Chapter 494: A Rare Meeting Between Onoki and the Raikage
The Fourth Raikage's heavy brow furrowed. He stared down at the crumpled heap of fabric and limbs discarded near his feet on the cold stone floor.
A moment later, the pile shifted.
A raspy, agonizing groan echoed in the damp cell.
"Ouch... my aching back..."
The Raikage flinched, his massive frame jolting as his eyes widened in sheer disbelief.
"O... Onoki?"
Hearing his name, the Third Tsuchikage struggled to lift his bruised face from the unforgiving floorboards. Through the dim, flickering light of the dungeon, his blurry vision focused on the towering, muscle-bound figure standing over him. The man looked like a cornered black bear.
Their eyes locked.
A suffocating, heavy silence descended upon the cramped cell.
The sheer awkwardness of the moment hung thick in the stale air. Here stood the Fourth Raikage of Kumogakure, and at his feet lay the Third Tsuchikage of Iwagakure. Not long ago, they had stood proudly as the Supreme Commander and Deputy Commander of the mighty Shinobi Alliance, raising their cups and swearing a blood oath to eradicate Konoha from the map.
And now.
They had successfully joined forces once again—as pathetic, broken prisoners rotting in the same dark cage.
"Why the hell are you here?"
The Raikage broke the silence first, thrusting a thick, calloused finger toward the old man.
"How did a slippery old geezer like you end up captured?"
His booming roar bounced off the narrow stone walls, causing Onoki's sensitive eardrums to ring painfully.
Gritting his teeth, Onoki braced his hands against the wall and forced himself up. He slapped the dirt from his torn robes with trembling hands. He might have been reduced to the status of a prisoner, but he refused to let this muscle-brained brute trample on his remaining dignity.
He let out a cold, dismissive snort, casting a sideways glare at the towering man.
"What are you shouting for, you idiot?" Onoki rasped. "Do you think screaming at the walls will magically open the iron bars?"
Limping toward a slightly drier corner of the cell, Onoki slid down against the rough stone, his wrinkled face twisted in a scowl of pure misery.
"I was covering my subordinates' retreat. I stayed behind alone to hold the line against the enemy!" He lifted his chin defiantly. "It was a heroic sacrifice for the sake of my village! Completely unlike a reckless brute like you."
A mocking sneer curled the edges of Onoki's mustache.
"Word on the battlefield was that you were beaten to a pulp in a head-on clash, then dragged back to Konoha by your collar like a helpless little chick."
"Bullshit!"
The Raikage exploded, instantly bristling like a wild beast caught in a trap.
"I was just careless!"
Thick blue veins bulged against the dark skin of his thick neck, spit flying from his lips as he roared his defense.
"Careless?" Onoki scoffed, shaking his head with slow, deliberate pity. "Fine. Keep lying to yourself if it makes you feel better."
The old man leaned his head back against the cold stone.
"After the news of your humiliating defeat at the hands of Might Guy reached the front lines... your right-hand man, Darui, lost his composure. He led the Kumogakure forces in a frantic, desperate charge straight into the teeth of the Konoha camp."
"But..."
Onoki opened his eyes, fixing the Raikage with a heavy, pitiful stare.
"It was completely useless."
"The suicide squad Kumogakure threw together couldn't even scratch their vanguard. Konoha's defensive line was an impenetrable iron fortress. And then..."
Onoki's voice hitched. He took a slow, ragged breath, the memory clearly haunting him.
"You should have seen it, A. Uchiha Akira's Susanoo."
The old man's hands trembled slightly in his lap.
"That was a true Perfect Susanoo. It was nothing like that half-baked, incomplete skeleton Uchiha Fugaku used to parade around. When that colossal purple god of destruction manifested on the battlefield, it just stood there. It did not even need to move. The sheer suffocating pressure of its chakra caused the shinobi from the smaller allied villages to mentally break. They dropped their weapons and wept in terror. With our morale shattered, I had no choice but to order a full retreat."
Naturally, the wily old Tsuchikage cleverly altered a few key details, smoothing over the embarrassing truth that he had been the very first to turn tail and run, conveniently shifting the blame onto the fragile courage of the minor hidden villages.
After speaking, Onoki paused, his tone turning grim.
"In the end, the main forces of Kumogakure and Iwagakure retreated under the cover of chaos. We left behind a few rearguard units and the stragglers from the minor villages who couldn't pull out in time. They served as meat shields to bog down Konoha's pursuit squads."
He closed his eyes.
"The Shinobi Alliance was officially declared disbanded right then and there."
Hearing those words, the fight drained out of the Raikage. His massive legs gave out, and he slumped heavily onto the dirty floorboards.
Retreated. That meant Kumogakure had lost. They had completely, utterly lost the war.
His pride screamed in denial, his fists clenching until his knuckles turned white, but the cold logic of a Kage forced him to accept reality. With their Supreme Commander captured and their vanguard decimated, Darui and the others had no other strategic choice but to flee.
"Then what about you?"
The Raikage finally spoke after a long, suffocating silence, his golden eyes locking onto the old man.
"If you successfully ordered a retreat, how exactly did you end up dragged into this cell?"
At the mention of his own capture, Onoki's wrinkled face flushed a dark, humiliated red, before swiftly draining into a sickly, defeated pallor.
"I had actually managed to escape the main battlefield," Onoki muttered, a bitter, hollow laugh escaping his throat. "But... that monster, Uchiha Akira. He never had any intention of letting me walk away."
The horrifying, desperate scene flashed behind Onoki's eyes, vivid and terrifying.
"I used my Dust Release. I fired it multiple times in a row, pushing my chakra to the absolute limit. I even rallied thousands of elite Iwagakure shinobi to launch a synchronized, massive ninjutsu bombardment directly at him."
Onoki's voice grew fainter, weighed down by a crushing sense of absolute powerlessness.
"And the result? Uchiha Akira's Perfect Susanoo just stood there. It absorbed the combined destructive force of thousands of jutsu without taking a single step back. When the smoke cleared, he was completely unharmed."
The Tsuchikage let out another self-deprecating chuckle, staring blankly at his own calloused hands.
"Onoki of Both Scales. The legendary Dust Release. The pinnacle of elemental transformation, the Kekkei Tota... In front of Uchiha Akira, all my lifelong pride was nothing but a pathetic joke."
As the words left his mouth, Onoki seemed to deflate entirely, as if his very spine had been surgically removed. He slumped further against the damp wall.
"Snatching me from the sky was as effortless for him as plucking a helpless chick from a nest."
The Raikage sat in stunned silence.
He knew the Third Tsuchikage's strength intimately. To hear that Onoki, backed by thousands of elite stone shinobi, could not even scratch Uchiha Akira's armor... it defied all logic.
"," Onoki whispered, his eyes hollow with utter dejection, "Uchiha Akira has already issued an absolute ultimatum to Iwagakure. If the entire village does not surrender and permanently merge into Konoha, he will personally march to the Land of Earth and level Iwagakure to the ground."
Merge into Konoha?
The Raikage's breath hitched. Had Uchiha Akira's dark ambition truly expanded to such a terrifying scale?
"That arrogant bastard!"
The Raikage roared, slamming his massive fist into the floorboards. The sheer kinetic force of the blow sent a spiderweb of deep cracks racing across the solid stone.
"Does he actually intend to annex the Five Great Shinobi Nations? Is he trying to conquer and unify the entire ninja world by force?"
"And why shouldn't he?" Onoki asked quietly, his voice devoid of its usual fiery stubbornness.
"He possesses the absolute strength to do exactly that. Even the legendary Sage of Six Paths was probably only at this level of power."
The old man looked up at the ceiling. "Look at the current ninja world. Who is left to stop him?"
Onoki pointed a trembling finger at the Raikage. "You?"
He pointed to his own chest. "Me?"
Slowly, Onoki shook his head.
"There is no one left. The times have changed, A. The era of the Five Kage balancing power... our era... is officially over."
The Raikage opened his mouth to shout a furious denial, to declare that Kumogakure would fight to the last drop of blood, but the words died in his throat. He could not find a single logical argument to refute the old man.
If Uchiha Akira's Perfect Susanoo could shrug off the pinnacle of Dust Release and the concentrated artillery fire of thousands of Iwagakure shinobi, who else could possibly stand in his way?
A cold, unmatched sense of absolute despair wrapped its icy fingers around the Raikage's fiercely proud heart.
"Then what? We just sit in this dark hole and wait to die?" the Raikage demanded, grinding his teeth together in bitter unwillingness.
"What else do you suggest?"
Onoki grunted, rolling onto his side to find a slightly more comfortable position on the hard floor.
"Since we are already locked in here, we might as well make ourselves at home. Anyway, these brittle old bones of mine do not have many years left to live regardless of what happens."
He cast a sideways glance at the brooding giant.
"As for you... you are still in your prime. It would certainly be a pity for a warrior like you to rot to death in a Konoha dungeon."
Onoki paused, his sharp political instincts flickering briefly in his tired eyes.
"However... the fact that Uchiha Akira went out of his way to capture us alive instead of executing us on the battlefield means we still possess some utility value to him. As long as we remain useful, he will not kill us."
The old Tsuchikage shifted his weight, pulling his torn robes tighter against the dungeon chill.
"As for what happens after he extracts that value... let us just leave it to fate."
Inside the cramped cell, a long, heavy silence fell over the two fallen leaders. There were no more arguments, no more grand declarations of war.
Only the slow, ragged breathing of two defeated men echoed in the dark.
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