Akira slowly stepped forward and gave a faint smile. "That barrier can restrict the chakra drawn from inside the body, sure. But I doubt it can stop someone from drawing energy directly from the world around him."
Ordinary shinobi relied on their own cells to generate chakra. Even Kage-level fighters were no exception.
But for all Kiei's planning, he had missed one thing. Akira was an anomaly. He had mastered senjutsu, the legendary art of seizing natural energy itself and making it his own.
A crude chakra-suppression barrier like this was a joke in front of sage arts.
And beyond that, Akira's body, already bordering on Six Paths-level, combined with the Rinnegan, was not something this bargain-bin prison could truly hold.
Kiei's brow furrowed as he barked, "What exactly are you trying to say? Stop bluffing!"
Akira shook his head and looked at him with something close to pity. "What I'm saying is this: before you made your move, did you really do your homework? Your understanding of me is probably still based on rumors and secondhand stories."
"Hell, even the people closest to me don't necessarily know how deep the well really goes."
That sentence detonated the unease in Kiei's chest. He stopped talking and slashed his hand downward.
"Kill them! The longer this drags on, the worse it gets!"
The skeleton horde, already trembling with bloodlust, exploded into motion at once. Bone daggers in hand, they surged toward Akira like a white tide.
They felt no pain. Their bones were as hard as forged steel, yet their bodies were light, making them unnaturally fast. They closed the distance in an instant.
Akira did not so much as spare the cannon fodder a glance. His eyes remained locked on Kiei.
The two of them stood facing each other across the field, and for a moment the air itself seemed to freeze.
Then, just as the first wave of skeletons was about to brush the hem of Akira's coat, his expression sharpened.
"Sage Mode."
He did not form a single hand seal. He did not even bother with a stance. The transformation happened instantly.
"Vmmm."
A suffocating pressure descended, and the entire cavern began to tremble violently.
Ancient, mysterious markings spread across Akira's face. At the same time, a long violet-gold coat formed around his body from condensed senjutsu chakra itself, the tails of it stirring in wind that did not exist.
Several violet-gold chakra serpents manifested out of nowhere and began circling him, hissing and coiling, carrying with them the savage, primordial aura of Ryūchi Cave.
This was suppression from a higher order of power.
A violent wave of energy exploded outward from Akira, pure destructive force sweeping across the battlefield.
A chain of cracking sounds followed immediately. Hundreds of skeletons at the front line had not even swung their blades before fractures spread across their bodies.
Those steel-hard bones became brittle as stale crackers under the wash of sage chakra.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The closest dozen or so exploded outright into clouds of bone powder, leaving nothing behind.
And then, from those shattered remains, gray soul-lights drifted out and flew into Kiei like moths into a furnace.
Akira caught it instantly. Kiei's presence swelled again.
"I see. So that's your ace. You devour the souls of your own kin to strengthen yourself."
Akira's eyes turned cold. "I'm guessing you've fed on plenty of innocent shinobi too. Turning the dead into rations for your own power. The Oni Clan really are monsters to the core."
Killing was one thing. This, reducing souls to fuel and denying them even rest, was a level of depravity beyond the pale. No wonder the whole world had treated this clan like vermin.
Kiei felt the strength surging through him and bared his teeth. "Akira, you destroyed over a dozen of my clansmen. That debt is written in blood. Today, one of us dies."
Akira let out a contemptuous snort. "One of us dies? You think you qualify? Creatures who won't even leave their own dead in peace are a stain on the air."
"Don't insult the word 'human.' Calling you the Oni Clan was generous. You're just demons wearing skin."
Akira could stomach killing on a battlefield. But this, desecrating the soul itself, crossed a line even war did not excuse.
The spiritual pressure unique to Ryūchi Cave's sage arts now blanketed the battlefield. The remaining skeletons had found a natural predator. Terror rooted them in place, and they trembled where they stood.
Behind Akira, both Kurenai and Anko were staring in stunned silence.
Anko had known he had mastered sage arts, but this was her first time seeing him like this, like some god stepping into the mortal world.
The dense, almost tangible senjutsu chakra wrapped around her. Instead of crushing her, it gave her a strange sense of safety.
Kurenai's mind had gone blank entirely. She could only whisper, "So this… this is sage power? I've never felt chakra of this quality in my life…"
She could sense the endless natural energy outside pouring into Akira in a flood. His chakra reserves felt bottomless, immeasurable.
Natural energy had found a perfect outlet, rushing into him like a broken dam.
For the first time, Kiei's expression truly changed. He realized he had picked a fight with the wrong kind of monster.
He roared, almost hysterical now, "Brat! So what if you've learned some twisted power like this? In here, I am still the ruler!"
His body blurred and vanished, turning into an invisible phantom.
Akira did not even look back. He casually tapped Kurenai and Anko on the shoulders.
A warm yet massive stream of senjutsu chakra poured into their bodies, instantly dispelling the suppressive effect of the barrier.
This was energy processed through Akira, made safe. It would not petrify them the way raw natural energy would.
The sudden return, and amplification, of their power made both women light up with shock and relief.
Akira spoke without turning around. "The skeleton trash is yours. I'll handle the one hiding in the dark."
The two women exchanged a glance and nodded hard.
"Understood."
They rushed the skeleton crowd at once, Kurenai forming seals while Anko took point in front of her.
Akira slowly turned and fixed his gaze on an empty corner of the cavern.
A flash lit his eyes. He raised a hand and hurled a violet-gold lightning serpent toward it.
Boom!
That section of rock wall exploded into rubble, and Kiei's body was blasted into view, staggering out and vomiting blood.
Clutching his chest, he stared in horror. "Impossible! I'm in a spiritualized state. Physical attacks should be useless. How could you hit me?"
Akira looked at him like he was simple. "Physical attacks don't work. Senjutsu does. Turns out it's pretty effective against monsters and ghosts. Your intel could use an update."
It wasn't really Kiei's fault for not knowing. The sage traditions of the great holy lands were so difficult that very few living people had ever mastered them.
Realizing spiritualization was no longer enough, Kiei changed tactics at once. His spirit snapped back into his hidden body, and the flesh concealed in the shadows behind the giant stone throne jerked awake.
He stepped out from behind it, bones cracking loudly as he walked. With each step, his presence climbed higher.
As his power fully flared, a blurred, grotesque figure of a death god rose behind him.
Kiei sneered. "Don't mistake us. The Oni Clan don't only know spiritualization. Any forbidden art that touches the other side, we've studied."
The death god phantom seemed almost aware. It extended a short blade toward Kiei.
Akira studied it for a second. The thing's eyes were empty, lifeless.
"Cheap imitation," he said. "Though I'll admit, the blade might actually be something."
Kiei took the death god's knife and slashed casually. The air in front of him split like fabric, and gray ash rained down from the cut.
Akira frowned slightly. "That effect… it's almost like the blade in the Reaper Death Seal, the one that severs souls. That could be troublesome."
Troublesome, though, was all it was.
Akira clenched his hand, and a chakra-forged blade took shape in his palm.
"High-density senjutsu chakra should be enough. Even if it's a death god's knife, I can still match it."
The next instant, both of them moved.
They became two streaks of light too fast for the eye, colliding above the boiling magma lake.
"Boom!"
The shockwave flattened everything around them. Within dozens of meters, rock disintegrated into dust.
Skeletons caught too close toppled into the lava like hail, vanishing in the molten red before so much as a bubble could rise.
Hard as their bones were, nature's raw force did not care.
Kiei, however, was delighted.
Every skeleton that fell and burned released its soul, and each of those souls rushed into him as more fuel.
Already at the peak of Kage-level, he was pushed even higher and managed to withstand Akira's monstrous strength.
Without that constant stream of soul reinforcement, his internal organs would have been pulp from the first clash alone.
Akira noted the abnormal increase in Kiei's power.
Without this barrier suppressing chakra, Kiei's output would likely have been even more absurd.
Unfortunately for him, the barrier cut both ways. He couldn't rely on chakra either. He could only force himself onward with raw spiritual power.
Still, that suited Kiei just fine. The Oni Clan had always specialized in soul-based arts.
The two exchanged blows at insane speed in the cramped battlefield, blade-light weaving into a lethal net.
But the longer it went on, the more alarmed Kiei became.
The pressure Akira exerted felt like a mountain pressing down on him.
Akira in Sage Mode was a tireless war machine. He wasn't fighting evenly. He was dominating.
Kiei had no openings to exploit at all. He was reduced to desperate defense.
And this was Kiei at his strongest, truly at the peak of Kage-level and brushing against the edge of something beyond.
This form had been his answer to the Five Kage themselves. Yet here he was, cornered by Akira.
To complete the barrier, he had butchered village after village and stained his hands with blood. Once he devoured Akira, he would break through every remaining limit and become something truly beyond Kage-class, a legend no ordinary shinobi could even dream of touching.
Reality, however, slapped him hard.
Even with home ground advantage, even after sacrificing his own people, he still felt powerless against Akira.
Worse, Akira still had not even begun breathing hard. He hadn't used a single Rinnegan jutsu.
That meant only one thing.
Kiei was not fighting for survival. He was being used as a warm-up.
With blood running down both hands where his palms had split against the hilt, Kiei howled, "Die!"
Using the roar as cover, he wrenched his blade free and thrust viciously for Akira's heart.
It was fast, a blur, but it struck only afterimage.
Akira appeared behind him like a phantom and drove his blade clean through Kiei's chest.
"Shhk!"
The sound of steel punching through flesh rang clear. Blood burst across Kiei's robes.
He screamed, twisting forward and tearing himself off the blade by force, then rolled dozens of meters away before he stopped.
One hand pressed to the wound pouring blood down his body, he gasped at Akira in terror.
"Damn you! Why? Why are you this strong even with your chakra restricted?"
He had assumed Akira was just another Kage-level fighter. Instead, the boy's speed and close-quarters skill were flatly inhuman.
And that cursed sage power ignored his barrier as though it did not exist.
If he could not finish the sacrifice soon, this forced ascent in power would collapse. At that point, not only would his dreams of reviving the clan die, he might not even survive the day.
Akira flicked the blood from his blade and spoke flatly.
"So this is your limit? You schemed for years and this is it?"
That contempt hurt worse than the wound itself.
Kiei knew conventional methods were finished.
The final hope of the Oni Clan could not die here.
He glanced back at the dwindling number of skeletal clansmen and something decisive hardened in his eyes.
"I'm sorry, my people. For the glory of the clan, give me everything!"
His hands flashed through seals.
"Forbidden Art: Soul Convergence!"
At once, the hundreds of skeletons still fighting Kurenai and Anko shattered apart. All of their spiritual force became black streams that shrieked as they were pulled into Kiei's body.
The air filled with the howls of furious, unwilling souls, but Kiei no longer cared.
"Soul Fusion! Devour!"
The final seal clicked into place. Kiei's body swelled grotesquely, and a sickening sound of chewing echoed from within him.
Boom!
An utterly vile, violent surge of chakra exploded upward.
"SKREEEEE!"
Kiei threw back his head and screamed, the sound like metal scraping metal.
His body stretched to over three meters. His skin took on a metallic sheen, and black markings spread over him until he looked like a demon king dragged out of myth.
A wave of savage soul-pressure tore across the battlefield. Every living thing within hundreds of meters felt as though a hammer had struck inside its skull.
Already badly injured, Kurenai and Anko rolled back and collapsed unconscious on the spot.
The same wave hit Akira squarely and vanished like mist.
Akira's soul was already iron-hard. This level of attack amounted to no more than a breeze.
Meanwhile, the sage serpents circling him became excited. Their bodies swelled from the thickness of arms into huge pythons five or six meters long.
More than a dozen violet-gold snakes coiled behind Akira, hissing silently at Kiei.
The hiss was not physical sound. It was a direct senjutsu genjutsu assault on the mind.
Kiei, still intoxicated by the rush of power, froze and began shaking violently.
"My head! What kind of cursed genjutsu is this?!"
His prized body started to twist and convulse against his will, as if every cell in him had suddenly rebelled.
Even Akira was mildly surprised. He had not expected the sage constructs to possess such vicious built-in countermeasures.
This genjutsu was stronger even than the Mangekyō Sharingan's Tsukuyomi.
And more importantly, as the serpents bit into Kiei's soul-force, they fed that stolen power back into Akira.
Kiei dropped to his knees, clutching his head and smashing it against the ground.
He had fused hundreds of souls and built terrifying mental strength, but under this senjutsu genjutsu, it still was not enough.
"If I'm going to die anyway, I'll make sure you go with me!"
His eyes bloodshot, he snapped fully into madness. He lifted his head and bellowed, "Even if my soul is erased, I'll drag you down with me!"
His hands formed another forbidden seal, the opening to a suicide jutsu.
Akira did not immediately interrupt him. He wanted to see what exactly this lunatic thought self-sacrifice would achieve.
"With my flesh and soul as the offering, I call upon the Reaper! Grant me the power to kill the enemy before me!"
As Kiei screamed the words, the once-blurred Reaper phantom sharpened and plunged as a streak of light into the crown of his head.
Boom!
When the light faded, Kiei's swollen body had shrunk back down. If anything, he looked leaner than before.
But his aura had transformed completely.
Now he seemed half-transparent, hovering between flesh and spirit. A string of white skull prayer beads hung at his neck, and in his hands rested the true death god's long blade.
Inside the maw that split all the way to his ears, there was only a blood-red void.
Akira narrowed his eyes. "Interesting. That power really has crossed the line above Kage-level."
This was the sort of strength one could only buy by burning away life itself. It would not last long, but for now, it had indeed entered the realm beyond Kage-class.
The world of shinobi really never stopped producing oddities.
At that moment, Kiei's body was steeped in death itself, and the sage serpents' genjutsu no longer worked on him.
"Immune to illusion now," Akira murmured. "That explains why the Uchiha couldn't wipe you all out completely back then."
Once genjutsu failed, Akira dismissed the serpents with a wave. His blade crackled as lightning burst along its edge once more.
"Come on, then. Let's see where your limit really is."
Kiei vanished at the exact same instant, and for the first time, his speed fully matched Akira's lightning state.
CLANG!
The clash of steel split the air. Their blades crashed together mid-strike.
The impact alone flattened the surrounding hills. The stone ground beneath them shattered in every direction, and huge boulders rolled into the magma lake, kicking up walls of fire.
This time Kiei actually held Akira's strike head-on and gave not a single step.
Their blades ground together in a storm of sparks.
Kiei grinned savagely. "This is the power of death itself! Akira, your end is here!"
Akira felt the sheer force running through the blade and, instead of concern, only smiled wider.
"Now that's more like it. A punching bag worth hitting."
Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw the unconscious Kurenai and Anko lying dangerously close to the collapse zone.
His expression cooled.
Kiei caught the flicker of distraction and barked a laugh. "Ha! Those two women are dead! No one saves anyone in front of me!"
Akira's answer came with a cold smile. "You're not qualified to kill anyone in front of me."
The instant he spoke, the senjutsu chakra around him split and condensed at his side into a full solid clone identical to himself.
The clone formed a blazing chakra blade and, without hesitation, launched into Kiei with a frenzied barrage.
That split-second distraction was all Akira needed. His real body became a flash of lightning and crossed hundreds of meters instantly.
"Get back here!" Kiei tried to break away, only for the clone to hammer him back with one monstrous blow.
Boom!
Another hill collapsed under the aftershock of their clash.
Akira's real body appeared beside the two women and looked down at their injuries, grim now.
"I gave them too much credit. A fight at this level was too much for them."
He scooped both of them up carefully and vanished from the collapsing hellscape in a single flash.
Back at the center of the battlefield, the clone formed from highly concentrated senjutsu chakra was swinging its blade in a world-ending duel with Kiei.
Their battle spread from the cavern into the surrounding mountains. Everywhere they moved, peaks split, stone exploded, and the earth caved in as if the end of the world had arrived.
It wasn't yet Madara versus Hashirama territory, but it honestly wasn't all that far beneath it.
The truth was not that this sage clone was stronger than Akira's real body.
It was simply that Akira himself had not fought seriously up to this point.
And now even a single clone, made from dense senjutsu chakra, was pushing Kiei to the edge and even beginning to overpower him.
That realization made cold sweat run down Kiei's back.
"This is just a clone," he thought in mounting horror. "How can a clone be this strong? Was he playing with me the whole time?"
The possibility sent a chill through him from scalp to heel.
"I've pushed myself into something beyond human, and I still can't beat one clone? Is that thing even human anymore?"
"At this point he feels more like death than the Reaper itself."
Meanwhile, Akira's real body was already far from the battlefield. Carrying the badly injured Kurenai and Anko, he used the Rinnegan's spatial jump and appeared on a lonely peak several kilometers away.
He glanced down at the two women and frowned.
They were in rough shape. Their wounds were ugly, blood soaking through them fast, their faces pale as paper.
Akira clicked his tongue. "Perfect timing. Of course I'm out of the emergency pills now."
If he had any left, these wounds would be trivial, one pill and they'd be fine.
But the stock had run dry in earlier battles.
His thoughts raced, then he exhaled. "No choice. I'll have to burn chakra and use medical ninjutsu to stabilize them the hard way."
He spared a moment to sense the battle in the distance and smiled faintly.
"At least that clone is doing its job. That batch of senjutsu chakra is nasty enough to keep Kiei pinned."
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