Chapter 460: Sasuke's Unwillingness to Accept Defeat: I Need Power
Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the battlefield, the clash had escalated into pure carnage. Kinkaku and Ginkaku stood at the epicenter, their bodies entirely submerged in bubbling, dark red chakra. They had fully transitioned into their semi-Tailed Beast states, the dense, corrosive aura warping the very air around them.
"Chidori!"
Sasuke's low, feral shout cut through the chaos. A blinding cluster of blue lightning ignited in his palm, the ear-piercing screech of a thousand birds drowning out the ambient roar of combat.
Naruto reached out, his eyes widening. "Sasuke, wait!"
But it was too late. Positioned closest to the Gold and Silver Brothers, Sasuke had already launched himself forward. His Three-Tomoe Sharingan spun wildly, calculating trajectories and mapping the battlefield in a fraction of a second. Like a bolt of lightning, he sliced directly into Kinkaku's defensive blind spot.
The strike was absolutely flawless. It was a masterclass in speed and precision, an assassination thrust so rapid that an ordinary Jonin would be dead before they even registered the flash of blue light.
Yet, through the slit-like, monstrous eyes of the semi-Tailed Beast Kinkaku, this blinding assault moved in agonizingly slow motion.
"Is that all?" A hideous, mocking sneer twisted Kinkaku's chakra-warped features.
'I got him!' Sasuke's heart leaped, a fierce surge of triumph flashing across his face as the crackling tip of his Chidori closed the final inch toward Kinkaku's chest.
Then, reality shattered his expectations.
A thick, dark red tail, condensed entirely from hyper-dense, boiling chakra, whipped out from behind Kinkaku's back with bone-crushing velocity. The Chidori slammed dead-center into the Tailed Beast Mantle. Jagged blue lightning and corrosive red chakra ground violently against one another, erupting into a blinding shower of lethal sparks.
Sasuke's crimson pupils contracted to pinpricks. The Chidori, his ultimate assassination technique, the blade of lightning he took such immense pride in, could not even dent that suffocating layer of chakra.
"Is that it?" Kinkaku's voice was a distorted, demonic rumble. "Uchiha brat, to This Great Lord, you are nothing! Get lost!!"
With a violent roar, Kinkaku flexed the chakra tail.
The sheer kinetic force hit Sasuke like a battering ram. He let out a choked groan as his ribs bowed inward, his body launched backward through the air like a broken doll. He crashed into the earth dozens of meters away, tumbling violently through the dirt.
"Cough... hack..." Sasuke forced himself onto his hands and knees, a mouthful of hot blood splattering against the shattered ground.
"This is the so-called genius of the Uchiha?!" Ginkaku cackled, his voice layering over his brother's. "It doesn't even qualify as a scratch!"
The Gold and Silver Brothers threw their heads back, completely surrendering to their berserk state. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the dark red chakra cloaking them surged into a towering pillar of malice. The sheer atmospheric pressure crushed the earth beneath their feet, the bedrock splintering and cracking inch by inch.
"Roar!!!"
Two deafening, inhuman bellows tore through the battlefield. Immediately after, Kinkaku and Ginkaku unhinged their jaws, aiming their maws toward the sky. Blue and red chakra particles violently converged, compressing into a dense, pitch-black sphere that expanded at a terrifying rate.
A Tailed Beast Ball. And they were charging two of them simultaneously.
The gravitational pull of the spheres warped the air. At this proximity, with such horrifying density, the resulting detonation would instantly vaporize everything within a multi-kilometer radius.
Sasuke could only stare, his breath hitching, his mind momentarily blanking at the sheer scale of the approaching destruction.
"Hey, Sasuke."
A rush of wind broke his stupor. Naruto materialized directly in front of him, his orange jumpsuit snapping in the gale.
"What are you spacing out for?"
Before Sasuke could force a word past his bleeding lips, sand swirled into existence beside Naruto, solidifying into a familiar silhouette. Gaara stood tall, his arms crossed over his chest, his pale teal eyes locked coldly onto the monstrous brothers.
"If they wish to use the power of the Tailed Beasts," Gaara stated, his voice eerily calm amidst the roaring winds, "then we will return the favor in kind."
In the blink of an eye, the battlefield shifted.
Golden-orange Nine-Tails chakra erupted from Naruto, flaring into a brilliant, blinding cloak that pushed back the suffocating malice of the Gold and Silver Brothers. Simultaneously, a tidal wave of yellow sand erupted from beneath Gaara's feet, spiraling upward to form the massive, jagged bust of the One-Tail, Shukaku.
"Tailed Beast Ball!!" Naruto and Gaara roared in unison.
In front of them, two equally colossal spheres of hyper-compressed black chakra rapidly took shape, the sheer density of the attacks tearing up the ground beneath them.
Sasuke remained kneeling in the dirt behind them. He stared at the broad, glowing backs of his two peers. His bloodied hands, previously clenched into white-knuckled fists, slowly went slack. The Three-Tomoe Sharingan spun weakly in his eyes. Amidst this clash of titans, his visual prowess felt entirely insignificant.
He was completely, utterly redundant.
"Fire!!!"
The four apocalyptic spheres of annihilation launched forward, colliding dead-center in the narrow stretch of the battlefield.
For a fraction of a second, all sound ceased.
Then, an extreme, blinding white light swallowed the world. The shockwave hit first, followed by an devastating detonation that tore the crust of the earth apart, sending a colossal mushroom cloud of fire and ash climbing into the heavens.
"Earth Release: Multiple Earth Flow Walls!"
In the distance, the surviving Konoha shinobi slammed their hands onto the ground, desperately chaining their defensive ninjutsu to weather the apocalyptic aftershocks. Thick, choking smoke and pulverized rock blotted out the sun. As the dust slowly began to settle, a devastating crater, hundreds of meters in diameter, lay carved into the center of the wasteland.
"Cough..."
Sasuke knelt near the precipice of the newly formed abyss. A thick, hardened dome of yellow sand crumbled away from his shoulders. Gaara had actively diverted a portion of his absolute defense to shield him at the exact moment of the blast.
'Is it over?' Sasuke gritted his teeth, forcing his battered body to stand as he peered into the depths of the smoking crater.
The final veils of ash blew away.
Naruto and Gaara remained standing at the edge, their breathing steady, completely unscathed.
Opposite them, at the very bottom of the scorched pit, Kinkaku and Ginkaku lay in absolute ruin. Their semi-Tailed Beast mantles had been violently stripped away. Their bodies were mangled, missing entire limbs and chunks of their torsos. Paper-like debris unique to the Edo Tensei wriggled and fluttered around their wounds, desperately attempting to piece their shattered forms back together.
"This... how is this possible..." Ginkaku gasped, his single remaining eye wide with unadulterated terror.
"The Nine-Tails... and the One-Tail..." Kinkaku choked out, his jaw half-missing. "These two brats... they can actually perfectly control the power of the Tailed Beasts?"
As ruthless monsters who had survived by gorging on the internal flesh of the Nine-Tails, they understood better than anyone the chaotic, maddening nature of a berserk Tailed Beast. Yet, these two teenagers had wielded that apocalyptic power with surgical precision.
That combined strike had utterly annihilated them.
"The times have long since changed, old men." Naruto stepped up to the very edge of the crater, looking down at the broken legends while casually rubbing the bottom of his nose. "Those who only know how to roar and thrash around blindly... those are just beasts."
"Don't waste your breath on them," Gaara interrupted smoothly.
He raised a single hand. A torrential waterfall of yellow sand poured into the basin of the crater, swarming over Kinkaku and Ginkaku, tightly binding their regenerating limbs before they could even twitch.
"Desert Layered Imperial Funeral!"
Gaara clenched his raised fist. The massive volume of sand instantly compacted, crushing inward to form a towering, dense pyramid. complex black sealing formulas spider-webbed across the smooth surface of the structure.
"Sealing Squad!" Gaara commanded, turning his head.
Several Konoha Sealing Squad shinobi materialized instantly via the Body Flicker Technique, slapping specialized sealing tags onto the four faces of the sand pyramid to finalize the lockdown.
"We... we won!"
A beat of silence passed before deafening cheers erupted from the surviving Konoha shinobi, the sound echoing across the ruined landscape.
Naruto and Gaara turned to face each other, raising their arms to bump fists.
"Not bad, Gaara," Naruto grinned, his blue eyes bright.
"You too, Naruto," Gaara replied, a rare, faint smile touching his lips.
Only Sasuke stood apart.
He remained entirely isolated on the periphery of the celebration. His bangs cast a heavy shadow over his eyes, masking his expression from the cheering crowd. But at his sides, his fists were clenched so tightly that his fingernails bit into his palms, drawing fresh blood.
'Too weak.'The thought echoed in his mind, a venomous whisper.'I am really... far too weak.'
He stared at the backs of Naruto and Gaara as they casually chatted and laughed, bathed in the glow of victory. Deep within the darkest recesses of Sasuke's heart, a bitter seed named jealousy took root, frantically sprouting vines that choked his pride.
The Three-Tomoe Sharingan. It was nowhere near enough.
Suddenly, the atmosphere shifted.
A terrifying chakra fluctuation rippled outward from a neighboring battlefield, causing the very air to tremble. It was a suffocating pressure, entirely distinct from the feral heat of the Tailed Beasts.
Sasuke snapped his head up. He saw the distant sky had been stained a bruised, deep purple.
A colossal purple giant, wielding a massive ethereal blade, stood tall upon the earth, piercing the heavens.
'That's... Father's Susanoo.'And standing right beside Uchiha Fugaku's towering avatar was another equally terrifying, blazing giant.'It's him. The shame of the Uchiha Clan.'
Despite the bottomless disdain he harbored for Itachi, witnessing the sheer majesty of that second Susanoo forced Sasuke to acknowledge his older brother's unfathomable strength.
"That's a Susanoo!" Naruto yelled, his eyes widening in awe as he stared at the mountain-like purple deity in the distance.
"Is the other one an enemy?" Gaara asked, his expression instantly hardening into a grave mask.
Sasuke did not answer. His entire body was trembling uncontrollably, not from fear, but from a desperate, consuming hunger.
'Is that... the ultimate power of the Mangekyo Sharingan?'
"I'm going over there," Sasuke muttered.
Leaving those words behind, he completely ignored Naruto's frantic shouts, kicking off the ground and dashing madly toward the towering shadows of the Susanoo.
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