Shanks turned sharply toward Erza and the rest of his clan siblings, his expression firm and commanding.
"All of you, leave this place immediately," he ordered, his voice calm but brooking no argument. "If I'm not mistaken, you're the ones escorting the caravan stationed about three to four kilometers from here. Go back to it and tend to your wounds. None of you are in good shape after sustaining those injuries."
Erza exchanged a quick glance with her brothers and sisters before nodding. Together, the ten Uzumaki siblings responded in unison, their voices filled with respect and relief.
"Yes, Onii-chan."
Without further hesitation, their figures blurred and vanished from sight, retreating with the swiftness only shinobi could muster.
The toll of Hanzo's poison had already begun to spread through their ranks. Benimaru, Todoroki, and several of the others who lacked natural resistance to toxins were visibly weakened, their movements sluggish, breaths ragged. They required treatment immediately, and Erza knew it. That urgency had driven her to make the critical choice to call upon their hidden trump card—the summoning of Shanks.
It was a measure they reserved only for dire circumstances, when the threat before them was not just formidable but fatal. Whenever a situation arose that they themselves could not endure yet one their elder brother could handle, they had no choice but to rely on his overwhelming strength. Shanks himself had drilled this into them: when the danger was insurmountable, summon him without hesitation.
Their faith in him was absolute. To the Uzumaki siblings, Shanks was not merely their elder brother—he was a shield, a force they trusted to stand unyielding against enemies like Hanzo.
And so they had called him here.
Had the enemy been someone even Shanks might not be able to defeat, they would have abandoned everything, even the Daimyō's son and his caravan. Through reverse summoning, they could have retreated to safety, leaving this battlefield behind without a second thought. That was their final contingency, their most desperate option.
But thankfully, today was not such a day.
Hanzo made no move to interfere as the Uzumaki siblings vanished from the battlefield. His sharp eyes instead lingered on the figure they had left behind, the one Erza had summoned.
"So this is their trump card," he mused silently, his mind sharpening with curiosity. "I expected a monstrous summoning beast, some creature bred for war… but never this. Never him."
The rain continued to fall, steady and unrelenting, washing over the young man now standing alone at the heart of the battlefield. His crimson hair clung damply to his head, strands plastered against his face, the vivid red all the more striking under the gray curtain of rain. A long black overcoat hung from his broad shoulders, the fabric heavy with water, its folds half-hiding the white shirt and dark trousers beneath. Black boots pressed firmly into the mud, unyielding despite the storm.
At his side rested a sword, its hilt worn yet commanding, his right hand settled casually but purposefully on it. It was a warrior's stance, calm yet ready to strike at the first opening.
But what caught Hanzo's seasoned eye most was the absence. The young man's left arm remained concealed beneath the heavy drape of his overcoat, but Hanzo knew better. After a lifetime of combat, he recognized the subtle asymmetry, the way the cloth hung just so. There was no arm beneath that sleeve. The young man stood before him, formidable even with such a loss.
Hanzo narrowed his gaze, rain streaming down the hardened lines of his face. Finally, he spoke, his voice carrying across the sodden battlefield.
"I presume you are Shanks Uzumaki… the head of the Uzumaki clan."
Shanks met Hanzo's gaze directly, his single visible hand still resting on the hilt of his sword. His voice cut through the rain, steady and unwavering.
"You're absolutely correct. I am Shanks Uzumaki, clan head of the Uzumaki."
For a moment, his sky-blue eyes seemed to narrow, the weight of his presence alone pressing against the battlefield.
"To be honest, I was already expecting to be summoned here. Word had reached me that my brothers and sisters took on a mission in the Land of Rain, and soon after… they were ambushed by an overwhelming number of shinobi." His tone hardened, though his composure did not falter. That information came to me through Frosty— summoned by Makima. Through him, I learned enough to piece together the truth.
Shanks tilted his head slightly, his damp hair shifting as the rain dripped from its ends.
"At first, I wondered whether this attack was orchestrated by your forces of Amegakure, or perhaps by Konoha. Only the two of you possess the ability to mobilize such numbers in the Land of Rain without stirring a storm of rumours in the wider shinobi world. If forces from Kirigakure or Kumogakure had attempted this, word would have spread long before they could set foot here. Neither your land nor the Land of Fire would have tolerated a rival village's presence at such a precarious time in the ongoing war."
His tone grew sharper, cutting like a blade.
"A few years ago, you allowed the Sannin of Konoha to escape your grasp, though you slaughtered their entire battalion. At that time, I imagine you feared that killing the Sannin—the students of the Hokage himself—would provoke a response you were not prepared to face. For if the Hokage had chosen to act personally, the odds of your survival would have been slim. You knew his power far surpassed your own, and being the cautious man you are, you let the Sannin live. As a warning to Konoha, you spilled the blood of their battalion instead. A calculated move… and an effective one."
Shanks' voice dropped lower, yet carried a sharper edge, laced with anger barely restrained.
"But now… you dared to strike at my clan brothers and sisters, believing that I would not appear. You thought wrong. Whether or not you understand the full scope of my strength, you must have at least heard whispers of it. Yet even knowing that, you had the audacity to underestimate me—and worse, to underestimate the Uzumaki clan."
He tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, his presence radiating killing intent as his final words rang out like thunder under the storm.
"For the injuries you inflicted on my siblings, Hanzo… you will pay the price."
As his final words faded into the rain, Shanks shifted his stance. Slowly, deliberately, he began to draw his sword. The metallic scrape of steel rang out faintly beneath the sound of the falling rain. Yet even as the blade left its sheath, his right hand—still gripping the weapon—moved with uncanny precision, weaving one-handed seals with fluid speed.
With each completed seal, arcs of energy began to crawl across his body. Lightning sparked along his frame, crackling in jagged lines that lit up the darkened battlefield. In moments, his entire figure was wreathed in electricity, but this was no ordinary chakra. Normally, such lightning would glow a piercing sky blue—but around Shanks, it bled into a fierce crimson, streaks of red lightning bursting outward like veins of molten power.
The air itself seemed to ripple around him. The pressure he exuded was suffocating, a barrier formed by the sheer force of his Conqueror's Haki. Each pulse of it clashed with the storm, echoing like distant thunder. The ground quivered, and even the rain hesitated, droplets hissing as they struck the charged aura enveloping him.
In the next instant, Shanks vanished. To the untrained eye, his movement was nothing more than a blur of red and black, impossible to follow. When he reappeared, it was directly before Ibuse—the colossal salamander that loomed as Hanzo's greatest weapon. Standing upon the creature's head, Hanzo's eyes widened, the sudden presence nearly impossible to register.
Shanks' voice cut through the chaos, cold and sharp as a blade of steel.
"Divine Departure."
He swung his sword in a single, diagonal arc. Though his words were spoken softly, they rolled across the battlefield like a tremor, reverberating through stone, rain, and bone alike. For that instant, everything else—the storm, the clash of chakra, the cries of distant combat—fell silent before the weight of his strike.
----
Want to get daily updates and read chapters on a daily basis? Then join my Patreon!
Patreon Link: https://[email protected]/Hkj822
Join Discord Link: https://discord.gg/Ab9HdNbK