Pakura and Tsunade, caught in their strange mix of rivalry and rare teamwork, had started on the battlefield's far western edge, left alone at first, without human opponents, facing only the ancient formations.
Those old samurai and monk Edo Tensei weren't ordinary.
They didn't mold chakra at all.
They fought like the warriors of old eras, using pure physical strikes, but coating every swing, step, and stance with externally drawn natural energy thanks to their decades of immersion and experience.
Sword arcs erupted into massive laido-tornado crescents.
Bare fists expanded into bodhisattva-shaped shockwaves.
Every movement carried the pressure of a different age, before ninjutsu dominated war.
Pakura and Tsunade tore through them regardless.
Pakura's Scorch Release evaporated entire waves of ancient warriors.
Her Heatwave Barrage sliced through their silhouettes.
Her Mirage Cloak burned their projectiles before they reached her.
Tsunade obliterated others with pure strength and split the ground into valleys.
And together, they sealed dozens. using Ryusei and Ashina's pre-made specialized tags designed for these Edo types.
They used them in bulk, slamming scroll after scroll onto fallen warriors.
But it couldn't last.
Minato finally faltered in the distant sky.
There was nothing left for him to do there against Ryusei, as he was told by Ashura.
Konoha's side had never expected Ryusei's faction to be this strong from the very start.
That was why they threw Ashura and Minato at Ryusei immediately, hoping to remove the most important threat first quickly.
But Ryusei still wasn't falling.
And while he held those two monsters in place, Pakura and Tsunade were already tearing through the formations and were moments away from sweeping into the rest of the battlefield like a collapsing wave.
That was the moment Konoha realized the fight was not entirely unfolding the way they had planned. So he descended here.
A yellow flash cut across the battlefield.
Minato rejoined the western front, right where Pakura and Tsunade were eliminating the last of those formations just now, precisely.
And the situation changed instantly.
Then he struck.
Flying Raijin.
Those spatial shunt steps.
Teleporting bodhisattva fists and ancient sword strikes around him as if he were the axis of the entire battlefield.
His Rasengan arsenal came next, right after another as well, including the most potent and dangerous senjutsu Rasenshuriken.
His perfect Toad Sage Mode sharpened every step, every teleport, every flicker.
Pakura was nearly cut down twice, only saved at the last second by her Mirage Cloak and Tsunade's intercepting blows.
Tsunade herself took several surprise hits from Minato's sudden teleports, and she regenerated each one through her Mitotic Regeneration.
But even she couldn't land a killing blow with her superior strength in close range.
Each time she raised her fist, Minato vanished.
Each time Pakura launched her Radiant Blade strike or those miniature suns, Minato bent space with micro-wormholes and redirected it.
It was getting bad.
So Ryusei stepped in.
More clones materialized, dense, fluid, mist-shaped presences that struck with perfect timing.
One protected Pakura with Slug Armor.
Another disrupted Minato's teleport markers.
Another intercepted monk strikes.
The clones turned the rhythm back toward balance.
But Minato was relentless, and the formations didn't tire.
Pakura's Scorch nearly vaporized him once, until Minato stepped through a slip-space gap and reappeared above her head, carrying a giant Rasengan Ryusei's fragment absorbed.
Tsunade, in her Five Gates regenerative perfect state, nearly killed him once, until he used a remote Flying Raijin mark to escape her punch and a kick a heartbeat before they landed.
Pakura nearly burned through a monk phalanx until Minato teleported the entire wave sideways to block her.
Tsunade's regeneration kept her alive no matter what he did.
Minato's awareness kept him alive no matter what they did.
The three of them, and the remaining concentrated ancient formations behind Minato, fought in a spiraling, wide-range dance of teleportation, heat bursts, and raw force.
Before long, the entire western front had been reduced to molten sand and shattered stone.
Pakura was breathing hard.
Tsunade was bleeding and regenerating.
And the clones Ryusei sent kept arriving, because without them, Pakura would already be dead.
And Tsunade would eventually be overwhelmed by Minato's speed. The balance held. Barely.
Ryusei sensed all of it still from above, now locked in a brutal one-on-one with Ashura.
For a moment, he considered it.
If he pushed everything he had right now, without Minato tearing space open for Ashura's attacks through wormholes, he might actually finish him.
Ashura's mobility and reach were already reduced.
He didn't have instant teleportation out of reach anymore to escape from Minato as well.
A full-force assault gamble could maybe end it.
Because Ryusei's short-term burst potency might realistically be higher than his one-on-one.
But that was also the problem."Might" wasn't enough.
This was his real body after all, not those perfect slug-based replicas.
If he gambled and missed, if he exhausted himself even slightly too far, it would be all over.
And he had already spent an absurd amount of chakra keeping Ashura and Minato contained this long in the first place.
Hence, it would be even more dangerous if it failed, and he spent even those last parts of his already diminished chakra.
Most of his overall reserves weren't even here anymore from the current overall chakra distribution pool.
They were now concentrated inside the clone he sent outside the village to locate the Hyūga energy vessel.
Judging by the steady stream of sensory impressions leaking through their shared fragment network, there were still no results.
That clone was practically an extension of himself, and with such heightened perception, it should have found the source by now, especially with Hiashi burning through that power more aggressively every minute.
Ryusei estimated that half an hour, maybe more, had already passed since the battle truly began. It was only a matter of time; if he survived this long, they would surely be news soon.
Which also meant something else.
Madara should have already appeared to seize the Nine-Tails.
Meaning that he would, in the next few minutes, that he was even more certain of that than in his clone seizing the Hyuga vessel first or at all.
So Ryusei held back from the urge to unleash everything on Ashura now.
He couldn't afford desperation, not when the battlefield was still shifting and his victory condition depended on timing, not brute strength.
For now, he still endured, waiting for the one moment that would break everything open.
A minute later, luckily, he finally felt it.
A massive chakra spike erupted from inside the village, so large it tore straight through the otherworldly barrier as if it wasn't even there.
It hadn't grown or approached.
It had simply appeared, fully formed, like a storm materializing out of empty air.
Its weight, its pressure, its nature, only one person could radiate something that close to him and Ashura.
Ryusei's slit-eyes widened, then narrowed with satisfaction.
Madara.
And he already knew how Madara arrived, or rather, who had simply materialized him straight into the village like that.
So, a long-lost grin cut across his face.
"So he finally showed up…"
All his preparations, all the chaos he'd forced on Konoha, it paid off.
The village was now being crushed from every direction, even if only for a short window.
And that window was all his outside clone needed to finalize his destiny in this world.
All Ryusei had to do now was hold Ashura a little longer.
Just a little.