The battle between Might Duy and the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist was extremely brief.
After all, Duy had to finish everything within the limited duration of the Eight Gates Formation.
From start to finish, he fought in a constant state of total eruption. His enemies were five elite jōnin, and Duy delivered exactly five attacks—
Each one an instant kill.
After carving those words into the rock, Hagoromo said nothing more and fell into silence.
He moved from one corpse to the next, first confirming that each enemy was truly dead, then retrieving the ninja sword left beside the body.
Hagoromo had learned and witnessed many techniques, but there were far more he had yet to encounter. Even if someone appeared to have been reduced to a bloody mess, it was still possible that a special survival method had allowed them to cling to life.
Feigning death and escaping after Duy burned himself out was not an impossibility.
But this time, Hagoromo was simply being overly cautious.
None of the Seven Swordsmen could survive a killing blow from Duy in the Eight Gates state. Even if they possessed some last-resort escape technique, they would never have had the chance to activate it under such overwhelming speed.
As for Duy—
There was no need to check.
Hagoromo knew he was already gone.
Regret?
Pity?
Sorrow?
Lament?
Hagoromo's emotions were tangled beyond what a single word—or even several—could express.
If he had arrived five minutes earlier, perhaps the outcome would have been different. Perhaps Duy and the Seven Swordsmen would not have perished together.
But in the world of shinobi, there were no "perhaps" and no "if only."
In a world where a single second could determine life or death, fighting for five extra minutes was often an impossible luxury.
Right and wrong were irrelevant.
This battle was, beyond doubt, the greatest proof of Duy's life as a shinobi.
Slaying five members of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen alone—
What more could possibly be said about a "genin" like that?
For Eight Gates Duy, the Seven Swordsmen were neither too weak nor too strong. Individually, they were elite jōnin; as a group, even more formidable.
But they were not Uchiha.
Not Senju.
Not Ōtsutsuki.
No matter how strong they were, they remained within the bounds of conventional shinobi.
They were, in every sense, the perfect opponents for Duy.
No matter how one looked at it, the Seven Swordsmen had prepared the stage for Duy's final curtain call.
Although Hagoromo retrieved the swords, he did not intend to take all of them.
After some thought, he sealed Nuibari and Hiramekarei into a scroll, to prevent a repeat of the Samehada incident.
These two, he would take with him.
As for the remaining blades—Lightning Blade: Fang, Blastsword: Shibuki, and Kabutowari—he carried them beneath the rock face and began carving sealing formulas into the ground.
The purpose was localized spatial isolation: to block summoning techniques.
Hagoromo intended to imprison these three swords here.
Not to honor Duy's spirit.
Not to memorialize the battle.
He hadn't thought that far.
He left them here for one simple reason—
So that Kirigakure would eventually come to retrieve them.
No matter the method, once Kirigakure sought to recover their swords, they would arrive at this nameless island, stand before this rock wall, and see the words Hagoromo had carved.
Through this, Hagoromo was telling Kirigakure a single fact:
The famed Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist were annihilated by an unknown Konoha genin named Might Duy.
This was not to glorify Duy.
The dead had no use for fame. From beginning to end, Might Duy was only ever a genin.
Hagoromo merely wanted certain people to know the truth.
Whether they believed it or not was irrelevant.
The Seven Swordsmen died by Duy's hand.
That was all.
He left the battlefield completely untouched.
What he had seen, they would see.
From Konoha's perspective, recovering the Seven Swordsmen's bodies would have been the correct, rational choice. The intelligence value alone was enormous.
But that was Konoha's logic.
Hagoromo was acting on his own.
As someone who had witnessed the battle with his own eyes, he chose emotion over cold calculation.
Might Duy deserved respect.
Everything Hagoromo did was driven by that respect—not by Konoha's rules or利益.
Strictly speaking, such behavior made him an unqualified shinobi.
Leaving Duy's name behind did not count as intelligence leakage. The Seven Swordsmen had been on a deep infiltration mission into the Land of Fire; missions of this kind were undertaken with the understanding that the operatives might never return.
If they failed to report back, Kirigakure would already know they had been killed by Konoha.
The only additional information gained was a name: Might Duy.
But that name meant nothing operationally.
If Kirigakure searched their records, they would find nothing—because they had known nothing about him.
Kirigakure had files on Hagoromo. Vague or precise, they existed. He had clashed with multiple Kirigakure elites and personally killed Kisame Hoshigaki, making him a high-priority target.
But a nameless genin like Duy—nothing more than a disposable asset of war?
They knew nothing at all.
If Kirigakure gained anything from the inscription, it would only be the name of a technique—
Eight Gates.
Unfortunately for them, it would be a very long time before that technique ever bloomed so completely again.
After confirming that the sealing barrier was functioning properly—and that no summoning retrieval like Samehada's could occur—Hagoromo had finished everything he needed to do.
It was time to return to the Land of Fire.
He carried Duy's body to Pakura, performed a summoning, and placed both Duy and the barely-living Pakura on the back of the Yatagarasu, preparing to fly back to the front lines.
For convenience alone, Hagoromo could have sealed Duy into a scroll.
But he chose not to treat him like an object.
"The enemy corpses—are you just leaving the Seven Swordsmen here?" Pakura asked.
She had witnessed the entire battle and all of Hagoromo's actions. Though this was a matter between Konoha and Kirigakure and had nothing to do with her as a captive, she couldn't help but speak before they left.
Not even taking the heads?
Not searching for confidential documents?
Hagoromo had merely confirmed their deaths and done nothing more. From a shinobi's perspective, it was highly irregular.
"I just want to bring our people home," Hagoromo replied.
Duy's sudden death had thrown his emotions into disarray. He had no interest in anything else.
If Pakura said another word, he might have left her on the island as well.
Although Duy had stayed behind to buy time for Guy and the others, the battle itself was so swift—and Hagoromo traveled by air—that when Guy returned to the front lines…
Duy had already arrived before him.
But for Might Duy, this arrival could never be called a return.
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