Chapter 9: The Emperor's Decree
"Now," Lucius's cold voice resonated, "allow us to show you what true, absolute power looks like."
The words were not a boast; they were a verdict. As Lucius spoke, the body they shared began to shift once more. The second pair of arms, Julius's arms, retracted into their torso with a faint shimmer of displaced space. Then, the blond-haired head of Julius Novachrono, his expression serene and accepting, began to recede. It didn't vanish, but rather sank back into the body's core, the neck sealing over with smooth, unblemished skin as if it had never been there at all.
All that remained was one man. He was tall and imposing, his black hair falling in shaggy layers, the dark sun-like mark on his forehead a stark brand of authority. His amber-gold eyes, now holding only the cold, analytical light of Lucius Zogratis, surveyed the scene. The two souls had become one will. The time for observation and assessment was over. The time for judgment had begun.
Yagura, in his Version 2 form, seemed to recognize this shift on a primal level. This was no longer a spar. This was an execution. The puppeteer pulling his strings made a final, desperate gambit: total annihilation.
A guttural, world-shaking roar tore from Yagura's throat as his Version 2 aura exploded outwards. The dark red chakra morphed and expanded at an impossible rate, solidifying into flesh, scale, and shell. The ground shattered under the immense, growing weight. In seconds, the humanoid figure of the Jinchuriki was gone, replaced by a monster of myth.
Isobu, the Three-Tails, now stood in its full, terrifying glory. It was a colossal beast, a titanic turtle with a gnarled, coral-encrusted shell harder than any steel, and three massive, spiked tails that whipped through the air, leveling the remaining rock formations. Its single, crimson eye, filled with ancient rage and alien intelligence, fixed on the lone figure of Lucius.
The Kiri ANBU, who had been creeping closer, scrambled back in terror. Their Mizukage had unleashed the full power of the Bijuu. The training ground, the village itself, was now in jeopardy.
Lucius watched the titanic transformation with an expression of profound boredom. He didn't raise a shield. He didn't prepare a jutsu. He simply stood there, an arrogant king observing a peasant's tantrum.
"A larger form only presents a larger target," Lucius stated, his voice cutting through the Bijuu's roar. "Another fundamental flaw in your strategy."
Isobu, driven by the puppeteer's command, opened its cavernous maw. Positive black chakra and negative white chakra began to converge, swirling into a dense, crackling sphere of unimaginable destructive potential. The air itself began to scream, warping around the growing Tailed Beast Ball
This was it. The ultimate ninjutsu. A power capable of wiping cities off the map.
With a final, deafening roar, Isobu fired. The Tailed Beast Ball shot across the battlefield, a miniature black sun that tore up the ground, superheating the air and vaporizing the mist as it hurtled towards Lucius.
Lucius raised a single, casual hand.
He did not erect a barrier of bone. He did not create a well of gravity.
He simply waited.
The Tailed Beast Ball, an unstoppable force of nature, was ten feet from his face. Five feet. One foot.
And then it stopped.
It just… stopped. Frozen in time, inches from Lucius's outstretched fingertips, its chaotic energy still visibly swirling but utterly motionless. The sound, the pressure, the heat—all of it vanished in an instant of absolute, unnatural silence. The only thing that remained was the sight of a city-destroying power, held in perfect stasis, suspended in time as if it were a common stone.
Lucius's cold eyes stared at the frozen cataclysm. He slowly, deliberately, reached out and tapped its surface with a single finger, the motion condescending, as if inspecting a curious piece of art.
"Crude," he said, his voice laced with contempt. "All this effort, all this raw, unfocused power, for such a primitive result."
He then made a subtle gesture. "Time Magic: Chrono Anastasis."
An ethereal, backwards-spinning clock face superimposed itself over the Tailed Beast Ball. The technique didn't explode. It didn't get sent back. It unraveled. The sphere of condensed chakra began to reverse its own creation, the black and white energies separating, shrinking, flowing back into Isobu's open mouth as if the moment of its firing had been rewound and erased from existence.
The Kiri ANBU stared, their minds utterly broken by the sight. He hadn't blocked their Bijuu's ultimate attack. He hadn't tanked it. He had treated it like a minor inconvenience and simply undone it.
Isobu, feeling its own power being siphoned back, roared in confusion and rage. Physical force was the only option left. It tucked its head and limbs into its shell, the three spiked tails wrapping around its body. It began to spin, becoming a colossal, unstoppable ball of death. Spiked Ball Assault.
The ground shattered as the multi-thousand-ton Bijuu rolled forward, gathering momentum, aiming to pulverize Lucius and everything else in its path into a fine paste.
Lucius watched the approaching mountain of destruction, his expression unchanged.
"Brute force," he sighed, as if deeply disappointed. "The final resort of the simple-minded."
He stomped his foot on the ground. A single, sharp crack.
"Bone Magic: Imperial Judgment."
The earth in the path of the rolling Isobu erupted. It wasn't a forest of spikes; it was a cathedral of them. Hundreds of colossal bone spears, each one as thick as an ancient tree and sharpened to a cruel point, shot up from the ground with the force of a volcanic eruption. They were angled perfectly, a phalanx of ivory lances designed not just to stop, but to impale.
Isobu, unable to alter its course, slammed into the bone formation. The sound was a horrifying symphony of grinding metal and fracturing earth. The Bijuu's immense momentum was its undoing. Dozens of the colossal bone spears pierced its supposedly impenetrable shell, sinking deep into its flesh.
The rolling assault came to a dead, screeching halt. Isobu was impaled, trapped, its colossal form skewered by the forest of bone.
But Lucius wasn't finished. He raised a hand. "Gravity Magic: The King's Throne."
The very bone spears that had impaled Isobu began to rise from the ground, lifting the titanic, struggling Bijuu with them. Ten feet. Fifty feet. A hundred feet into the air, Isobu was held aloft, helpless, bleeding, and utterly dominated, presented to the world like a hunter's grisly trophy.
Lucius levitated effortlessly, rising to meet the Bijuu's single, hate-filled eye. He floated before the trapped beast, a god before his conquered monster.
"You who hide in the shadows," Lucius spoke, his voice calm, but now it was directed not at Yagura or Isobu, but at the foreign will controlling them. "You who use kings as puppets and Bijuu as weapons. Your methods are flawed. Your control is… temporary."
He placed his hand gently on Isobu's massive, coral-encrusted head. A brilliant, blinding golden light erupted from his palm, sinking deep into the Bijuu's form. It was not an attack. It was a cleansing. A purge. "Soul Magic: Sovereign's Decree."
A scream, not from Isobu, but from the very chakra controlling it, echoed on a spiritual plane. Lucius's magic was a divine fire, burning away the threads of the genjutsu, forcibly severing the puppeteer's connection. He wasn't just breaking the illusion; he was asserting his own, absolute authority over Yagura's soul.
The crimson chakra around Isobu flickered violently and then dissolved. The Bijuu's colossal form shimmered and then shrank at an incredible rate, collapsing in on itself until only the small, unconscious form of Yagura Karatachi was left, draped over one of the massive bone spears.
Lucius gestured, and a platform of bone formed beneath Yagura, catching him gently. The entire bone construct then lowered itself back to the devastated ground with a quiet finality.
The ANBU stared, frozen not by magic, but by a terror so profound it had seized their very souls. They had just witnessed their Kage and their village's guardian beast be utterly humiliated, dissected, and freed by this "one" , impossible man.
Lucius landed softly, his red robe settling around him. He looked upon the unconscious Yagura, then cast his gaze across the terrified, hidden shinobi of the Mist.
"Yagura Karatachi has been freed from the insidious control that has plagued his mind and forced this village down its bloody path," Lucius announced, his voice echoing across the silent battlefield. "As of this moment, by right of salvation and by display of absolute power, Kirigakure and the Three-Tails are now under my protection."
It was not an offer. It was not a negotiation. It was the declaration of a new reality. He was no longer a visitor. He was the undisputed master of the Mist.