Karma: Stage Two.
A horn grew from his head, further unleashing the power of his true body.
Isshiki had lived in this body for a thousand years. Although he had spent that time hiding and barely surviving, in a turbulent ninja world, it was impossible for him to have never fought at all.
Yet in all these years, this was the first time he had entered Stage Two in battle.
He had no choice.
Only the overwhelming power of Stage Two could temporarily suppress the injuries to his body.
And then…
He would let the human before him witness what a true god really was.
Isshiki spread his palm. A black rod appeared out of thin air in his hand. It spun once and smashed toward Ryosuke, and at the same time...
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Dozens of extremely sharp, tiny black rods, so small they were impossible to catch with the naked eye, were summoned from the void and stabbed toward Ryosuke.
These were Isshiki's two strongest abilities.
Sukunahikona, which could shrink any non-living object within his line of sight. As for living beings, only Isshiki himself could be shrunk.
The speed of this shrinking and restoration could almost be understood as instantaneous.
The other ability that complemented it was "Daikokuten," which could store shrunken objects in an extradimensional space where time was stopped, and summon them at any time to be used as weapons.
Isshiki's most commonly used combo was exactly like this, summoning black rods shrunk to the limit from Daikokuten and throwing them at the enemy, then, at the instant they touched the skin, instantly enlarging them to pierce through the opponent's body.
Instant activation, impossible to perceive, plus the black rods' indestructibility and chakra-absorbing effect, it was terrifyingly powerful.
Isshiki swung the long rod in his hand as a feint, waiting for the shrunken black rods to pierce Ryosuke's body.
Clack! Clack! Clack!
Star Platinum grabbed at the air with both hands.
"What?!"
The black rods that had been shrunk to the extreme by Sukunahikona, completely invisible, were all intercepted in midair.
Back when Isshiki escaped the "Spatial Slingshot," Ryosuke had already noticed something was off through Star Platinum's eyes.
Isshiki hadn't escaped like Obito using space-time ninjutsu.
He had shrunk himself, avoided the bombardment of the Spatial Slingshot, and only then fled to a hundred meters away.
Since he knew Isshiki had the ability to shrink, Ryosuke naturally guarded against it, keeping Star Platinum on the front line in a defensive stance the entire time.
A series of metallic collisions rang out as Star Platinum grasped more than a dozen black rods in each hand.
Ryosuke pointed at Isshiki.
A chain of ripple crystals formed, like frost covering the black rods.
"Ora!"
Star Platinum roared and hurled all the black rods back at Isshiki at an even faster speed.
So fast they were like streaks of black lightning.
Isshiki used Sukunahikona again, trying to shrink the incoming black rods.
But the ripple crystals were ultra-highly compressed ripples. The moment they began to shrink, the energy inside became unstable, followed immediately by explosions.
Isshiki was swallowed by a series of fiery blasts.
"Damn it!"
With his defensive methods, explosions of this level couldn't injure Isshiki. What alarmed him was the loss of vision, even his Byakugan couldn't find Ryosuke.
Suddenly, he heard an extremely sharp whistling of wind.
Whoosh!
Smoke and dust were torn apart.
Ryosuke charged to within five steps of Isshiki, holding a high-speed spinning steel ball in his palm.
The curtain of rain in the sky suddenly dispersed, the clouds tore open a corner, revealing a crescent moon hanging high in the heavens.
The opposing points of the crescent moon connected with each other, forming something like a rectangle…
Framing Otsutsuki Isshiki within it.
Bone-chilling terror.
Even back when he had been ambushed by Kaguya and thrown into the God Tree to be devoured, Isshiki had never felt terror like this.
The steel ball flew from Ryosuke's palm.
Isshiki swung the black rod in his hand and tapped it. The indestructible black rod was as fragile as a wafer biscuit when facing Lesson 4–level rotation.
Still, it bought Isshiki time.
He seized the chance to shrink the steel ball.
Protected by the rotational force, the effect of Sukunahikona slowed down. The steel ball was indeed shrinking, but to reduce it to a negligible size would take at least half a second.
On the other side, Ryosuke pulled out the Ruin Greatsword from the Ghost Room.
Isshiki shrank himself again, fled into the sky, and summoned thousands of black rods stored in Daikokuten, raining them down on Ryosuke like a storm of pear blossoms.
There were too many, so many that even Star Platinum couldn't capture them all in a short time, and could only watch as they poured down.
At the final moment, Ryosuke could only condense a ripple barrier.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Thousands of uninterrupted piercings.
Layer after layer of ripple barriers shattered and reformed, until the very last black rod stopped just half a meter from Ryosuke's brow.
Ryosuke casually pushed the black rod aside, his gaze never leaving Isshiki for a moment.
That look seemed to be afraid that Isshiki might seize the chance to escape.
Isshiki coldly met Ryosuke's eyes and charged forward again.
———
High in the sky, far from the ground, the White Snake Sage and Yakushi Kabuto were sitting in front of a television, one snake and one man, mouths half open, watching the battle between Ryosuke and Otsutsuki Isshiki.
They were aboard the Sky Base, overlooking the ninja world from above. Naturally, they could see far and clearly. Once Ryosuke and Isshiki fully broke out into battle, it immediately caught the White Snake Sage's attention.
And so, the live broadcast before them came to be.
After the first round of probing, the two had gained a rough understanding of each other's abilities.
One was an Otsutsuki.
One was an ultimate lifeform.
Both had extremely powerful physical bodies, incredible recovery, and immense vitality. Killing the other with a single surprise ability on first contact was not an easy thing.
As they clashed, the heavens and earth changed color. The land, mountains, and rivers shattered under the aftershocks of their battle.
With a wave of his hand, Ryosuke could summon rivers to flow backward into dragons, mountains to leap up into tigers. Isshiki, likewise, could reduce all attacks within his gaze to nothingness.
Yakushi Kabuto glanced down at the White Snake Sage's belly.
Obito was sleeping inside, dreaming of becoming the Ten-Tails' jinchuriki and sweeping the world without rival.
Kabuto pursed his dry lips.
With combat displays of this level, even a Ten-Tails jinchuriki… could they really win?
"Don't lose focus."
The White Snake Sage's words pulled Kabuto out of his thoughts. It pointed its tail at Ryosuke.
"Remember every one of his abilities. Sooner or later, you'll have to face them."
"Me?" Kabuto pointed at himself.
"Yes."
The White Snake Sage patted Kabuto's back.
"I believe that one day, you'll be able to defeat Ryosuke."
Kabuto looked at the scene on the television, then at the White Snake Sage's serious expression, and for a moment didn't know what to say.
He could only turn his head and continue watching the broadcast.
The slaughter between Ryosuke and Otsutsuki Isshiki entered a white-hot phase.
Unlike Toneri, Isshiki didn't have many flashy techniques, just simple mechanics paired with extreme stats.
In that sense, he and Ryosuke were the same type of person.
However…
Crack!
Ryosuke swung his blade down. Isshiki blocked with a black rod. As they struggled against each other, a crack appeared on Isshiki's body.
After all, it wasn't a perfect body that had truly reincarnated.
Jigen's body couldn't withstand the power of Karma, Stage Two for long.
"Let's stop here for now, Ryosuke," Otsutsuki Isshiki said.
"I don't want to fight you to the death. Believe me, you don't want to see what I look like when I fight to the death either."
"For today, let's end it here. How about it?"