"Ugh..."
"What just happened...?"
"Where is this place...?"
"What happened to the village...?"
A Konohagakure shinobi struggled to crawl out from a pile of rubble. His entire body was covered in dust, as if he had been unearthed from the ground.
His appearance was unrecognizable, but his wide, black-and-white eyes were filled with shock and terror.
Because within his field of vision, the village he had lived in for over twenty years—the village where he knew every tree, every blade of grass, every iconic building on every street—
Was gone.
The entire center of Konohagakure had been swept away, as if by an unstoppable hurricane, leaving the Hokage Rock as the dividing line.
A fan-shaped pit of yellow sand spread outward, with the deepest part near the Hokage Rock. Further away, the displaced earth formed mounds, and at the village's edge, the dirt had piled into circular slopes.
From a wider perspective, it wasn't just Konohagakure that had been devastated. Even the surrounding mountains had been cleaved in half, leaving only short, stubby remnants connected to the ground.
Atop the Hokage Rock stood a colossal blue giant. The shinobi couldn't even see the giant's head when he tilted his own, as the sunlight glaring off the massive figure forced him to shut his eyes.
There was intense combat happening near the Hokage Rock...
"I have to go help!"
"As a member of Konohagakure, I can't just stand by and watch the enemy destroy our village like this!"
"He must pay the price!"
The shinobi snapped back to his senses, his eyes sharp with determination. But as he pushed himself up with his hands, trying to free his lower body from the rubble,
He realized—he could no longer feel his legs.
"Why...?"
"Why am I so useless...?"
"I can't even protect my own village!"
The shinobi clenched his fists tightly, pounding the ground. The mixture of dirt, stone, and shattered wood held his lower body firmly in place, leaving him immobile.
Drip, drip...
Tears streamed down his face, carving two clear trails through the dust on his cheeks.
"Someone!"
"Someone, please save the village!!"
He threw his head back and howled in despair.
Whoosh!
A swirling vortex of space suddenly appeared before him, and two figures stepped out from within.
The shinobi, now reduced to only his upper body, stared blankly at the two young men before him. Both radiated an overwhelming aura of power, but it was the black-haired man whose presence was truly terrifying. His Chakra felt like an endless abyss—vast, boundless, and eerily calm, yet suffused with an unsettling menace.
However, when the shinobi's gaze shifted to the red-haired youth, a glimmer of hope lit up his face. The red-haired man's eyes bore the unmistakable Sharingan of the Uchiha Clan!
They must be secret allies of Konohagakure!
"You..."
Just as he was about to speak,
The world around him seemed to flip upside down, spinning rapidly.
"What's happening...?"
But when he saw the headless corpse on the ground, blood gushing from its neck, he finally understood.
"You talk too much," the black-haired man said coldly, his voice like ice piercing through the air.
In his final moments, the shinobi's thoughts were not of himself. Instead, he worried for his village.
Two more terrifying enemies had appeared...
Hokage-sama... please... you must win...
"Madara, as expected. If he's the one collecting the Tailed Beasts, it's only natural he'd start with the Nine-Tails!"
"This is perfect. With him keeping the Konohagakure forces occupied, our job just got a lot easier!"
The black-haired man narrowed his eyes slightly, gazing at the battle atop the Hokage Rock.
After a moment, he withdrew his gaze.
Suppressing his Chakra to the lowest possible level, a faint golden-green mist began to emanate from his body. He was using the sensory abilities of Sage Mode to lock onto his target.
Finally, the black-haired man spoke. "Sasori, let's go."
"Let's deal with half the Nine-Tails first. Once that guy's dead, we'll clean up the rest."
Another spatial vortex swirled into existence, and the two young men vanished as mysteriously as they had appeared.
All that remained was the headless corpse lying in a pool of blood, as if nothing had happened at all.
Beneath the rubble, countless Konohagakure residents had been crushed into a mixture of flesh and dirt, forming a grotesque "wall of blood and meat."
Atop the Hokage Rock, all of Konohagakure's remaining high-level combatants had gathered.
But even with their superior numbers, they were no match for the 200-meter-tall, godlike samurai giant before them.
"You bastard!"
"How dare you destroy our village..."
"Unforgivable!"
"Absolutely unforgivable!!"
A blond-haired boy roared in rage, his voice nearly a scream.
Golden Chakra swirled around him, and his eyes burned with fury.
"Wood Release: Wood Human Technique!"
Creak, creak, creak...
The sound of wood grinding against wood echoed through the air.
Suddenly, a massive wooden Buddha emerged beneath the blond boy. The Buddha sat cross-legged, a "wooden halo" behind its head adorned with countless wooden arms, all clenched into fists.
"Naruto!"
"Don't act recklessly!"
"The enemy's strength surpasses any of us here!"
"Calm down!"
"And if you keep using the Nine-Tails' Chakra without restraint, you'll risk being consumed by it!"
Minato Namikaze, clad in a red Chakra cloak, stood nearby. Only six tails remained behind him, a clear sign of the toll the earlier effort to redirect the two meteors had taken on him.
"Hashirama's Wood Release?"
"This is the extent of what you can do with it?"
"Pathetic! This is an insult to Hashirama!"
Madara's mocking voice echoed from within the blue giant.
Even the towering Wood Human, standing dozens of meters tall, barely reached the thighs of Madara's Perfect Susano'o. Compared to the fully-formed Susano'o, Naruto's Wood Human looked like an underdeveloped dwarf.
Whoosh!
Suddenly, the blue giant dissolved into blue flames, dispersing into the air. Madara's figure descended from the sky, landing heavily in front of the Konohagakure shinobi.
His Rinnegan glinted coldly as he stared at the approaching Wood Human.
"Wood Release... that's not how it's supposed to be used," he sneered.
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