"Challenging God? Jiraiya boy, are you crazy? Where does God come from in this world?!"
Perched on Jiraiya's right shoulder, Fukasaku Sage looked utterly disdainful. In his eyes, there was only one true god—the Great Toad Sage, whom he had served faithfully for centuries.
"The kid's dad was right! There is no god in this world! Even the tailed beasts, for all their power, are nothing before us sages!"
From Jiraiya's left shoulder, Shima Sage wore the same arrogant expression.
And they had the right to be arrogant. As elders who had served the Great Toad Sage for over eight hundred years, their strength and wisdom placed them above most mortals.
Even the most gifted shinobi—Hashirama, Madara—those legends who had once shaken the ninja world—were but fleeting flames. A few decades of brilliance, and gone. Meanwhile, the two of them could live for millennia.
But Jiraiya wasn't so optimistic. He had seen Jaeger's overwhelming might—reshaping mountains, resurrecting the dead. Power like that… no matter what the sages said, it was divine.
"The opponent isn't just some enemy—it's that ridiculously beautiful man. Be careful, the two of you. His strength really is godlike!"
Though it pained him to admit, Jiraiya couldn't deny it. Even Tsunade, the love of his life, could not compare to Jaeger's otherworldly beauty.
"Snort! I'd like to see who could scare Jiraiya boy like this!"
Fukasaku squinted his sharp eyes at Jaeger—then froze. In an instant, cold sweat drenched his back.
Just as tailed beasts could sense Jaeger's crushing aura, sages—masters of natural energy—could feel it even more keenly.
This… this presence…!
"Child… look!" Shima's trembling voice cut through the silence.
"Huh?"
Fukasaku followed her gaze—and his eyes widened in shock.
"Uchiha… Madara?!"
He stared at the familiar face in disbelief. "Impossible… You were dead for decades! How are you alive—young—and this strong?!"
Madara, in his Susanoo: Shikai Form, smirked arrogantly.
"Since this brat Jiraiya dares to challenge God, why shouldn't I be favored by Him? I advise you two toads to scamper back to Mount Myōboku before you meet your death anniversary."
"Really now… how entertaining."
Beside him, the golden-haired Angel—with that cold, mocking smile—added, "This white-haired fool clearly doesn't value his life. And if you two stay to help him fight Jaeger… well, I don't need to tell you the result."
"..."
The corners of Fukasaku's mouth twitched. "Jiraiya boy… I believe you now. Forget Madara and that blonde woman. That beautiful man… he really is the strongest existence I've ever seen. Calling him a god walking among men isn't exaggeration."
"Two sages… return to Mount Myōboku," Jiraiya said heavily. "You've seen it yourselves. This battle is steeped in misfortune."
"Hmph, it doesn't matter!"
Fukasaku and Shima laughed with that old arrogance. "We've served the Great Toad Sage for 800 years! What storms haven't we weathered? Battle isn't simply the strong defeating the weak!"
"…Good. Then let's begin!" Jiraiya grinned bitterly, clapping his hands into a seal. "Thank you both. Let's unleash it—Sage Art: Fire Release—Goemon!"
—Zzeng
"God Avoid"
Jiraiya never even got the chance.
A dazzling golden blade appeared in Jaeger's hand. He swung it lazily—later than Jiraiya's seal—but his strike landed first.
Zheng—!
The sword light touched Jiraiya's neck.
"Eh—?"
The flames died in his throat. A thin line of blood spread across his neck. His eyes widened in disbelief.
"That," Uchiha Miyuki said softly, "is God's Avoidance—one of His Highness Jaeger's first Noble Phantasms. A concept made manifest: the ultimate slash of inevitability. A strike that ignores time, distance, defense, and space. The moment it exists, the result is death. Even the Otsutsuki ancestors would fall to it. To waste such a weapon on a perverted hermit and two toads… it's almost insulting."
Her words fell, and blood answered.
Chi—!
Jiraiya's head toppled from his shoulders. The waists of Fukasaku and Shima split cleanly.
Boom!
The three fell into their own blood, while a mountain range in the far distance cracked apart as though the earth itself had been severed.
"Wh-what… what happened…?"
The two sages' fading minds reeled. They hadn't even realized they were attacked. The battle had ended before it began.
Jiraiya, though, sensed it dimly. Jaeger's slash had no process. Only outcome. A law that denied causality itself.
And he… had lost. Completely.
"…So this is my corpse."
He looked at his headless body, strangely calm. He had imagined his death countless times—humiliating, heroic, even absurd. But instant defeat at the hands of a god? It wasn't such a bad ending. After all, he had spent his life chasing a prophecy in ruins. At least this ending… was his choice.
"…Tsunade."
His gaze softened as it landed on her. In her eyes—shock, grief, helpless sadness. Was she mourning him? Then he was satisfied.
His final look turned to Jaeger—standing like a god among mortals.
"…Tsunade, and Konoha… I leave them to you."
Jaeger smiled faintly.
"You can rest easy, Jiraiya. I am Konoha's son-in-law, after all. I would never harm it. I'll raise new branches of the Senju clan with Tsunade, and on holidays, I'll bring our children to your grave… two bouquets, at least."
"…"
Jiraiya's mouth twitched. This bastard… he's doing it on purpose.
He wanted to spit back that he didn't need to hear about how many kids Jaeger and Tsunade were going to have—but the blood filling his throat silenced him. His breath rattled once, then stopped, his eyes still wide open.
"Jiraiya…"
Tsunade's chest tightened at the sight of her oldest friend of decades dying so pathetically. And yet… her grief was complicated. His constant crude remarks toward her and other women were fresh in her memory, and more than once she had begged him to stop chasing death. He never listened.
"Sorry, Tsunade."
Jaeger's golden blade dissolved into particles of light. The energy of Jiraiya and the two sages flowed into him, and he looked at Tsunade with an apologetic smile.
"No. Don't blame yourself."
Tsunade shook her head firmly. She had seen it clearly—Jiraiya wasn't just "sparring." He had sworn he'd fight without regrets, even summoning the two elder sages and preparing a Sage Art strong enough to devastate an entire battlefield.
If Jiraiya showed no mercy, why should Jaeger?
And truthfully, her heart had already shifted toward Jaeger. She felt he was the one forced into misfortune. He was simply sparring peacefully, only for an old fool to interrupt and force his hand. If anything, Jaeger had been too forgiving.
Her sadness dissolved into a weary sigh, and when she looked at Jiraiya's broken body, her gaze carried faint reproach. We were all Konoha's comrades. Why did you have to ruin it like this?
"Ah—!"
A sudden laugh burst from Uchiha Madara. His Sharingan eyes gleamed with amusement. "Heh. Lost his woman, lost his life, handed Jaeger three Noble Phantasms with two sages as a bonus… Jiraiya was the perfect clown."
[But really… isn't that all he ever was? In those so-called "memories," just a clownish side character. A tool teacher whose role was only to set up the protagonist's cheats.]
Madara snorted. He had once been a "tool" himself. For a moment, he almost pitied Jiraiya. But the thought of finally fighting Jaeger again made his blood boil—and that pity burned away in an instant.
"Jaeger! Enough stalling! Let's fight!"
A surge of blue spiritual pressure roared upward like a pillar piercing the heavens. Madara raised his Uchiwa Fan, now transformed into a Zanpakutō, his eyes burning.
"Sure." Jaeger's lips curved. "Come at me together. But I'd be careful—this two-on-one could end instantly."
"Ha! Don't underestimate me, godling!"
The silver-winged Angel sneered. Even if Jaeger's lines of mortality couldn't be seen, he didn't falter. His wings flared, his blade shone, and he accelerated—twenty percent the speed of light. His body became a golden-white beam that vanished into a warped wormhole in space.
The sheer speed warped space itself, tearing the reconstructed earth into powder.
"So fast!" Madara's brows furrowed. "That woman wasn't even using full strength against me earlier…" Rage simmered. He had been underestimated. But for now, Jaeger was the true enemy.
With a thought, the hundreds of Truth-Seeking Orbs swirled around him, merging into his fan. In a single motion, he unleashed a beam of blue destruction.
"Super Golden Wheel Reincarnation Explosion!"
The light was blinding, capable of sundering the very sky.
"Jaeger—!"
Tsunade's voice cracked. She knew Jaeger was strong, but seeing that overwhelming force hurled at him, her heart clenched in fear that he might fall like Jiraiya.
"An enhanced Golden Wheel… and wormhole tech?" Jaeger tilted his head, voice almost bored. "You've really gone all out."
Two golden arms unfolded behind him, slow and deliberate, each raised toward an opponent—one at Madara, the other at the hidden distortion of space where Angel lay in ambush.
"The Heavens Are Dead!"
"Sun Fire!"
And for the first time, he added a third—a Noble Phantasm he had never before revealed.
"Thousand-Style Guanyin!"
Crack—!
The twisted wormhole shattered instantly, space itself collapsing into nothingness. Angel's body was obliterated with the broken dimension, leaving only a single beautiful head—eyes wide in disbelief—that rolled from the void into Jaeger's hand.
Meanwhile, in the palm of the Guanyin, a strange eye opened—a pupil burning with the sun's own fire.
"…That move…!"
Madara's heart thundered. He had seen whispers of it in the live chat group. Though called Sun Fire, it wasn't ordinary flame. It was the condensed blaze of one hundred and fifty devoured stars. Its temperature eclipsed the sun itself. Even a star could be reduced to ash in an instant.
It was the ultimate destruction.
"Too terrifying…"
Even if Uchiha Madara understood the mechanics of Jaeger's burning pupil technique so similar to the Mangekyō's Amaterasu, there was nothing he could do. This was not Amaterasu's "merciful" flame that simply refused to go out.
This was fire without origin or end. Fire that erased existence itself.
"Wah—!"
No accelerant, no spreading blaze. In an instant, Madara became a figure of pure golden fire.
And just as suddenly—gone. The flames collapsed in on themselves, vanishing as quickly as they appeared. No lingering pain. No scream. Just a severed head with wide, stunned eyes thudding onto the ground. A grotesque mix of funny… and terrifying.
"…Where's my body?"
Madara's disembodied head blinked in confusion.
"Pfft—!"
Uchiha Miyuki couldn't hold back her laughter. "Burned into nothingness, of course! If His Highness Jaeger hadn't pulled the flames back at near light speed, even your head would be cinders by now!"
"That's not the case," Jaeger corrected gently. He extended a hand, tracing a rune of immortality over Angel Leng's surviving head. "I aimed it precisely to burn away only the body from the beginning. There was never any danger of error."
Angel Leng twitched, her lips curling in exasperation. "…Compared to that, I feel like you really did show mercy to Jiraiya." She sighed. "Give me a Senzu Bean already."
"Sure." Jaeger smiled like a yandere bride, opening the group interface to request one from Jibril.
At that moment—
"Oi! What the—?!"
Madara's head, restored by the power of the Six Paths, looked down in shock as his body re-formed stronger than before. His aura surged like a storm. "I… I got stronger?! What the hell?!"
"This is…"
Angel Leng's golden eyes flicked toward Jaeger instinctively. There was no doubt in her mind whose handiwork this was.
"Haha. Feels good, doesn't it?"
Jaeger folded his arms, a satisfied smile playing on his lips. "Looks like Scáthach was wrong. Seems I do have the makings of a good teacher."
•••
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