"Sonoko, don't!"
Ran quickly pulled her best friend back.
Sonoko still looked indignant, but she immediately shut up.
Because she saw someone walk in from outside, standing at the tent entrance.
Haruno Sakura.
Sakura was wearing a white Medical-Nin uniform. Her face was very pale, her lips almost colorless.
She stood at the tent entrance, her gaze looking past Sonoko and Ran's shoulders, landing on Naruto.
Shikamaru, Ino, Tenten, and the others also noticed Sakura walking in, and their expressions changed.
Sakura walked into the tent, came to Naruto's cot, and stood there, her expression complex as she looked at Naruto, who was covered in bandages.
Naruto didn't dare to meet Sakura's eyes at all, burying his face deeper into the blanket. "S-sorry... Sakura..."
Naruto's voice trembled. He hadn't brought Sasuke back, and Gaara was about to die.
It was, it was all his fault.
"Naruto."
Sakura spoke.
Everyone held their breath, afraid that Sakura might say something that would further upset Naruto.
"I... I like you, Naruto."
At these words, the tent seemed to have had its pause button pressed.
Everyone was stunned.
At this moment, unless Yu and Beam publicly announced they were a couple, nothing could be more explosive than this.
Sonoko's eyes nearly popped out of her head. She turned her head and stared at her best friend with an expression of disbelief.
"What-what's going on?"
Ran was also completely dumbfounded, her eyes wide.
"I don't know either!"
Even Sonoko herself was confused.
While this soap opera was unfolding in Naruto's tent, Makoto and his group were in Gaara's tent.
Gaara lay flat on his cot, his face pale as paper. After Shukaku was extracted, his body was visibly failing at an alarming rate.
Mai sat on the edge of the bed, feeling Gaara's pulse.
Mai withdrew her hand and said, "He probably has about one more day left."
Moeha, standing beside her, added, "I can use my Heal-Heal Fruit ability to help him. That should buy him a little more time."
"That's enough."
Makoto stood at the tent entrance, his back to the group, his gaze looking out at the pitch-black horizon in the distance.
"Before the sun sets tomorrow, this war will be over."
Hearing this, Temari, Kankuro, and the others also breathed a sigh of relief.
Although Shukaku had left some of his Chakra in Gaara's body, and although Mai and Moeha said he could hold on, it still wasn't enough to reassure them.
But since Makoto said so, it meant there was absolutely no problem.
Just as the siblings were about to express their gratitude to Makoto—
Instantly, a surge of Chakra, so vast it was difficult to fathom, spread out from a distance.
Even non-Sensor-type Ninjas could feel the terror of that Chakra.
Then, an earth-shattering roar came from over a hundred miles away.
"Roooar—!!!"
It shook the eardrums of everyone in the Allied Forces.
"What... what's wrong? What's happening?"
Countless Allied forces personnel who had been receiving treatment or sleeping in their tents came running out.
Many still had IV drips in their arms, covered in bandages.
Everyone looked in the direction of that roar.
Then, everyone saw a gigantic dark shadow approaching.
The shadow moved rapidly under the moonlight, each step causing the earth to tremble.
It got closer and closer, larger and larger, nearly blotting out the moon in the sky.
When it reached a certain distance, many could vaguely make out the ten tails dancing wildly under the moonlight.
Makoto stepped forward a few paces and saw the arriving dark shadow clearly.
The wildly dancing ten tails.
"Sorry, I was mistaken."
Makoto, his back still to Temari behind him, corrected himself,
"It seems this will end before sunrise."
"Nishikawa Makoto! Take this!"
Obito's enraged shout came from atop the Ten-Tails.
His Rinnegan crossed over tens of kilometers, precisely locking onto the man standing in front of the Allied Forces camp.
The Ten-Tails' body leaned back slightly, its chest puffing up.
Then, it opened its gaping maw, as if trying to swallow the entire sky.
In front of the Ten-Tails' mouth, Chakra rapidly condensed.
Dark red Chakra surged from within the Ten-Tails, converging and compressing before its mouth.
The crimson red color was particularly striking under the moonlight, like a blood-red sunset about to fall.
The next moment, this Tailed Beast Bomb was launched.
The conical Tailed Beast Bomb traced a parabola through the air, tearing through the atmosphere, flying straight toward the Allied Forces' camp.
"Isn't that way too big?!"
Many in the Allied Forces were terrified. Many of them had seen Tailed Beast Bombs before, even the Nine-Tails' Tailed Beast Bomb.
This was the difference between a bullet and a cannon.
"I'll do it!"
Utaha stepped forward.
Her Mangekyo Sharingan spun wildly in their sockets, ready to activate Kamui.
The black-stockinged senpai locked her gaze onto the falling Tailed Beast Bomb, preparing to suck it into the Kamui Dimension.
But just then, Yu suddenly spoke.
"Erina-sama, if you would."
As Yu spoke, he pulled his arm to complete his transformation.
Having transformed into the Gun Devil, he raised his right arm, aiming at the Super Tailed Beast Bomb that was already beginning to fall toward him.
Erina immediately understood his meaning. She raised her hand and injected her Devil Fruit energy into the barrel.
"More-More: Fifty times."
Erina muttered softly.
The muzzle of Yu's gun erupted with a flash of fire. An armor-piercing round shot out from the barrel at several times the speed of sound, visibly growing in size as it flew.
By the time it was about to collide with the Tailed Beast Bomb, its size was no less than the opponent's.
The next moment, under the stunned gazes of both sides—
A deafening explosion came from high above.
The Super Tailed Beast Bomb and the hyper-concentrated armor-piercing round collided head-on in mid-air.
The light emitted was brighter than the sun, illuminating the battlefield for dozens of kilometers as if it were daylight.
The shockwave spread in all directions like a tsunami, ripping up forests hundreds of meters high and creating countless cracks in the earth.
Even the Ten-Tails, with its mountain-like size, was forced back step by step by this shockwave.
"Roooar—!"
The Ten-Tails let out a grunt and barely managed to steady itself.
On the Allied Forces' side, the ground itself was torn up. The shockwave ripped open entire layers of topsoil.
Just as these nearly ten thousand people were about to be thrown into the air…
At this critical moment—
Mrs. Yuigahama stepped forward.
Her index and middle fingers crossed.
A semi-transparent cyan barrier materialized before her.
Erina quickly stepped up, pressing both hands on the barrier.
"More-More: Fifty times!"
Instantly, the barrier rapidly expanded.
The huge, semi-transparent barrier instantly grew to fifty times its original size, completely blocking the shockwave.
The shockwave came raging, but the barrier didn't budge an inch.
In the distance, the Ten-Tails, forced back by the shockwave, dug its fingers into the soil to avoid continuing to slide backward.
Obito and his group rose and fell with the Ten-Tails' breathing. A gleam of shock appeared in the Rinnegan behind Obito's mask.
Madara stood on the Ten-Tails' shoulder, his feet firmly planted on its back. Looking up at that huge, transparent barrier connecting the sky and earth, a hint of something other than contempt appeared in those Rinnegan for the first time.
"Oh, a technique I haven't seen before."
A hint of interest in Madara's voice.
"In terms of defense, it seems to surpass even Hashirama's Rashomon."