Chapter 122 - The Sarutobi Clan Annihilated! The Shimura Clan Annihilated!!!
At this point, Konoha's side had already collapsed across the entire front. There was no coherent defense left-only scattered pockets of resistance that fought more out of inertia than conviction, as if their bodies still remembered duty even while their hearts had already accepted the ending.
Danzō's "death" had been nothing but a trick. After faking it, he fled the battlefield with his tail between his legs, vanishing into the shadows to cling to life the way he always had. But the cost of his escape was total: the Shimura clan had been wiped out, Root had been erased from history, and whatever power he'd once built through fear and secrecy died screaming in the streets he claimed to protect.
Koharu, too, had fallen-killed by Tsunade's hands.
And the rest? Might Guy, Kakashi, Kurenai… they fought with restraint, their movements careful and incomplete. The clans watched, calculated, and held back. Everyone had their own reasons, their own limits, their own silent lines they refused to cross for a village that had crossed too many first.
Under the combined assault of Chiba, Orochimaru, Tsunade, Ryūchi Cave's snake legions, Katsuyu, and Otogakure's thousand-strong elite force, Konohagakure had become a slaughter-ground-an unholy arena of crushed stone, corrosive acid, shattered bodies, and screaming chakra.
By now, only a handful still had the will-and the strength-to fight on.
At the center stood Jiraiya, backed by the forces he could still summon from Mount Myōboku: Gamabunta, and the elder sages, Fukasaku and Shima. Behind him, barely holding formation, were the last ANBU still loyal to Hiruzen's camp, and what remained of the Sarutobi clan.
This was Konoha's final barrier.
And Chiba intended to crush it-cleanly, completely-until even hope had nowhere left to hide.
He had just finished "killing" Danzō and erasing Root alongside the Shimura clan when he turned without hesitation, spearpoint shifting toward Jiraiya's position. Orochimaru noticed Chiba moving personally and let out a low, pleased laugh. He disengaged from Jiraiya's front without urgency and redirected his force into the clan formations instead, carving through Konoha's remaining structure like a surgeon working without anesthesia.
Jiraiya's face tightened the moment Chiba arrived.
No one in this world understood Chiba's terror better than he did. He had seen it-again and again-each time in a different shape, each time more complete. But this time, there was nowhere to run. No angle left to exploit. No plan he could still pretend would work.
Only a desperate, final gamble.
"Fukasaku-sama, Shima-sama… Bunta," Jiraiya said, voice rough as if it scraped against his own throat. "It's come to this. I can only fight with everything I have left."
He drew in a breath, eyes hardening. "Please… lend me your strength!"
Fukasaku's gaze softened-not with pity, but with that weary kindness only old warriors could still carry. "Alright, kid Jiraiya."
In a single heartbeat, Jiraiya, Fukasaku, Shima, and Gamabunta surged with senjutsu chakra at the same time. The air thickened. The battlefield's noise seemed to dull at the edges, as if nature itself leaned in to listen.
"Senpō ("Sage Art")… Gōyōgōmon ( "Goemon")!!!"
It was the ultimate combined technique-Jiraiya and the elder toads amplifying Gamabunta's output into something that could drown armies.
Scalding oil erupted like a tidal wave, roaring outward in a molten flood, its surface rippling with lethal heat and pressure. It rolled straight toward Chiba and the White Snake Sage beneath him, the white-scaled serpent a towering silhouette against the oncoming inferno.
For most of the shinobi world, this was catastrophe given form.
For Chiba-
It was merely a threat worth acknowledging.
He lifted one hand.
And the world answered with cold.
A blast of extreme frost detonated from him, violent enough to make the air scream. It wasn't just chill-it was a crushing, abyssal cold, threaded with Ryūchi Cave senjutsu, saturated with natural energy that didn't belong to ordinary men. The full mastery of his devil-fruit ability, refined to its limit, merged seamlessly with the strongest sage power this world could offer.
The result was a sky-covering arctic surge.
It crashed into Goemon head-on.
Ice and fire collided.
Heat shrieked. Cold roared. The battlefield became a furnace and a blizzard at the same time-steam exploding upward, light warping, the very air turning violent with contradictions.
But it wasn't a stalemate.
There was no equal struggle.
There was only domination.
Chiba's extreme frost swallowed the flames and the oil in an instant-freezing it all so completely it looked as if the inferno had been turned into an ocean of ice mid-breath. The rolling firestorm became a solid, endless frozen sheet, crystalline and dead.
Jiraiya, Fukasaku, Shima, and Gamabunta stared, stunned into silence.
They had withstood Chiba's earlier Ice Age together.
But this-
This was different.
This was Chiba finally letting the battlefield see what his "real power" looked like.
And the worst part was that the freezing wave didn't stop after sealing Goemon.
It kept coming.
It surged forward like judgment, racing toward them with murderous speed.
They didn't even have time to process their shock.
Jiraiya snapped into motion.
"Katon ("Fire Release")… Gama Yūendan ( "Toad Oil Flame Bullet")!!!"
Flames erupted-massive, expansive, a sea of fire broad enough to rival the legendary infernos of the strongest Uchiha techniques. At the same time, Fukasaku and Shima unleashed their own senjutsu in perfect rhythm:
"Senpō ("Sage Art")… Fūton: Suna Hokori ( "Wind Release: Sand Dust")!!!"
"Senpō ("Sage Art")… Suiton: Suizan no Jutsu ( "Water Severing Technique")!!!"
Fire, hurricane wind, and cutting torrents of water slammed forward together, layered into a three-pronged counterattack meant to break the frost by force and chaos.
It did nothing.
The ice didn't slow.
The flames vanished as if they'd never existed. The wind collapsed into silence. The water froze, bound and erased, swallowed by a cold that didn't "fight"-it simply decided.
Then the extreme frost reached Gamabunta.
The giant toad's enormous body froze in place in a breath-ice crawling up his limbs, sealing his muscle and joints, trapping him as if the battlefield itself had turned him into a monument.
Jiraiya, Fukasaku, and Shima sprang upward at the last possible moment, barely escaping the freezing wave. They landed hard, breath ragged, eyes wide.
And that was the moment Konoha's remaining loyalists threw themselves in.
ANBU surged forward, unleashing every elemental technique they could fire in desperation.
"Fūton ("Wind Release")… Fūkiri no Jutsu ( "Wind Cutter Technique")!!!"
"Raiton ("Lightning Release")… Shichū Bakufu no Jutsu ("Four-Pillar Binding Technique")!!!"
"Katon ("Fire Release")… Suyaki no Jutsu ("Clay-Firing Technique")!!!"
The Sarutobi clan-barely two or three dozen left-joined as well. They knew what this was. If they didn't bet everything now, there would be no "later" to regret.
They poured out the last of their chakra like men throwing their own lives into the fire.
"Katon ("Fire Release")… Gōen no Jutsu ( "Great Flame Technique")!!!"
Wind, lightning, fire, water, earth-everything Konoha could still raise in one place came crashing toward Chiba in a storm of jutsu, a desperate display of legacy and pride.
Chiba smiled, calm and faintly amused.
Beneath him, the White Snake Sage hissed-and the battlefield's atmosphere buckled as senjutsu exploded outward.
"Senpō ("Sage Art")… Karyū no Jutsu ( "Dragon Transformation Technique")!!!"
All the sage chakra condensed into the White Snake Sage, fusing, compressing, refining until the serpent's form blurred and transformed-becoming a colossal dragon of pure senjutsu chakra. Natural energy from the surroundings was ripped in and woven into its body, swelling its scale until it eclipsed the street, the buildings, the sky's line itself.
Then it lunged.
It didn't dodge.
It didn't weave.
It didn't bother acknowledging the incoming jutsu with respect.
It simply slammed forward, a dragon of nature's wrath crashing into Konoha's final loyalist formation.
The impact turned the world white.
A single strike-
-and ANBU, and the Sarutobi clan, and their desperate elemental storm were annihilated in the explosion. The sky and earth seemed to detonate together, sound collapsing into a hollow roar as bodies were reduced to ash and dust, chakra extinguished like sparks under a wave.
When the light cleared, the battlefield fell into a dead, unbearable silence.
Despair seeped into the bones of every remaining Konoha shinobi. Fear sat heavy on tongues that couldn't form words. The war had moved past pain into something colder-something that felt like inevitability.
Jiraiya stared at what was left and felt something inside him go quiet.
Danzō was gone. Koharu was dead. Root was erased. The Shimura were wiped out. The Sarutobi were wiped out. ANBU had been burned out of existence.
And now?
Was there even meaning left in continuing?
It felt as if Konoha had been reduced to a single man standing in the rubble-alone, facing Chiba's unstoppable tide.
Jiraiya exhaled slowly and shook his head.
Around them, the rest of Konoha's forces were also collapsing under the combined assault of Ryūchi Cave's snakes, Otogakure's army, Orochimaru's pressure, Tsunade's devastating presence, and Katsuyu's relentless support. The battle had become one-sided in the clearest, cruelest way.
Everyone could see the truth.
Konoha couldn't win.
The clans saw it too-and they acted like clans, not martyrs.
They began pulling back, fighting defensively, retreating step by step. They did it with calculations behind their eyes: Chiba was ruthless, yes, but he wasn't a mad butcher. He had limits. He'd accepted Momochi Zabuza. He'd accepted Pakura of Sunagakure. He'd taken in the Uchiha and the Hyūga after their defection. Under his rule, Kirigakure's clans had grown rather than been strangled.
If Konoha fell and became part of Chiba's domain… would he really slaughter everyone?
They didn't believe so.
And if the outcome was inevitable, why should they die for Hiruzen Sarutobi's faction?
What did dying for that regime ever earn anyone?
Sakumo Hatake. Tsunade. Minato Namikaze. Hyūga Hizashi.
The answers were carved into history in blood.
So the clans withdrew.
Kakashi, Guy, Kurenai-each of them retreated with measured restraint, protecting lives rather than pride.
The battlefield emptied until only one figure remained at its center, still refusing to step back.
Jiraiya.
Chiba looked at him, expression unreadable.
"Jiraiya," Chiba said evenly, voice carrying through the ruined street. "Will you still refuse to surrender?"
Jiraiya's jaw tightened. "Maybe… maybe Sensei was wrong in countless ways. Maybe Konoha is rotten, filled with darkness and decay." His eyes flicked over the devastation, and the pain in his gaze was real. "But this is where I was born. This is my home. I can't stand here and watch you destroy it."
Chiba's smile returned, faint and almost sad.
"Destroy it?"
He tilted his head. "You're wrong, Jiraiya."
"What I'm doing… is saving Konoha."
His voice sharpened-not with anger, but with certainty. "The one truly killing this village isn't me. And you know exactly who that is."
Jiraiya's heart lurched.
He did know.
He'd known for years, even when he pretended he didn't.
Fukasaku and Shima sighed beside his ears, their voices gentle with the resignation of elders who had seen too many wars end the same way.
"Enough, kid Jiraiya…"
"Keep fighting, and nothing changes. Only more bodies."
Jiraiya stayed silent, staring at the wreckage as if searching for a path that wasn't there. He understood the logic. He understood the cost.
But surrender…
Could he really do it?
Could he watch this happen and not try to stop it?
Fukasaku's voice turned firmer. "Kid Jiraiya, keep going and Konoha loses even more. Surrender now, and you can still protect the village's civilians… the shinobi who've stopped fighting… the children."
And then-
A voice cut through the smoke.
"Ero-sennin!!!"
Jiraiya froze.
He turned, and there-standing at the edge of devastation with wide eyes and shaking breath-was Uzumaki Naruto.
"Naruto?!" Jiraiya's blood went cold. "Go back! This isn't a place you should be-at least not at your age!"
Naruto stared at the ruined streets, at the corpses and the monsters and the ice-scarred sky. Terror and disbelief twisted together in his expression.
"W-What… what happened, Ero-sennin?!"
Jiraiya forced a bitter smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"This is a natural disaster… and a man-made one."
He looked away, shame heavy in his chest. "It's a loss we can't bear-worse than the Kyuubi incident."
His voice dropped. "Sorry, Naruto. I couldn't protect Minato… and today I couldn't protect Konoha either."
Naruto didn't fully understand-but the weight in Jiraiya's tone told him enough.
Jiraiya slowly unclenched his fist.
He exhaled.
Then, finally, he lifted his gaze to Chiba.
"Mizukage-sama… you've won."
His throat tightened as he forced the words out, each one tasting like blood.
"This Konoha…"
"…is yours."
Around him, the last shinobi who had still been fighting at his side-those who remained loyal to Hiruzen, to the old Konoha-went pale. Their shoulders sagged as if their bones had suddenly doubled in weight.
Weapons slipped from numb fingers.
Clang-clang-clang.
Steel hit the ground.
The sound felt like an ending.
With Jiraiya's surrender, the rest of the village followed. The clans that had already been retreating didn't hesitate. They laid down arms, stepped back, and chose survival over a doomed pride.
Kakashi. Guy. Yamato. Kurenai.
The Aburame, Inuzuka, Akimichi, Nara, Yamanaka-
All of them surrendered.
All of them-
Except two.
Because the Sarutobi clan and the Shimura clan…
Had already been erased.
Completely.
Annihilated to the last.
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