"No. I have to find a way off this planet."
"Earth is far too dangerous. This so-called Fifth Hokage, Uchiha Ren, is a complete monster."
"Kinshiki is dead. The Ōtsutsuki main family will be enraged. As long as I can escape Earth, I can still turn this around. I can still watch Uchiha Ren die at the hands of the clan."
After the first wave of panic, Urashiki's expression shifted again and again before hard resolve finally surfaced in his eyes.
He had run out of roads.
All he could do now was gamble on the last one left.
"Fifth Hokage Uchiha Ren, I'll admit it—you're strong. Much stronger than I expected."
A moment later, Urashiki drew a breath and forced himself to sound fierce.
"But Kinshiki is dead because of you. No matter how strong you are, the Ōtsutsuki main family will kill you for this."
"Oh?"
Ren gave a lazy nod, as though he'd just heard something mildly amusing.
"The Ōtsutsuki main family? What are they supposed to be?"
He looked at Urashiki and smiled without warmth.
"I'll make this simple. If they dare come to Earth, I'll kill them too."
"One comes, I kill one."
"Two come, I kill both."
That was all.
No shouting. No posturing.
Just a flat, matter-of-fact promise.
Urashiki's face twisted.
He opened his mouth, then coughed up blood instead.
"Pwah—!"
"Pwah—!"
He looked miserable.
Honestly miserable.
He had never felt this humiliated in his life.
Ren wasn't just trying to kill him. He was grinding him down first, crushing his pride before the body followed. That kind of helpless fury was enough to make a person go mad.
Ren, meanwhile, had already lost interest in watching him flail.
With one step, he crossed the air and appeared above the Ten-Tails.
The giant beast, still radiating its savage, unstable aura, quieted the instant he arrived overhead.
A moment later, it let out a low, unwilling growl.
Ren frowned.
"Once I kill this one, you can roam the shinobi world however you like."
The Ten-Tails' lone Rinnegan gleamed.
"Understood, Master."
Its tone turned eager.
"With trash like him, I can crush him at any time and devour every bit of chakra in his body."
Urashiki's body stiffened again.
So now even the Ten-Tails was looking down on him.
If it had happened a little earlier, he might have exploded in rage on the spot. But now? With the beast in its complete state and Ren standing over it, all that anger had nowhere to go. He could only swallow it.
Ren gave the Ten-Tails a small nod.
"That's enough. Let's begin."
"No problem, Master."
The Ten-Tails shrank at once.
Its colossal body compressed in an instant, then shot upward like a streak of dark light and rushed straight toward Ren.
Urashiki's face turned white.
"It's over…"
He knew what was coming.
A Ten-Tails jinchūriki was about to be born.
And with Ren's strength already this absurd, adding a complete Ten-Tails to the equation was the sort of thing that drove people into real despair.
Then it happened.
Without warning, an aura exploded out of Ren's body and swept across the entire shinobi world.
It wasn't just vast.
It was oppressive in a way that made the heavens seem lower and the earth itself seem to sink beneath it.
It felt like this:
The Ten-Tails jinchūriki had appeared.
The world could only bow.
All across the shinobi world, shinobi froze where they stood. Before they could even understand what was happening, their minds blanked out—and when awareness returned, they found themselves kneeling.
Far from the battlefield, Queen Loran, Princess Sara, and the ministers looked down in disbelief at their own knees pressed into the ground.
"We… we're kneeling again?"
"Lord Fifth Hokage's aura just jumped to another level."
"The Ten-Tails entered his body…"
Their expressions were awkward, complicated, half-stunned and half-resigned.
Was there no end to this?
Were they just going to keep dropping to their knees every time Ren grew stronger?
Still…
If the one making them kneel was the Fifth Hokage, and if that meant he had become even stronger than before, then maybe kneeling wasn't so bad.
At least that was how they comforted themselves.
Elsewhere, the entire shinobi world had fallen into stunned silence.
Then came the noise.
Konoha.
The Rain Village.
Takigakure.
Sunagakure.
Kirigakure.
Every village aligned with Ren erupted in shouts.
Even those pinned to the ground by the pressure wore excited, almost feverish expressions.
They didn't know exactly what had happened.
But they knew that aura.
It belonged to Uchiha Ren.
And judging from the sheer force of it—judging by how naturally it drove the entire world to its knees—the Fifth Hokage had undergone another transformation.
He had become even more terrifying than before.
Even more absolute.
And for those who stood behind him, that was enough.
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