"Mikoto..."
After being embraced, Kushina's breath seemed to stop.
She was a few years older, yet from their first meeting, they became close friends who could talk about anything, as if they'd known each other forever. She had given Kushina, an outsider to the village, a sense of warmth.
Gentle Mikoto was like a beacon in her heart.
And now... Are we going to die together?
"..."
For them, that single moment stretched into an eternity!
Then, in the next instant, everyone present witnessed an unbelievable scene.
Tsunade, who was poised to leap in and finish the fight after the three-pronged feint, froze in her tracks.
"Facing death, one must maintain elegance!"
They saw Lucian give a strange smile, making no move to dodge or counterattack.
He simply stood there, smiling.
He opened his arms wide, as if to embrace death, welcoming its arrival with the utmost elegance.
This was the moment he had been waiting for!
"..."
Mikoto and Kushina, standing before Lucian, were shaken to their core.
Why isn't he dodging?
Due to their different perspectives, in their eyes, and in the eyes of Minato and the other ninja in front, Lucian looked like a hero, facing death without fear to protect the two girls.
With a body that looked no older than ten, he stood as a wall before them!
In that moment, his small frame seemed to grow infinitely tall in their minds!
"What kind of foolish enemy is this..."
As some whispered in disbelief, the attacks landed!
"Puchi-chi!"
With a sickening sound, the shuriken and white hair pierced straight through Lucian!
Amidst the spray of blood, the ferocious swarm of snakes suddenly halted. Orochimaru had stopped them.
From their direct line of sight, they saw that the attacks which would have struck the two girls were completely blocked by Lucian's body, while the rest of the barrage just missed them.
It was a scene of a man pierced by a thousand blades!
The mental shock of it all left the ninja in front of Lucian with their minds completely blank!
As the snake swarm halted abruptly, a few tails flicked out, knocking Mikoto and Kushina away.
The combination of emotional shock and physical impact caused them to lose consciousness.
Seeing this, a kunoichi scooped up the two girls and carried them from the battlefield.
"..."
The snakes hissed, and the entire field fell silent.
"Damn it!"
Orochimaru was surprisingly furious. He immediately withdrew the snakes, his face dark.
With the snakes gone, all signs of life vanished from Lucian.
It was just a probing feint, why didn't such a powerful person fight back?
Why didn't he even dodge?
It was incomprehensible!
Everyone stared at the scene in disbelief, as if the powerful figure who had dominated the field moments before had never existed.
He died... just like that?
Was it really to save two girls he didn't even know?
Tsunade unclenched her fists, her gaze lost. "Sensei..." she said, her voice dry. "What exactly did that child do wrong?"
His sudden death made them all recall the situation.
That's right, why were they fighting?
They didn't even know why he was an enemy, much less why he had suddenly given up resisting.
Was he out of strength?
"..."
He had just crippled Danzo and destroyed Root, but Sarutobi was too ashamed to speak the words.
Every action has a consequence.
Any explanation would only complicate things further, so he remained silent.
"Quickly, continue the attack!"
In the midst of the silence, the near-dead Danzo shouted with manic excitement.
"Blast his body to bits, make sure he's not alive!"
"Seal every piece of his flesh and blood! I'm going to study him, piece by piece!"
Hiss... Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!
At that moment, many ninja felt a cold disgust at Danzo's depraved behavior.
"Stop! Don't go near him!"
Jiraiya shouted. Just when everyone thought it was out of respect for the dead.
Orochimaru's eyes narrowed. He saw that Jiraiya's face was extremely serious as he stared intently at the body.
"What are you looking at?"
"...He might not be dead!"
"?"
"I can feel it... I've been training with natural energy, although I haven't mastered it..."
Jiraiya's first sentence made Orochimaru want to hit him, but he continued.
"But my perception of energy has improved. I can sense a strange, unknown energy spreading within that body..."
"It's fast, it's spreading so fast."
"It's strong, getting stronger and stronger!"
The others were confused by what they were hearing, but then Jiraiya's expression changed drastically, and he roared.
"Look out!"
"It's dangerous, fall back!!"
At the same time, a fatal sense of crisis spread across the field, making everyone's scalp tingle.
They saw pinpricks of light appear on Lucian's body. In less than half a second, the light grew so blinding that everyone present had to shut their eyes.
Lucian's body began to dissolve into spirit particles, which then converged, reforming into a new figure.
BOOM!!
BOOM!!
Jiraiya and the others retreated hastily.
But it all happened too fast. Everyone felt a violent and unimaginable surge of pressure.
"Thud! Thud! Thud!"
In an instant, the energy exploded outwards in all directions.
A terrifying repulsive force sent everything within a several-hundred-meter radius flying, and many of the weaker ninja instantly dissolved into a bloody mist.
"BOOM!"
The spirit particles formed a pillar of light.
This pillar, bright enough to illuminate all of Konoha, shot upwards and tore a rift in the sky.
The scene once again shocked those watching from afar.
Splash!
In an instant, like a torrential downpour, terrifying droplets of spiritual power rained down from the sky!
Incredibly,
each droplet seemed to weigh a ton, striking the ground like armor-piercing bullets, destroying everything below.
"Aaaaargh!"
Painful screams filled the air.
As one shinobi after another had their bodies destroyed and their souls shattered, the place turned into a living hell.
The shinobi who survived through various means, like Hiruzen Sarutobi, glanced behind them, their eyes filled with rage and despair.
In just a few short seconds, at least a hundred shinobi had died.
Sarutobi's heart ached so much he could barely breathe.