The geometric tear in the sky above the Hokage Monument did not just reveal stars. It framed the new reality that had just intersected with Konoha's dying old world. The silence that followed Indra's declaration was thicker than the dust, charged with a different kind of power—not annihilating, but authoritative.
Rias Uzumaki did not look at Pain first. Her gaze swept down, across the apocalyptic scar that had been the village center. She saw the tiny, distant figures of medics—some Konoha, some divisions of Katsuyu—digging frantically at mounds of rubble. She saw a flash of orange fabric under a splintered beam, a child's arm limp and dust-covered. She heard, amplified by her Uzumaki sensory gifts and the heightened acoustics of the Sonic-Wood now integrated into her being, the muffled sobs, the ragged screams for help, the last wet breaths of the dying.
Her expression, which had been one of focused readiness, shifted. The cool analysis melted away, replaced by something colder, sharper, and infinitely more dangerous. It was the fury not of a wildfire, but of a glacier calving—a deep, tectonic, and utterly calm rage.
Rias: (Her voice, when it came, was not loud. It was a clear, carrying tone that cut through the haze, resonating with a faint harmonic that made the very rubble vibrate.) This… is not justice. This is a tantrum.
Her green eyes, flecked with gold, finally lifted to lock onto the floating form of the Deva Path. There was no fear in them. Only a profound, pitying contempt.
PAIN: (The Rinnegan stared back, unblinking. The voice was the same monotone, but perhaps a micro-degree colder.) You speak of what you do not understand, child of the privileged. You stand in a village built on the bones of the oppressed. You see collapse; I see overdue reckoning.
Indra remained slightly ahead and above Rias, his posture relaxed but his Rinnegan actively scanning the other five Paths now beginning to converge from their holding positions. He was the strategist, the shield, the calculator. Rias was the voice, the heart, and now, the prosecutor.
Rias: Reckoning? (A short, mirthless laugh escaped her.) You level homes. You crush children. You murder medics trying to save lives. You call this a reckoning for the sins of the shinobi system? You have become the very worst of it. You are not its judge; you are its most destructive symptom.
Below, Tsunade and Jiraiya had regrouped on a relatively stable section of collapsed wall. Both were bleeding, breathing heavily, but their eyes were fixed on the new confrontation above.
Jiraiya: (Muttering, his Sage Mode still active) She's not pulling punches. Going straight for the ideology.
Tsunade: (Wiping blood from her lip, her eyes on Indra's poised form) He's letting her. He's containing the battlefield. She's dismantling the enemy's will. They're a perfect damn team.
The Deva Path descended slightly, coming level with the monument. The other Paths—the Asura, Animal, Preta, Human, and Naraka—touched down on the ruined rooftops surrounding the area, forming a loose circle. They did not attack. They watched.
PAIN: Privilege blinds you. You stand with the heir of the Uchiha, in the shadow of the Hokage who allowed the rot to fester. You know nothing of true loss. Of having your world, your family, your future torn from you by the casual cruelty of villages like this one.
Rias: (Takes a single step forward, her boots crunching on pulverized stone. Her spear was still a hairpin, but her hands were curled at her sides.) I know of loss. My clan was hunted to near extinction. Not in a single cataclysm, but in a slow, grinding genocide orchestrated by greed and fear. The Uzumaki of Uzushiogakure did not have the luxury of a single, clean villain to hate. We had a world that turned away, that collaborated, that harvested us.
Her voice gained volume, the harmonic resonance deepening, making the air thrum.
Rias: I know of a boy who grew up with the ghost of a massacre, who felt his father's death through a summon's message, who carried his mother to a foreign land for sanctuary. I know of the weight of a legacy soaked in blood. So do not lecture me on loss, Nagato.
The use of the true name, spoken into the devastated silence, had a physical effect. The Deva Path did not flinch, but the chakra in the air from the other Paths flickered, just for an instant.
PAIN: So. The intelligence network of the Storm Coalition is thorough. It changes nothing. Knowing a name does not mean you know the pain.
Rias: I know the pain of Yahiko.
This time, the reaction was unmistakable. The Deva Path's hand twitched. The Animal Path, perched on a broken water tower, let out a low, bestial growl.
Rias: I know the pain of believing in a better way, only to see your hope, your leader, your heart murdered before your eyes. Manipulated into a position where his death was inevitable. I have read the ROOT archives unsealed in Konoha. I have seen the reports filed by Danzo Shimura.
The name hissed through the space like poison.
PAIN: That… man… was a disease. A symptom of Konoha's soul.
Rias: He was! He was a monster! And he used you! (She flung an arm out, encompassing the ruin.) This? This is not your wrath, Nagato. This is Danzo's final, twisted victory! He broke you in that rain-slicked gorge! He turned your love for your friend, your dream for peace, into the very weapon that would destroy everything you once hoped to save! He orchestrated the betrayal that killed Yahiko to crush the Akatsuki's ideal, to keep the minor nations divided and weak! And you… you took his poison and made it your creed!
The Deva Path was silent. The Rinnegan stared, unreadable.
Indra's voice cut in, calm, analytical, a counterpoint to Rias's fiery indictment. He was looking not at the Deva Path, but at the Human Path, as if reading data from its form.
Indra: Psychological profile syncs. The trauma is foundational. The manipulation was near-perfect. Danzo provided the catalyst, but the philosophical framework for your nihilistic escalation was provided by another. A ghost who showed you the Rinnegan's power and whispered that the world was a prison of pain. Obito Uchiha. The very man who, under Danzo's guidance, attacked this village and killed the Fourth Hokage and his wife, creating an orphan you now seek to murder.
The web of connections, stated so coldly, hung in the air. For the first time, the Deva Path's voice held a subtle edge, a ripple in the still pond of its tone.
PAIN: You speak of puppeteers. I am the one who pulls the strings now. I have seen the truth. This world cannot be saved. It can only be forced to know peace through shared, overwhelming suffering. The tailed beasts are the keys. Their power, united, will create a weapon of such magnitude that war will become impossible. A deterrent born from the pain I will inflict today.
Rias: A weapon? (She shook her head, her pity now overwhelming her anger.) You're still trying to build Yahiko's dream. You're just using a nightmare as your tool. You think by holding the world hostage with a bigger stick, you'll force them to be good? All you'll create is a bigger tomb, Nagato! You'll become the new Hanzō of the Salamander, the very tyrant who betrayed you, but on a global scale!
The Deva Path's hand rose. Chakra gathered.
PAIN: You understand nothing! The pain of this village is a fraction of what the world endures daily! It is a necessary lesson! Hand over the Nine-Tails and the Seven-Tails you have hidden here, and the lesson ends. The world will move forward, unified under the threat of true pain.
Rias: NO!
Her shout was a sonic pulse. It didn't attack, but it clarified the air, shaking loose dust from the monuments.
Rias: The world is already moving forward! While you were festering in the rain, nursing your magnificent grief, people were changing! Konoha is putting its own monsters on trial! Kiri is drowning its bloody past! Kumo is building a world where children don't starve and jinchuriki are not weapons but partners! Iwa is opening its stone gates! Suna is learning to grow forests in the desert! They are doing it together! They are building a peace, brick by brick, treaty by treaty, not at the point of a god-weapon, but across a bargaining table! It's messy, and slow, and imperfect! It is nothing like the clean, dramatic catharsis of your revenge! And that is why you hate it! Because it proves your pain isn't special! It proves the world can heal without your destructive pity!
The condemnation was absolute. It wasn't just a rebuttal of his methods; it was a dismissal of his entire existential purpose.
The Deva Path floated, utterly still. The other Paths seemed to lean forward, tense.
PAIN: (The voice was quieter now, but no less lethal.) Pretty words from the heart of the new empire. Kumo, the benevolent hegemon, dictating terms with its technology and its perfect jinchuriki. You replace one system of control with another, shinier one. You are still cages, just with more comfortable bars.
Indra: (Finally turned his full gaze to the Deva Path.) Incorrect. A cage implies an external jailer. Sovereignty is self-determination. We offer the tools for defense, for growth, for health. Each village, each nation, chooses how to use them. The Coalition is a mutual defense pact and knowledge commons, not a government. You conflate cooperation with subjugation because your worldview, forged in betrayal, cannot comprehend trust. You see conspiracies and cages because you have never been free.
Rias: (Her voice dropped, becoming lethally soft.) You talk of teaching the world pain. But you didn't come here to teach Konoha. You came here to hurt a scared, lonely boy who never knew his parents, because a ghost and a dead monster told you he was a weapon. You came to kidnap a joyful girl who just found friends, because your grand design needs her pain. You are not a teacher. You are a bully, rationalizing his cruelty with bad philosophy. Your 'justice' is a tantrum—the screaming fit of a child who decided that because his toy was broken, no one else can have one.
The silence that followed was seismic. The truth of the insult—reducing his divine wrath to a child's tantrum—was a weapon sharper than any blade.
The Deva Path's chakra exploded. The calm shattered.
PAIN: ENOUGH! YOU WILL KNOW PAIN!
The Asura Path launched from its perch, missiles streaking. The Animal Path summoned the multi-headed dog, which split and charged. The Preta Path surged forward to absorb any ninjutsu.
But Indra was already moving.
Indra: Spatial Law: Segmented Arena.
His left eye, the azure Dialga sigil, glowed. The space between the monument and the advancing Paths fractured. It was as if thick, invisible panes of glass slammed down, separating the battlefield into distinct zones. The Asura Path's missiles hit one pane and detonated harmlessly against it. The charging dog summons crashed into another, snarling and clawing at empty air that had become solid. The Preta Path found nothing to absorb.
Indra had casually, effortlessly, compartmentalized the threat.
Rias didn't even glance at the contained Paths. She kept her eyes on the Deva Path, who was gathering chakra for another, more focused Shinra Tensei.
Rias: You want the tailed beasts, Nagato? You want to see what real power looks like when it's not used for destruction? When it's used for creation?
She didn't form hand signs. She simply knelt and placed her palm on the cracked stone of the Hokage Monument. She closed her eyes. A different kind of chakra bloomed from her—not the harmonic vibration of sound, nor the entropic pulse of destruction, but something ancient, warm, and fiercely alive.
Rias: True Wood Release: Symphony of the Second Chance.
Where her hand touched, the stone bloomed. Not with flowers, but with intricate, glowing circuitry of living wood that spread like golden lightning across the monument's face. It raced down the cliff, into the pulverized earth of the village.
And where it went, life erupted.
Not to rebuild the buildings—that was beyond even this power. But from the rubble, from the blood-soaked soil, forests of impossible plants burst forth. Sonic-Wood trees, singing with soft, healing harmonies, grew in seconds, their roots gently shifting debris, their canopies providing instant shelter. Vines of glowing amber snaked into collapsed structures, forming organic support beams and lifting wreckage with tender strength. Carnelian-colored flowers opened, releasing a pollen that glowed with pure medical chakra, settling over the wounded like a blanket, staunching bleeding, numbing pain, knitting flesh at a visible rate.
In the annihilated zone, a great, single tree erupted—a sapling that became a giant in three heartbeats. Its bark was the color of a sunset, its leaves like chiming crystals. It was the First Songflower, a fusion of Sonic and Wood Release, and its mere presence pulsed with a melody of resilience and regrowth.
The sheer, breathtaking beauty of it, emerging from the horror, was a more powerful rebuke than any argument. Konoha's survivors stopped, stunned, staring as their graveyard transformed into a miraculous, singing garden of sanctuary.
The Deva Path, hovering above it all, watched the impossible growth. The gathering chakra for his attack faltered, sputtered, and died. The Rinnegan stared at the singing forest, at the glowing flowers healing his victims, at the woman who had done it.
Rias stood up, her hand leaving the glowing lattice on the monument. She looked exhausted, but her gaze was triumphant.
Rias: That is the power of the tailed beasts you seek to chain. Not to destroy worlds, but to heal them. Not to inflict pain, but to end it. Gyūki and Matatabi are not prisoners in Kumo. They are sovereigns. Partners. They helped me learn this. Your path, Nagato, is a dead end. It leads only to more of this.
She gestured to the devastation that still lay beyond her oasis of wood and song.
Rias: You have a choice. You can cling to the pain Danzo and Obito sold you, and die as the final, tragic weapon of the old, hateful world. Or you can lay down your wrath. Step out of the rain. And help us build something that won't need a god-weapon to protect it.
The Deva Path said nothing. It simply floated, a silent, dark silhouette against the rift in the sky, surrounded by the vibrant, singing evidence of everything it claimed was impossible. The ideological clash was over. The truth, growing audibly from the ruins below, had spoken its verdict. Now, it was waiting for the god of pain to admit he was just a wounded, furious man.
End of Chapter – 103.