Chapter 279: The Return
"Lord Rakshasa. I am withdrawing from this assassination mission."
Kakuzu spoke the words with the solemn gravity of a man signing a treaty. Every syllable was measured. Every breath was deliberate. He had weighed the options—the twenty-million-ryō bounty against the cold arithmetic of survival—and the calculation had been damning.
He had not felt pressure like this since Senju Hashirama.
The bounty was tempting. Of course it was. Twenty million ryō was a fortune that could fund a lifetime of comfort, a lifetime of security. But money meant nothing to a corpse. The premise of collecting any bounty was survival. And survival, in this particular case, seemed... unlikely.
When he had been sent to assassinate the First Hokage all those decades ago, he had reached the same conclusion. The reward on Hashirama's head had been astronomical—far higher than Ragnar's current bounty. And what had Kakuzu done? He had thrown one kunai from eight hundred meters away and fled. Not because he lacked ambition. Because he possessed the one trait that separated living bounty hunters from dead ones: the ability to recognize when the odds were not merely unfavorable, but suicidal.
His Earth Grudge Fear technique granted him multiple lives. Five hearts. Five chances. But it was not true immortality. It was a buffer against death, not an exemption from it. If someone destroyed all five hearts—if someone killed him five times in rapid succession—he would die just like any other mortal. And Rakshasa, he suspected, could manage that with five swings of that demonic blade. Perhaps fewer.
Kakuzu had survived nearly eighty years not through invincibility, but through the sophisticated art of knowing when to run. Call it cowardice if you wished. He called it wisdom.
"Really." Ragnar's voice was flat. Unreadable. "Then do you know the identity of the employer who posted this bounty?"
His expression did not change. He made no threatening gesture. And yet, Kakuzu felt the pressure intensify—an invisible weight pressing down on his shoulders, making every breath a conscious effort.
SSss—
The cold wind swept through the forest clearing. The temperature seemed to drop by several degrees. Leaves skittered across the ground. Kakuzu's patchwork skin prickled with a sensation he had almost forgotten: genuine, bone-deep fear. If he answered wrong—if he said the wrong word, made the wrong move—he suspected he would lose a heart. Or several. Or all of them.
With Rakshasa's strength... I might not even leave a corpse behind.
"I don't know," Kakuzu said, forcing the words through a throat tight with tension. Then, desperate to provide something of value, he added: "In bounty work, the employer's identity is never revealed at the time of posting. Only after the mission is completed—when you meet to collect the payment—might you have a chance to learn who they are. That's the only way."
Ragnar absorbed this. It confirmed what he had already suspected. The underworld's anonymity was a feature, not a flaw. Tracing the bounty back to its source through official channels would be impossible.
But he did not need official channels.
He already knew.
Danzō.
The name sat in his mind like a stone in still water. He did not need proof. He did not need confirmation from a trembling bounty hunter. The old war hawk had made his move, and Ragnar had survived it. That was answer enough.
He looked at Kakuzu—this patchwork creature, this immortal coward, this relic of a bygone era—and felt no urge to kill him. The man's terror was so palpable it was almost embarrassing. What satisfaction could there be in cutting down someone who was already defeated? Killing the weak proved nothing. It added nothing to his legend. It merely wasted time and chakra.
Besides. There was a certain value in letting a witness live. Let Kakuzu carry the story back to the underworld. Let him tell the other bounty hunters what had happened to the twenty who had come before. Let him spread the word: Rakshasa is not a target. Rakshasa is a death sentence.
The Demon turned toward Konoha. The village gates glowed faintly in the distance, warm lights beckoning through the dusk. He began to walk.
Kakuzu did not move. He did not breathe. He simply watched as the silhouette of the most terrifying shinobi he had ever encountered grew smaller and smaller, until it merged with the shadows of the treeline and vanished entirely.
Only then did he exhale.
What kind of monster...
The pressure lifted slowly, like a physical weight being removed from his chest. His hearts—all five of them—gradually returned to their normal rhythm. He had done nothing. He had not drawn a weapon, had not formed a single hand seal. And yet Rakshasa's presence alone had been enough to make him feel like prey.
Twenty million ryō. What a joke.
He would not lie to himself. The loss stung. Twenty million was not a sum a man like him could dismiss easily. But compared to his life? Compared to the eighty years of survival he had fought and clawed and endured to achieve?
It was nothing. Less than nothing.
He cast one final glance toward Konoha—that village of monsters, that nest of demons—and made a silent vow. He would never accept another bounty in the Land of Fire. No. He would never accept another bounty anywhere near the Land of Fire. The entire country was tainted now, stained by the shadow of the Demon who called it home.
Slip away. Slip away now. If you don't leave, when will you?
His form dissolved into the darkness, and the forest was empty once more.
Konohagakure — The Village Gates
The gates of Konoha rose before him, ancient and proud.
Ragnar stood in the shadow of the great wooden beams—the same beams that Hashirama Senju had raised with his own hands, the same gate that had witnessed the birth of the Hidden Village system. At night, the village beyond was a tapestry of lights. Lanterns swayed in the evening breeze. Windows glowed warm and golden. The distant sound of laughter drifted through the streets—ordinary people, living ordinary lives, blissfully unaware of how close the world had come to shattering.
When I left...
He remembered.
He had been nothing then. A fledgling ANBU operative, talented but unproven. The Uchiha clan had been circling him like vultures, their resentment simmering just beneath the surface. He had been alone. Outmatched. Forced to accept the arrangements of Konoha's high command because he lacked the strength to refuse.
The battlefield had changed that.
Step by step. Kill by kill. He had used the war as a whetstone, sharpening himself against the bodies of his enemies until the blade of his spirit could cut through anything. He had arrived in the Land of Rain as a promising shinobi. He was returning as Rakshasa.
Now?
Now he feared nothing.
Not Danzō. Not the Uchiha clan. Not even Sarutobi Hiruzen. The machinations that had once seemed so overwhelming—the political webs, the hidden threats, the cold calculations of men who thought themselves untouchable—now appeared as what they truly were: the desperate scrabbling of those who lacked real power.
Ragnar's goal had never been the Hokage's seat. Let others fight over titles. Let others chase the hat. What he wanted was simpler, purer, and far more absolute.
Strength.
Strength enough to suppress an entire village single-handedly. Strength enough that the very concept of "politics" became irrelevant. A Hokage ruled through authority. Ragnar would rule through inevitability. He was already a Kage in all but name—the Demon of the Battlefield, the monster who had ended a world war. Why would he need a ceremonial title to confirm what everyone already knew?
Though, if he was honest with himself, he was not quite there yet. Not entirely.
Konoha was not just any village. It was the most powerful Hidden Village in the world, home to more forbidden techniques and bloodline limits than any other nation. The Sealing Corps alone posed a threat he could not dismiss lightly. The Dead Demon Consuming Seal—the Shiki Fūjin—could drag even the strongest soul into the stomach of the Death God. That technique, born from the twisted genius of Tobirama Senju, was a contingency designed specifically to neutralize threats like him.
Tobirama. You were preparing for Madara, weren't you?
The Second Hokage had known that if his brother fell, no one else in the village could match the Uchiha patriarch. So he had created a technique that bypassed power entirely—a suicide seal that sacrificed the user's life to summon the Shinigami itself. If Madara ever returned, Tobirama would drag him to hell with him.
But Tobirama had never anticipated that Madara would die while Hashirama still lived. The seal had become a solution without a problem. A forbidden technique, locked away in the scroll of seals, waiting for a threat that never came.
Tobirama had been confident in his abilities. Against anyone except his brother and Madara, he believed he was unmatched. And he had reason for that confidence. The man had invented half the forbidden jutsu in Konoha's arsenal. Multiple Shadow Clone Technique. Bringer-of-Darkness Genjutsu. The mutually multiplying explosive tag technique. A genius of warfare, paranoid and brilliant in equal measure.
Ragnar respected that. And because he respected it, he would not give Konoha reason to use those techniques against him.
As long as they don't provoke me... I won't move against them.
His feelings toward the village were complicated. Not loyalty. Not love. But not hatred either. Konoha was simply... a place. A convenient base of operations. A familiar environment. He had no deep sense of belonging here, but he had no burning desire to see it burn either. It was what it was.
And there were people here who mattered.
Kushina.
Her face surfaced in his mind unbidden—that fierce, unyielding girl with hair like blood and a spirit like fire. During the war, he had received word of the Uzumaki clan's destruction. Whirlpool Village, wiped off the map. An entire bloodline, reduced to scattered refugees. He did not know how Kushina had endured that news. The Uzumaki were her family, her heritage, her connection to a history that stretched back to the Sage of Six Paths himself. To lose all of that in a single stroke...
She was strong. Stronger than most gave her credit for. But even the strong could break under enough weight.
Beyond Kushina, there were others. Maito Gai's father—the Blue Beast of Konoha, a taijutsu master whose devotion to his art bordered on madness. Okamoto-sensei from the Academy, who had taught him the fundamentals when he was still a clueless orphan. Tsunade, the tigress, whose fists could shatter mountains and whose heart was larger than she would ever admit. Hatake Sakumo, the White Fang, whose stern exterior concealed a deep and abiding sense of honor.
But Kushina came first. Always.
Because Kushina carried the Nine-Tails. And the time for the Jinchūriki transfer was approaching.
Uzumaki Mito—the current Jinchūriki, the wife of the First Hokage—was old now. Her strength was fading. Soon, the Nine-Tails would need a new vessel. Kushina had been brought to Konoha for exactly that purpose. She was to be the next sacrifice. The next cage for the most powerful of the Tailed Beasts.
The sealing process was dangerous. The Nine-Tails would resist. Mito's chakra reserves were not what they once were. When the time came, Kushina would need someone to stand beside her. Someone to ensure that the transfer did not become a catastrophe.
Ragnar intended to be that someone.
Protecting Kushina... that was a more daunting task than protecting Konoha itself. The girl attracted danger the way a flame attracted moths. And the forces that would eventually come for the Nine-Tails were not ordinary enemies.
I need to become even stronger.
His thoughts drifted to an unexpected development. Uzumaki Miko—a refugee from Whirlpool, rescued by Namikaze Minato during the war. She had not appeared in the original timeline. Her very existence was an anomaly, a deviation from the script he remembered. And there seemed to be something developing between her and the future Fourth Hokage.
Could Miko become an alternative Jinchūriki? Could the burden of the Nine-Tails be lifted from Kushina's shoulders?
Unlikely. But worth monitoring.
He shook his head, clearing the speculation from his mind. The future was a river with too many tributaries to map. He would deal with each current as it came.
For now, there was only the present.
The gates of Konoha loomed before him. The night was dark, but the village beyond was bright. He could sense the chakra signatures of the gate guards—two chūnin, bored and inattentive, their minds on dinner and warm beds rather than the perimeter.
Ragnar did not announce himself. He did not stride through the main entrance like a returning hero. He was ANBU, and old habits died hard. With a whisper of displaced air, he vanished from the gates and reappeared on a rooftop deep within the village, his silhouette briefly outlined against the moon before he melted into the shadows.
Let the official welcome come tomorrow. Tonight, he had people to see.
And somewhere in the darkness beneath Konoha, Danzō Shimura sat alone in his subterranean fortress, waiting for news that would never come. The twenty assassins he had bankrolled were scattered across the forest floor in pieces. The legendary Kakuzu had fled with his five hearts intact. And the Demon he had tried to kill was already inside the walls.
The old war hawk did not know it yet, but his gamble had failed. Spectacularly. Completely.
And Ragnar was not the kind of man who forgot.
(End of Chapter)
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