Chapter 478: The Defeat of the Ninja Allied Forces
The perspective shifted back to the main battlefield, where the air was thick with the stench of charred flesh and copper.
"Kill!!!"
"Charge! Rescue Lord Raikage!!"
The Kumogakure shinobi had descended into absolute, feral madness. The capture of their Raikage had not broken their morale; instead, it had ignited the most savage, primal bloodlust buried deep within the bones of these highland warriors. They threw themselves forward with zero regard for their own lives, their eyes bloodshot and wide.
"Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall!"
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
Konoha's defensive line buckled under the sheer weight of the suicidal onslaught. Even with a clear tactical advantage, the death toll on the Leaf's side was skyrocketing in the face of such reckless aggression.
"Hold the line! Don't let them breach the camp!" a Konoha Jonin roared, his throat raw. He drove his kunai through a Kumogakure ninja's chest, twisting the blade. But before the corpse even hit the mud, another Kumo shinobi lunged through the spray of blood, wrapping his arms around the Jonin's leg.
A sizzling sound echoed. An explosive tag.
Boom!
The battle had devolved into a meat grinder of unmatched brutality.
On a high vantage point overlooking the carnage, Ōnoki hovered in the air. His wrinkled face was so dark and rigid it looked carved from cursed stone.
'It is hopeless.'
That reckless, muscle-brained fool of a Raikage had doomed them all. By getting himself captured, Kumogakure had completely lost its footing. This frenzied charge was not a counterattack; it was merely the final, violent thrashing of a dying beast.
"Lord Tsuchikage! Should we move in to support them?" Akatsuchi asked, his usually cheerful voice muffled and heavy with anxiety.
"Support my ass!" Ōnoki barked, spit flying from his lips. "That is just throwing our lives away!"
He gritted his teeth, his knuckles turning white. "Pass down the order! All Iwagakure forces, disengage immediately! Gather the shinobi from the minor hidden villages and pull out together! We are leaving!"
But just as the words left Ōnoki's mouth...
The earth violently heaved.
It was not a mere tremor. The ground buckled, throwing shinobi off their feet. Across the blood-soaked battlefield, whether it was the crazed Kumogakure warriors or the desperate Konoha defenders, every single person froze. Their muscles locked. Their weapons halted in mid-swing.
"What is happening?"
"An earthquake?"
Instinctively, the slaughter paused. Thousands of heads turned in confusion, searching for the source of the tremor.
Then, they saw it. A sight that would be branded into their retinas until the day they died.
Miles away, in the sector where Uchiha Akira had been fighting, the sky itself seemed to fracture. A deafening, thunderous roar tore across the horizon, carrying a shockwave that flattened the distant forests.
From the dust and ruin, an indescribable behemoth slowly rose.
One hundred meters... two hundred meters... three hundred meters.
It pierced the clouds, a colossal giant of pure, suffocating chakra, clad in ornate, demonic armor, with massive wings unfurling from its back to blot out the sun.
High in the air, Ōnoki's eyes bulged so wide the veins threatened to burst. His tiny frame began to shake, a violent, uncontrollable tremor that rattled his very bones.
This silhouette. This suffocating pressure.
It violently ripped open the darkest, most terrifying trauma buried in the depths of his soul, a memory he had spent decades trying to bury.
"Uchiha... Madara?" Ōnoki shrieked, his voice cracking into a pathetic wheeze.
Then, rationality violently snapped back. "No... that is impossible!"
Uchiha Madara was dead. He had been dead for decades. He had seen Uchiha Fugaku's Susanoo, and it was a mere toy compared to this divine monstrosity.
There was only one person on this battlefield capable of manifesting such a terrifying, god-like avatar.
"That is... Uchiha Akira!!" Ōnoki gasped, his lungs burning. "Is he a monster?!"
Before his horrified eyes, the towering giant slowly raised a massive chakra blade and brought it down. With a single, casual sword strike, the earth was cleaved in two. Mountains shattered. The sheer world-ending magnitude of that attack instantly crushed whatever lingering courage Ōnoki had left.
"Run!!! Run quickly!!!" Ōnoki screamed, completely abandoning the dignified poise of the Third Tsuchikage. He roared at the Iwagakure troops below, his voice tearing his throat. "Do not look back!! Retreat at full speed! Everyone, fall back!"
Without waiting for a response, Ōnoki spun around and fled. Kitsuchi stared at the Perfect Susanoo rising from the horizon, his face pale as a sheet, before he hurriedly leaped across the terrain to catch up with his father.
Against power of this magnitude, numbers were a joke. Even if he threw the entire military might of Iwagakure at it, that giant would wipe them out in three swings of its sword.
Below, Mifune stood frozen. The seasoned General of the Land of Iron, a man who had dedicated his entire life to the unyielding spirit of Bushido, felt his knees go weak.
At this moment, his lifelong faith shattered like brittle glass.
"How... how are we supposed to fight a god?" Mifune let out a hollow, tragic laugh.
Even in his youth, when facing the legendary Hanzo of the Salamander, Mifune had never felt this absolute, paralyzing despair. This was a gap that no amount of willpower, technique, or sacrifice could bridge.
"Retreat..." Mifune whispered, his hand falling away from his katana. "All Samurai... retreat..."
With Iwagakure and the Land of Iron fleeing in terror, only the blood-soaked Kumogakure shinobi remained on the front lines.
"What... is that thing..."
Darui slashed through a wave of flames, his chest heaving, and looked up at the distant giant casting a massive shadow over the battlefield. The broadsword in his hand suddenly felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
A bone-chilling despair washed over him, like a bucket of ice water dumped directly over the heads of every Kumogakure shinobi present.
They had wanted to rescue the Raikage. They had been willing to die for it.
But... facing this? Facing a deity of destruction? Was there any point in throwing their lives away?
"Captain Darui..." a Kumogakure shinobi beside him stammered, his voice cracking, his eyes wide with raw terror. "Can we... still win?"
Darui's lips curled into a bitter, self-deprecating smile.
Win with what?
The Raikage was captured. The Eight-Tails Jinchuriki was nowhere to be found. And now, the enemy commander had casually revealed a trump card that could wipe their entire nation off the map.
"Let us retreat..." Darui closed his eyes, forcing the words through his tightly clenched teeth. "Follow Iwagakure's path... Retreat!!"
That single command severed the last remaining thread of Kumogakure's sanity. The frenzied, suicidal offensive evaporated in an instant. Weapons clattered to the ground as the Kumo shinobi turned and fled in a pathetic, chaotic stampede.
The defeat was absolute, like a collapsing mountain.
The moment Uchiha Akira's Perfect Susanoo graced the battlefield, the mighty Ninja Allied Forces completely and utterly broke.
On the Konoha side of the trenches.
"We... we won?"
A blood-soaked Konoha Chunin stood amidst the corpses, staring blankly at the tidal wave of retreating enemies. He blinked, hardly daring to believe his own eyes.
Just a second ago, they were fighting tooth and nail on the razor's edge of death. And the next second, the entire enemy coalition was fleeing in sheer terror?
"Is that... Lord Hokage's technique?" someone murmured, pointing a trembling, bloodstained finger at the colossal giant slowly dissipating in the distance. The terror in their eyes was rapidly being replaced by a burning, fanatical worship.
"So strong..."
"This is our Fifth Hokage!!"
"Long live!!"
"Long live Konoha! Long live Uchiha!!"
Cheers erupted across the blood-soaked mud, swelling into a deafening tsunami of victory. All the exhaustion, the pain of open wounds, the grief for fallen comrades, it all vanished in this singular, extraordinary moment.
It was replaced by an unmatched, burning pride.
With a god-like figure guarding Konoha, what in this world did they have to fear?
Miles away, standing atop Gamahiro's massive head, Jiraiya watched the ethereal armor of the Susanoo slowly scatter into the wind. He let out a long, heavy breath of turbid air.
"That guy, Akira..." Jiraiya muttered, his expression a complex mix of awe, relief, and lingering apprehension. "He really has completely surpassed all the previous Hokage."
But the moment for reflection passed. Jiraiya's eyes sharpened, taking on the ruthless edge of a seasoned war veteran.
"Pass down the order!" Jiraiya's voice boomed across the allied lines. "All forces, advance!! Kick them while they are down! Do not let these bastards retreat so easily!"
"YES, SIR!!!"
Morale soaring to unmatched heights, the Konoha army surged out of their defensive trenches. Howling like a pack of starving wolves, they launched a vicious, sweeping pursuit against the broken remnants of the Allied Forces.
On the far side of the battlefield, standing amidst the shattered landscape he had just created.
Uchiha Akira casually dusted off his hands. His expression was placid, his dark eyes entirely indifferent.
To him, crushing Uchiha Itachi and casually scaring tens of thousands of elite shinobi into a mass rout was nothing more than a trivial chore, finally completed.
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