Chapter 70: Spatial Slash Returns!
Demonic Illusion: Shackling Stakes Technique was a genjutsu the Uchiha Clan could cast directly through the Sharingan.
It created an independent mental space through ocular power, making the victim feel as though imaginary stakes had pierced their limbs and completely immobilized them.
Even Orochimaru had once been subdued in a single move when Uchiha Itachi used this technique against him, forcing him to sever his own arm and escape.
The black-robed man was clearly treating this genjutsu as one of his trump cards.
"It's been a long time since I've met an opponent this troublesome, and you're still a newcomer. Your potential really was limitless."
He approached Makoto step by step with a kunai in hand, looking completely confident that victory was already his.
"But why did you have to become my enemy? You're talented, but unfortunately, I have no choice but to send you to your death."
The kunai pierced Makoto's chest and slowly pushed toward his heart. Just as death seemed inevitable, a sharp voice suddenly rang out behind the black-robed man.
"Black Flash!"
The man jolted in alarm. He immediately activated intangibility and spun around, assuming Makoto had hidden another Shadow Clone somewhere and was finally using it for a sneak attack.
But when he turned, there was nothing there.
No, that wasn't entirely true.
A fist-sized shadow resembling a tiny mirage floated in the air, imitating the sound of a fist tearing through the wind.
'A Stand?'
The thought had barely crossed the black-robed man's mind when a chill suddenly ran down his back.
Makoto tore both of his own arms free with brute force, breaking out of the genjutsu's restraint. Reverse Cursed Technique immediately regenerated them, while his right hand formed into a blade.
Makoto poured half of his cursed energy into the attack and activated Cursed Technique Extension.
Then he slashed down with all his strength.
An invisible spatial blade twenty meters long tore across the sky and descended vertically toward the black-robed man's face.
Makoto had also wanted to strengthen the attack with a Binding, but nothing happened when he tried to invoke one.
Only then did he remember that the Binding mechanic was a world-specific advantage of Jujutsu Kaisen, something even Adaptability couldn't compensate for.
Still, it didn't matter.
The attack in front of him was already enough.
The earlier clash between Domain Expansion and intangibility had proven that Makoto's Spatial Manipulation and the black-robed man's phasing existed on roughly the same level as spatial abilities.
The Domain could pull the intangible man inside, yet couldn't prevent him from retreating directly into the Kamui Dimension.
That also meant his intangibility couldn't completely ignore Makoto's spatial abilities. Until now, he'd simply been escaping quickly enough to avoid being hit.
This time they were practically face-to-face.
The instant Makoto released Spatial Slash, the blade was already upon him.
'Let's see how you dodge this one.'
Makoto's left hand wasn't idle either.
He pointed repeatedly around the black-robed man's body, opening several intersecting Spatial Gates.
Back when Makoto had still been an ordinary person in the real world, he'd played a game called Portal.
A portal gun could create two linked doors on walls, allowing someone to enter one and emerge from the other.
But Makoto had once seen people discuss a strange question.
'What happens if the entrance and exit overlap each other?'
The game itself didn't allow it, but some analyses suggested that a person's body would be repeatedly twisted between the entrance and exit, eventually distorting into something grotesque.
That was exactly what Makoto was attempting now.
He didn't expect the overlapping gates to literally twist the black-robed man's body apart.
He only needed them to disrupt his intangibility.
And it worked.
The black-robed man, who had been phasing normally moments earlier, suddenly felt himself trapped inside a horrifying spatial loop.
His head seemed to emerge from his stomach while one foot stepped into his own chest. His mouth seemed to kiss his backside, while his internal organs felt as though they had been pulled outside his body.
These weren't hallucinations.
They were genuinely happening.
During intangibility, his true body hid inside the Kamui Dimension while only a projected image remained in the real world. Under normal circumstances, there was no direct way to break that state.
But Makoto was also manipulating space.
The intersecting Spatial Gates completely disrupted the process of projecting the black-robed man's body back into reality.
The resulting spatial chaos exceeded what his eye could process. His ocular power drained rapidly, and dark blood began running from the corner of his eye.
Uchiha Obito's Mangekyo Sharingan wasn't an Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan.
Obito could preserve his eyesight because Hashirama Cells and the White Zetsu material supporting his body compensated for the strain.
The black-robed man enjoyed no such advantage.
Pain stabbed through his eye so violently that he instinctively blinked.
That single blink interrupted his intangibility.
The opening may have lasted only 0.1 seconds.
Makoto caught it.
Spatial Slash arrived exactly on time and cut the black-robed man cleanly in half.
For one instant, Makoto thought he'd won.
The man's severed halves were genuinely falling toward the ground. This wasn't an illusion, and he hadn't used something like Izanagi.
Yet just before he struck the earth, both halves suddenly dissolved into masses of white smoke.
The smoke rapidly merged together, reforming into a man whose body was still half vapor.
Makoto's pupils contracted.
'The Smoke-Smoke Fruit?'
The black-robed man quickly ended his elemental transformation, but to Makoto's surprise, he didn't immediately attack again.
Makoto couldn't see his face beneath the covering, but he was certain the man's expression was awful.
And he was right.
If the black-robed man hadn't taken out a loan from his Guild leader and bought a Smoke-Smoke Fruit before coming here, Makoto would have killed him just now.
He had no choice but to admit that he'd badly underestimated Makoto.
Overlapping portals to disrupt the entire surrounding spatial structure wasn't merely creative.
Executing it required terrifying precision in spatial manipulation.
The young man before him was even more talented than he'd imagined.
'What now? Keep fighting?'
With the Smoke-Smoke Fruit, the black-robed man theoretically didn't need to fear death as much anymore.
But the newcomer in front of him could use Black Flash.
'If I keep this up, I'm asking to die.'
Gritting his teeth, the black-robed man made his decision.
He turned and rushed toward Uzumaki Naruto.
Makoto immediately pursued him while rapidly considering which of his techniques could affect an enemy using elemental transformation.
Adaptability suggested his techniques should work.
Yet the man had just used elemental transformation to survive Spatial Slash.
'Does elemental transformation have some special property?'
'Or do I need something like Haki to hit him properly?'
Makoto suddenly paused.
'Wait. They're both black... Could Black Flash work?'
His eyes lit up, and black light immediately gathered around his fist.
The fleeing black-robed man's hair stood on end.
'This bastard really did figure out how to counter elemental transformation!'
The essence of elemental transformation was turning the physical body into an element while hiding one's consciousness within a small portion of that element.
As long as that core consciousness wasn't dispersed, a Devil Fruit user could avoid injury and death.
Haki countered this because it materialized overflowing life energy and spiritual will.
When such power struck an elemental body, it could forcibly drag out the consciousness hidden within the transformed matter.
Black Flash functioned on a somewhat similar principle.
It dramatically amplified a sorcerer's strike, while cursed energy itself originated from negative emotions.
Cursed energy was far less potent than Haki for this specific purpose, but Black Flash's massive amplification helped compensate for the difference.
For the first time, a battle that had previously been evenly matched now had a clear advantage.
Unfortunately, even after finding a way to defeat the black-robed man, Makoto still couldn't stop him if he refused to fight.
The man reached Uzumaki Naruto first, seized him by the collar, and lifted him up.
His Mangekyo Sharingan spun wildly as he cast some unknown genjutsu on Naruto.
Makoto arrived only a step too late.
The black-robed man immediately threw Naruto toward him, then turned and disappeared into the Kamui Dimension.
It seemed he'd finally abandoned the battle with Makoto entirely.
Before Makoto could relax, Naruto suddenly changed.
The boy who had been sleeping peacefully twisted into a vicious expression. His fangs lengthened, the whisker marks on his face deepened, and scarlet chakra began pouring from his body.
A tail erupted behind him.
Makoto's pupils contracted.
'Don't tell me that bastard destroyed Naruto's mind outright.'
Makoto immediately activated his Three-Tomoe Sharingan and tried entering Naruto's mind to stabilize him.
He succeeded.
Konoha appeared before him, engulfed in flames.
Corpses covered the ground at Naruto's feet.
Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, Hatake Kakashi, Umino Iruka... everyone Naruto knew was dead.
And the person responsible was Makoto.
Within the illusion, Makoto held a long blade that had pierced directly through Naruto's abdomen.
Violent chakra erupted endlessly from Naruto's body.
He had clearly accepted Makoto as an enemy who had to die.
Makoto immediately mobilized his ocular power and tried erasing the illusion created by the black-robed man's eye technique.
Before he could make any progress, a cold roar came from the deepest part of Naruto's mind.
"Get lost, you Uchiha brat!"
"Try stopping me from getting out and I'll swallow you whole!"
A pair of enormous scarlet eyes appeared at the far end of Makoto's vision, blazing like suns in the darkness.
Their owner was imprisoned behind an iron gate, but its claws and chakra were already leaking through.
More and more of that chakra flowed directly into Uzumaki Naruto.
Only then did Makoto understand the black-robed man's real plan.
This was what he'd been trying to accomplish all along.
Makoto's interference had merely forced them to make Naruto lose control out here in the wilderness instead of inside Konoha.
Their objective was obvious now.
They wanted Konoha destroyed.
The two teams' mission objectives were completely opposed. At this point, only one side could survive and complete its mission.
Makoto suddenly found himself worrying about Yukinoshita.
'I wonder if she can handle those enemies inside Konoha.'
As for the berserk Uzumaki Naruto in front of him, Makoto genuinely had no good solution.
He possessed plenty of powerful abilities now, but none were designed to suppress a jinchuriki.
Killing Naruto would be easy.
But back in Jujutsu Kaisen, simply taking one of Ryomen Sukuna's fingers had triggered that world's item rules.
'If I kill Naruto here, wouldn't the Sage of Six Paths come crawling out of the Pure Land to kill me personally?'
Makoto considered another option.
'Maybe I should lock Naruto inside my storage space and let him calm down.'
Before he could decide, a figure descended from the sky with terrifying pressure.
Two Toad Sages sat on his shoulders.
It was Jiraiya in Sage Mode.
Seeing Naruto's condition, Jiraiya immediately issued an order.
"Give Naruto to me!"
Makoto's eyes lit up.
Without hesitation, he threw Naruto toward him.
But while still in midair, Naruto suddenly sprouted four tails.
Dense red chakra enveloped his entire body until he no longer looked fully human.
Makoto sucked in a sharp breath.
'Isn't this the version of Naruto that nearly beat Orochimaru to death?'
'Yeah, I should leave. Immediately.'
"Take Gaara and the other wounded and get out of here."
Jiraiya moved directly between Naruto and Makoto.
"I noticed your fight from a distance. You did well!"
Makoto's opinion of Jiraiya immediately rose.
He'd half expected the man to demand an explanation for why Naruto had ended up in this state, perhaps even blaming Makoto for it.
Instead, Jiraiya immediately took responsibility for the danger.
'As expected of the Toad Sage. When it matters, he's reliable.'
Makoto grabbed Gaara by the collar and carried him over to Uchiha Sasuke.
Sasuke was still unconscious.
Seeing Temari rushing toward them to save her younger brother, Makoto simply tossed Gaara into her arms.
Temari froze in surprise.
She hugged her brother tightly while staring at Makoto with obvious suspicion.
Makoto stared back at the 20 Fate Value above her head and started wondering what sort of manifestation result he might squeeze out of her.
At that moment, Gaara's brow twitched.
He slowly woke up.
Temari excitedly called his name, but Gaara's first question was about someone else.
"Naruto... Is he still alive?"
"Not doing great. He's gone berserk and is currently fighting his teacher."
Makoto pointed into the distance.
Naruto had already reached five tails.
If Jiraiya hadn't entered Sage Mode, he probably would've been beaten down already.
Gaara forced himself upright and looked toward Naruto, frustration filling his face.
"Why did he become like that? He was the one who told me I shouldn't live only for killing."
Makoto glanced at the 30 Fate Value above Gaara's head and immediately sensed an opportunity.
"Because someone is interested in the Tailed Beasts inside both of you. They want you dead."
The moment he said it, Temari and Gaara both turned suspicious gazes toward Makoto, almost as if he were the murderer himself.
Makoto shrugged.
"Don't look at me. I'm the same kind of creature as you. There's a pure chakra lifeform living inside my body too."
The next instant, Makoto activated Making Fake Become Real and Cursed Energy Burst at the same time.
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