"End? Yes, it's almost over."
At this moment, the masked man completely shed the frantic panic he had displayed during his earlier silence.
Having finally cracked a method to break through, he felt as if the dark clouds had violently parted, letting the sun shine through.
Only, by this point, absolutely no one had noticed one glaring, fundamental problem.
Wasn't this entire dynamic completely reversed?
Shouldn't it be the protagonist facing down a terrifying, oppressive villain, racking his brain, fighting with desperate strategy, burning through every tool at his disposal, erupting with hidden potential, and finally finding a miracle path to turn the tables?
How the hell had it turned into the masked man getting violently pressured for half a day, only to dynamically grow stronger under that very pressure?
The script was completely upside down!
"Ten, nine, eight..." The masked man suddenly started counting down out loud.
On Makoto's side, they had just pulled a classic "villains die from talking too much" trope by totally over-explaining Izanami to the masked man.
Now, the masked man refused to be outdone.
Worried that Makoto and the others had stolen his rightful spotlight as the main villain, and terrified they wouldn't accurately grasp the exact millisecond his intangibility wore off, he actually started counting down the timer for them.
"Seven, six, five...?"
Halfway through his dramatic countdown, the masked man suddenly noticed Makoto whip out a small audio recorder and hit the record button.
But the masked man gritted his teeth, ignored the weird flex, and kept counting.
"What exactly is that for?" Hashirama asked Makoto curiously, perfectly voicing the burning question the masked man couldn't afford to ask out loud.
"Oh, I'm just recording a quick audio clip for Kakashi. I'll wrap it up and give it to him as a birthday present."
The millisecond Makoto dropped that casual answer, the triumphant confidence welling up inside the masked man violently wavered again.
That sounded incredibly specific.
It sounded like the other party already knew exactly who was hiding behind the mask.
The masked man started internally panicking all over again, completely missing the glaring logical flaw buried in Makoto's statement.
Why the hell would an audio clip of him dramatically counting down from ten make a good birthday present for Kakashi?
'Damn it, he even knows that kind of intimate detail...'
Sure enough, Makoto, acting as the true veteran, possessed psychological warfare abilities that the current new generation simply couldn't compare to.
Konan shot Makoto a subtle glance but kept her mouth shut.
First, if she asked, wouldn't that just be admitting she actually understood the filthy joke?
Second... there was no time left on the clock.
"Three, two, one!"
The masked man finished the final countdown, and his body forcibly snapped back into a tangible state.
Konan instantly yanked the sea of explosive tags away from him, clearing a wide path for Uchiha Naori to engage.
Although it technically would have been fine even if she left them—Uchiha Naori was an immortal Edo Tensei and could easily synergize with the Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags—the sheer concussive shockwaves from the blasts would still physically slow down her movements.
As for trying to blast the masked man with the tags? Useless.
He had absolutely activated Izanagi the exact millisecond he became tangible.
No matter how much raw damage she pumped into him now, it would all just get magically reset.
Konan didn't need to farm meaningless damage points just to fight for MVP, so naturally, she withdrew the tags.
So, what exactly was this genius breakthrough method the masked man had cooked up?
First, as expected, he had indeed activated Izanagi the second his timer ran out.
Even though Konan actively pulled the bombs away, he didn't doubt his own judgment. He wasn't about to gamble his life on whether Konan had secretly left a few tags behind to ambush him.
Nor was he going to gamble on whether the Second Hokage would suddenly blitz him with a Flying Raijin Slash.
So popping Izanagi was a mandatory first step.
What remained was the real problem: how the hell was he supposed to dodge Izanami?
That was the true key to surviving this!
"Hahahahaha!"
Thinking of his brilliant countermeasure, the masked man suddenly threw his head back and burst into wild, unhinged laughter.
One of the legendary Four Great Uchiha Mad Laughers had officially entered the stage!
"The force supporting me in becoming the second Sage of Six Paths is none other than Konoha's very own Will of Fire! Hahahahaha! Thank you, Kakashi!"
Facing down Uchiha Naori as she blurred toward him, the masked man didn't panic in the slightest.
He calmly activated Kamui.
Last time, the masked man had weaponized Kamui to suck up a massive tsunami of raw shit just to take petty revenge on Kakashi, triggering a terrifying biohazard disaster in Konoha.
In the end, Konoha had barely managed to contain the nightmare through a massive team effort: Kakashi absorbing the worst of it with his own Kamui, Team Guy acting as human meat-shields with desperate spinning attacks, and Yamato finally sealing the rest away in a wooden box.
Although, at the very end of that operation, Yamato's hands got a little too into the rhythm, and he accidentally squeezed the containment box into a highly pressurized bomb.
After that incident wrapped up, the masked man obviously had to scrub down the inside of his Kamui dimension.
Otherwise, forget hiding out in there—every single time he popped his intangibility in the future, he'd come out dyed a solid, sickening yellow.
So, casually stealing Uchiha Madara's name once again, the masked man warped into a random bandit stronghold and flushed the septic tank straight out of his Kamui dimension, flooding the entire base like a biblical plague of filth.
At the very end of the purge, he even used the raw sewage to finger-paint a message on the stronghold's main wall:
The killer was Uchiha Madara.
But the cleanup didn't end there.
Because releasing Kamui was just like opening a massive floodgate.
It flushed out the vast majority of the liquid, sure, but the thick, crusted residue lining the walls still had to be scrubbed off manually.
It was the exact same hellish chore Kakashi had to deal with when he first warped away the massive septic tank Deidara detonated during the Chūnin Exams.
The masked man literally had to grab a mop, a bucket, and scrub the dimension down himself.
However, after finishing the hellish chore this time around, the masked man didn't just throw the remaining waste away.
Perhaps heavily inspired by the "Imitation: Toad Oil Flame Bullet" combo he had used when fighting Kakashi, the masked man deliberately left several massive buckets of the concentrated filth stored safely inside the Kamui dimension.
He just left them sitting there to dry out, ferment, and concentrate into a horrifying sludge.
Later on, he even went out of his way to actively raid a few more toilets, practically rivaling White Zetsu's dedication during the Hidan setup back in the day.
These "imitation toad oil" reserves sitting in his Kamui dimension had originally been stockpiled just to buff his Fire Release attacks as an elite Uchiha.
But he never in his wildest dreams imagined that today, of all days, these buckets of pure, concentrated biohazard would actually save his life.
"Come on then!"
A massive wooden bucket instantly materialized in the masked man's hands via Kamui, and he hoisted it high over his own head.
'What the hell was he doing? The Ice Bucket Challenge?'
No. The truth was...
Splash.
The heavy bucket tipped over, and its putrid, fermenting contents poured down, completely drenching the masked man from head to toe.
At this moment, the masked man had truly brought the filth upon himself!
Uchiha Naori, who was currently blitzing straight toward him, caught the entire sequence in high definition.
Her Sharingan pupils violently shrank.
She instantly popped her Susanoo, hitting the brakes so hard in midair she completely halted her own momentum.
Even though Uchiha Naori's Edo Tensei body hadn't been installed with the sensory formula that allowed her to smell, relying purely on the enhanced visual acuity of her Sharingan, she could vividly feel that the masked man's current body was wearing the ultimate, unparalleled masterpiece of pure filth—a wordless, visual epic of absolute disgust!
"Haha—cough, cough!"
Seeing that Uchiha Naori literally didn't dare step a single inch closer, the masked man tried to laugh in triumph.
But the second he opened his mouth, a thick glob of shit accidentally slid right past his mask and made him violently choke.
He didn't hesitate for another second.
He instantly fired up Kamui and began warping himself away!
While his body spiraled into the void, he relentlessly praised his own genius.
He knew it!
Uchiha Naori's pristine personality and elegant clothing clearly marked her as a classic, highborn noble lady of the Uchiha clan.
There was absolutely no way in hell she'd be willing to physically touch this kind of radioactive filth.
But Uchiha Obito was built entirely different!
He was the pure lotus blooming directly from the mud!
He was the future second Sage of Six Paths, the man who would trigger the Infinite Tsukuyomi no matter what horrific, disgusting price he had to pay!
"No, seriously, what the hell are you even laughing at?"
Watching the scene unfold, even Makoto felt genuinely disgusted.
In truth, the masked man still hadn't actually won.
If Makoto simply popped a Time Stop, he could casually freeze the guy right there.
The glaring problem was...
Back when Joseph Joestar fought Dio in Egypt, he really didn't need to waste time wrapping his entire body in Hamon energy.
If he had just jumped straight into a massive pit of raw shit and soaked himself, even if the arrogant vampire stopped time, Dio absolutely wouldn't have wanted to punch Joseph with his bare hands.