As far as the eye could see, the boulders rising out of the lava river were packed with skeletons, thousands of them standing shoulder to shoulder.
This was the true nest of the Oni Clan.
And on a massive slab of black stone in the distance sat a man whose flesh still clung to his bones.
He was the only one among these monsters who still possessed a body, and at this moment, he was staring at the intruders with naked greed.
"Welcome to my world, shinobi of Konoha."
The man threw back his head and laughed, already preparing to activate the final sacrifice.
Too bad for him, in this hellscape woven from illusion, the real reaper was Akira, with the Sharingan in his eyes.
Back in the day, when the Uchiha launched that brutal purge against the Oni Clan, even a family as fearsome as theirs had only barely won by climbing over the bodies of their own dead.
To wipe out that threat for good, the Uchiha had spent years on the campaign and lost dozens of elite fighters with awakened Sharingan. That alone showed just how vicious and dangerous the Oni Clan had truly been.
And yet, a centipede dies hard.
Even after suffering a catastrophe like that, remnants of the clan had survived in the darkest corners of the world.
There were even shinobi inside Konoha itself who carried traces of that cursed bloodline.
At that moment, Kurenai Yuhi and Anko Mitarashi stayed tight at Akira's side. Both women were pale, and the sweat running from their temples vanished almost instantly in the unbearable heat.
Anko forced down the fear clawing at her chest and asked in a dry voice, "Akira, what exactly is going on here? It feels like we just stepped right into the heart of their nest."
It was no wonder they were rattled.
The surroundings looked like hell brought to life.
The rock beneath their feet was scorching hot, and below the cracks flowed churning red magma. One wrong step and a person would be gone without even ashes left behind.
Worse still, the jagged stones around them were covered in pale skeletons.
These were not dead remains. Cold lights flickered in their eye sockets, as if some grotesque spark of life still lingered inside them.
Akira remained calm. He even had the leisure to straighten his sleeve before answering in a tone as flat as still water.
"One correction. We did not stumble in here by accident. These rats invited us."
That single sentence sent a chill through both women.
Even in this blazing cavern, they felt cold run up their spines.
Kurenai, especially, looked shattered.
As a master of genjutsu, she could barely accept what had happened. Her greatest specialty had been turned against her. She had been led here like a puppet without realizing it.
Did every one of these monsters possess ocular power on par with the Sharingan?
Because genjutsu enhanced by the Sharingan was in a class of its own. It belonged to prodigies like Uchiha Itachi.
The exact same technique, when used by him, could erase an equal in an instant. That was the crushing advantage of a bloodline limit.
And yet now, aside from the Sharingan, there existed another unknown eye jutsu capable of trapping even her, a recognized illusion specialist, without the slightest warning.
If these creatures had chosen to attack halfway here, the consequences would have been unimaginable. The more Kurenai thought about it, the more frightened she became.
Anko, by contrast, was far more straightforward. At this point she was simply confused, still trying to piece together what had happened.
Just then, the giant shape atop the distant black stone slowly rose to its feet.
He was a huge man, over two meters tall. In a world where most shinobi were lean and wiry, his sheer size alone was oppressive.
His eyes burned blood-red, leaving eerie streaks through the dim cavern light like the gaze of a demon dragged up from the underworld.
The instant he moved, Anko and Kurenai tensed. Kunai flashed into their hands, both of them bracing for a fight to the death.
Akira, however, kept both hands in his pockets and met the giant's stare without so much as a blink.
"You went to a lot of trouble to lure us into a place like this. I assume you want our souls as offerings, to boost the success rate of your little ritual."
That was the nature of the Corpse Spirit Barrier. The stronger the sacrifice, the more monstrous the final result.
And clearly, the Oni Clan's intelligence network was still alive and well. This creature had heard the stories Akira had been stirring up across the shinobi world.
The soul of a strong shinobi came with strong power. To lunatics obsessed with restoring their clan, Akira was the finest prize they could have asked for.
And with Anko, a special jōnin, and Kurenai, a full jōnin, thrown in beside him, the lineup of sacrifices was downright luxurious.
If the ritual succeeded, the giant was certain he would complete his transformation.
Standing on the edge of the stone, he looked down on Akira and smiled with savage delight.
"Akira, I do not deny that you are strong. But this is the ancestral ground of the Oni Clan."
He spread his arms wide and laughed.
"The field here suppresses a shinobi's power completely. Go on, try drawing chakra. See how much you have left."
At those words, both women's hearts lurched. They immediately tried to move their chakra.
Their expressions changed at once.
The chakra inside their bodies felt as though it had sunk into mud. It moved sluggishly, barely at all.
That hopeless sensation, being reduced to prey while their enemy held all the knives, made their breathing heavy.
Only Akira showed no sign of alarm. If anything, he looked mildly curious as he studied the giant.
"So you're the current head of the Oni Clan? Average at best. Still, I have to admit, I did not expect the stragglers from back then to breed this many descendants. Looks like the Uchiha did a sloppy job when they cleaned house."
The moment he said the name Uchiha, the skeletons around them began to shake violently.
The ghost-fire in their eye sockets surged, and their bones clicked together with a horrible grinding sound, as though the word itself were a curse they could never forget.
Hatred that deep had been carved into the marrow. Even death had not burned it away.
Back in the era before hidden villages, when the Uchiha and Senju were still rival war clans, the Uchiha had simply taken a commission from the Fire Daimyō and slaughtered the Oni Clan.
It had not been some ancient blood feud. It had been business.
But to the Oni Clan, it was a wound written in blood.
The giant, known as Kiei, let his gaze turn icy. His killing intent toward Akira rose in an instant.
After the Uchiha had nearly wiped them out, vengeance had become the only thing keeping the clan alive. And now the Uchiha had fallen too. Fate really did have a cruel sense of humor.
That was exactly why the Oni Clan had dared to restart the long-sealed Corpse Spirit Barrier. They wanted to forge a superweapon capable of complete spiritualization.
If they succeeded, they would produce something beyond Kage-class, something that could sweep the ninja world clean.
The only problem was that this kind of blasphemous ritual had an abysmal success rate. In all these decades, only one had ever truly succeeded.
And in the end, even that ancestor had fallen beneath the assault of dozens of fully matured three-tomoe Sharingan.
The Uchiha had won that battle, but at staggering cost. Nearly half the clan's foundation had been bled away.
Kiei stepped closer, stopping about a hundred meters away. He stared at Akira with naked hunger.
"Akira, you should consider it an honor to become the cornerstone of my clan's revival. That is the only value your existence has today."
Akira let out a small, mocking laugh.
"So what, you want me to kneel and thank you for it?"
Kiei was not merely a Kage-class fighter. He was also the greatest prodigy his clan had produced in a century. His mastery of spiritualization far surpassed that of Kato Dan from Konoha, who had only inherited a faint fragment of the bloodline.
Kiei, by contrast, was true main-line blood.
He had prepared for this day for years, evaluating countless targets before settling on Akira as the perfect vessel.
His eyes narrowed, their red glow deepening.
"Stop struggling. Inside this barrier, your chakra is stagnant. No matter what jutsus you know, you cannot use them."
Akira raised an eyebrow.
"And this sort of indiscriminate suppression is not exactly comfortable for you either, is it? Unless the barrier somehow knows friend from foe."
He paused, then went on as though giving a casual lecture.
"Judging by how confident you are, it suppresses chakra, not spiritual force. That would make sense, given that your entire clan specializes in screwing around with souls."
"Lure us into a dead zone, combine it with a barrier tailored to your strengths, and trap us on your home ground. I'll give you this, the setup is solid."
Akira even gave a few soft claps, and the sound echoed sharply through the cavern.
For the first time, Kiei felt a thread of unease twist through his chest.
Akira was far too calm.