Ryu had just crossed the threshold of the Eight Trigrams Seal. The massive iron gate towered behind him. Ahead of him, filling the entirety of what the eye could perceive, was a wall of rust-red fur of something that had existed before the village was a concept.
The two enormous red eyes, each roughly the size of a bull, were already fixed on him.
"I am in your turf now," Ryu said, and his voice came out steady and conversational, "like you asked." He let the pause sit. "Now what?"
There was a moment of silence as the Nine-Tails remained unresponsive. The massive beast simply watched him, the red eyes unblinking, the silence carrying the weight of a predator whose meal had just walked onto its plate.
"Impressive," Fox declared.
"Thanks… I wish I could say the same, but you disappoint me, honestly," Ryu replied.
The growl that came back was not loud. It was the kind of sound that bypassed volume entirely and settled somewhere deep in the chest. You disappoint me. The words echoed back from the walls of the chamber in a way that felt like the fox was tasting them.
"You are an insect," the Fox said at last. The voice was not one voice. It was the sound of nine voices layered over each other, every one of them contemptuous. "A fragile, ridiculous little insect that I could crush between two fingers. An ant."
Ryu tilted his head. "Have you never heard the story of the ant and the elephant?"
A tense silence filled the air.
"Your size makes you a bigger target," Ryu said, pleasantly. "That is all it does."
The growl intensified, reverberating through the chamber. "Just because you know you are not real here, do not grow overconfident. In the real world, I would have eaten you whole."
Ryu smiled, and it was not the smile of someone who had heard a threat. "Whole," he repeated. "Like you ate the Kinkaku and Ginkaku brothers whole?"
The change in the air was instantaneous. The temperature dropped. The water on the floor shivered in expanding rings as if something massive had tensed every muscle it possessed. The memory of Fox's first-ever and worst-ever stomach ache resurfaced.
Ryu watched the eyes and kept talking. "Were they tasty? I mean, did you throw them up, or did you poop them out? Can a chakra lifeform even poop, Mr 9?"
Ryu laughed at his poop joke, and it was genuinely unhinged. It bounced off every surface, an intentional, mocking sound designed to grate against the beast's pride.
The roar that followed was a physical event. The entire mindscape shook. The water waves rose off the floor in a curtain and the air pressure redoubled. From the darkness behind the bars, a tail the size of a thundercloud came crashing straight down.
Ryu was already gone, using [Lightning Style: Body Flicker] to vanish before the impact and reappearing metres away. The displaced water still splashed where he had been standing a tenth of a second before.
He looked down at his hands, then his arms. He turned them over once.
Ryu thought, "The recoil is manageable, almost nonexistent. My body is not physically real in this space. Internal organs are not subject to speed impact. The limiting factor is not physiology; it is technique itself."
He started walking forward again.
Ryu thought about his past battles as he moved. Tsunade had held back during their spar. Itachi's fight was a kid-level spar with no real stakes. Most of his fights had been from a position of advantage or friendly sparring.
He thought, "Except for Kaminari and Tatsuma Aburame of Root, no one has pushed me to the brink or given me a real challenge. Without the dreamscape creation properties against the Moon Clan, I wouldn't have lasted sixty seconds."
Strip away the forbidden fuinjutsu he had invented, the Senju-style taijutsu, and the arts he had only just begun learning from the Moon Clan — and what remained was a fighter sitting somewhere above chunin and below a mid-level jonin. Against anyone genuinely powerful, all he could do without those tools was... buy time. He was lucky this particular fight was happening in a virtual environment.
"In every fight I was lucky to have advantages… even now. Let's see how my luck and current abilities work against a tailed beast."
The next tail came sweeping in low. Ryu used [Lightning Style: Body Flicker], vanishing from its path and reappearing several metres closer to the fox, still walking.
"Mr 9," Ryu called out. "You have to be better than that if you want to crush me."
The Nine-Tails's chakra pulsed once, sharp and hot, the water around its feet rippling outward in a ring. Ryu kept standing, and the wave passed under his feet, with Ryu going up and down.
"I want to ask you something," Ryu said.
The Nine-Tails had gone quiet, watching, waiting to hear what question the irritating brat had.
"Do you regret it?" Ryu asked, his voice staying level. "Killing Naruto's parents... Making him an orphan."
The chamber went quiet. The fox's pupils contracted fractionally, the question landing somewhere the beast had not expected it to reach.
"All his hardships started with you," Ryu continued, still walking at the same pace. "If you had not done what you did the night he was born, he would still have a family. He would have a mother and a father."
Tails came crashing down again, but Ryu used Body Flicker once more.
The Nine-Tails's lip pulled back. A tooth appeared in the darkness, the size of a waggon. The beast froze for a moment, the psychological probe making it visibly uncomfortable. It refused to answer.
"Stop buzzing around like a fly," the fox demanded, its voice rougher now, burying the discomfort under aggression.
Ryu asked again, "Do you ever imagine it? What his life would have looked like? The ordinary version of it? The version where his life is full of happiness?" He paused. "Well. Compared to what it became."
A brief moment of guilt flashed in the Nine-Tails's eyes, quickly buried by defensiveness. The fox roared and attacked for real, bringing multiple tails and its massive orange-furred arms crashing down together, a hammer and anvil closing from two directions.
There was no clean gap to step through. Ryu dodged, but even with the [lightning-style body flicker], it was getting harder and harder. The fox was getting used to Ryu's movement speeds.
Ryu landed safely on the water at a distance after barely avoiding multiple attacks.
"You do imagine it," he said again, quieter now. "His life would have been better. You know that."
"You know nothing!" The Nine-Tails snarled, the sound vibrating through the water.
"Ohh, I understand perfectly," Ryu said, and his voice had no triumph in it. "I understand that you are blamed for things you haven't done, like attacking the village. And I understand you are locked up in a cage with no fault of your own… for the first two Jinchurikis, at least. …"
He let the silence breathe for a moment.
"First Hokage, they told you that your power is too great to let you be free. He said it was to prevent you from being used as a weapon of mass destruction." Ryu's eyes narrowed. "But where was the First Hokage's cage? He, too, possessed the ability to cause massive destruction. The man who built the prison never once considered that the rules he wrote for you should apply to himself."
The Nine-Tails went completely motionless.
The water on the floor began to move. It rippled upward from below, and from those depths, massive wooden pillars erupted, splitting and branching with terrifying speed, wrapping around the first tail, the second, and the third, lashing every orange limb down to the floor.
At the far edge of the chamber's false light, a form began to form.
The image of the First Hokage stood at the water's edge, one hand extended, and his voice rang out across the mindscape with the calm authority of a man who had done this before.
"[Wood Style: Nativity of a World of Trees]," the imposter shouted.
The Nine-Tails recognised that voice immediately, and something cold moved through it. It thrashed, tearing through some of the constructs with sheer mass, ripping tails free, its movements growing frantic in a way they had not been before. Simultaneously, the shadows behind the freed tails grew thicker and solidified, transforming into something entirely different.
A colossal blue Susanoo materialised and grabbed the freed tails with a grip that did not negotiate.
The fox's eyes locked onto the figure at Susanoo's feet before the man had taken two steps. That face. That silhouette. The Nine-Tails had spent lifetimes trying to forget both.
Madara Uchiha stepped fully into the light and spoke.
"You are only a piece of yourself," he said, unhurried. "You, Biju, are simply a servant to those with ocular powers…Obey me."
The Nine-Tails knew that voice. The fox was genuinely spooked now, the historical terror of those words cutting through its fury. It had heard both these voices before, in eras it had spent centuries trying to forget. Just as it tried to fight back, a shape rose from directly behind it that dwarfed everything else in the chamber.
A colossal thousand-armed Buddha materialised. It did not move quickly. It simply lowered a single giant wooden hand and pressed it flat against the top of the Nine-Tails's head, pushing the beast down into the water, slow and immovable as a mountain settling.
"How", the Nine-Tails shouted, its voice breaking, "is this possible?!"
And then Nine Tails releases his anger and chakra combined.
The chakra came out in a massive, concussive wave of dense red energy, bursting outward from pure, unadulterated rage. It flooded the chamber in every direction. The illusions dissolved. The weight of the Buddha's hand was gone. The Susanoo faded. Only the water and the bars and the two of them remained.
Ryu had accounted for exactly this. Outside, his physical body remained connected to Naruto via the [Uzumaki Sealing Chains]. That direct link allowed him to safely absorb the volatile energy. As the wave hit, he thrust both hands forward. The chakra slammed into him and he pulled, converting the raw torrent as fast as he physically could manage before the wave passed.
He lowered his hands. He was breathing harder than before.
He stayed where he was for a moment and let his breathing steady itself.
"You threw away your reasoning in anger just now and believed what you saw was real," Ryu said, his tone turning cold. "Just like you threw it away four years ago when you tried to kill a newborn Naruto."
The fox's chakra was still growling at the edges of the chamber after seeing faces he never wanted to see again.
"With age comes wisdom," Ryu said. "But even after existing for millennia, you are still controlled by rage."
"Naruto is maybe the kindest soul ever born," Ryu said.
Ryu knew this with the same certainty as he knew anything. The boy had grown up alone and hated and was told by others to stay away, yet he still laughed. He had still shown up every single day with a smile.
"And you tried to kill that innocent boy," Ryu said.
Veins popped along his temple. Genuine fury overtook him.
He vanished with the fury of the lightning in his [Lightning-Style Body Flicker].
He reappeared hovering right beside the Nine-Tails's face, level with the enormous jaw. Channelling perfect chakra control, he loaded the [Senju-Style Chakra Impulse] into his right fist and drove it into the fox's jaw.
It was a small fist against a colossal target, but the kinetic force detonated like a bomb at the point of impact. The thick fur and flesh contorted sharply around his knuckles, the shockwave rippling outward in a visible wave across the Nine-Tails's jaw, and the enormous head snapped hard to one side.
A/N:
Thank you,
Codesavage, Hugh Jass, El Gordo, Zarassa van Cresh, Nova Gamer555, David Jenkins, Carlos Barker, Auzzo, Some guy, Dalton Harris, Toyo, McCallister Wilson, Timothy cordelle, Mason Erickson, Eymi Lopez, อวิรุธ อนุรัตน์, Vernan Stapleton, Monkey D. Murda, R3vo, for supporting me on P@treon.
Please support me on P@treon. and leave a review on WN if you liked the story.
Latest chapter on P@treon: Chapter 368 ~ Two hidden Uzumaki
A few free chapters for everyone are available to read on p@treon. com/PageTurnerPJ.
Your support is what gets this story going, so please like share and review the story and add it to your library.