"You really haven't changed," I said, staring at Hashirama like he'd just walked out of our childhood. "Still the same soft-hearted idiot."
The guy actually flinched. Those big earnest eyes of his… yeah, they hadn't aged a day.
Meanwhile I'd gone from salaryman to child soldier to whatever this overpowered disaster was.
Hashirama stepped forward, voice shaking with hope he didn't deserve.
"We've changed, Raizen-kun. All of us have… except you. You're the one still holding on to that dream."
Dream. Right. The one where three boys thought they could fix the world.
"Raizen… will you accept my request?" he asked quietly.
I exhaled. Slowly. Painfully. Then turned to my forces.
"Konoha, fall back."
My voice carried across the battlefield. The Amamiya and allied shinobi pulled away without hesitation. Hashirama mirrored me, ordering the Senju and Uchiha to retreat far into the treeline. In seconds the world grew brutally, painfully quiet.
Three men remained.
Me.
Hashirama.
Madara.
Madara cracked his neck, Sharingan glittering like twin storms.
"Raizen… I've waited years for this. Don't you dare hold back. If you do, I'll kill you."
"Same to you," I said. "If you're coming at me today, come to win… or stay down."
Madara didn't need to be told twice. His Susanoo erupted upward in a burst of blue fury, greatsword swinging down toward me with enough force to collapse a mountain.
"Bring it on!" Hashirama roared, face etched with Sage markings as two massive vine-whips tore out of the earth.
Perfect.
This is exactly what the reincarnator handbook warned me about.
Page 62: "Childhood friends will eventually try to murder you simultaneously."
I triggered Susanoo's wings, launching myself skyward, longbow snapping into a blade wreathed in Amaterasu's black fire.
"Good. Now we're talking."
I cut through Hashirama's vines, but the man's chakra was monstrous. One whip wrapped around my Susanoo's waist, yanking. My armor groaned. The vine strained.
Then snapped like rotten rope as I forced myself downward toward Madara.
"Madara!"
The blade of black flame came screaming down, aimed straight for him.
Madara didn't retreat. Because Madara never retreats.
"Finally!" he shouted, meeting my swing with twin chakra blades.
The world exploded.
Stone shattered and flew like kunai. A crater tore open beneath us, wide enough to bury a house. The shockwave sent heat and wind roaring out in every direction.
"Don't ignore me!" Hashirama's voice thundered from behind.
The ground bucked. Chakra surged. Then the world just… erupted.
A hundred meters of battlefield transformed into a writhing, devouring forest as Wood Release burst upward with enough force to flip mountains. Branches lunged for me like living blades.
"Tree World, huh?" I muttered. "Cute. I can do that too."
I shoved Madara back, formed seals so fast my fingers blurred, and unleashed a forest of my own—my Wood Release slamming into Hashirama's like two titans grappling for the right to exist.
Hashirama's eyes widened.
"You… Raizen… you can use Wood Release as well?"
Madara snorted. "You're full of surprises, Raizen-kun, but this—this I can counter."
His hands blurred.
"Fire Style: Majestic Destroyer Flame!"
Under his Eternal Mangekyō, the flames didn't just burn. They roared alive like a goddess of fire screaming her fury. Half the forest ignited instantly. Heat washed across the battlefield like a furnace door kicked open.
Even through Susanoo, my skin prickled.
"As expected of you, Madara. Seriously."
But heat had a weakness. All heat does.
My chakra dipped. Turned cold. Dangerous.
A chill spilled outward from my feet like the breath of winter itself.
"What—?!" Hashirama's voice cracked.
The fire died in an instant. Wood Release froze solid mid-growth.
Frost swallowed everything in a hundred-meter radius, locking the world in white silence.
Both Madara and Hashirama braced back, teeth grit against the cold.
"Has he… grown this much?" Hashirama whispered.
Madara clicked his tongue. "This bastard… it's been years, and he's still annoying."
I stepped forward, Susanoo's red armor cutting across the frost like some myth dragged out of an old shrine painting.
"Looks pretty good," I said, admiring the white plain beneath me. "Not bad for barely any Ice Release training."
Hashirama's face shifted. The excitement was unmistakable.
"Raizen-kun is serious. Then… so am I."
His chakra flared—no, detonated.
"Wood Release… Deep Forest Emergence!"
Sage Mode boosted him beyond anything human. The ice shattered beneath an avalanche of roots. Trees burst up faster than I could cut them, an entire forest blooming like it was trying to smother the sky.
Vines the thickness of houses lashed at me, endless, relentless, choking out the world.
I sliced through dozens with Amaterasu's blade.
Burned hundreds.
Froze thousands.
Didn't matter.
Hashirama's Wood Release just kept coming. Ceaseless. Alive. Immortal.
"This… is Hashirama when he stops holding back," I muttered, blood pounding in my ears.
Good.
If I ever wanted to build Konoha, I had to beat monsters like these.