"The chakra's that huge?!" Hibiscus Takuma's voice cracked with disbelief. "How can one man have more chakra than two thousand shinobi combined?!"
Sarutobi Sanbei's jaw tightened. He wanted to snap back, but the battlefield didn't wait for arguments. Around them, the Hyūga Coalition's front line was in full frenzy, hundreds of shinobi hurling jutsu at a single glowing titan. They couldn't hear anything anymore. Couldn't think. They only wanted to kill the thing in front of them.
The ground shook.
Crack.
Susanoo's armor splintered under the weight of the Hyūga Alliance's combined assault. The monstrous warrior of chakra shattered like glass, its light scattering into the smoky air.
But the man at its heart didn't scream.
He laughed.
"Ha... hahaha... Hahahahahaha!"
Amamiya Raizen's laughter tore through the battlefield like thunder. His crimson Sharingan burned brighter than the fires around him, and the mad joy twisting his face made him look like something not entirely human.
"Hyūga Alliance," he said, his voice echoing through the smoke, "you all stay here today."
The air itself trembled. Murderous intent surged from him like a physical storm.
"Summoning Technique!"
A thunderous boom erupted at Raizen's feet. Smoke exploded outward, swallowing the field in white. From within that haze came a sound no human throat could make—a low, guttural roar that seemed to drag the world down with it.
A massive tail swept through the smoke, then another, then a third—each one slamming into the ground like a mountain falling from the sky. Entire platoons of shinobi were crushed, their screams lost beneath the crash.
"Three tails..." someone whispered, as the haze thinned.
And then they saw it.
The monstrous turtle towered over the battlefield, a fortress of scales and muscle. Its right eye was gone, the socket scarred and hollow, but its remaining eye spun with a crimson tomoe—Raizen's Sharingan, reflected in that monstrous pupil.
"Inuzuka Daisaku! Pull back, all Konoha shinobi, now!" Raizen roared.
Pain seared behind his eyes, but he forced the chakra out anyway. The Sharingan spun violently, locking the beast's mind in his grasp.
Three Tails—Isobu—let out a roar that cracked the clouds.
The shockwave flattened trees, scattered corpses, and silenced the battlefield in one breath.
"Hyūga Alliance... accept your punishment."
Raizen stood atop Isobu's head like a dark god. His gaze swept across the broken ranks of the Alliance—men and women who'd once believed themselves invincible. Now they trembled like ants in the shadow of something they'd never even imagined facing.
"That... that's a Tailed Beast!" Sarutobi Sanbei gasped, his face drained of color. The stories hadn't lied—these things weren't just monsters. They were living disasters.
"Full retreat!" he bellowed, voice hoarse with terror. "All units, fall back!"
But it was already too late.
Isobu's three tails slammed down in a storm of blood and stone. The front line vanished. Shinobi screamed, weapons scattered, and bodies were crushed into the dirt before anyone could weave a single hand sign.
Some tried to fight back. Hyūga elites activated Byakugan, forming complex patterns of strikes. Gentle Fist met armored flesh—and failed. Their chakra simply dissolved against the beast's hide.
Isobu roared again, and dozens of them ceased to exist.
In less than ten minutes, three hundred shinobi were gone. Not wounded. Not missing. Gone.
"Chakra's building in its mouth—scatter!" someone shouted.
Too late.
The Tailed Beast Bomb glowed between Isobu's fangs, a sphere of black-red annihilation. The air warped around it. Then—
BOOM!
The world vanished in white light.
When the shockwave finally passed, the hill that had stood in front of the Hyūga lines no longer existed. Neither did the hundred men who'd been retreating behind it.
Hibiscus Takuma—once the proud commander of the Hyūga Coalition—stared at the destruction in horror. "Retreat separately! Go!"
There was no army left to command. Only survivors running for their lives.
Raizen's voice cut through the chaos. "Still breathing, huh... the quasi-Kage of the Mujin clan."
He looked toward Takuma, who was barking desperate orders, and smiled coldly.
Isobu turned its head.
Takuma froze. He felt the creature's gaze on him—an ancient, crushing awareness pressing down on his lungs. His instincts screamed that death had already chosen him.
"Roar."
The sound came like thunder.
The world went black as the Three Tails' maw opened wide, and Hibiscus Takuma—shinobi commander, quasi-Kage, symbol of the Hyūga Coalition—was swallowed whole.
Not slain by a rival. Not pierced by a blade. Simply erased by the very monster that haunted shinobi nightmares.
When the dust finally settled, only the sound of the sea and the low growl of the beast remained.