The instant battle resumed, Tendo Pain's body snapped forward, his frame blurring with unnatural speed. His grip tightened around the black chakra rod, which seemed almost alive in his hand. With a sharp gust that cut through the mist, the weapon thrust forward, a lethal spear aimed at Danzo's vitals.
Danzo's face was unreadable, his gaze cold and calculating.
In the same heartbeat, his jet-black wooden sword arced upward, as though animated by a will of its own. Wind Release chakra surged along the blade, sharpening it beyond sight, the air itself howling as it met the oncoming strike.
Clang!
The battlefield rang with the piercing clash. Black rod and wooden sword locked in a deadly stalemate, their opposing energies tearing the earth beneath them.
Pain's weapon radiated the chill of the Rinnegan—unyielding, oppressive, as though it pierced not just flesh but the soul itself. Each strike carried the suffocating weight of inevitability, as if resistance itself was an illusion.
Danzo's blade, however, pulsed with madness—wild, feral, sharpened by countless stolen Sharingan burning across his body. The Wind Release around it roared like a storm of invisible razors, fearless in its defiance of the so-called "god."
Each impact sent shockwaves surging outward, rattling stone, ripping up soil, and hurling debris into the air. Dust swirled around them in violent eddies, a storm born from their fury.
Danzo's wrist snapped, the sword carving a jagged, unnatural arc. In a blink, the blade slid toward Pain's throat, its angle deceptive, near-impossible to track.
But Pain adjusted with uncanny precision. His body shifted a fraction, and the black rod swept across, intercepting the strike. The two traded blows in a blur of steel and chakra, each attack aimed with ruthless precision at the other's vitals.
To an onlooker, their movements would have been nothing but shadows and sparks. A storm of death in human form.
Then—
Pain's heel smashed into the ground, sending a shockwave through the battlefield as he launched himself upward. His figure rose like a dark comet. From above, the black rod descended, its killing intent suffocating as it stabbed down like a divine judgment.
Danzo didn't move an inch. His wooden sword spun in a whirl of wind, a storm wrapped around its edge. With inhuman precision, he raised it to meet the falling strike.
Clash!
The collision rang out like thunder. A violent eruption of chakra blasted the two apart, their feet skidding against torn earth, both forced several steps back.
But neither relented. In the very next instant, they lunged once more, black rod and cursed wooden blade intertwining in a relentless dance of offense and defense. Sparks, chakra waves, and shockwaves filled the battlefield.
Yet as the exchanges grew longer, Danzo began to falter.
Even with his unnatural stamina, even with the monstrous boost of countless Sharingan burning on his body, facing the Six Paths alone was a trial that ground against even his warped limits. His swings carried weight, but his flow faltered ever so slightly under the endless storm of Pain's divine assaults.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, the tide of battle reached a breaking point.
On the outskirts of the Hidden Mist Village, chakra writhed violently. The debris left behind by Shinra Tensei—splintered wood, shattered stone—suddenly caught fire. Black flames crackled and spread across the battlefield, devouring matter, devouring light.
The ground trembled, the very air distorted, as if space itself shuddered under the rising malice. The auras of both Obito and Danzo swelled in response, warping into something monstrous.
"Get lost!"
Obito's roar shattered the fog. His right hand tore into the shadows that clung to him, wrenching Black Zetsu free with terrifying strength. The parasite writhed helplessly in his grip, its sludge-like form trembling beneath the Mangekyo's crimson gaze.
The parasite had latched to countless hosts, yet in that moment, under Obito's gaze, it felt paralyzed. Trapped.
A bitter thought coiled in its mind: This man… he is no longer someone even Nagato and I can suppress.
Obito's voice was low, venomous:"You thought you could chain me? Pathetic."
With that, Zetsu's body froze like black stone, locked helplessly under Obito's crushing ocular power.
Obito's form blurred—then vanished. In the blink of an eye, he reappeared directly before Uchiha Itachi.
Biwa Jūzō reacted instantly, his hands gripping the Kubikiribōchō, the massive blade cutting the air in a defensive sweep.
But Obito was already there.
His boot slammed forward, burying itself in Jūzō's chest with brutal force.
Thump!
The impact thundered through the battlefield. Jūzō's body folded under the blow, blood spraying from his mouth as he was hurled backward, crashing into the earth in a heap. His massive blade clattered to the ground beside him.
He didn't rise.
Obito's gaze snapped back to Itachi, his voice low and mocking, the words twisting like knives: "Itachi… how much longer can you keep standing?"
Facing the crushing pressure of Obito's killing intent, Itachi's eyes narrowed, Mangekyō spinning with desperate resolve. In the next instant, a colossal Susanoo erupted from his body, flames licking across its armored frame as it bellowed into existence. The fiery giant raised the Totsuka Blade high, its sealing aura radiating with unyielding force, and charged headlong at Obito, determined to bind him for eternity.
But behind Obito, something equally monstrous began to stir.
A Susanoo—alien, malformed—slowly took shape, its half-formed body writhing as though resisting its own existence. Unlike Itachi's pure manifestation of willpower, this Susanoo seemed like an abomination clawed up from the depths of madness itself.
Danzo's sharp eyes flashed. His hands blurred through seals, slamming down against the ground. The shattered husks of withered wood all around suddenly writhed like snakes, surging upward, fusing into the half-formed Susanoo at Obito's back.
Obito tilted his head, his voice cutting through the chaos like a jagged blade:
"Uchiha Gen… if you would lend me strength—then give it all to me!"
Danzo leapt to his side, his Sharingan spinning with manic intensity. At that instant, Obito and Danzo's visual power fused—two storms merging into a single, catastrophic force. The Susanoo behind them convulsed and swelled.
Its body bloated with blackened chakra, wings of molten flame tore open behind its back, beating with a sound like a funeral dirge. Its head warped into the visage of a burning moth, while its lower half twisted into a serpentine dragon's tail that coiled with malevolent energy.
The Dragon-Moth Susanoo—a fusion of corruption, hatred, and stolen power—screamed into existence, its aura so foul it seemed to poison the very air.
Without hesitation, it lunged at Itachi's Susanoo.
When the two titans clashed, the sky itself shattered. A shockwave of raw chakra swept across the battlefield, burning the very oxygen from the air.
Itachi's Susanoo staggered under the crushing weight, the strain immediately too much. Blood burst from Itachi's lips, his face paling to ash.
The grotesque third eye on his forehead spun wildly, sucking his remaining chakra into an endless void. His Susanoo flickered, its fiery armor crumbling away, before shattering entirely into motes of fading chakra.
Itachi collapsed to one knee, breath ragged, his body trembling as though hollowed out.
Meanwhile, the Dragon-Moth Susanoo only grew more ferocious, its eyes glowing like twin furnaces of bloodlust. With a single turn, it redirected its killing intent toward Tendo Pain.
The battle across Hidden Mist Village reached its fever pitch. Root operatives and the Fourth Mizukage's loyalists tightened their grip, Village Elder Genshi's forces crumbling under the pressure. The Kiri Rebellion, battered and bloodied, stood on the brink of collapse.
And then—
The remaining Paths of Pain moved in unison. Naraka Path slammed its hands together, resurrecting the Human, Preta, and Asura Paths in a burst of black chakra. One by one, their power streamed into Tendo Pain's body, the Rinnegan glowing like molten suns.
Nagato's voice, strained through the conduit of his Deva Path, echoed low and grim:
"Three… any more will consume the body… but this is the limit I can risk."
He raised his hand toward the heavens.
"Shinra Tensei!"
The world split open.
Repulsive force crashed outward in a cataclysm, a tidal wave of gravity and violence colliding with the Dragon-Moth Susanoo. The abomination's chakra roared back in defiance, the clash of energies tearing the battlefield into a storm of distorted space and howling destruction.
It was as though doomsday itself had descended on the Land of Water.
At that moment, Tendo Pain barked an order through the chaos:
"Zetsu! Itachi! Jūzō! Retreat!"
The three vanished into the shadows.
The other five Paths did not escape. The overwhelming collision ripped them apart like fragile dolls, their bodies shredded and cast into the storm.
The explosion's aftershocks raged for long moments, the roar echoing like thunder that would not end.
And when the dust finally settled, the battlefield told the grim truth:
The Akatsuki had fallen.
Danzo and Obito stood victorious.
The Hidden Mist Village—once locked in its cycle of blood—was now firmly in their grasp.