Ōtsutsuki Kūshiki landed on the ground. Just as he was about to search for the Ten Tails that had burrowed underground, a violent explosion suddenly erupted behind him.
He whipped his head around and saw that in the center of the bone sphere that had wrapped around Kaito, a golden sun had appeared, and the entire sphere was beginning to dissolve.
Before he could react, the bone sphere evaporated completely, dispersing into wisps of gray smoke.
When the smoke cleared, Kaito's figure reappeared in Kūshiki's line of sight.
His eyes had transformed into two blazing sun-like patterns. The moment Kūshiki saw them, his reaction was the same as Momoshiki's back then. He shouted in shock,
"Kinringan!? How could you possibly possess the clan leader's eyes!?"
Kaito gazed at Kūshiki calmly and said in a faint voice,
"So these eyes are called Kinringan? Good, I'll remember that."
Kūshiki swallowed hard. No one understood better than him just how terrifying the Kinringan were.
From what he knew, throughout the entire history of the Ōtsutsuki clan, the only one ever to awaken them had been the clan leader—Ōtsutsuki Shibai.
And the clan's very emblem was modeled after the Kinringan, proof enough of their overwhelming power.
Kūshiki had once fantasized that perhaps, if he devoured enough Chakra Fruit from the God's Trees, he might awaken them too.
But thousands of years had passed, and aside from his eyes turning black, there had never been the slightest sign of them evolving into the Kinringan.
Kaito, meanwhile, was also speculating. His Kinringan might not be just the product of combining the Rinnegan with the Tenseigan—the real key had been the Ten Tails formed from Ōtsutsuki Shibai's own body.
It was similar to the conditions for awakening the Rinnegan—requiring both spiritual and physical power, except in this case, both powers came from a former god of the Ōtsutsuki clan.
But since the Ten Tails wasn't fully developed, Kaito's Kinringan couldn't stay open for long. Faced with Kūshiki's deadly strike earlier, he had been forced to reveal this final trump card.
And indeed, their power was immense. The Chakra unleashed just from opening them had instantly evaporated Kūshiki's version of Chibaku Tensei. And that wasn't even their full power.
Kaito couldn't imagine just how far beyond mortal limits Ōtsutsuki Shibai had been.
Kaito turned his gaze back to Kūshiki.
Under the lock of the Kinringan, Kūshiki felt his very soul tremble. His will to fight was gone. He hastily opened a portal to escape.
But it was too late. The sun pattern in Kaito's left eye began to spin. He whispered,
"Divine Silence."
There was no sound. Kūshiki's body convulsed, the bone armor on his body shattered and fell away, and his eyes turned ashen gray.
With a dull thud, Kūshiki collapsed onto the ground, motionless.
His soul, just like the bone sphere earlier, had evaporated directly out of his body. All that remained was a lifeless husk.
This was the terror of Divine Silence—it erased the soul itself. Even Kūshiki, who had devoured countless Chakra Fruits and achieved practical immortality, could offer no resistance before it.
It was a power of law itself—his words became reality.
Kaito ignored Kūshiki's corpse for now and slowly raised his hand.
The earth began to quake violently. Countless black branches burst out from underground, gathering together and growing into a colossal tree that pierced the sky.
This was the God's Tree formed from the Ten Tails. Compared to it, Kaguya's God's Tree had been nothing but an immature sapling.
All it lacked now was to bloom and bear fruit.
Without Kaito's guidance, a black vine suddenly sprouted beneath Kūshiki's corpse, dragging him underground.
Moments later, a blood-red bud swelled at the top of the God's Tree, pulsing like a beating heart.
Kaito flew up to hover above the bud. Compared to it, his body was insignificant—the gaps between its petals looked like mountain ravines to him.
From the Door-Door Space, he retrieved the "pill" he had crafted from countless Ōtsutsuki bodies and scattered it into the opening of the bud.
Buzz!
The pill was absorbed instantly, and the bud bloomed. A massive Chakra Fruit appeared before Kaito.
It was enormous—far too big to eat bite by bite. That would take him until the end of time.
Fortunately, Kaito had obtained Sukunahikona from Isshiki. Shrinking such an object was trivial for him.
A golden light flashed in his eyes, and the fruit instantly shrank down to the size of a regular apple.
Kaito picked it up, studying it carefully. A thought struck him—could this fruit taste like a Devil Fruit?
After all, before maturing into the God's Tree, this Ten Tails had produced Devil Fruits.
What if its ultimate fruit was just as foul-tasting?
He wondered if he should shrink it further, or perhaps directly transplant it into his body with the power of the Op-Op Fruit.
If Kūshiki were still alive to hear his thoughts, he'd probably die of rage all over again.
A fruit of such supreme quality, and he was worrying about flavor? Even if it tasted a million times worse than dung, people would line up just to eat it!
Luckily, Kaito's ridiculous thoughts didn't last long. In the end, he popped the fruit into his mouth and even chewed twice.
To his surprise, it was delicious—unbelievably sweet. It was the best thing he had ever tasted.
Compared to Devil Fruits, it was the complete opposite extreme.
But before he could savor it for long, a surge of overwhelming energy erupted from within him.
Golden cracks spread all over his body's surface. His expression changed as he muttered,
"This is bad! Am I about to explode!?"
The moment he spoke, radiant golden light burst out of the cracks, and his body "shattered."
The entire Ōtsutsuki Star was obliterated in an instant, vanishing from the universe entirely.
In the pitch-black void of space, Kaito looked down at his unharmed body and murmured,
"Well, guess I've completely stopped being human now."
There was no longer a single impurity within him—his body was composed entirely of golden energy.
He felt light, unbound, as if he had broken free from some eternal shackle.
The only way Kaito could make sense of this was as a breakthrough in his very state of existence—one that far surpassed the Six Paths.
If this state needed a name, it could only be—The Realm of Gods.