The war did not stop for introspection, but Arthur made time for it.
He stood amidst the screaming steel and exploding earth with his feet planted in the mud. He crossed his arms. To an outsider, he looked like a statue amidst a landslide.
But he wasn't just standing there. He watched the movement of chakra and bodies behind closed eyelids. He did not need to see with his physical eyes to understand the collapse of his strategy.
This game of war was akin to chess, and he was losing precious pieces.
His face remained blank. The muscles in his jaw did not tighten. His breathing did not hitch. Yet, beneath that calm veneer, he was quite livid. Livid because the work he had tried so hard to achieve was being destroyed by clumsy hands.
He tallied the cost. Two clones were dead, and one was incapacitated.
Those were not simple clones, disposable and cheap. They were complex constructs, forged from significant reserves of his own life force and resources. Creating them was an exhausting endeavor.
Even then, the success rate to create one was never absolute. He had discarded failed attempts before. And to see three perfect creations wasted in such short order was a complete disaster.
The losses were as such: Ryugetsu had been sealed by Pain, Kaito had fallen to Jasper, and John detonated himself.
Kaito's defeat was the most surprising. That clone was built for speed, yet he had lost to Jasper. Jasper was a player, and Kaito knew little of the man's specific capabilities.
Ignorance was a dangerous thing in war, and it had cost Arthur Kaito.
John's death was different. That clone had triggered his own explosion as a fail-safe. It was a tactical withdrawal to ensure that Arthur's information would never be leaked.
Such was the trouble of facing Nagato in this situation: his Six Paths of Pain were relentless and didn't tire. Mix any one of them with members like Kisame, and Nagato could honestly destroy all Five Ninja Nations.
John had understood that. He served his purpose, but the loss stung nonetheless.
Then there was Ryugetsu.
Of all the losses, this one cut the deepest. Ryugetsu was the linchpin. He held the Treasured Tools of the Six Paths.
From the moment Arthur returned in this timeline, the connection to summon those tools back to his real body had been severed. They were physical objects now, stranded with a clone.
And when the Deva Path intervened and sealed Ryugetsu, he took the tools with him.
On top of the loss of his clones, Arthur had also lost two of the Seven Ninja Swords. His arsenal was thinning now. He had spent countless hours reforging those weapons, pouring chakra and focus into them until they were perfect extensions of his will.
Now, they were gone. He was resource-poor in a battle that demanded everything.
Only Hoshikaze remained. The final clone stood at a distance, watching Jada. His job was containment.
Jada had intervened enough. She needed to be kept on the periphery, alive but irrelevant to the outcome of this clash. Hoshikaze would ensure she stayed that way if she ever woke up.
All of these exchanges were not entirely one-sided. One of Nagato's Paths was out of the fight. That meant that Nagato himself was extremely committed by pushing his Paths to their limits.
If he wanted a war of attrition, Arthur would oblige him. But he would not play by Nagato's rules. He needed to draw the puppeteer out.
So Arthur shifted his weight. The mud squelched beneath his boots. He was angry, yes, but he was not defeated. All he had to do was adjust.
Many would have thought that he was standing idle while his army fell. In truth, he was doing the opposite.
While he stood motionless, he pulled the air into his lungs. The earth beneath him, the sky above him, and the very atmosphere of the war zone hummed with energy. Nature energy. It was wild, heavy, and abundant.
Most men would turn to stone trying to hold this much of it. Arthur drank it in. He let it flood his chakra pathways, mixing with his own spiritual and physical energy. The stillness was necessary. To balance the turbulence of nature, one had to be a stagnant pool.
Now, the vessel was full!
Arthur uncrossed his arms. The movement was slow as he raised his right hand. The air shimmered, and the Blade of Chaos materialized in his grip. Then he pointed the tip of the blade toward the gray, churning sky.
The energy he had been gathering was pushed from his body into the sword. An orb began to form at the apex of the blade. Then Arthur drew upon the chakra of the Tailed Beasts moulded within the weapon.
First came the sand-grit feeling of the One-Tail. Then the deep, crushing pressure of the Three-Tails. He wove in the corrosive slickness of the Six-Tails, the buzzing frequency of the Seven-Tails, and finally, the malice and heat of the Nine-Tails.
The orb swirled. The density of it distorted the air, and the sound bent around it. It looked like oil on water held together by Arthur's will.
When the sphere was complete, it suddenly fractured as multiple smaller orbs shot upward. They ascended with a high-pitched shriek that pierced the din of battle. They climbed higher and higher, trailing light behind them.
The ninjas on the ground, friend and foe alike, stopped. They looked up. The instinct to fight was overridden by the instinct to witness.
The lights reached the clouds before vanishing for a heartbeat. Then, the sky fell.
Beams of energy rained down. They were not uniform. Some were fire, others wind. Some were streams of boiling acid, others jagged bolts of lightning—all intertwined in one, corrosive element. It was a bombardment of elemental chaos.
The impact was immediate.
The ground erupted as Rain shinobi, caught in the open, died almost instantly. There was no time to scream. The earth turned to glass, then to dust. The shockwaves overlapped and created a roiling sea of destruction.
The ice that covered part of the battlefield hissed as it was sublimated. Great clouds of steam rose up, mixing with the smoke and dust. The temperature spiked. The air grew thick and hard to breathe.
Many of Arthur's forces had already been retreating, having been forewarned of this doom.
The same could not be said for the Uchihas in their Susanoos.
Just as Itachi pushed back his father, he felt the sudden impact of Arthur's attack hit him from behind. Shisui was already running, and Itachi's father just stood there as his son was being pelted from every angle.
Sasori did his best to try and shield his partner from the bombardments. Yet each time he unleashed a wave of his iron sand, they would disintegrate just as fast as they formed.
The puppeteer simply had no way to defend against this onslaught.
A drop of sweat dripped from Fugaku's face, a reminder of just how dangerous the shinobi he served was. Not even his Sharingan was needed to see the Uchiha's ultimate defensive technique being broken down into pieces.
Far from them, Kimimaro was forced to fall back from his tussle with Kakuzu.
"How is this possible?!" Kakuzu demanded.
The two danced away from one another, leaping desperately to not get hit by Arthur's intense technique.
"Such is the power of lord Arthur," Kimimaro answered, retreating.
Kakuzu simply couldn't fathom this. The first thing he tried was to dash away, but the magnetic properties within the attack only tracked him down until he was eventually hit.
Elsewhere on the field, the Preta Path stood its ground. It raised its hands to the sky, ready to absorb this chaos. When it caught a beam of white-hot energy, and the absorption began, the Preta Path convulsed.
The energy was not just chakra. It was laced with the heavy weight of natural energy.
As such, the Preta Path could not handle the Sage Chakra. Its hands turned to stone as the petrification spread instantly, followed by fire. Then its body burned before crumbling into ash and gravel.
Nagato, miles away or hidden nearby, felt the connection sever. That made the Deva Path react; it had sensed the nature of the attack and understood how dire this situation was.
Because if it continued, he would lose this war.
"Holy crap!" Jasper screamed. He had been confident moments ago after having killed Kaito—believing Arthur to be on the same level. Now, he looked at the apocalypse raining from the sky and felt very small. "Nagato, I think we should get to safe—"
But he couldn't finish as Pain boomed upward to the sky.
Pain weaved through the falling beams of destruction. A bolt of lightning missed his shoulder by an inch. A stream of acid hissed past his leg. He didn't even flinch as his Rinnegan was fixed on the source above.
Then, in a moment's notice, he breached the cloud layer. He was above the bombardment now.
He hovered there for a second to truly understand this roiling storm Arthur had created. And when he understood it, he extended both arms to his sides. Chakra was channeled instantly. He was not going to hold back.
"Almighty push!"
A massive, repulsive force expanded from his center and hit the rising beams of Arthur's technique. The force slammed downward, and the display was dazzling as it shattered them. Even the clouds felt the full force.
In just a single, violent second, the dark, heavy clouds that had hung over the war for hours were shoved aside to the horizon. The sky had cleared, and the bombardment had stopped.
For the first time since the fighting started, the sun hit the ground. The light was almost blinding, and the sudden brightness was just as shocking as the explosions.
Silence rushed back in to fill the void.
Arthur stood his ground. The wind from the Almighty Push had tugged at his clothes and whipped his hair back, but he didn't even bat an eye. Instead, he lowered his arm, and the Blade of Chaos vanished.
This was what he needed: he had forced Nagato's hand.
The Almighty Push was the Deva Path's ultimate defense and offense. But it had a cost. When used at this scale, to clear the sky and negate a Sage Art attack, the interval before it could be used again was significant.
Pain was now vulnerable. And if the Deva Path was out, then their ultimate defense would go along with it.
Of all those that witnessed this pinnacle event, one such person finally stirred awake. It was Jada, and she slowly opened her eyes to the light. Her head ached, and her mind was discombobulated due to the heavy burden her heart failed to understand.
As she arose from the floor, she saw the open sky. "Huh…?" she asked herself, unsure of the last events. Then, like a boulder had smashed into her memories, she yelled his name. "Arthur!"
Straightaway, she felt sore behind her neck. That's right, there was war going on, and she had tried to stop it by taking down Arthur first. But Arthur was somehow too strong, too invincible.
"You're finally awake," she heard a voice say from behind. When she looked, she saw the one man she still refused to believe was actually here: Hoshikaze.