BOOM!!!
With a deafening blast and a quake that rattled the earth, the Three-Tails Isobu—rolling madly and trying to crush everything in its path—finally slammed into the foot of a mountain.
The impact made the entire range shudder violently.
Countless rocks tumbled down the slopes.
Its massive, battered body at last stopped rolling.
Isobu uncurled, thick legs sheathed in gray-white armor jutting from its shell. Like giant pillars, they drove deep into the cracked, wrecked ground to steady itself.
Its single eye, shot through with vicious blood-red veins, swept back and forth across the tract it had pulverized into mud, searching—
Hunting for the human who had brought it such excruciating pain.
On the shell of its back, the horrifying hole bored clean through by magma—and the chakra-fused flesh seared within—was mending before the naked eye under the tailed beast's prodigious vitality.
New plates of carapace writhed like fleshy buds, while tailed-beast chakra seeped in like glue to plug the breach.
But the soul-deep burn wouldn't fade.
It gnawed on Isobu's nerves like maggots on bone.
"Huff… rrrrgh…"
Agitated, Isobu clawed furiously at the ground with its thick forelimbs, flinging rock and earth like they weighed nothing.
It panted so hard that the scalding white breath it vented spun into little whirlwinds, blasting dust into the air.
As if only that could take the edge off the omnipresent agony.
And then—
The Fourth Mizukage, Yagura Karatachi, who had been embedded atop Isobu's head, seemed to flinch awake from sharing that ultimate agony with the beast. His brows knotted with pain, lashes trembling, he hazily pried open eyes that had been shut for a long time.
A thoughtless groan slipped out.
His gaze was unfocused. He glanced around at the hellscape, then lowered his eyes to his lower body, fused into the tailed beast.
Yagura's brow furrowed deeper—he'd realized something.
Suddenly!
His will was smashed by an invisible hammer.
A high-pitched wahhhh thrummed through his skull; everything went woozy.
The real scene before him warped and twisted in an instant.
The sky looked as if painted in clotted blood. A colossal, ominously glowing red "moon" hung upside down overhead.
No—that wasn't the moon at all!
Look closely and it was an enormous Mangekyō Sharingan, intricate and eldritch, rotating slowly and spanning the entire sky!
That giant eye stared down at him, cold and indifferent—
As if judging an insect.
"Damn… Sharingan… genjutsu…"
Clutching his skull as if it would split, the boyish Mizukage grimaced, a hoarse, unwilling whisper scraping out of his throat.
Agony and struggle flashed across his face as he tried to fight off the mind-seizing grip.
It was useless.
A heartbeat later, the pain and struggle were wiped away as if erased by a rubber. His eyes went hollow and manic again.
At the same time, his pupils—and Isobu's single eye below—seemed pulled by the same string, turning stiffly in perfect sync to stare at one distant point.
There—
A thick pillar of smoke roiled skyward like a dragon bridging earth and heaven.
Beneath that smoke, a crimson figure stood tall upon a ridge of scorched earth.
Heat shimmered around the figure, air twisting violently so he looked as if seen through a quivering curtain of flame.
From far away, he stared down on the battered Three-Tails with absolute, icy calm.
"ROARRR!!!"
Isobu's pupil pin-pricked to a needlepoint.
Seeing Uchiha Chizumi standing there completely unscathed filled it with disbelief—and incandescent rage.
Beastly fury smothered what little reason it had left.
Its pillar-like feet stamped down.
KA-RUMBLE—!!!
The ground groaned under the strain, spiderweb cracks racing outward.
Boulders the size of human heads bounced ten meters into the air, then hung there—trembling and floating in the monstrous chakra turbulence.
VMMMM—!!!
Suffocating tailed-beast chakra erupted from Isobu like a tsunami.
Its yin and yang chakra began gathering and compressing in front of its gaping maw at a special 2:8 ratio!
In moments, a tiny black orb radiating annihilation flickered into being.
The tailed beasts' ultimate technique—the embryo of a Tailed Beast Bomb.
Isobu's lone eye blazed with frenzy and the urge to destroy.
It poured everything it had into the sphere, burning its own reserves dry.
With each flood of chakra, the skull-sized black orb swelled at a terrifying, visible pace—
Twice… five times…
Ten… twenty…
In a blink, it bulged to the size of Isobu's own ugly head—and still kept growing!
Crack…
Crack…
The floating rocks nearby powdered to dust as if crushed by an invisible giant hand, ground apart by the hidden forcefield of that ultra-dense sphere.
The mountain behind Isobu shook violently.
A deeper chasm split open under its feet.
The air twisted so hard the tailed beast's huge form wavered, warping in and out of focus.
Waves of destructive energy spread like tangible tides in all directions.
Even creatures kilometers away felt their hearts clench. …
In the distance, the ninja cat Jujirou—so composed moments ago—saw its fur explode to full fluff.
Its plump body went taut as a bowstring, pure horror written across its feline face.
"MrrreOW!!!"
It let out a high, sharp yowl, jabbed its paw frantically into Izumi's cheek, and squeaked, "That tailed beast has snapped! That's the Tailed Beast Bomb Chizumi-sama warned me about, nya! They say it's a tailed beast's strongest attack!"
"Rookie! Run!! Run like your life depends on it! As far as you can! Don't look back! Don't hesitate, nya!"
It suddenly remembered something and sputtered, "Nya! Don't run in a straight line! Don't run where its head is pointing! Go sideways! Left or right—either! Move, nya!!!"
It was the first time Izumi had ever seen the usually lazy, snarky Jujirou this rattled.
She didn't even stop to think.
Raw danger prickled at her spine—and she trusted Jujirou. She spun on her heel.
Chakra flooded her legs, no holding back.
She sprinted hard, angling to the side.
Beside her, Jūzō Biwa's face blanched. As a former member of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, he understood better than Izumi what a Tailed Beast Bomb meant.
"That's… ngh!"
He sucked a cold breath. The hot air couldn't thaw the ice forming in his gut.
He didn't hesitate—he hefted the hulking Kubikiribōchō, poured everything into speed, and tore off right behind Uchiha Izumi.
As Izumi bolted, Jujirou—clinging to her shoulder—risked a hurried glance back.
The instant it saw the colossal, deathly black sphere, now swollen to a hair-raising size and radiating extinction, the whole cat almost jumped out of its skin.
"Too slow, nya! Rookie, at that pace you'll never clear the blast radius!"
Jujirou sprang from Izumi's shoulder.
Midair, its cute, chubby body ballooned as if inflated.
In a blink it became a beast the size of an elephant—fur bristling, claws gleaming like knives.
It clamped Izumi by the back of her collar with its jaws.
All four paws slammed down—
FWIP—
An orange streak split the world, speed so fierce it left afterimages.
In almost no time, Jujirou had left the straining Jūzō a speck in the distance.
He didn't even get the privilege of eating their dust.
Jūzō, sprinting with all his might and a greatsword on his back, felt a hurricane rip past—then saw only an orange back dwindling fast and a sky full of grit.
Jūzō: "???"
Hey!
Wait for me!!!
…
Elsewhere, Terumi Mei's pupils shrank to pinpoints.
Even though she stood behind and off to the side of Isobu—nowhere near the direct line of fire—she still stumbled back a few steps, aghast at the annihilating power coiled inside that black sphere.
Ao had already torn off his eyepatch, the veins around his Byakugan throbbing.
He strained to see, sweat beading cold on his brow from shock and nerves.
"This… we're inside the Land of Water!"
Ao's voice shook, colored with bewilderment and dread. "For the Mizukage to use something this—this apocalyptic… doesn't he fear wiping out nearby towns? What about the civilians?!"
A powerful wrongness surged in his chest.
This wasn't the Fourth Mizukage he remembered—harsh "Blood Mist" policy or not, the man had still cared about the village's basic interests and the safety of the Land of Water.
This felt like…
A different person entirely.
But at this range, not even the Byakugan could cut through the raging tailed-beast chakra and warping air to show him the Mizukage's exact state atop Isobu's head.
…
Uchiha Chizumi stood still, feeling the ground's escalating tremors under his feet. Even the pebbles at his boots were jittering madly.
Expressionless, he murmured,
"A Tailed Beast Bomb…"
Then he slowly raised his head. The scarlet glow in his eyes flared.
The pattern in those eyes was no longer an ordinary Mangekyō. It was more intricate, more uncanny, deeper—
As if two different Mangekyō patterns had nested perfectly together and fused.
A qualitative change— A pair of eyes imbued with eternal power.
The Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan.
RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE—!!!
As his ocular power fully unleashed, the earth roared louder than before, and a titanic crimson skeleton—like a demon god clawing up from the deepest hell—surged out of the ground behind him!
And that was only the beginning.
As the skeleton rose, torrents of crimson chakra like molten lava flooded over it, weaving cords of thick, rippling muscle.
Next, layered plates of heavy, ancient, brutally menacing red armor slid into place over Susanoo's towering frame, as if alive.
Crimson chakra flames roared along the armor.
The heat alone made the ground at its feet bubble and melt from a distance—
A black-red lake of lava spread outward, popping and boiling.
At the exact moment Isobu's Tailed Beast Bomb swelled to its limit,
the Hell-God Susanoo revealed its complete body.
A colossus over two hundred and ten meters tall, a mobile mountain planted in this world.
Its shadow could blanket a small ninja village.
From its back burst a pair of absurdly huge wings—look closely and thick molten rock seemed to flow within them as they unfurled.
The glow of lava washed the clouds with red.
Each beat of the wings whipped up blistering gales.
Uchiha Chizumi stood safeguarded within.
Guided by his will, the Complete Body Susanoo lifted a hand larger than a house,
and clenched empty air.
VMMMM—!!!
Endless Lava Release chakra converged. In an instant, a magma greatsword—bigger and heavier than any before—coalesced in its grip.
The blade was as broad as a massive door, its edge oozing slow rivulets of molten rock,
radiating a promise to burn all to ash. …
"What is that…"
Feeling the heat rolling over them and gaping at the lava giant towering against the sky, Ao's eyes went wide.
Terumi Mei whispered, shaken, "I… think I've seen something like it in some decades-old village records. It seems to be a dōjutsu unique to Konoha's Uchiha…"
…
Meanwhile, the Tailed Beast Bomb in Isobu's maw had swelled to a jaw-dropping size—nearly a quarter of its entire body.
The chakra cloaking the beast had dimmed, threadbare from the output.
"RRAAAHHHH—!!!"
With its last strength, it let out a sky-rending howl.
That super-massive Tailed Beast Bomb—packed with everything it had, enough to erase mountains and redraw the land—broke free of its jaws like an unleashed beast of destruction.
It made no sound as it fired.
Or rather—
The sound was left far, far behind.
At a speed beyond the eye's ability to track, the sphere sliced through space in utter silence; even light seemed to warp and vanish around it as it streaked toward the distant Susanoo.