At the same time, standing atop Aoda's head, Uchiha Sasuke activated Susanoo. Cloaked in the towering chakra avatar, he used Amaterasu to slice open the Ten-Tails' defensive barrier and charged straight inside.
Both of them were fearless. Skilled enough to back up their confidence, they did not hesitate even when surrounded.
Under his control, the massive Susanoo drew its bow.
The arrow was not ordinary chakra.
It was Amaterasu, the ominous black flames.
"Sasuke! Wind Release: Super Massive Rasenshuriken!"
Uzumaki Naruto roared as he hurled the gigantic Wind Release Rasenshuriken.
At the same moment, Uchiha Sasuke seized the opportunity.
"Inferno Style: Susanoo Flame Control!"
The Amaterasu arrow shot forward.
Wind and black flames collided midair, merging into a terrifying fusion attack that slammed into the Ten-Tails with crushing force.
On any normal battlefield, that strike alone would have decided the war.
Here, it was enough to make even the Ten-Tails suffer.
"I've never seen Flame Control used like that," the Second Hokage remarked in the scene, openly praising the power of the attack. "The chakra ratio must be nearly perfectly balanced."
"Even longtime partners would struggle to achieve that level of coordination."
"A windmill-like Shuriken combined with arrows darker than lacquered night," Namikaze Minato said seriously. "I shall name it Scorch Release: Halo Hurricane Jet Black Arrow Style Zero."
A moment later, he broke into laughter.
"Forget it. I'm just making that up."
The scene ended there.
Everyone felt unsatisfied. They wanted more information about that future battle.
But it was clear Kaede Kitahara had no intention of revealing further details.
They waited a while longer. When no new diary entry appeared, they knew the update was over.
The sheer amount of information weighed on them.
Kaede Kitahara's diary was chaotic. He recorded whatever he felt like, whenever he felt like it. There was no pattern.
Most of the time it was nonsense. On bad days, he might only write something like, "Clear weather. Stayed home to train."
It was not always packed with shocking revelations like this.
Which made it all the more important to seize every meaningful entry.
"Orochimaru, you really deserve to die," Tsunade muttered, her face darkening as she remembered the scene where she had nearly been killed by him.
She had grown rusty. Completely rusty.
In that battle between the Legendary Sannin, she had been the only one at full combat strength.
Jiraiya had been drugged.
Orochimaru's arms had been crippled, making it difficult for him to use ninjutsu.
Yet even under those conditions, she and Jiraiya had barely defeated him.
She had even suffered a humiliating setback at the hands of that subordinate named Kabuto.
A Kage Level ninja like her had nearly been killed.
Trampled into the dirt.
Her Hemophobia had played a role, yes. But the greater issue was that she had not participated in a battle of that scale for years.
She had not even maintained her condition.
Her strength had declined severely.
"To think I couldn't even handle a brat like that… Tsunade, you've really fallen," she mocked herself.
Even at her peak, she had only barely stood at the threshold of Kage Level.
After her decline, the gap had become painfully obvious.
A sudden thought crossed her mind.
She gathered chakra between her fingers and formed a Chakra Scalpel. With it, she sliced across her left palm.
Blood splattered out.
For a brief instant, fear flickered across her face.
Then it steadied.
The overwhelming panic she had once expected did not come.
"…Is it gone?"
She stared at her blood-covered hand in disbelief.
Hemophobia had haunted her for years.
Ever since she watched Dan die in front of her.
It had capped her strength, held her back from advancing further than the Kage Level threshold.
After that day, she had stopped wanting to train.
She chose escape.
To put it bluntly, she had given up on herself. Everything she still had was just leftover capital from her past.
In that sense, she was not so different from Hatake Kakashi.
After losing his father, his best friend, and his teacher in succession, Kakashi had improved compared to twelve years ago during the Nine-Tails incident.
But considering his talent, he had mostly been coasting.
Recently, he had stopped progressing because even that old capital had finally run out.
Most people did not even have that kind of reserve.
At its core, though, it was the same issue.
"There's still time before Orochimaru launches the Konoha Crush Plan. Maybe I can get back into shape."
Tsunade smiled.
It had been a long time since a smile like that came from the heart.
This diary entry had given her the most.
She had rediscovered her resolve.
She would never allow Orochimaru to destroy the village founded by her grandfather and granduncle, protected with the lives of Sarutobi Hiruzen, Nawaki, and Dan.
"Orochimaru…"
Jiraiya murmured.
He had already known about the Konoha Crush Plan. Now he had even seen where Orochimaru went after it failed.
It left him embarrassed.
One of the Legendary Sannin, taken down so easily.
Even if it had been Tsunade who drugged him, it still stung.
But what truly occupied his mind was the New Sannin.
From Sasuke's arrival to the three of them summoning their Summoned Beasts, to that coordinated strike against the Ten-Tails, the scene had been brief.
Yet the information was immense.
An overwhelmingly powerful enemy.
All villages united into a shinobi alliance.
Even that mountain-sized Super Massive Rasenshuriken combined with Amaterasu had only made the Ten-Tails suffer slightly.
That level of attack could devastate an entire battlefield.
And it still was not enough.
Even without seeing what happened next, Jiraiya could tell from the Ten-Tails' reaction.
"Even the past Hokage were summoned. Has the future truly reached that point?"
If all five great villages had been forced into the same trench, then resurrecting the Hokage made sense.
"The future world… you can't even rest in peace after death."
He sighed.
Then something else struck him.
Why had he not appeared in that battle?
It was not arrogance. He did not think he was above the Hokage.
But in a war of that scale, how could he possibly be absent?
Not just him.
Tsunade was not there either.
If all past Hokage were present, and the original Sixth Hokage, who had later been demoted back to "Five-and-a-Half," was already known to be dead, then only the Fifth Hokage was missing.
Him.
Tsunade.
A cold thought crept in.
Had they already died before that battle even began?
He did not dare follow that line of thinking further.
Maybe the future truly belonged to Naruto, the child of prophecy. The savior.
Hatake Kakashi closed the diary, his mind flooded with images of the old Sannin and the New Sannin.
The future was overwhelming.
He finally understood what Kaede Kitahara had meant before about Zabuza having "met two saviors."
No matter how strong you became later, had Zabuza beaten you once or not?
If he had, you had to admit it.
Still, one question gnawed at him.
Why was he not in that scene?
Where had he gone?
Had he… died?
As a ninja, he had long accepted the possibility of sacrifice.
But confronting that possibility so directly still hurt.
Then another, more terrifying realization surfaced.
"That monster was already beyond anything I've ever known," Kakashi thought. "And yet… it barely appears in Kaede Kitahara's diary."
Instead, the diary focused heavily on a group called the Otsutsuki Clan.
A race that walked among the stars like gods.
The Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke in the footage had already reached a level capable of changing the tide of an entire war.
If Konoha had possessed fighters like that during the Third Great Ninja War, it might have ended swiftly.
Perhaps it would never have started at all.
Their strength rivaled that of the First Hokage, Senju Hashirama, the God of Shinobi.
Rivaled that of Uchiha Madara, the Ninja World Asura.
And yet, according to Kaede Kitahara, even those two would be casually beaten down by someone named Otsutsuki Isshiki.
He had even described Isshiki as invincible under heaven.
Which meant…
The Ten-Tails, terrifying as it was, was not the greatest threat they would face.
There was something even worse waiting beyond it.