Konoha Hospital had returned to silence. No… 'silence' was not quite right either. It was a dead, oppressive quiet.
At the moment the fighting began, all areas outside the inpatient building had long been evacuated. Only the inpatient building remained, holding hundreds of injured patients and medical personnel taken hostage by the fifty elite Sunagakure's puppeteers.
And for nearly a kilometer around the inpatient building, five hundred Konoha's Shinobi stood in a tense standoff.
—That was how it should have been.
But now, the puppeteers inside the inpatient building had vanished. Outside, Konoha's Shinobi lay scattered and broken across the ground.
"H-how... how can someone be this strong!?" Orochimaru lay in a spreading pool of his own blood, his serpentine pupils trembling uncontrollably.
The woman known as 'Aka' had appeared without warning, displaying a power that was simply overwhelming, annihilating everyone with crushing ease.
Even he, one of the Legendary Sannin, had merely lasted a few moments longer against her.
'This level of power... it's definitely not inferior to Sarutobi-sensei. I must get this information to him.' Recalling the brutality of the brief fight, Orochimaru's body shuddered.
He had not underestimated Aka in the slightest.
After all, Hanzo, who had once defeated the three Sannin, had been killed by this woman.
Though they had all grown stronger since then, they would never disregard Hanzo's strength.
To kill Hanzo was no small feat.
But even though he had estimated her strength as highly as he could, when her true power manifested, a deep sense of despair had bloomed within him.
With immense effort, Orochimaru smeared blood from his wound and performed a hand seal. A small snake was summoned. With a trembling finger, he wrote 'Beware of Aka' on its scales before finally succumbing to unconsciousness.
The little snake, understanding its summoner's last command, swiftly slithered away into a patch of grass and disappeared.
The last sign of movement in the hospital compound vanished, plunging it into a perfect, graveyard stillness.
...
"I'm fine."
Ryuji responded to the concerned looks around him.
However,
Despite his words, his physical condition was as dire as it could be.
His sternum was shattered. His internal organs had suffered severe damage of varying degrees.
Simply sitting up now caused waves of agony, making each breath a struggle. Exerting the slightest bit of force made him cough up blood.
Injuries of this severity meant he was effectively out of the fight.
If Aka and the others had not arrived in time, he would have had no choice but to transfer his consciousness to a new body to continue.
But thankfully, Aka had come.
She had brought the remaining forty-plus members of the Sunagakure's delegation and the fifty puppeteers who had been interning at the hospital. All of them were now here.
Yes, including those fifty puppeteers.
Before separating from the main force, Ryuji had specifically ordered them to rendezvous with Yashamaru and the others at the hospital.
Otherwise, given the time that had passed since Orochimaru retreated to report, for strategy to be decided, and for a team to be dispatched to besiege the hospital puppeteers, Aka and the main force of over forty should have arrived much earlier.
"Kuro has lost contact. Gin's side also seems to be locked in a difficult battle," Aka reported, kneeling on one knee before Ryuji.
Though her heart was a furnace of rage, burning with the desire to immediately destroy the one who had harmed her master, her core programming, to share her master's joys and sorrows, kept her outwardly calm as she delivered the report.
"..."
Ryuji was silent for a moment, then closed his eyes to sense. Within the shared mental network, Kuro's presence had indeed vanished.
"Failed, then."
Though focused on his own battle earlier, he quickly accessed the memory logs from the network and understood what had transpired.
"Almost all the high-tier combatants remaining in Konoha have made their move. The only ones who could stop Kuro are Mitokado Homura and Uzumaki Kushina, but they haven't even intervened in the battle here. It's impossible they'd go that far out to find Kuro..." Ryuji thought for a moment. "Did some of Konoha's frontline experts happen to return? Or are there other hidden masters still within the village?"
Mitokado Homura was an elder advisor, his duty to counsel the Hokage.
Elders in such high, non-combat positions generally wouldn't take action unless the village faced utter ruin.
Because if the retired elders of a village had to step in, other villages would perceive the younger generation as weak, the village as having no future. This invited contempt and even invasion.
Even potential clients might doubt the village's strength and take their business elsewhere.
If he didn't intervene in the closer, more crucial battle here, it was even less likely he'd go to the outskirts to hinder Kuro.
As for Kushina...
Due to Konoha's formidable power, they did not treat their Jinchuriki as frontline combatants but protected them as strategic deterrents.
Even though Kushina had become a Jonin long ago and possessed strength surpassing an ordinary Kage, no one sent her out to fight.
Her situation was different from Homura's, but it was equally improbable she would emerge in a conflict of this scale.
No, even if she couldn't resist joining the fight, she would participate here, not go after Kuro, who was tangential to the main crisis.
However...
"It doesn't matter," Ryuji said, his voice cold. His gaze pierced through the holes in the ruined walls, meeting the silent stare opposite. "If Kuro is dead, I will make them pay a hundredfold, a thousandfold, with their lives. If he is alive, they must return him to me, unharmed. Gin, that's enough. Rendezvous with Kana on the commercial street."
There was no reply from the other side. It was uncertain if the message was received.
After a moment's hesitation, Ryuji did not send another.
Given Gin's absolute reverence, it was unlikely she would hear and not respond.
The lack of reply probably meant she was locked in a desperate struggle, with no capacity to respond, or her focus was so consumed by the fight she simply didn't register it.
Sending more messages might distract her at a critical moment.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!!!!
The sounds of rapid movement cut through the air.
The Third Hokage leapt to the foremost rooftop, his four personal Anbu guards landing close behind.
Aka took a single step forward, placing herself directly in his line of sight.
An invisible pressure erupted from both of them, so tangible it made the air feel thick and hard to breathe for those nearby.
Then, several dozen more figures arrived in swift leaps.
It was Karura, the nine other teachers, and the Konoha's Shinobi who had been besieging them.
Seeing Ryuji sent flying by the staff and Aka's arrival with reinforcements, Karura had retracted her defensive sand and led her group in a breakout to this location.
These two groups, seeing Aka and the Third Hokage in a silent confrontation, instinctively separated, taking positions behind their respective leaders.
Boom!
A wall on the right collapsed. The Iron Fortress, its steel hide scored and bloodied, charged out defiantly.
A swarm of pursuers followed closely behind.
Thus, the combat forces of both sides were fully assembled.
Both sides stood facing left and right, their gazes locked. The atmosphere grew so tense even the Jonin had sweat beading on their brows.
"Attack!"
With that command, Hiruzen charged first.
He leapt from the rooftop, his feet tapping rapidly against the wall to accelerate. The moment he landed, his staff, the Adamantine Staff, shot toward the Sunagakure's formation, expanding violently.
Boom!
The air itself seemed to be pierced.
The bowl-thick staff elongated at over a dozen times the speed of sound, its tip thrusting into Sunagakure's ranks in an instant.
A subtle, dangerous light flickered in Aka's eyes. Her fist, hardened by Steel Release to a gleaming metallic sheen, struck out to meet it.
Bang!
Fist and staff tip collided, unleashing a cataclysmic shockwave. The tremendous force transmitted through their bodies shattered the ground beneath their feet instantly. Those standing closest were sent tumbling away like leaves in a storm.
"Stay away from these two!"
Ryuji's warning came just in time. He did not want the people he had fought so hard to protect to be killed by the mere aftermath of Aka's battle.
In truth, the warning was almost unnecessary.
After that single, earth-shaking collision, both Aka and the Third Hokage had gauged each other's strength. They retracted their fist and staff simultaneously, then charged at each other at speeds that blurred into afterimages for most onlookers.
Both were terrifyingly fast.
While the Third Hokage's sustained speed might be slightly less than Minato's without the use of Flying Thunder God Technique, his raw physical power far exceeded it, granting him a burst acceleration that was staggering.
Aka was similar.
Though she possessed the template of Minato's freakish neural reflexes and talent for the Body Flicker Technique, having integrated them only half a year prior, she had not yet reached his peak proficiency.
But she also possessed Tsunade's monstrous strength.
Fueled by Chakra Reserve that dwarfed even Naruto's at fifteen, the raw, explosive power she could unleash in an instant might not rival the First Hokage's, but it was undoubtedly on a level Tsunade could scarcely imagine.
Propelled by such monstrous strength, her explosive acceleration even slightly surpassed the Third Hokage's.
Before most others could even finish rising to join the charge, the two combatants had already met in the center, clashing together once more.
The impact made the very earth shudder violently. The resulting shockwave was so powerful it knocked people dozens of meters off their feet. Already damaged buildings crumbled into dust.
The sheer violence of their instantaneous clash was terrifying.
The initial collision ended in a draw. Immediately, they fell upon each other in a whirlwind of close combat.
Aka used her Steel Release-hardened fists as her primary weapons, launching a relentless barrage. Fist-shadows filled the air like machine-gun fire, each punch causing miniature sonic booms.
Hiruzen countered without pause, his Adamantine Staff whirling in a defensive arc so dense not a drop of water could pass, meeting her assault blow for blow.
Boom! Boom! Boom!!!
Their exchanges were a continuous chain of explosions, each impact sending new shockwaves rippling outward. Wherever they moved, the ground shattered, and the air churned violently.
Those around could not even think of intervening. Merely watching the fight was a challenge, their eyes struggling to track the blurs of motion.
This exaggerated, superhuman battle made even Ryuji question his own perceptions. Was Hiruzen holding back during our fight?
Of course not.
Ryuji's current strength, while not comparable to when he wore the specialized Armor, was undeniably at the pinnacle of the Kage-level.
Against such an opponent, even a Third Hokage in his prime, a master of all attributes, could not hope for an easy victory.
Moreover, with their similar combat styles and Ryuji's greater Chakra Reserve, his Ninjutsu usage posed a natural counter.
The reason Hiruzen had not displayed such overwhelming power earlier was simply that it had been his full effort against Ryuji.
In other words, Ryuji had given him the impression that going all out would be sufficient to win. He had not felt a life-or-death threat from Ryuji.
But Aka was different.
Aka gave the Third Hokage an intense sense of crisis… of imminent peril.
Both her feat of killing Hanzo and the palpable, dangerous aura she radiated filled Hiruzen with deep unease.
He was the Hokage, the village's leader.
If he fell here, Konoha was finished.
Hiruzen had no room for retreat. This intense sense of crisis made him fight with every fiber of his being, unleashing 120%, even 200% of his power.
This resulted in a completely different tier of combat compared to his fight with Ryuji.
This was a battle that had surpassed the ordinary Kage-level.
"You old fool," Aka hissed, her voice devoid of its usual softness, filled only with cold fury. "How dare you harm Master. You are dead."
Hiruzen did not respond with words. His movements simply became more ferocious, more powerful. Even as Aka's assault intensified, he yielded not an inch.
This, too, was to be expected.
Aka possessed the ability to self-adjust her innate talents.
But limited by her frame of reference, she needed to have witnessed and understood that a human could possess a certain talent before she could replicate and optimize it.
However, talent was just talent.
To transform talent into true skill required training. Regardless of the duration, that process was necessary.
And when it came to raw, all-around talent, the Third Hokage feared no one.
Whether in Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, Genjutsu, tactical analysis, or Chakra Control… his innate abilities were top-tier in every conventional category.
Apart from rare, specialized talents like Minato's supernatural neural reflexes, Sasori's extreme multi-tasking, or certain savant-like mental processing, Hiruzen possessed the highest-grade talents available.
No matter how Aka adjusted, she could at best match him in these areas, not surpass him.
While she could gain an advantage in the few esoteric talents he lacked, she had only existed for a little over three years. Her cumulative training time and breadth of combat experience were far inferior to the Third Hokage's decades.
Without the Kekkei Genkai and secret arts developed by Ryuji, her current strength would likely be inferior to Hiruzen's.
But even with those enhancements, the contest was, at best, an even fight.
And that assessment was made without considering Hiruzen's own hidden techniques and secret arts.