm, yet it clearly pierced the deathly silence of the battlefield. "Your understanding of 'the only one' is far too narrow."
He slowly raised his hand, pointing toward the pitch-black Ten-Tails, whose Susanoo-like shell was shedding to reveal its hideous true form.
"The power of the God Tree's fruit does indeed originate from the sole source of this world. But power itself is not some inert object—incapable of being divided or reshaped."