Hiruzen watched the Third Raikage and Ōnoki warily, making no move to attack first.
The woman's voice beside his ear was growing less ethereal and increasingly distinct!
The two Kage were even more baffled...
Wait...
Weren't you the one who shattered the combined war ninjutsu of over a thousand shinobi with a single punch?
Why are you acting so guarded, as if the two of us were the ones who just did something like that?!
The Third Raikage looked as though he had come to terms with everything.
As far as he was concerned, he had already done everything he possibly could during his years as Raikage of Kumogakure. Whenever anything happened, he had always been the first to charge forward, constantly tempering his body and honing his skills...
Nor had he neglected research and development, doing everything he could to make up for the village's weaknesses.
They had developed the Heavenly Transfer Technique and even a prototype Chakra Cannon.
Their use of the Tailed Beasts was also at the forefront of the shinobi world.
But there was nothing he could do about this...
Konoha had produced yet another shinobi capable of reaching the level of Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara!
That simply wasn't something human effort could overcome...
Ōnoki, meanwhile, stared fixedly at the black armor covering Hiruzen's body.
The Tsuchikage's expression twisted in a way rarely seen as information he had once read in old records flooded back into his mind...
There were plenty of people throughout the shinobi world who paid attention to Uchiha Madara.
After all, the Shura of the Shinobi World was about as famous as a shinobi could get—the biggest of big names...
But when it came to who had studied Madara most thoroughly and obsessively, an objective ranking would often leave the Uchiha themselves surprisingly far from the top...
Senju Tobirama was unquestionably number one when it came to studying Uchiha Madara!
On one particular timeline, when the Fourth Shinobi World War began, the four reincarnated Hokage of Konoha each had their own thoughts before entering the battlefield, revealing the deepest obsessions in their hearts.
Hashirama was thinking about 'an old friend,' while Minato was thinking, 'I finally get to see my son.'
Tobirama, meanwhile, had only one thing on his mind—an Uchiha: 'Madara, you won't get away this time!'
As for the remaining Third Hokage, what he had been thinking was: 'Come! It's been far too long since I've seen a war!'
Each of the four had something different to look forward to...
And aside from Tobirama, Ōnoki was the second-greatest scholar in the field of 'Madara studies'...
The Tsuchikage had suffered a brutal lesson at Uchiha Madara's hands when he was still young. Over the years, the psychological shadow Madara had left behind not only failed to fade after his 'death,' but actually grew deeper...
To the point that Ōnoki had used the resources and authority of the Tsuchikage to gather all kinds of intelligence about Madara from across the shinobi world, endlessly studying the greatest madman the Uchiha Clan had ever produced...
The heavy black armor covering Hiruzen had just triggered something in the Tsuchikage's vast store of Madara-related knowledge...
"That! That's the battle armor Uchiha Madara wore in his youth!"
"Back then, Uchiha Madara hadn't yet fully mastered the power of the Susanoo, so he still had to rely on external protection for defense. But that was also when he was at his most aggressive..."
"So even though he wasn't as powerful as he was at his peak, this version of Madara left the deepest impression on the older shinobi of the Warring States Period, because his fighting style was at its most brutal..."
Ōnoki muttered to himself as though trapped in a genjutsu, almost completely lost in his own obsession.
The Third Raikage gave his old rival a startled look.
This old bastard really had been driven insane by Uchiha Madara...
The Shura of the Shinobi World had been dead for fifty years, and he was still standing there reciting everything he'd memorized about him?
"Are you all right?"
The Third Raikage couldn't help asking.
"Why are you so obsessed with Uchiha Madara? Get a grip. That's Hiruzen standing in front of us..."
"What do you think we should do? My suggestion is that we surrender and talk to the Hokage..."
Then the Third Raikage dropped a bombshell.
"It's over. There won't be any miracle that turns this war around."
His son, the Fourth A, was stunned.
"Father, how can we surrender? The Hokage is right here! Shouldn't we at least try to capture him?!"
"Capture the Hokage? Do you have what it takes?"
The Third Raikage elbowed his son squarely in the face, furious at his inability to see the obvious.
The blow was so heavy that blood immediately began pouring from the Fourth A's nose.
Beside them, Killer B kept his eyes down and wisely said nothing.
The Third Raikage might normally have a mild temperament, but when he truly got angry and started teaching the Fourth A a lesson, it really was a case of 'a father beating his son'!
He hit a hell of a lot harder than the Fourth A did when disciplining Killer B...
The Fourth A covered his face, feeling rather aggrieved.
That elbow had been heavy!
But there was nothing he could do. Even a tough man like him could only cover his head when his even tougher old man started hitting him.
You only got one father...
And unfortunately, his father could still beat the hell out of him.
"Being tough means never giving up while there's still a chance of victory. Even if that chance is only one percent, you do everything you can to find a way to turn things around."
The Third Raikage looked over the battlefield Hiruzen had reduced to scorched earth and shook his head.
"But now there isn't any chance left..."
"You still see far too little of the truth, my foolish son."
"As a fellow taijutsu shinobi, you should at least be able to recognize when someone has reached a higher level. Hiruzen has tempered his body to at least the same level as mine. Ordinary ninjutsu won't work on him..."
"And large-scale war ninjutsu doesn't work on him either. I've never seen a shinobi like this! Isn't the whole reason Shorty has spent all these years having Iwagakure increase its population at any cost to deal with techniques like the Susanoo?"
The Third Raikage's voice turned cold.
"By using collective war ninjutsu..."
"Gathering the power of lower- and mid-level shinobi into a single whole to deal with individual shinobi who stand too far above everyone else. Am I wrong, Shorty...?"
"But Hiruzen has overcome even that. So if you want to defeat the Hokage, numbers no longer mean anything. You need individual fighters who can actually match him..."
"A shinobi at your level would only get in the way if you joined a battle against the Hokage. You wouldn't be able to hurt him, and you'd still take up space on the battlefield and disrupt everyone else's rhythm."
The Third Raikage showed his son no mercy.
That was simply how Kumogakure—and the Third Raikage himself—operated. When it came to important matters, they didn't spare anyone's feelings. They simply said things as they were.
The Fourth A listened in silence.
"Even if Ōnoki and I joined forces, with me holding Hiruzen down, and by sheer chance the Hokage failed to use his secret technique and was struck by Dust Release..."
"Everything would only get worse."
The Third Raikage continued in a grave tone.
"The other Konoha shinobi would go insane! It's easy to predict what would happen. If Hiruzen were gone, Konoha would undoubtedly fall into enormous internal turmoil..."
"Without anyone with enough weight to keep everyone in line, Konoha could end up like the Uchiha Clan once did because of Izanagi—descending into internal conflict and perhaps eventually tearing itself apart..."
"But before that happened, Konoha's shinobi would utterly tear Iwagakure and Kumogakure apart with a level of brutality far beyond anything seen during the Warring States Period. Only afterward would Konoha's powerful factions begin fighting among themselves."
"So even setting aside the fact that Ōnoki and I can't defeat the Hokage, this war is already over."
The meticulous analysis sounded almost absurd coming from a man built like the Third Raikage.
"Then what do we do?" the Fourth A couldn't help asking.
"Surrender. Pay reparations. Accept the Hokage's terms. Then wait quietly..."
The Third Raikage's expression remained calm.
"Unexpected things always happen in the shinobi world. Konoha once had both of the two legendary shinobi, yet even they ultimately went their separate ways..."
"Do you know Isshin, the current head of the Uchiha Clan?"
The Fourth A paused. After this war, he had become fairly familiar with Konoha's notable shinobi.
"I do. I've heard he's an unusually cunning Uchiha, completely different from the usual stereotype..."
The Fourth A answered honestly.
"The reason the Uchiha Clan managed to survive Senju Tobirama's pressure long enough to reach the era when Hiruzen began allowing the Will of Fire to truly flourish was because of that man, Isshin."
The Third Raikage sighed with emotion.
"The Konoha Military Police Force. Uchiha Madara's departure..."
"The Uchiha Clan's position in Konoha was once extremely dangerous. They had a combative temperament, yet lacked any real ability to resist. They didn't even have a single meaningful ally within the village."
"They also carried blood feuds with the other clans dating back to the Warring States Period. You could almost say they were already standing at the edge of a cliff."
"Meanwhile, Senju Tobirama controlled all of Konoha's resources. On one hand, being Hashirama's younger brother gave him an inherent legitimacy. On the other, he kept provoking the Uchiha..."
The Third Raikage continued slowly.
"'A clan possessed by evil.' No one else came up with those words. Yet Senju Tobirama could still claim that, as Hokage, he was merely monitoring every potentially destabilizing element equally..."
"Then, step by step, he pushed the Uchiha out of Konoha's central districts."
"If you were in Isshin's place, could you endure that?" the Third Raikage asked his son.
The Fourth A froze. He thought hard for a while before slowly shaking his head.
"Probably not. If I were Uchiha Isshin, I'd probably fight Senju Tobirama to the bitter end!"
"Then both you and the Uchiha Clan would have disappeared from the shinobi world..."
The Third Raikage shook his head.
"But Isshin endured it. As clan head, he kept the Uchiha's resentment under control all those years, until he finally lived long enough to see the changes Hiruzen brought..."
"That's what we need to learn from Isshin now."
"If you can't win, lower your head and quietly wait for an opportunity."
Ōnoki finally tore his gaze away from Hiruzen's black armor and couldn't help looking at the Third Raikage in surprise.
You know quite a lot about the Uchiha yourself, don't you?
You even know about a man as deliberately low-profile as Isshin!
As expected of his lifelong rival...
"But what if we wait and Konoha never produces another Uchiha Madara? What do we do then...?" the Fourth A still couldn't resist asking.
It wasn't as though Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara were going to turn on each other every generation, right?
"Then go ask the Sage of Six Paths!"
The Third Raikage snapped irritably before glancing toward Ōnoki.
"What's your opinion?"
"The same."
Ōnoki sighed softly.
"Have the other shinobi withdraw. This war has nothing to do with them anymore. But we can't surrender without even putting up a fight..."
"Hiruzen wouldn't accept that. He charged into the enemy formation alone because he wants to make a name for himself—to raise his prestige throughout the shinobi world to the level of those two and further increase his influence..."
"Defeat an army of ten thousand in a single battle and capture two Kage. If you had an opportunity like that, would you let it pass?"
"Besides, we're Kage. We still have a duty to fulfill. At the very least, we have to fight..."
The Third Raikage nodded silently and waved his hand.
Ōnoki issued the same order.
The formations of Iwagakure and Kumogakure receded like the tide, while numerous scouts rushed toward the front lines with orders for the defensive forces to stop engaging the Konoha shinobi coming to reinforce the Hokage.
The Third Shinobi World War was about to end...
The victors would digest their gains and reap the rewards. The defeated would lick their wounds and wait for another opportunity. Everyone had their own matters to attend to.
And this was where reputation mattered.
If this had been Uchiha Madara's Infinite Tsukuyomi, leaving the shinobi world no path to survival, then even the weakest shinobi would have found the will to fight against such an overwhelming enemy.
But Hiruzen was different...
Neither the Third Raikage nor Ōnoki would ever say it aloud, but both of them harbored an indescribable degree of 'trust' in Hiruzen.
This man truly was different from other shinobi. He had something of Hashirama's character in him.
He was more pragmatic, certainly, but he wasn't nearly as extreme as Uchiha Madara.
"I keep feeling like the Hokage has something else in mind..."
Ōnoki stared at Hiruzen, who stood motionless atop the Five-Tails in the distance, and spoke quietly.
"Actually, by charging into our army alone, he was giving Iwagakure and Kumogakure a chance."
"There's an information gap between us and him. We had no idea his strength had already reached this level..."
"If he'd allowed Danzō and Uchiha Seisui to be captured by the two of us, nothing would have happened to them. We wouldn't have been in any position to do anything to them..."
"Instead, Hiruzen could have used their capture as perfectly reasonable grounds to escalate the war and completely destroy Iwagakure and Kumogakure. But he didn't..."
"Rather than showing off his strength, it's more accurate to say he was stepping in early to bring this war to an end."
The Third Raikage nodded silently.
He had been thinking something similar...
When all was said and done, even if Konoha destroyed Iwagakure and Kumogakure, it would indeed struggle to govern those two territories. Objectively speaking, it simply didn't have enough manpower...
But was that really something a shinobi was supposed to consider?
Hadn't everyone always just taken whatever they could before?
There had never been anything more to it...
In a certain sense, Ōnoki and the Third Raikage felt that Hiruzen might even be looking at these issues from the perspective of a Raikage or Tsuchikage...
He was like the head of a vast shinobi family. Children who made mistakes had to be punished, but punishment didn't mean beating them to death. It meant making them reflect on what they had done and admit their mistakes.
In a sense, Ōnoki and the Third Raikage had correctly guessed part of what Hiruzen was thinking...
As Hokage, Hiruzen naturally intended to punish Kumogakure and Iwagakure. He would stamp out the dangerous precedent of starting wars, and he would secure the reparations and technology Konoha was owed...
But the waters of the shinobi world ran far deeper than that.
The Five Great Shinobi Villages were merely the problems visible on the surface. The true hands manipulating events from beneath the surface were the ultimate threat the entire shinobi world would eventually have to face.
So while Kumogakure and Iwagakure needed to be punished, their strength was also worth bringing under control. As long as they could be rendered harmless, it would be best to preserve their fighting strength.
Hiruzen had never forgotten the intelligence concerning the 'deus ex machina.'
He simply had never managed to figure out what exactly this so-called 'deus ex machina' was supposed to be.
Was it the Sage within the stone tablet manifesting in the world, or would some new enemy emerge from outer space or beneath the earth...
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