By this time, the Nine-Tails had completely adapted to its newly resurrected body. It had been thousands of years since the Sage of Six Paths had originally split its consciousness from the Ten-Tails. In all those millennia, not a single shinobi had ever managed to truly kill it. Consequently, this was the absolute first time the Fox had ever experienced resurrection since its birth, which explained its brief physical disorientation.
But now that its cellular network had fully recalibrated, it was time to slaughter this arrogant human!
With a subtle, violent shudder of its massive frame, a cataclysmic shockwave of raw, brutal chakra erupted from the beast's core. The elite Root ninjas, who were pouring every ounce of their energy into maintaining the containment matrix, were instantly hit by a devastating magical backlash. Massive torrents of blood erupted from behind their porcelain masks, splattering through the eye slits and pooling onto the dirt below.
Capitalizing on the exact microsecond the seal-masters lost their concentration, the Nine-Tails leaped violently backward. The sudden movement allowed it to cleanly evade Danzo Shimura's outstretched left hand, which had been mere inches away from making contact with its skull.
Watching the Kyuubi rapidly slip out of his grasp, Danzo's heart flared with venomous rage. What are these incompetent fools doing?! They can't even restrain a stationary target. A literal squad of useless garbage!
Having missed his decisive strike, Danzo executed a fluid mid-air flip and landed lightly on the ground. He immediately roared at the surviving Root forces, "What are you idiots standing around gaping for?! Move! Restrain the beast for a second sealing attempt!"
Enduring the severe physical trauma of the chakra backlash, the remaining Root ninjas suppressed their agony and lunged forward once more, desperately attempting to pin down the Kyuubi's massive limbs.
But the Nine-Tails was no longer fighting at a disadvantage. Looking down at the incoming Root forces—who swarmed toward it like a bothersome cluster of fleas—the beast unhinged its massive jaws. A dense, pitch-black vortex of negative and positive chakra rapidly compressed into a hyper-dense sphere: a Tailed Beast Bomb.
With a deafening boom, the Tailed Beast Bomb was launched like a cannonball, charting a direct, cataclysmic trajectory straight toward Danzo Shimura.
"Code Red! Protect Lord Danzo at all costs!"
Dozens of loyal Root ninjas threw themselves into the projectile's path, frantically weaving hand signs to erect high-level defensive ninjutsu walls to intercept the incoming blast.
Danzo didn't hesitate for a single fraction of a second. Seizing the distraction bought by his subordinates' bodies, he spun on his heel and fled at maximum speed. He understood the apocalyptic destructive capability of a Tailed Beast Bomb better than anyone; there was a zero percent chance his expendable subordinates could block a point-blank blast of that caliber.
Sure enough, the defensive line of Root ninjas was instantly vaporized by the sheer, micro-nuclear heat of the Tailed Beast Bomb. Not a single trace of flesh, bone, or armor remained; they were completely obliterated from existence.
An instant later, the catastrophic shockwave of the detonation tore across the deserted island. A violent hurricane-force wind swept through the archipelago, ripping ancient trees from their roots and reducing solid stone structures to floating debris that scattered across the boiling sea. At the epicenter of the island, a colossal mushroom cloud rose majestically into the heavens.
Having barely managed to outrun the terminal blast radius, Danzo stared back at the billowing mushroom cloud in sheer, unadulterated horror. At this point in time, he had not yet engineered his infamous right arm embedded with multiple Sharingan. The only extra eye he possessed was the single three-tomoe Sharingan hidden beneath the heavy bandages over his right socket.
A single three-tomoe Sharingan meant he could only rewrite reality via Izanagi exactly once. Against a cataclysmic, island-shattering explosion of that magnitude, what good was a single usage of Izanagi? He had only survived just now because his survival instincts had screamed at him to run immediately. Had he hesitated for a heartbeat, he would have been thoroughly disintegrated.
Damn it all! Danzo thought, his knuckles turning white as he ground his teeth. The Nine-Tails has completely shaken off the sluggishness of it's resurrection. I am the only Kage-level combatant left on this field, and I stand absolutely no chance against that beast in a direct confrontation. This capture mission is an absolute failure!
Gazing at the Kyuubi as it prepared to level the remainder of the island, Danzo prepared to salvage what he could. He turned to the scattering remnants of his forces and commanded, "Listen to my order! Prepare to withdraw—"
Before the words could fully leave his mouth, a brilliant, blinding streak of lightning pierced the horizon, cutting through the ocean spray and screaming across the shoreline directly toward the Nine-Tails.
The velocity of the incoming lightning bolt was sheer insanity. Even a seasoned, battle-hardened veteran of the Great Shinobi Wars like Danzo Shimura couldn't track the intruder's silhouette with his naked eye.
The streak of plasma arrived at the beast's flank in a microsecond. Without uttering a single word, the glowing figure threw his weight into a devastating, lightning-infused elbow strike aimed squarely at the Kyuubi's massive waist.
"Raiga Bomb: Heavy Flux!"
A colossal kinetic force exploded against the Nine-Tails' waist, vibrating violently throughout its massive body. The sheer, lightning-fast impact lifted the beast's colossal paws completely off the ground. The Kyuubi spun wildly through the air, hurtling across the horizon for hundreds of meters before violently crashing back down into the dirt.
The Nine-Tails was pushed to the absolute brink of fury. Another detestable human launching a pathetic sneak attack! This worthless race is truly more irritating than the last!
Only then did Danzo Shimura manage to catch a clear glimpse of the intruder's silhouette, and his face instantly twisted in shock.
It was the Fourth Raikage, Ay! For the active leader of a hidden village to personally infiltrate this far meant only one thing.
Danzo snapped his head toward the shoreline. Sure enough, hundreds of dark-skinned elite Cloud Ninjas, clad in the signature black-and-white flak jackets of Kumogakure, were sprinting across the ocean spray, swarming onto the island like an unyielding tide.
Faced with this overwhelming invasion force, Danzo abandoned all thoughts concerning his subordinates. Turning on his heel, he instantly fled into the wilderness to save his own skin.
The remaining Root ninjas left behind on the island were utterly doomed. A few fortunate ones managed to mimic Danzo and slip into the shadows undetected, but the vast majority were caught directly in the devastating crossfire between the Cloud Village and the Nine-Tails, systematically crushed and slaughtered by both sides.
The Fourth Raikage, Ay, stared at the massive Fox with a grin of pure, adrenaline-fueled excitement. He had previously received intelligence from his scouts regarding a sudden, localized surge of Nine-Tails chakra and had immediately gone to Killer B to verify the data. Once the Eight-Tails confirmed through their unique telepathic connection that the Kyuubi had indeed perished three years ago and was undergoing resurrection, Ay didn't waste a single second. He mobilized his elite forces and marched straight to the coordinates.
The rumors were true; the legendary Fox was right here. This was Kumogakure's golden opportunity to add a second cataclysmic Tailed Beast to their military arsenal!
Ay lunged forward, leading the vanguard himself. The Cloud shinobi didn't waste breath on useless banter; they simply rolled up their sleeves and unleashed hell.
The ensuing clash between Kumogakure and the Nine-Tails was catastrophic. One hyper-dense Tailed Beast Bomb detonated after another, the apocalyptic explosions completely fracturing the tectonic plates of the desert island until the entire landmass was forcefully sunk into the boiling ocean.
Yet, even as the island dissolved beneath their feet, the war didn't cease. The combatants took the battle directly to the churning surface of the sea, bleeding and tearing into each other as they migrated the conflict to another desolate island miles away.
Naturally, a cataclysmic war of this magnitude sent shockwaves throughout the continent. Countless sensory and espionage ninjas from various hidden nations deployed their scouts, sending frantic, high-priority intelligence updates back to the desks of their respective Kage: The Nine-Tails has resurrected, and Kumogakure is actively attempting to subjugate it.
By the evening of the following day, on a completely separate, heavily scorched island a few miles away from the initial resurrection site, the dust finally began to settle.
The Fourth Raikage leaned heavily against a jagged boulder, looking thoroughly battered and exhausted. He convulsed, spitting a massive mouthful of fresh blood onto the dirt. He cast a grim glance over the field, taking in the horrific casualties of his elite forces, and clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles turned white.
He had completely underestimated the true depth of the Nine-Tails' malice. He had hand-picked hundreds of Kumogakure's most powerful elite Jonin, and combining their strength with his own top-tier, Kage-level nintaijutsu had still proven utterly insufficient. The Fox was still breathing, standing tall amidst the ruins, while his own vanguard had been decisively broken and his personal stamina was severely depleted.
Ay remembered how his late father, the Third Raikage, had once battled the Eight-Tails to a complete, exhausting draw. Ay had always believed that even if his own strength couldn't completely match his father's legendary physical endurance, grinding down and capturing the Nine-Tails alongside an army of elites should have been an achievable task.
But after experiencing a direct confrontation, he realized he had been dead wrong. The disparity was monumental.
The raw power of the Nine-Tails was fundamentally on an entirely different plane compared to the Eight-Tails; neither its offensive capacity nor its impenetrable skin could be measured by the same standards. Ay had initially planned to exploit the Nine-Tails' colossal size, assuming its massive frame would make its movements sluggish and predictable. He never could have anticipated that the beast's reaction velocity would be nearly on par with his own Lightning Release Chakra Mode. It defied logic that a creature that massive could move with such terrifying, liquid speed.
In that moment of bitter clarity, the face of the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, flashed across his mind. They had clashed multiple times during the Third Great Shinobi War. The global intelligence reports from three years ago stated that Minato had sacrificed his life to seal away the Nine-Tails during the night of the Kyuubi attack.
At the time, Ay had privately scoffed at the report, believing Minato was a fragile, speed-reliant shinobi who simply couldn't handle a massive, lumbering live target in a straight-up fight, resulting in his mutual destruction.
Now, staring at the cratered landscape, Ay realized Minato's power had been anything but simple. The rumors hadn't just been political propaganda; Minato hadn't just sealed the beast—he had physically pushed the Nine-Tails to its absolute psychological and physical limits to enforce that seal! To single-handedly subjugate a force of nature this absolute... was that Golden Flash truly a monster?
Looking over the broken bodies of his weeping, bleeding men scattered across the field, Ay ground his teeth until they bled. A day and a night of relentless, high-intensity warfare had yielded nothing but a pile of corpses and shattered pride. It was a humiliating reality, but he was a leader; he had to accept it.
Taking a deep, ragged breath, Ay bellowed across the ash-laden field, "Cloud ninjas, heed my command! Abort the mission! Full retreat!"
Hearing the order, the surviving Kumogakure ninjas felt an overwhelming wave of relief wash over their bruised chests. Before setting sail, they had been bursting with arrogance, fully convinced they were going to easily bring home a new weapon for their village. Now, they didn't care about military supremacy or Tailed Beasts anymore; they just wanted to preserve whatever fraction of their lives remained and go home to their families.
This Nine-Tails was an absolute demon, operating on a level of terror that completely eclipsed any other beast in existence. They never wanted to look at that monster again.
The Cloud forces scattered like a flock of terrified birds, executing a disorganized, frantic retreat back toward the Land of Thunder under the grim protection of the injured Raikage.
Left alone on the ruined island, the victorious Nine-Tails threw its head back and unleashed an earth-shattering roar into the heavens!
Finally! Free at last!
Ever since it had been forcibly placed under the hypnotic control of the Mangekyou, it hadn't tasted a single second of true, unadulterated freedom for fifty agonizing years! Now, in an era where legendary titans like Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha were nothing but dust in the wind, it—the Nine-Tails—was completely unrivaled, a god among insects!
As for that little toddler, Naruto? The Fox had completely wiped the boy from its memory. That brat didn't leave much of an impression anyway; at best, he had just been a lucky little parasite who somehow survived their brief mental clash. The next time they crossed paths, as long as it kept its guard up and didn't fall for any strange mental tricks, that tiny human posed absolutely no threat!
The Kyuubi swept its slitted eyes across the horizon. This specific island had been pulverized into jagged, blackened shards. How could the strongest, most majestic Tailed Beast in the entire shinobi world reside on such an unsightly, mutilated rock?
Turning its massive body, the Nine-Tails charted a course back toward its ancient territories, eventually arriving at a massive, isolated landmass known historically as Beniryuu Island (Red Demon Island).
The island was vast and breathtakingly beautiful, featuring a sweeping, pristine plain nestled right in the center, encircled by endless fields of vibrant wild flowers. The Nine-Tails bounded into the heart of the meadow, collapsing onto the lush grass to lazily absorb the surrounding scenery.
It was precisely on this island that Madara Uchiha had enslaved it fifty years ago. Having roamed these very fields for thousands of years prior to its captivity, the Fox felt an immense surge of primitive joy at finally reclaiming its ancestral home.
While the Nine-Tails was basking in absolute bliss, back in Konoha, Hiruzen Sarutobi's lungs were about to burst from sheer, unmitigated fury.
He had just received the finalized intelligence report regarding the cataclysmic battle at sea. In a fit of explosive rage, he slammed his fist into his mahogany desk, nearly splintering the wood into kindling.
Danzo, you absolute, treacherous bastard!
That old vulture had deliberately buried the catastrophic news of the Nine-Tails' impending resurrection, operating entirely in secret to deploy his private Root forces to claim the prize for himself. Yet, instead of securing the village's greatest deterrent, his absolute incompetence had nearly gifted the most powerful entity on earth straight to their rivals in Kumogakure!
Danzo had kept his mouth shut from the very beginning. If the old man had actually succeeded in capturing the Fox, Hiruzen might have swallowed his pride and tolerated the insubordination; after all, as long as the Nine-Tails remained under Konoha's banner, there would always be political room to maneuver. Even if Danzo had successfully transformed himself into the new Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, it wouldn't have broken Hiruzen's control. A Hokage does not maintain authority through raw muscle alone; Hiruzen possessed ten thousand political ways to keep a reckless military man on a tight leash.
But Danzo was a man who excelled at ruining plans while achieving absolutely nothing. Not only had he utterly failed to seal the Fox, but he had also slunk back into Konoha three days ago, acting completely normal and playing the part of a loyal advisor while keeping the Hokage entirely in the dark.
It had taken three whole days since Danzo's pathetic return for the Nine-Tails to safely settle into its old territory, and only now was Hiruzen finally uncovering the truth of the resurrection.
"It's absolutely abominable!" Hiruzen slammed his pipe onto the desk, his voice echoing off the walls of the Hokage's Office.
If he had been the one waiting at the coordinates, he would have easily deployed the village's elite Sealing Corps at the exact millisecond of the Nine-Tails' materialization. At the moment of resurrection, the beast's chakra would have been at its weakest, its mind disoriented and sluggish. Sealing it under those pristine conditions would have been a guaranteed success. How could there have possibly been so many catastrophic variables?
Instead, Danzo's greed had created an absolute political nightmare. Now, the Leaf Village had lost its ultimate deterrent, their relationship with the Cloud was on a razor's edge, and the strongest Tailed Beast on earth was roaming completely free.