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Sasuke's battle with Itachi was not an accident of war - it was the inevitable collision Chiba had prepared for him, the kind of confrontation that could only happen once in a lifetime, and only end one way. The bond between brothers, the hatred that had festered for years, the guilt that refused to die… everything would be dragged into the open here, and everything would be decided here.
A sharp tremor ran through the air.
Sasuke's Mangekyo Sharingan flared, and the world snapped into his control. It wasn't a simple illusion meant to distract. Itachi's senses were seized outright, his body and perception forced into a reality molded by Sasuke's will.
Inside that genjutsu, Sasuke drew his Kusanagi Sword and drove it forward without hesitation - straight through Itachi's chest, precisely where the heart should have been.
Itachi's lips parted. A thin line of blood slipped from the corner of his mouth, vivid and cruel against his pallor, and pain flooded him so violently it felt like it swallowed his thoughts whole.
Sasuke didn't stop.
He twisted the blade.
The motion was measured, deliberate - less like a finishing strike and more like a sentence being carried out. The agony spiked, vicious enough to burrow into the soul. Itachi's composure broke, and a raw scream tore from him, echoing through the illusory space as if the heavens themselves were being forced to listen.
Sasuke's eyes stayed cold.
"Someone who could kill even his own parents…" his voice shook with restrained fury, "you don't deserve to keep wearing that flesh."
Then the punishment began.
Sasuke moved with merciless precision, cutting Itachi down again and again - stripping away dignity, stripping away the illusion of redemption, reducing him to nothing but suffering under Sasuke's gaze. It was the very meaning of senbon-giri - a death by countless cuts.
But death never arrived.
That was the true cruelty of Sasuke's genjutsu: Itachi couldn't even collapse into oblivion. Each time his body was torn apart, the illusion restored him - whole again - only so the torment could begin anew. Over and over, like an endless descent into a personal hell where time had no mercy and pain had no ceiling.
His screams dwindled into broken breaths. His mind frayed, then cracked. His eyes went unfocused, as if the world had become too unbearable to fully perceive.
Still, Sasuke's hatred didn't loosen. It demanded more.
Sasuke's Mangekyo surged again. Amaterasu ("Heavenly Illumination") ignited, and Kagutsuchi ("Flame Control") shaped that black inferno into a weapon - an edge of cursed fire in his grasp.
He struck.
The hell-black flames crawled across Itachi's body with a patient cruelty, eating through him inch by inch - burning away everything until nothing remained but ash… and then the world reset again, forcing Itachi back into the same cycle.
Once.
Twice.
Again and again.
Eventually, Itachi "woke" inside the illusion the way a drowning man breaks the surface - violent, desperate, and broken. He fell forward onto the ground, gulping air in ragged, panicked bursts. His gaze was vacant. Saliva slipped from his lips. He looked less like a shinobi and more like a man whose sanity had been ground down to dust.
Sasuke stared down at him, breathing steady. The rage in his chest didn't disappear - but for the first time, it felt like a small portion of it had finally been released.
"Well?" Sasuke's voice was ice. "Uchiha Itachi… did you feel even a fraction of my pain?"
Itachi couldn't answer. He could only gasp.
Sasuke's mouth curled into contempt. "No strength left, huh… Just like my master said. A walking corpse. An empty shell."
He raised the Kusanagi Sword, voice turning sharp with finality.
"Then it's time. Go to the Pure Land, and kneel before Father - before every Uchiha you slaughtered. Beg them there."
The blade came down -
And the air exploded.
A violent crimson chakra surged from Itachi's body, swelling outward like a dam shattering. In an instant, the tengu-like armored form of Susanoo ("Susanoo") manifested around him - grim, red, and oppressive.
Karasu Tengu Susanoo ("Crow-Tengu Susanoo") - the armored third form.
Sasuke's strike was knocked aside.
Sasuke's eyes widened. He had assumed Itachi, stripped of his original Mangekyo, could no longer reach this height.
Then he saw Itachi's eyes.
The pattern twisted.
Mangekyo Sharingan ("Mangekyo Sharingan").
Sasuke's shock flared - and immediately hardened into refusal.
"Don't tell me… that torture awakened it again. No. That's impossible."
Itachi pushed himself upright, but the man who stood there had none of the quiet control Sasuke remembered. His breathing was ragged, his posture unstable, his expression warped by something broken and obsessive.
He was past reason.
"Do you think I lived well?!" Itachi roared, voice cracking with madness. "Do you think I didn't suffer?!"
His words spilled out like poison that had been fermenting for years.
"I betrayed the clan - betrayed our parents - for Konoha's peace… and that peace was destroyed by Chiba! He ruined my plans, made me watch Konoha and the Uchiha tear themselves apart, and then he took my eyes!"
Itachi's chest heaved. "I lived like a corpse - like a crippled waste! My pain was never less than yours!"
His face twisted into something feverish.
"Your torture wasn't enough to awaken it… but the suffering of all these years was!!!"
Then, with a zeal that made Sasuke's blood run cold, Itachi screamed:
"Now I'll finish what I couldn't finish back then - "
"I'LL SLAUGHTER THE ENTIRE UCHIHA CLAN!!!"
Sasuke stared at him, and the last traces of disbelief died.
So even now… Itachi hadn't changed. Not even slightly. He didn't cling to massacre because it was rational - he clung to it because it was the only thing left that let him pretend his life meant something.
Sasuke's fury surged like fire up his spine.
He drew in a slow, deliberate breath - so steady it was terrifying.
"Good," he said quietly.
His voice was calm, but it carried the weight of a verdict.
"I thought you might still have a trace of humanity left. Turns out I overestimated you."
His eyes sharpened. "You've already exterminated it. You're worse than an animal."
Sasuke lifted his gaze, Mangekyo flaring.
"Fine. I was going to kill you today anyway…"
"So I'll show you what I am now."
A colossal chakra presence slammed into existence.
Sasuke's Susanoo ("Susanoo") erupted in full, complete form - its pressure so immense it felt like the sky had lowered. Compared to Sasuke's towering fourth form, Itachi's armored third form looked pitifully small.
Itachi froze.
For the first time, despair swallowed the madness in his face.
Am I really going to die today… by Sasuke's hand?
The thought hit like a curse.
Is this… retribution?
Chapter 163: Itachi's Doomsday - Sasuke's Overwhelming Power!
In that moment, Sasuke's Mangekyo power surged without restraint.
The complete fourth-form Susanoo stabilized fully - vast, oppressive, and utterly dominant. It stood several times taller than Itachi's Karasu Tengu Susanoo, not merely stronger, but existing on a different scale entirely.
Itachi could only stare.
He couldn't accept it - not in so short a time.
But reality didn't ask for acceptance.
Sasuke was Chiba's direct disciple. He had fused Hashirama's cells, bringing the powers of Asura and Indra into violent resonance. It didn't mean he had stepped into the Six Paths realm - but it was more than enough to sharpen his ocular power and drive his strength upward at an abnormal pace.
Even with Mangekyo reawakened, Itachi was no longer in the same world.
Sasuke's voice cut through the tension, cold and precise.
"Uchiha Itachi… you don't understand what real power is."
His eyes narrowed, hatred steady as iron.
"These eyes awakened through hatred - hatred you gave me."
He exhaled, and the air tightened.
"How deep my hatred is… is how strong I became."
"Today, I'll make sure you understand that."
A weapon formed in his Susanoo's grasp: a gigantic chakra bow, solemn and ancient in shape, like something meant for gods rather than men.
Ame no Makakoyumi ("Heavenly Makakoyumi Bow").
With a single intent, Sasuke drew the string back. A massive chakra arrow condensed onto it - Amaterasu ("Heavenly Illumination") igniting into unquenchable black flames, Kagutsuchi ("Flame Control") shaping those flames into a killing edge.
Kagutsuchi no Ya ("Kagutsuchi Arrow").
Itachi's pupils tightened. He pushed his Susanoo to its limit and manifested his ultimate defense.
Yata no Kagami ("Yata Mirror").
A shield spoken of as though it could repel anything.
But in the shinobi world, "absolute" was just a word people used when they hadn't yet met something stronger.
The arrow fired.
There was no time, no space, no angle to evade. The attack was too fast, too broad, too overwhelming.
Itachi braced and endured.
The impact detonated like a falling star.
The Yata Mirror shattered.
Not cracked - shattered, exploding apart under the difference in power. Because it was never truly an external tool; like the Totsuka Blade, it was an ethereal chakra construct. And chakra, no matter how legendary, still broke when crushed by something vastly greater.
The arrow's force continued, igniting Itachi's Susanoo armor in Amaterasu's black fire.
Itachi couldn't control it. Without Kagutsuchi, he couldn't shape the flames, suppress them, or dismiss them at will.
His only option was brutal.
He abandoned the armor - shedding the burning outer layer as his chakra collapsed, tearing himself free at the cost of severe consumption. His Susanoo dropped to the second form, reduced to a weaker shroud.
Blood tears leaked from Itachi's eyes. He gasped, shoulders trembling. The genjutsu loss had already pushed his mind toward collapse, and now the exchange had stripped away what little stamina remained.
Sasuke watched him, expression unmoved.
"That's it?" he asked, voice like frost. "That's the 'pain' you bragged about?"
He stepped forward, shadow swallowing the distance.
"Your so-called sacrifice wasn't noble. It was self-indulgence."
"You didn't sacrifice yourself."
"You sacrificed the Uchiha."
"Our relatives. Our friends. Our comrades."
His voice sharpened into disgust. "Even our parents."
Sasuke's gaze turned contemptuous. "And you still think you get to talk about pain? About sacrifice?"
"In my eyes… you're nothing but a stray dog."
Ame no Makakoyumi drew again.
Another Kagutsuchi Arrow formed - ready to end it.
Itachi's breath hitched. He finally understood the gap completely.
But even then, he refused to die.
His obsession had replaced reason; the desire to wipe out the Uchiha had become a twisted inner demon he couldn't abandon.
So he roared and struck first.
From his Susanoo's arm, a massive chakra blade manifested - an infamous sealing weapon.
Totsuka no Tsurugi ("Totsuka Blade").
It lunged forward in a violent thrust, aiming to pierce through Sasuke's defense and seal him into the drunken-dream illusion forever.
But Itachi's Susanoo was only second form.
Against a complete fourth-form Susanoo, it was nothing.
Sasuke sneered, and the Kagutsuchi Arrow fired.
The collision erupted in a savage explosion - shockwaves ripping outward, the ground cracking under the pressure as chakra surged and detonated like a storm.
For a heartbeat, the two forces resisted.
Then the difference asserted itself.
The Totsuka Blade shattered.
The arrow kept going.
It slammed into Itachi's Susanoo again, forcing him to shed what remained of his defenses. Chakra collapsed in fragments, and his Susanoo fell all the way back to its first form - the skeletal outline.
In that state, Itachi could no longer manifest Susanoo's ethereal weapons. His offense and defense plummeted, leaving him bare and cornered.
Itachi stared at Sasuke, voice hoarse, despair seeping into every word.
"Sasuke… I didn't think you'd become this strong…"
A bitter laugh trembled. "Looks like… I underestimated you…"
Sasuke's eyes were merciless.
"You didn't just underestimate me," he said. "You never understood power."
His gaze sharpened.
"The next strike will send you on your way."
"Go to the Pure Land - "
"And face Father… and every Uchiha's rage."
His voice rose at the end, not with frenzy, but with absolute certainty.
"Because this time, Uchiha Itachi…"
"You're not escaping."