The forest outside the village shook again as Tobirama and Ashina clashed, their chakra ripples cutting through the smoke of distant explosions.
Every few breaths, the shockwaves from Ryusei and Ashura's aerial battle rolled over them, bending trees and scattering dust.
Both men felt it, both ignored it.
Their fight couldn't afford a glance upward.
Ashina pulled his chains apart, the adamantine links splitting and weaving into a shifting web.
The lattice circled him in spirals, patterns changing each second, never allowing a Flying Raijin mark to sit still long enough to be used.
Tobirama flicked his wrist.
A kunai vanished into the mist, then reappeared through the ground at Ashina's feet.
The chains snapped shut around it before he could touch it.
The seal on the chain pulsed, eating the mark clean.
Tobirama's eyes narrowed.
He didn't expect Uzumaki Sealing Chains could reach such a level.
Ashina's tone stayed calm.
"You will not get close."
However, after the silence, soon the ground darkened under Tobirama's feet.
Blight of the Abyss.
Water + Wind + Yin + Earth combination jutsu.
A low mist crept outward, heavy and cold, spreading in waves.
Ashina recognized it instantly—chakra-draining miasma.
A perfect anti-Uzumaki technique.
He shifted backward as the fog approached his ankles.
His chains struck the ground, forming a barrier of interlocking seals around him.
The fog hit the barrier, slowed, and curled upward.
Tobirama stepped through the mist untouched, his chakra shaping the fog like a cloak around his movements.
"You have advanced," Tobirama said. "But this is still my field."
Ashina exhaled, body relaxing instead of tensing. "Then try it."
His markings lit up.
The tattoos on his torso and arms ignited in crimson, flowing like liquid fire.
Five elemental points sparked on his forearms.
He slammed his palms together, and the entire seal network came alive.
A spiral pulled natural energy toward him.
Wind sharpened.
Water thickened.
Lightning crackled under his skin.
Earth made the air vibrate.
Flame threaded through every seal line.
Then all of it merged into the chains.
They surged outward, each link trailing blackened elemental currents.
The chains struck Tobirama's mist, parting it instantly.
Tobirama vanished with a flicker, appearing behind him in the same breath, already forming hand seals.
Spectral Release (Wind + Lightning + Water) took shape around his arm, a translucent construct phasing through Ashina's rear guard.
But the chains reacted first, moving like a living organism.
They intercepted the arm, turning solid just long enough to deflect it.
The spectral strike bled into wind and water again before Tobirama pulled back.
Ashina opened a second seal.
Heavenly Seal Reflection Barrier.
The air cracked as an angular mirror-like wall appeared, reflecting Tobirama's next jutsu straight back at him.
Gale Release (Wind + Water + Earth).
A sand-laced gale hit Tobirama's side, slicing his robe open.
The impact forced Tobirama to reassess.
Ashina wasn't simply blocking.
He was reading and redirecting, turning every style Tobirama used into a counter-flow.
Tobirama's fingers moved again.
Water and lightning welled together, darkening with metallic grit.
Abyss Release (Water + Earth + Lightning).
A flood of dense, electric water surged forward, crawling across the ground like living sludge.
Trees it touched bent, twisted, then fell apart.
Ashina braced.
His chains tightened around him, rotating in a full sphere.
The barrier held for three seconds before cracking.
He didn't flinch.
He opened the newly mastered seal on his chest.
Rite of the Crimson Thought.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the air behind Tobirama rippled with an idea made tangible.
A blade of red intent, formed purely from his directed imagination, cut down like a judgment.
Tobirama moved just in time, but the slice still grazed his shoulder, carving through chakra and flesh as if neither mattered.
He clicked his tongue once.
"So that is your new art."
Ashina's breathing stayed steady.
"It grows stronger the more I understand you."
Tobirama appeared in front of him again, motionless for only a single heartbeat.
They both felt it then, the massive pressure wave from above.
Ryusei's chakra surged, then clashed with Minato's boosted Rasengan storm and Ashura's titanic wood construct.
The ground shook as if the sky had cracked open.
For a moment, their own techniques flickered under the weight of that collision.
Tobirama's mist thinned.
Ashina's seals rippled.
Both stabilized instantly.
Ashina diverted a rush of remote Yang pressure that Ashura had sent sweeping across the battlefield, cutting it off before it could boost the Konoha forces behind Tobirama.
At the same time, a faint shimmer of slug chakra washed over the area.
Ryusei's support aura reached Ashina, canceling the vitality drain Ashura was trying to impose on him.
The external monk and samurai natural-energy constructs in the distance dissolved as Ryusei forced his own natural energy across the field, stripping their forms apart.
Neither Tobirama nor Ashina looked up.
They simply resumed the fight, as if the sky exploding was normal.
Ashina tightened his grip.
Tobirama's chakra sharpened again.
Their next exchange collided, a storm of mirrored seals and phasing water slicing between the trees.
They pushed forward. Neither yielded.
Tobirama raised his hand, fingers forming another masterful short sequence of seals.
The air around him dropped several degrees at once.
Frostfire Release (Fire + Water + Wind).
A pale, supercooled gas burst outward, swirling into a ring.
The temperature swung violently as the gas ignited in sudden flashes, freezing and detonating in alternating pulses.
Each blast distorted the forest around them, fracturing bark, shattering stone, then torching it a second later.
Ashina reacted instantly.
His chains spread into a dome, each link lighting up with sealing script.
He activated the field at the center of his sternum.
The ground shook as a gravitational sink formed beneath him.
Gravity bent inward. Chakra flow buckled.
Tobirama's frostfire gas stalled mid-motion, crushed downward until the explosions sputtered out in fragments of heat and frost.
The chains slammed down with the field, suppressing chakra within a wide radius.
For the first time, Tobirama's movements slowed by more than a fraction.
He clicked his tongue quietly.
"So you refined the gravity array as well."
Ashina stepped forward through the dying frost, chains tightening around him like a heartbeat.
"I told you," he said. "You will not reach Ryusei. And today…"
His expression didn't change, but the tone was final.
"Today is Konoha's doom."
The declaration hung in the air.
Not dramatic, just factual.
Tobirama straightened his posture slightly.
The cold mist around him steadied again, despite the pull of the sealing field.
He nodded once. "Perhaps."
Another small pause. "But even if that is true, I will not allow it to happen easily."
Ashina's chains flexed.
Tobirama's chakra rose again.
Neither lowered their guard.
Neither backed down.
The forest trembled as their next clash began.
Eventually, however, Ashina looked toward the distant dome over Konoha.
His chains shot upward, thinning into a single sealing spear.
He found an irregularity almost instantly.
A strain point in the barrier.
Probably caused by the shockwaves of the fight above.
Ashina pressed his palm forward.
If he could widen it, the entire sealing network would collapse inward.
The village would suffer catastrophic internal backlash.
The protective shell would slam into itself, crushing structures throughout Konoha.
However, before he could finish, Tobirama appeared on the chain.
A single Gale Release burst cut across the spear, knocking Ashina's seal out of alignment.
The fracture in the dome began closing at once.
Ashina tried to force the chain deeper.
Tobirama's hand flicked once.
A thin Spectral edge passed through the chain's sealwork, severing the formula mid-writing.
The spear collapsed.
Ashina exhaled.
"You defend it by instinct."
Tobirama's gaze stayed fixed on him.
"And you try to destroy it just as quickly."
They moved again without pause.
Ultimately, Tobirama was too slippery for Ashina to hit cleanly or seal, and Ashina eventually found ways to sense, seal, and steal, or even reflect every ninjutsu attack Tobirama sent at him with his chains.
And with his chains controlling the whole area better, it was almost impossible for Tobirama to get close through Flying Raijin, since Ashina also sensed every shift the moment it happened.
Hence, both of them, at this point, understood they were evenly matched and that the outcome might be decided by the clash above.
The sheer amount of chakra leaking from that fight made even their movements feel slightly heavier, and their senses were overwhelmed.
Ashina was quietly impressed.
Ryusei's Eight Gates form bent the air itself, and that phoenix-like burst had wiped out the entire forest around Konoha's barrier.
The giant wood constructs Ashura unleashed were no less overwhelming, forcing him to stay alert even while fighting Tobirama.
Tobirama felt the same.
He hadn't expected the Sage's hidden card to be that powerful, nor Ryusei to reach such a level. If Ryusei survived, Tobirama knew the boy would have no opponents left in this world.