Boom!
Black flames burst across the field as the Sword of Amaterasu carved a blazing arc through the battlefield. Even someone like Hyūga Tennin could only dodge, the infernal blaze licking at his armor and skin. Every step back felt like retreating into hellfire.
Tennin gritted his teeth.
Susanoo's pressure alone is crushing… and those flames—
They burned on air itself, undying. Even for a Byakugan elite, this was survival by instinct, not strategy.
Raizen, standing atop his Three-Tails avatar, watched the chaos spread. His clones, wrapped in translucent Susanoo armor, tore through the enemy lines.
Tennin's forces were barely holding the front. A thousand Hyūga warriors already fell back toward Qishui Gorge, where the coalition camps stood.
Raizen's eyes narrowed. So that's where they're retreating… Qishui Gorge, huh?
The thought sparked — reckless, brilliant, inevitable.
If I cut through now, the entire coalition collapses.
He didn't hesitate.
Controlling the Three-Tails through his chakra threads, he turned the beast and his Susanoo-clone toward Qishui Gorge.
"Qishui Gorge cannot fall!" Tennin shouted, sensing his intent. His Byakugan flared like white suns.
"All forces! Stop Amamiya Raizen from reaching Qishui Gorge! Hold the line!"
"YES, SIR!"
The Hyūga coalition surged forward in one desperate wave — six thousand strong, battered but unbroken.
Kunai, paper bombs, chakra strikes — a storm of human willpower met godlike destruction.
Even so, the monster advanced.
"If you want to die that badly…" Raizen's voice thundered through the battlefield, distorted with chakra. "Then I'll grant your wish!"
The Three-Tails opened its jaws. A black sphere began to form — chakra condensing, spinning, pulsing — Tailed Beast Bomb.
The Hyūga forces roared in defiance.
"Earth Style! Multiple Earth Walls!"
Dozens of walls erupted from the ground, shielding their comrades behind them. The combined effort of thousands held the blast — barely.
Then came the shadow they forgot.
Above them, another Susanoo — Raizen's clone — raised its Amaterasu-forged blade and brought it down in a single divine swing.
Whumph.
The world turned white.
Fire rained. Screams followed.
"Hyūga Coalition!" Raizen's voice echoed through the battlefield. "I'll say this once. Drop your weapons and surrender. You can't win this fight."
He stood atop the Three-Tails, cold and towering, chakra wind ripping through his hair. The aura of the Tailed Beast and Susanoo fused into one — a god in a shinobi's body.
Below him, the Hyūga warriors trembled. Fury and fear warred in their eyes.
"Arrogant bastard!"
"Kill him!"
Their voices cracked, hollow, uncertain.
Raizen sighed, his tone dropping to a whisper. "Ignorance really is the world's most common jutsu."
The three Susanoo clones around him lifted their hands, each forming a spinning chakra sphere — dense, screaming, white-hot.
Rasenshuriken.
They threw them in perfect synchronization.
BOOM.
The sky turned into a hurricane of chakra. The three shuriken tore through the battlefield, shredding everything — steel, stone, flesh.
When the sound faded, three massive craters remained.
A thousand Hyūga shinobi had vanished — turned to dust and memory.
The battlefield went silent.
The surviving Hyūga stared, frozen. Smoke curled upward like mourning incense.
"That power… it's not human…"
"Even if we kill the beast… we'll all die first…"
"My children… they're gone…"
Whispers turned to despair, despair into silence.
Tennin saw it — the collapse of morale, the hollow eyes of men who'd lost everything. He clenched his fists until his nails drew blood.
"Don't you dare give up!" he roared. "Your families are behind you! If we fall here, Amamiya Raizen will burn your homes and butcher them all!"
Raizen's voice broke through, cutting the battlefield like a blade.
"Wrong." His tone was cold but steady. "If you surrender, no one dies. No family, no child, no clan member. I'll take you all in — the Konoha Alliance will take you in. Fight me and you die. Live or die — your choice."
The words echoed across the field. Thousands froze, uncertain.
Even the proud Hyūga wavered.
Tennin's face twisted in rage. "Lies! Don't fall for his tricks!"
Raizen just smiled faintly, watching Tennin's chakra flicker like a candle in the wind.
"Funny," he muttered. "He says I'm lying while standing on a mountain of his own."
Tennin lunged. "Eight Trigrams Palm — Upright Gentle Fist!"
The air cracked as chakra surged from his palms, aimed straight for Raizen. The last stand of a desperate man.
Raizen met the attack with his own — Susanoo's massive hand closing in.
The mountain itself seemed to roar as the two collided.
The battle wasn't over. But for the Hyūga coalition… the war already was.