So strong.
Too strong!
Watching the battle between Kaede and Kaguya unfold in the sky, even Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura were struck speechless, let alone Kakashi, who had already reached the level of the Six Paths. He too couldn't help the look of shock on his face.
With just a single punch, Kaede shattered Kaguya's Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack. With a casual swing of his arm, he blew apart all of her techniques, along with her entire body.
That seemingly unremarkable frame of his contained nearly invincible power. No matter what the attack was, no matter what form it took, a single blow from him could erase it completely.
At this moment, Kaede...
Felt like despair incarnate.
Kakashi merely imagined himself fighting against Kaede, and instantly felt he'd be annihilated. Even his Kamui's intangibility might be forcibly torn apart by a punch capable of distorting space itself!
"So strong..."
"So this is... the power of the Hokage..."
Sakura, still being held by the collar in Kakashi's hand, couldn't stop murmuring in awe as she looked up at Kaede. His effortless dismantling of Kaguya with just a few moves was too shocking to take in.
She had heard countless legends of Kaede, how it was said that he split an entire canyon outside Konoha with a single sword swing, but she had never seen him in action before.
Now...
Witnessing his strength firsthand, she felt utterly insignificant. Like a single drop of water compared to an entire ocean.
"...Is it over?" Sakura turned toward Kakashi.
Kakashi came back to his senses, but did not relax. He kept his eyes on the sky and shook his head.
"No... Not yet. She's the progenitor of chakra. An immortal. She won't go down that easily."
Almost as soon as he spoke, the fragments of white matter scattered across the sky abruptly halted, as though pulled by an unseen force. With a whoosh, they surged toward a single point and reformed into Kaguya's body.
Her face was pale now, and her chakra had clearly diminished from earlier. The battle had taken its toll, even on her.
Normal chakra attacks were useless...
The All-Killing Ash Bones couldn't reach him...
She couldn't find an opening with long-range attacks, and any close-range engagement would end in her being overwhelmed. No matter what approach she tried, she couldn't win.
That meant...
Only one final option remained!
Kaguya took a breath. The Rinne Sharingan on her forehead pulsed with light. Amenominaka, the Heaven's Shift, suddenly activated. The entire world transformed in an instant.
Kakashi, Naruto, and Sakura all felt their vision blur, and found themselves in a bizarre new world. The icy cold was gone, replaced by a suffocating, oppressive atmosphere.
The sky above was a murky yellow-green mist.
The land was a rolling expanse of red hills.
This was Kaguya's Core Genesis Dimension, the original space created by her Amenominaka.
Crack! Crack!
The ground beneath her began to split apart. A torrent of chakra surged into her body, quickly restoring her strength, and her aura once again rose sharply.
Then,
That wild chakra began to pour outward, spreading from her body in all directions. It condensed into pitch-black matter, expanding rapidly. In the blink of an eye, it formed a Truth-Seeking Orb so enormous it dwarfed even a complete Susanoo.
This was the Expanding Truth-Seeking Orb!
But Kaguya wasn't done.
She remained inside the orb's core, and the Rinne Sharingan on her forehead gleamed once more. A dreadful surge of ocular power followed.
Crack! Crack!
In Naruto and Sasuke's horrified gazes, the sky of the Genesis Dimension began to fracture like cracked glass. The red ground below also split apart, fractures racing to the farthest edges of sight. The entire world began to collapse.
"What is that?!"
"This chakra..."
Naruto and Sasuke both paled, watching the ground disintegrate. They could sense it clearly, that Expanding Truth-Seeking Orb held a truly cataclysmic force.
It felt like facing a tsunami powerful enough to obliterate cities.
And they could do nothing.
"Is... is this the end of the world?" Sakura looked up at the splintering sky and ground. Her voice trembled. The power on display had gone far beyond her comprehension, beyond what any "ninja" could wield. This was no longer a battle of shinobi.
This was divine power.
RUMBLE!!
As the world continued to collapse, Kaguya's voice echoed out from within the giant orb:
"If I use this technique, this dimension will be utterly destroyed. It can't be restored. And the God Tree's power will be exhausted. This is a self-destructive move... one I normally wouldn't use."
"But against you... I have no choice."
"The destruction of the world and collapse of space will prevent you from using spatial techniques. You won't be able to escape. You'll be annihilated along with this world!"
"Be buried here!"
She had wanted to avoid this.
She didn't know when the enemies of the Otsutsuki clan might arrive. Using this technique would strip her of the God Tree's power, and she'd need to plant a new one and wait many years to regain her strength.
But faced with an opponent like Kaede, she had no other option. She had to destroy everything, and return to the ninja world to start anew.
Upon hearing her voice, Kakashi's face darkened. He tried activating Kamui, only to discover that the connection to his Kamui Dimension had been forcibly severed.
If he attempted to forcefully tear through space now, the warped spatial forces would rip his body apart.
"Damn it..."
Kakashi's expression grew grim. He turned to Kaede.
Kaede hovered in the air, glancing at the swelling Expanding Truth-Seeking Orb before lifting his gaze to the shattering sky above.
Zzzzz...
He extended his hand and pressed lightly into the air, attempting to open a rift with Yomotsu Hirasaka.
A black space portal formed, but the darkness inside wasn't stable. It writhed like a violent whirlpool, twisted by chaotic spatial currents. Entering it would mean instant death.
This world was truly breaking down.
To escape, they would have to force their way through the collapsing edge of space!
"So that's it..."
"Destroying the world. That's your final card, huh?"
Kaede slowly withdrew his hand. The dark portal disappeared. He looked back toward the growing orb.
All his punches before this were casual. He hadn't gone all out. He hadn't even used the life and death powers of his Rinne Tenseigan. He had just been testing her, wanting to see how far Kaguya had come in combat since learning to fight.
And now he had seen it.
Her trump card, combining the Expanding Truth-Seeking Orb with the collapse of the Genesis Dimension, was indeed a force of creation and destruction worthy of being called divine.
This... was her full power.
"Well then..."
"I suppose it's time I responded in kind."
Kaede exhaled.
The golden flames around his body surged tenfold, blazing outward with blinding radiance.
His terrifying chakra, rivaling the massive orb before him, condensed onto his fist. The black-and-white life-and-death energy of his Rinne Tenseigan also gathered into the strike.
HUMMMM,
He hadn't even swung yet, and space in front of him was already distorting, like a magnifying glass warping the air before a lens.
Sensing the monstrous chakra building on Kaede's side, even Naruto, Sasuke, and the others, already shaking beneath the looming orb, felt their breath catch. Their hearts nearly stopped.
Even Kakashi, at Six Paths level, turned pale.
At that moment, Kaede looked at him.
Their eyes met, and Kakashi instantly understood. His expression hardened. Without hesitation, he surged his ocular power.
HUM!!
He summoned his full-body Susanoo once more, reached out, and grabbed Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, placing them inside. Then he took off toward Kaede.
Within moments...
He reached a point behind Kaede, a few hundred meters back, and stopped there.
And right then,
Kaede, who had been quietly standing in place, finally moved.
He threw a punch.
That single punch, slow, deliberate, struck the air before him. The distance between his fist and the orb was still several hundred meters, but the golden flames on his hand vanished in an instant.
Silence.
Time seemed to freeze.
Even the collapsing world paused, as if held in that one breathless moment.
It was unclear how much time passed. Maybe in an instant. Maybe an eternity. But eventually, the stillness cracked.
CRRRACK!!!
Before the eyes of Naruto, Sasuke, and the others,
From the point where Kaede's fist had landed, black cracks spread outward like a shattering mirror.
These weren't chakra fissures.
They were spatial fractures.
From that one point of impact, the cracks spread across the sky and the land, racing toward the edges of the world, splintering everything.
The massive Expanding Truth-Seeking Orb, under the force of that punch, shattered like fragile glass.
And finally,
The entire orb, along with the world it inhabited, collapsed completely from that one strike.
And ahead of them...
Nothing remained but a void of absolute darkness.
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Completed version available on Patreon.com/Veltoria