Next, things flipped around: Uchiha Yorin received Ōnoki's challenge.
For all that he was an old fox with decades of experience, the Third Tsuchikage was no slouch at playing mind games.
In his letter of challenge he wrote in righteous, dignified tones: so many comrades on both sides had already died over "our two villages' feud," and that was truly wrong and tragic. So how about this—just the two of them, one-on-one, to decide the outcome of the war.
If they were really shinobi, they would accept.
Of course, Ōnoki pointed out, he was the undisputed supreme commander of Iwagakure. Whoever he faced must be the true commander on their side. He would only fight the real one.
While seizing the moral high ground, the old bastard didn't forget to stir up trouble at the same time.
That phrase "the real commander" was a needle meant to prick all four villages, and especially to drive a wedge between Minato and Yorin in Konoha.
Strictly speaking, the highest authority over the four-village alliance should be the Kage, and in theory all four Kage stood on equal footing.
So when everyone saw Ōnoki's challenge, they couldn't help but laugh.
Even someone as stiff as Kazekage Rasa pulled the corner of his mouth.
Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have been a mistake. As the "Two-Scales Ōnoki," he was definitely top-tier among the old guard.
But right now, everyone already tacitly acknowledged who commanded the alliance.
Even Sunagakure had had to hold their nose and formally appoint Uchiha Yorin as the Kazekage's advisor.
As for Konoha, Minato had already decided the role of Hokage's advisor would go to Yorin; the official appointment would be made once they returned to the village.
With all four villages' "Kage-adjacent" roles consolidated under him, Uchiha Yorin was the undisputed supreme commander of the alliance.
In private, Minato had quietly pulled Yorin aside and said, "Yorin, I think my Flying Thunder God is a hard counter to Ōnoki's Dust Release… why don't I take this fight?"
In the end, Yorin still talked him down and had him stay put.
That left Minato with an instinctive sense of unease.
The two of them had just gone through a relatively gentle clash and compromise—which meant that in all their future discussions, Yorin would be the one setting the tone, and Minato would be the one going along.
Once he realized that, Minato's mood turned complicated. On one hand, he felt relieved; on the other, there was a faint, hard-to-place sense of loss. But in the end he adjusted his mentality, went back, and fell asleep hugging Kushina.
That's one benefit of being a ninja: if your wife's a kunoichi, she can join you on campaign.
Minato was quite content with that part. Yorin was even more so.
After the alliance formed, Terumi Mei had initially worried about appearances and tried to keep her interactions with Yorin somewhat low-key. But when she later discovered Yorin was sharing a tent with Yekura every night and even putting up barriers around it, she couldn't accept it.
From then on, Yorin's nightly workload increased by about one and a half times—the extra 0.5 courtesy of the two beauties competing to outdo each other.
Thankfully, Kumo had been very cooperative. The 3 free attribute points from conquering Kumogakure had been added to Yorin's Spirit, bumping it up to a hefty 16. Otherwise, one faint spell or wobbly knee before tomorrow's bout with Ōnoki and he'd be the one getting sent to the grave.
Kurotsuchi: "This degenerate!"
Hearing certain sounds leaking from Yorin's tent, Kurotsuchi's face went bright red. She gritted her teeth and muttered just like that.
The reason she was here went back to after the Iwa high council broke up. Once Ōnoki announced he'd stake himself in a one-on-one with Yorin and thus shut down the internal faction fight, Kurotsuchi had been left feeling very unhappy.
Logically, she knew none of this was her fault. But she was a teenage girl—expecting her to stay logical was a bit much.
So after turning it over in her head, Kurotsuchi made a spectacularly insane decision: she would sneak into the coalition camp and assassinate Uchiha Yorin.
Sure, the odds of success were tiny. But if it worked, wasn't it an incredible payoff?
With that mindset, Kurotsuchi infiltrated Yorin's tent and ended up on his bed… promptly trussed up like a very decorative package.
The fight ended instantly. Or rather, it didn't qualify as a "fight" at all.
The "Leg Kage" was decent, and Lava Release had some good combat applications beyond just construction. But if she, a single elite jōnin, could kill Uchiha Yorin, Six Paths Sage would be laughing his head off in the Pure Land.
"You're bold, I'll give you that," Yorin said, genuinely impressed. "So this is Iwa's sincerity? One envoy brings us the formal challenge for tomorrow, while another assassin sneaks in to kill me."
He'd already guessed she'd most likely acted on her own. But if you can bluff, why not bluff?
Yorin looked at Kurotsuchi with that half-smile of his and posed the question.
She glared back at him murderously and started to regret every life decision that led her here.
If this guy used her as leverage against her grandfather, what then? And besides, falling into the hands of a notorious lecher like him, wasn't she as good as doomed?
Imagining her miserable future, with a dozen doujin-story scenarios playing in her head, she blurted out something incredibly embarrassing:
"Gh… just kill me."
Yorin: "..."
While Terumi Mei chuckled softly to the side, Yorin drew his blade. Kurotsuchi squeezed her eyes shut, then felt her body suddenly loosen. When she opened them again, the ropes binding her had been sliced free.
"?"
She stared at Yorin in shock, momentarily at a loss. Then she heard him say:
"Get out of here. Just this once."
"...You…"
"Don't lump me in with every villain you've imagined." He turned his back to her. "More importantly, this war really is almost over. We don't want our relationship with Iwagakure to turn irreparably sour. Shinobi interests line up in the long run—maybe one day we will be working together."
Yorin didn't bother trying to explain "Ninja Sect" and all his bigger ideas to her just then. He just waved her away with his back still turned.
"But only this once. My patience has limits. Don't waste my goodwill, girl. If there's a next time, I'll show you what hell really looks like."
"Don't think this means I'll like you or anything, you bastard," she snapped.
Then, wobbling on unsteady legs, Kurotsuchi stumbled out.
Her feelings were all over the place. For all her "I'll never like you" bravado, her hostility really had faded, her favorability had gone up, and she'd started seriously pondering this man's good points.
"When he said Iwa and he might 'cooperate' one day… what did he mean by that?"
With that tangled mood, she slipped back into Iwa's side of the camp, crawled into her own tent, and tossed and turned unable to sleep.
Her heart was a mess.
She didn't want to admit it, but in a village full of roughnecks—who occasionally produced the odd cross-dressing boy—there was no one who could compete with Uchiha's looks.
…
Ōnoki: "..."
What Kurotsuchi didn't know was that every one of her strange, confused, and blatantly wrong actions had been seen by her grandfather.
"Uchiha Yorin…"
He mouthed the name under his breath, then clenched his fist.
"That's one more reason you have to die. The only question is…"
As Tsuchikage, and as Kurotsuchi's grandfather, the two identities pulled in opposite directions, putting the old man who'd stood unshaken through decades of bloodshed in a very tight spot.
But soon enough, he reached a cold, rational conclusion.
"Iwagakure… must come first."
"…But if…"
…
The next day, neither side mentioned what had happened during the night.
Both Iwa and the coalition tacitly acted as if nothing had occurred, then hurriedly finished breakfast and marched out to form lines.
Among the four-village coalition, Konoha's forces looked completely different from everyone else's. After their "German-style" reform, their uniforms were sharp as hell, and their discipline and bearing looked at least twenty percent more elite. It made a lot of chunibyou teen shinobi on the other side's front line stare starry-eyed and seriously consider defecting to join Konoha.
…
Floating above on his Ultralight-Weight Rock jutsu, Ōnoki glared down at the allied forces with complicated emotions.
They were so absurdly strong. If that power belonged to Iwa…
"In the future, Iwa will have to abandon its flexible 'no permanent alliances' policy," he thought.
"We need reliable allies—those who will stand beside us when our enemies unite against us. Not fair-weather types like Kumo."
To be fair, Kumo's surrender and betrayal were understandable. If he'd been sitting in the Raikage's chair, Ōnoki might have made the same choice.
But with Iwa on the verge of destruction, asking him to stay calm, detached, and objective was asking the impossible.
Every time he looked at Uchiha Yorin, all that composure cracked. All the burning rage at everything Iwa had suffered now had a single, clear target.
Everything—every disaster, every humiliation—they were facing now came from this one man. If he could kill this man, then even if Iwa was badly hurt, there would still be room to recover.
Following in the footsteps of Genji, and of the Fourth Raikage, yet another old warrior made up his mind to go for mutual destruction.
…
Yorin: "That temper's something else. At your age, aren't you worried about a stroke?"
With a flash of lightning, Uchiha Yorin used his Lightning-style Body Flicker to appear at the very front of the line and called up to Ōnoki.
"Do all Uchiha only know how to flap their gums?" Ōnoki snorted. "Let's see what your hands can do."
"Sure, why not."
Yorin drew his twin blades, the famed Thunderfire twin swords.
After repeated reforging with special chakra-reactive metal—and his own terrifying record of triumphs—these blades were now renowned "divine weapons" throughout the ninja world.
As he unsheathed them, he summoned the armor of Kengyu Raijin: Susanoo, and that crushing aura rolled across the battlefield, letting every soul present know exactly how dangerous he was.
Ōnoki took a deep breath and stared hard at his opponent, realizing this was no empty reputation.
This was a shinobi on his level—or perhaps even beyond him.
That realization didn't make Ōnoki flinch. On the contrary, his fury and fighting spirit burned even hotter.
"Uchiha Yorin."
"Ōnoki."
They met each other's gaze and called each other's names.
As Yorin finished buffing himself, one towering rock giant after another burst up from the earth at Ōnoki's command, forming a whole army of massive stone puppets.
In response, Yorin summoned wind and water around his body; the invincible Ocean Titan mode rose once more—this time much changed from before. Lightning crackled all around its body, several times stronger than in past battles.
Harder. Heavier. Stronger.
With the "Sky" aspect of natural energy he'd gained from conquering Kumo fused in, Uchiha Yorin's power had reached yet another peak.
If Genshī could see it now, even he would be shocked that his ultimate technique had been pushed to this insane extent.
"What… what is that?!"
"So much power?!"
"Is that—Sage Mode?!"
"Mount Myōboku, Ryūchi Cave, Shikkotsu Forest—did he sign with one of the three sacred land?!"
Of course not. Everyone knew his contract beasts were the ninja cats.
So where did this "sage art" come from?
…Not many people even understood what sage arts truly were—and fewer still knew there were other sources of senjutsu besides the three great holy lands.
Of that tiny handful, Ōnoki was one.
Watching that thunder-wreathed sea giant rise as if from sea and sky itself, Ōnoki thought of one name: Senju Hashirama.
The strongest patriarch of the Senju clan, the man who ended the Warring States era, the "God of Shinobi." He was said to wield perfect Sage Mode, and Wood Release of unmatched power. The world's natural energy itself seemed to favor him, pouring through him at will. Many had speculated he used Sage Mode so naturally that he didn't even need to transform or show any markings.
Now, after so many years, Konoha had another man who could so easily wield natural energy.
Once he was sure of that, Ōnoki knew he was in deep trouble.
Even if Uchiha Yorin only had half—no, even just a fifth—of Hashirama's power, an old man like Ōnoki stood no chance.
But that didn't fill him with fear.
If anything, he felt strangely calm. His spirit even felt like it was rising to a new level.
If this was going to be his last performance before the curtain fell, then he would make it a show sang of for years to come.
"Uchiha Yorin!!!"
He roared at him.
"Give it up! No matter what, I'll never hand Kurotsuchi over to you!"
Yorin: "..."
"…The hell are you talking about?"
While Yorin was still stunned, Ōnoki sent a reinforced platoon of rock giants charging straight at him.
…
Current MC stats:
Ninjutsu 10, Body 12, Genjutsu 9, Wisdom 8, Strength 12, Speed 11, Spirit 16, Seals 8. Total: 86 points.
At this stage, learning the ultra-powerful "Thundercloud Giant" pushed his Ninjutsu up to 10.
And the recent training brought Seals up to 8, basically the upper end of what pure effort could reach.
That Spirit 16 doesn't just mean "can handle ten at once"—it also lets him fling absurdly powerful jutsu. Compared to monsters like Hashirama he's still a bit short, but… not that short anymore.