"Earth Style: Eruption Pillar!"
Sarutobi Sanbei's hands blurred through seals, and the ground beneath Amamiya Raizen buckled like a living thing. A column of molten rock exploded upward, a volcanic roar tearing through the earth.
Too bad it didn't matter.
Raizen's Kamui flickered to life, space twisting as the earth passed harmlessly through his body. The explosion died down, leaving only dust and a faint shimmer where he stood.
"Wind Style: Gale Barrage!" someone shouted.
Dozens of shinobi wove signs in unison. The air thickened, compressed, and split into a storm of slicing blades. Wind screamed as the assault crashed toward him, shredding the ground into ribbons.
Raizen's eyes narrowed. "Fire Style: Dragon Flame Chorus!"
He stepped out from the distortion of his own jutsu, his body reforming like a ghost stepping out of another world. Hands flashed through seals. The next instant, his lungs filled with searing heat—and he exhaled a storm of dragon-headed fire.
The battlefield turned crimson.
"Retreat!" someone screamed.
Panic rippled through the Hyūga Coalition, but Sanbei's voice cut through the chaos like a whip. "Stand your ground! Water Style users—defensive line! Water Barrier, now!"
Blue chakra flashed. Water erupted upward, forming gleaming walls against the incoming inferno. Behind them, Earth Style users slammed their palms into the ground, raising walls of stone to reinforce the barrier.
For a heartbeat, the flames and earth pressed against each other, hissing and cracking—but Raizen was already two steps ahead.
"It's time," he murmured, his right eye spinning violently. "Let's show them the power of the Eternal Mangekyō."
Chakra flooded through him—cold, electric, alive. Crimson light burst skyward, and from that storm of chakra rose a skeletal frame, ribs and spine forged from raw fury. Flesh knitted itself over bone. Armor clamped into place.
And then it breathed.
The battlefield froze.
A complete Susanoo towered over them, its armor detailed with divine precision, its crimson plates glowing like molten iron. Veins pulsed beneath the armor, chakra wings unfurled at its back, and a massive sword blazed in its hand—the fire of Amaterasu crawling along the blade's edge.
Every shinobi could feel it: this wasn't the same Susanoo as before. This was something perfected. Something alive.
Raizen's voice echoed from within. "Behold... the perfect Susanoo."
The air cracked as the giant raised its sword.
"Damn it!" Sanbei spat, chakra roaring around him. His fingers blurred faster than sight. "Earth Style: Titan of the Land!"
The ground convulsed. Cracks split the field wide open as massive stone hands clawed their way out, forming a colossal mud giant that lunged forward, catching Susanoo's descending blade in both arms.
"Now! Wind Style: Sword of the Storm!"
From the Hibiscus Clan's formation, a group of elite wind users raised their arms to the sky. Air pressure dropped. The wind howled into a vortex, condensing into a massive blade of cutting air that tore through the clouds and descended toward Susanoo.
Two S-rank jutsu—one of earth, one of wind—colliding against a god.
The impact cracked heaven and earth.
Dust and chakra storms engulfed the battlefield. Shinobi were thrown through the air like leaves, blood and screams scattering in every direction.
When the haze cleared, the Hyūga forces stared in horror.
Susanoo still stood. Unbroken. Unshaken.
The Titan's mud body collapsed into dust, the Wind God Sword splintered into air, and Susanoo didn't even bear a scratch.
Raizen laughed—loud, manic, alive. "You call that power?"
The Mangekyō spun faster, Amaterasu's flames roaring higher along the sword's edge.
"Then let me show you mine!"
He swung.
The blade cleaved the battlefield in half. The ground split open for a hundred meters, molten air distorting the sky. The explosion's shockwave swallowed the Hyūga front line, hurling bodies and debris in every direction.
The flames of Amaterasu spread like a black lotus blooming across the plain.
Sanbei's heart clenched as he saw his men burning—rolling, screaming, their flesh devoured by black fire that refused to die.
"Back! Fall back! Use sealing techniques!" he roared.
But even as dozens of sealing-class ninja surrounded the towering Susanoo, chains of chakra lashing out to bind its limbs, Sanbei knew the truth.
His Earth Titan hadn't stopped it. The Hibiscus Wind God Sword hadn't scratched it. The same army that once pushed back Susanoo now looked like children throwing stones at thunder.
Still, the sealers shouted, desperate. "We've got him bound! Attack, now! We can't hold long!"
High above them, on Susanoo's forehead, Amamiya Raizen stood calm amid the chaos, lips curling into a cold grin.
"Pathetic."
His eye gleamed crimson.