"You… want to kill me?"
Listening to Rei Kaguya's ruthless statement, two clear trails of tears could not help flowing down Kaguya Otsutsuki's beautiful, sacred face.
She gazed at this young descendant who carried the chakra fluctuations of Hamura Otsutsuki, and spoke as though lost in an overly long dream.
"Hagoromo betrayed me. Hamura wanted to seal me together with his elder brother… And now, you also want to kill me, my child?"
"It is merely something I have no choice but to do."
"That was what Hamura and Hagoromo said to me back then as well."
Kaguya Otsutsuki looked at Rei Kaguya's face. While tears continued flowing, she slowly raised both hands.
"All of you have broken. You have fallen… My greatest mistake was holding expectations that you would change your minds."
"But such expectations will not exist anymore."
"Return your chakra… to me!"
Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack!
The strongest taijutsu inherited from the main family of the Otsutsuki clan, capable of bringing the power of the Byakugan to its absolute extreme, thunderously struck out.
Carrying overwhelming force that could not be resisted, it smashed Rei Kaguya, who was floating before her, directly into the collapsing earth ahead.
The terrifying force of the Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack directly shattered the land plate that was cracking away from the moon. Enormous sound waves and tremors swept across a hundred miles in an instant, destroying every piece of vegetation and every Otsutsuki residence that had taken countless effort to establish upon the moon.
The dust it stirred up even transformed into a towering wall tall enough to touch the Moon Palace.
With just the opening strike, she had already displayed world-ending might.
But before Kaguya Otsutsuki could withdraw her hands, she saw Rei Kaguya, whose body did not have even a speck of dust on it, suddenly charge out from an area outside the range struck by the Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack.
With momentum faster than lightning, he swung his blade toward Kaguya Otsutsuki's body.
Rabbit Hair Needle!
Clang!
At the critical moment, Kaguya Otsutsuki's long hair turned into a shield, blocking the direction of Rei Kaguya's slash by the narrowest margin.
But what caused Kaguya Otsutsuki's eyes to tremble slightly was that before the tachi in Rei Kaguya's hand, even her hair, reinforced by her chakra, only managed to block for an instant before being cut open effortlessly.
The blade successfully landed on her body.
Sizzle.
In just a single exchange, Kaguya Otsutsuki suffered tangible damage due to her lack of combat experience and intelligence.
Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack!
Relying on the Byakugan's all-around field of vision, Kaguya Otsutsuki once again unleashed that strongest strike toward Rei Kaguya.
Her advantage in raw hardware allowed her to successfully return a blow, sending Rei Kaguya flying far away. Only then did she finally sense the utterly abnormal pain coming from the wound Rei Kaguya had cut open.
Gray stillness spread across her pale skin, turning her clothing, hair, flesh, and blood into ashes that constantly scattered through the air.
For Kaguya Otsutsuki, this manifestation was so familiar that it could not possibly be more familiar.
All-Killing Ash Bones.
Her strongest offensive method.
A power even Hamura Otsutsuki and Hagoromo Otsutsuki had failed to inherit from her.
"You have even inherited such power, yet you still refuse to return to my side, Rei?"
Kaguya Otsutsuki shed tears once more.
She swung her hand and severed the part of her body struck by Rei Kaguya's blade. Then, while using chakra to catalyze the regeneration of her flesh and blood, she asked in a tearful voice,
"You are clearly… closer to me than Hamura and Hagoromo ever were, Rei…"
"I am sorry. Even if I make you cry again and again, I absolutely cannot become someone on your side."
As he spoke, Rei Kaguya's figure once again appeared from above, outside Kaguya Otsutsuki's expectations.
He swung the gray, deathly bone blade in his hand and cut away the gray bone spike Kaguya Otsutsuki suddenly raised her hand to fire. Then, sighing, he said,
"Your attitude toward the shinobi world is far too brutal. As someone born in the shinobi world, I have no possibility of accepting such atrocities… Unless you are willing to entrust all authority over managing the shinobi world to me, and allow me to take responsibility for training an army to face those Otsutsuki clansmen who may come pursuing from the depths of the universe, I have absolutely no possibility of accepting your recruitment."
"The humans of the shinobi world… make you love them that much, Rei!?"
As if the anger in her heart had been ignited, Kaguya Otsutsuki flashed backward. A strange black space completely swallowed her figure from Rei Kaguya's sight.
And just as his downward charge paused because of Kaguya Otsutsuki's disappearance, an identical black space instantly opened behind him. At the same moment, Kaguya Otsutsuki's furious strike landed on Rei Kaguya's body without any obstruction.
"Gah—!"
The air exploded under unbearable pressure.
Kaguya Otsutsuki dragged Rei Kaguya's body with her, smashing him into the ground like a falling meteor. After carving an enormous canyon hundreds of kilometers long across the moon's surface, Kaguya Otsutsuki looked at Rei Kaguya, whose neck she had seized and whose expression had gone weak, and harshly questioned him with emotions even she herself could not understand.
"Hagoromo was like this. Hamura was like this. And now you are like this too!!! For the sake of a group of insignificant ants whose deaths do not matter at all, you would betray me, betray your mother! Why!? Why!? In your eyes, is the mother who gave birth to you, who gave you life and power, not even as important as a group of unrelated ants?"
"I will not speculate on what the Sage of Six Paths and Ancestor Hamura thought… But, Ancestor Kaguya, I am a child born from the ants you speak of. They are not… unrelated at all."
The "dying" Rei Kaguya looked at Kaguya Otsutsuki's face, which had become slightly distorted from anger, and barely gathered a breath before slowly giving his answer.
"I can give you my bloodline and make you my fourth child. My true child."
A gray bone protruded from Kaguya Otsutsuki's palm, stopping against Rei Kaguya's throat with only a hair's breadth between them.
"That way, you will have nothing to do with them anymore!"
"…But the time I spent with them will not change because of that, Ancestor Kaguya."
Rei Kaguya met Kaguya Otsutsuki's eyes without flinching or avoiding her gaze.
"Even if you do that, my answer will remain unchanged… I refuse to serve you."
"Then… die together with them, Rei."
Kaguya Otsutsuki bit down with her silver teeth and pressed her palm down hard, stabbing the All-Killing Ash Bones blade through Rei Kaguya's throat.
And so, gray decay and deathly stillness rapidly spread from the wound. In only an instant, Rei Kaguya's body turned into ashes scattering through the sky.
But at that moment, Kaguya Otsutsuki noticed something strange.
When he first revealed himself, Rei Kaguya should have been holding a tachi.
The weapon he used to cut open her Rabbit Hair Needle defense had also been that tachi.
But when he appeared a second time after being sent flying by her, that blade was gone. The weapon he used to fight her had also changed into a bone blade formed from All-Killing Ash Bones.
Was that normal?
No. It was not.
When those two rebellious sons, Hagoromo and Hamura, came to rebel against her back then, the weapons they carried had all played indispensable roles in the battle afterward.
Even they had been like that. So how could Rei Kaguya, who had displayed an attitude even more arrogant than theirs at the very beginning, casually discard his weapon?
And…
When he appeared the second time, he also showed a willingness to communicate with her. There was none of the madness he had displayed earlier when he recklessly declared that he would kill her.
Was he… buying time?
…
"Oh my, even though I said this is when Kaguya is at her weakest, she really isn't at a level where someone like me, who has only just touched the threshold, can use a clone to stall her. It got instantly killed, huh?"
In outer space, Rei Kaguya, who had used the opportunity of being sent flying by Kaguya Otsutsuki's Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack to swap places with the clone returning with the giant Tenseigan, received the experience and information sent back by the clone while placing his hand on the dimly glowing giant Tenseigan.
"But thanks to the clone stalling her with conversation, I finally have enough room to take over this generous gift."
"System, let me see your limits."
[Qualified eyeballs detected. Unique Rune: Eyeball Collection activated.]
[Ocular power +54]
[Ocular power +76]
[Ocular power +65]
…
[Ocular power +116]
[Current dojutsu level: Tenseigan (highest grade)]
[Current additional ocular power: 114514]
[You have obtained two opportunities to awaken specific types of dojutsu.]