Chapter 355: Danzō's Counsel
That her friend had grown so attached to someone several years older was one thing — but that she didn't even know the first solid fact about who he actually was left Kurenai a little stumped. Was her sweet, scatterbrained friend just too trusting for her own good?
But there wasn't much she could say about it. All she could do was grumble about it quietly to herself.
Kurenai let out a soft sigh, her gaze drifting blankly around her. By now she had a rough sense of just how bad things were.
The entire village of Konoha was caught in a crisis unlike anything it had faced since the First Hokage founded it — one that could end in the village's total destruction at any moment.
Fortunately, Konoha sat within the borders of the Land of Fire, enjoyed close ties with its Feudal Lord, and its shinobi had built up a strong reputation.
If they could just hold out in the open for two or three days until they reached one of the other towns, the people there might be willing to take them in, at least for a while.
I don't even know if Konoha can pull through this one. And if the other hidden villages catch wind of it, they won't hesitate to tear up the peace treaties and go to war against the Land of Fire all over again.
Kurenai's worry wasn't unfounded. With Konoha in this state, there would certainly be those looking to kick the village while it was down.
The so-called peace treaties only held while Konoha remained strong. The moment the village fell on hard times —
— the other hidden villages, vicious as wolves and tigers, wouldn't let the opportunity pass them by.
Which meant that even if they scraped through this crisis, the next one could be right on its heels.
Konoha was already in a wretched state. If the other villages really did move in for the kill — bleeding it dry, tearing off pieces —
— there was a real chance the village simply wouldn't hold. And that would be an entirely new catastrophe.
Nearly every shinobi shared that same fear, yet not one of them said it out loud — afraid the ordinary civilians wouldn't be able to stomach the truth, and that panic would spiral into chaos.
Things were already difficult enough as they were. Push it any further and it would all fall apart completely.
Looking over at Anko, still visibly on edge beside her, Kurenai gave her shoulder a resigned pat. "Relax. Didn't you say Ryū-oniisan knows the Fourth Hokage personally? If the two of them know each other, and as equals besides, he's probably plenty strong himself."
"Stronger than either of us, at any rate. Instead of worrying yourself sick over him, you'd be better off helping the other shinobi keep order."
"..."
After Kurenai's talking-to, Anko took a deep breath, doing her best to tamp down the inexplicable knot of anxiety in her chest.
She wasn't even sure why she was so worried about Ryū's safety. Maybe it was just because she'd never managed to treat him to that meal she owed him?
She couldn't quite say. But Kurenai was right about one thing — right now, keeping order was what mattered most.
Konoha was crawling with all sorts of unsavory characters, and as Chūnin, it was their job to make sure none of those troublemakers used this moment to whip up an even bigger panic.
Meanwhile, inside the mirror-space, the operation to wipe out the Void Beasts had reached a fever pitch.
The ground was already carpeted with Void Beast corpses. Thanks to the Ancient One's control over the Time Stone, only half an hour had passed in the outside world.
Inside the mirror-space, though, twelve hours had gone by.
This batch of Void Beasts was stronger than the last, but the dimensional rift they were pouring out of was noticeably smaller this time.
They couldn't all come swarming out at once — at most, three or four could squeeze through at a time.
That gave Ryū and the others plenty of room to work with — no need to worry about being surrounded on all sides. Everyone had settled into a clear division of labor, cutting the beasts down one after another.
The corpses piling up on the ground already resembled a small mountain range. The intact ones were countable — somewhere around eighty or ninety of them.
As for the ones blown apart into scattered pieces or reduced to mincemeat, those were past counting. Either way, the total kill count had already broken past a hundred.
A Ki blast several meters across, glowing a deep azure, slammed into the ugly skull of a Void Beast. The hide split open on impact without the slightest resistance.
Before the blood could even spray free, the blast's searing heat vaporized it outright — and the thick skull beneath shattered along with it.
The blast bored straight into the beast's brain, wiping out the neural tissue in an instant.
The creature's whole body went rigid, as if every ounce of strength had been drained from it in a heartbeat. The savage light in its eyes faded into a dull, empty stare.
Its massive frame toppled straight over, crashing down onto the pile of corpses already on the ground — very much on its way out.
"Still a lot of them, but nowhere near as bad as last time — at least we're not getting swarmed by a thousand of these things. Eleven of us here now, two to four beasts each — that's manageable."
Ryū muttered it half to himself. At the moment he was handling four Void Beasts at once — though by now it was down to three.
Except a fresh one had just crawled out of the rift, putting him right back to four.
He dodged a string of incoming attacks, then took a clawed swipe head-on without flinching.
With one hand he pinned a Void Beast's body down and unleashed the Decompose-Decompose Fruit's power at full force — the cells throughout its body began breaking down under the assault.
Then he cut the ability off just as fast, and drove a devastating Ki blast into the creature — a blinding wash of azure light bright enough to light up half the sky.
In a fight like this, the Decompose-Decompose Fruit was strictly a support tool — Void Beast corpses were worth good money.
One careless slip and he'd dissolve the whole beast into mush — and then he wouldn't even get the 100 Points for a pulverized corpse.
That would just be throwing money away. So for now, Ryū kept the fruit's power to harassment duty only — a support move, nothing more.
Out of nowhere, jagged white cracks split open across the space itself.
The dense web of fractures carried an endless, crushing force, and it all converged on one massive Void Beast.
Whitebeard's booming laugh rang out. "Gurararara! Outside of the Arena, this is the first fight in almost two months that's really gotten my blood up."
Veins stood out along his massive muscles. Whitebeard grinned a little wider, his crescent-moon mustache trembling.
A faint white glow wrapped around his right fist, and the space around him shuddered violently under the shockwaves of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
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