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WHOOOM——!!!
WHOOSH——!
SHRIIIK——!
Two sonic booms detonated simultaneously as both figures completed their opening strikes in less than a thousandth of a second.
Two Six Paths-grade divine weapons met in the space between them.
And the world screamed.
No flashy techniques. No elaborate setups. Pure speed, pure force, pure will crashing headlong into each other. In the time it took a heart to beat once, they'd already exchanged ten thousand blows.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG——!!!
The sound of divine instruments colliding rolled across the sky in an unbroken chain, shaking the firmament itself until the clouds vibrated apart. Two streaks of light wove around each other at impossible speed, the Six Paths Sword and the Nunoboko slamming together again and again and again.
Every collision threw off a blinding shockwave. Every impact carried enough force to peel the sky open like the rind of a fruit.
"HAAH——!"
"HAAH——!"
Twin battle cries punched through the atmosphere. Chakra storms swept outward in every direction.
Below, Indra and Asura stared at the sky with their mouths hanging open.
They'd both pushed their abilities to the absolute limit tonight. Susano'o. Thousand-Armed Buddha. The full arsenal. And watching this fight, they realized with sickening clarity that everything they'd done was kindergarten.
Susano'o might as well have been a plastic bag against these two.
The Thousand-Armed Buddha? A speed bump.
Ten thousand meters above the earth, violent air currents churned and roiled in the wake of their combat. Manji and Hagoromo's eyes met between clashes, locked for fractions of seconds, broke apart, locked again.
Hagoromo's mind was in freefall.
He'd lived for centuries. He understood the limits of this planet's life forms. He knew where the ceiling was, because he'd spent his entire existence standing on top of it.
And Manji had just blown through that ceiling like it wasn't there.
"MASTER! WHAT ARE YOU?? THE BIOLOGICAL LIMITS OF THIS PLANET'S CREATURES MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANYONE TO REACH THIS LEVEL OF POWER!"
Hagoromo gripped the Nunoboko with white knuckles, shouting over the thunder of their exchange.
He'd seen every kind of strong this world had to offer. Nothing came close to this. The man's longevity alone was absurd enough, but this kind of power on top of it?
"Heh. You think a few thousand years of accumulated skill can be shaken by a youngster like you?"
Manji's tone was breezy. Almost amused. The Six Paths Sword moved like it was half-asleep, yet somehow arrived at exactly the right angle to deflect every single one of Hagoromo's bone-crushing strikes.
Internally, Manji snorted. 'I'm a transmigrator. My strength doesn't follow this planet's rulebook. We're not even operating in the same dimension, kid.'
The battle kept escalating. The combat zone climbed higher and higher, pushing past the cloud layer, past the upper atmosphere, into the freezing emptiness of extreme altitude.
Neither of them needed to discuss it. Both understood that a fight at this level, at ground level, would turn the continent below into a parking lot. So they moved upward by unspoken agreement, dragging their war into a space where the only casualties would be clouds and empty air.
........
Meanwhile, on the moon.
Hamura Ōtsutsuki and his followers were monitoring the Earth's surface through their observation array.
"WHAT THE F— Great-Grandfather! What's HAPPENING down on Earth?? Those energy readings are off the charts!"
A white-haired elder pressed his face against the viewing apparatus, voice tight with alarm.
Hamura, ancient and stooped now, leaning heavily on his cane, squinted at the distant blue sphere. Something flickered in those cloudy old eyes. Surprise, maybe. But only a trace.
He waved a hand.
"Relax. Earth has Sage Manji and my brother Hagoromo watching over it. With those two standing guard, there's nothing to worry about."
He turned his back and shuffled away, leaving his descendants staring at each other in confusion.
"...As you say, Great-Grandfather."
They scratched their heads, decided the old man probably knew what he was talking about, and filed out one by one.
........
"HAAAAAH——————!!!!"
Another roar that could've cracked the atmosphere in half. The Six Paths Sword and the Nunoboko smashed together at full power.
Purple-gold and pitch-black energies tore into each other like two tsunamis colliding. The fabric of space itself buckled, tiny fractures spiderwebbing outward from the impact point.
And in that instant, Manji felt something that genuinely caught him off guard.
Both weapons were conduits of willpower. The stronger the conviction behind the swing, the more devastating the blow. That was how they worked. Simple math.
But the force he'd just felt through the Nunoboko wasn't just strong. It was foundational. Like hitting bedrock after digging through miles of sand. Hagoromo's will wasn't sharp or aggressive. It was vast. An ocean-floor kind of solid. The kind of resolve that came from genuinely, truly, with zero reservations, caring about every living thing on the planet.
The man actually had a heart big enough to hold the whole world. It wasn't an act. It wasn't philosophy. It was just... him.
"Hagoromo. Looks like your love for this world really is the real deal."
Manji murmured it almost to himself. Something close to respect colored the words.
Across from him, Hagoromo's arms shook violently, veins bulging from wrist to shoulder as he fought to hold the Nunoboko steady against the Six Paths Sword's relentless pressure.
"Master... your strength truly has no bottom."
The words squeezed through gritted teeth.
Manji looked relaxed. Sounded relaxed. But internally, he was reassessing.
This stubborn old man. He already gave half his power to Asura. He's ancient. Dying. Running on fumes and determination. And he's STILL holding me off?
A starving camel was still bigger than a horse, apparently.
"Time to wrap this up."
Dragging it out any further risked collateral damage. Manji dropped every pretense of restraint, and his Sage chakra erupted in full.
"Sage Art: Multi-Shadow Clone Technique!"
His body split into five.
Five identical figures materialized in a perfect encirclement, boxing Hagoromo into the center with no avenue of escape.
"Sage Art: Five-Sage Barrage!"
All five clones struck simultaneously, each one channeling a different Sage tradition. Mount Myōboku. Ryūchi Cave. Shikkotsu Forest. Yatagarasu. Monkey King Clan.
Five completely different styles of world-ending Sage energy, refined over centuries of practice, converging on a single point.
The cumulative power of those five attacks was enough to rewrite geography. Flatten mountain ranges. Boil oceans.
Hagoromo watched the five-colored tidal wave of Sage energy screaming toward him, and his face went through every shade of pale the human spectrum could produce.
This volume of Sage energy could grind anything physical into atomic dust.
"Rinnegan Absorption!"
He knew the math. Forcibly absorbing this much Sage chakra would cause his body to self-destruct from the energy overload. But if he didn't absorb it, the blast would punch through to the surface and kill millions.
There was no third option.
At the same time, the Truth-Seeking Orbs floating behind him shot outward. Yin-Yang Release chakra unfurled like a black curtain, sealing the entire combat zone inside an airtight barrier.
Not a single joule of energy would leak through. Not one ripple would reach the ground below.
Then Hagoromo focused on his final remaining Truth-Seeking Orb. It began to swell.
"Expansive Truth-Seeking Orb!"
There it was.
The same technique Kaguya had once attempted. Now Hagoromo was replicating it. Not at his mother's level, not even close, but enough.
If this hits, even Master won't walk away unscathed. He'll be weakened enough for Asura to handle the rest... This is all I can do. I can't even reach Hamura on the moon through this barrier...
A single tear slid down Hagoromo's cheek.
"An Expansive Truth-Seeking Orb, huh?"
Manji saw it forming and understood Hagoromo's gambit instantly.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!
A detonation so violent it turned the entire night sky white.
For one frozen moment, the world held still.
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