Sarada had to admit it—when she first heard their target was a Tailed Beast, she'd scoffed.
At the time, she'd thought the man in white was just trying to scare her, the "hostage," into obedience. According to what they were taught at the Academy, the Tailed Beasts had long been freed and no longer belonged to any single village.
That should have made capturing one easier in theory… but if a Tailed Beast went berserk, the damage to any nearby village would be catastrophic.
So when the white-robed man actually led her straight to Chōmei, the Seven-Tails, and then deliberately disturbed its peaceful sleep—firing off probing attacks just to provoke it—
She finally realized he wasn't joking.
Watching the enormous insect-like beast stir, Sarada shivered and ducked behind the white-robed man, whispering, "Any Tailed Beast has devastating power. If you provoke it like this, aren't you just asking to die?"
"It's only the Seven-Tails," the man in white said mildly. "By all accounts, the weakest of the bunch."
As expected, the awakened Chōmei, after sensing the intruders' malicious intent, glared down with its many eyes. Ever since Naruto freed them, the tailed beasts had lived relatively peacefully—but that didn't mean they tolerated hunters.
"The shinobi world is at peace," Chōmei rumbled, voice trembling the trees. "And still there are humans who dare to scheme against the Tailed Beasts!"
Its chakra flared as it tried to crush the intruder with pure presence.
But the moment Chōmei focused on the man's face—on the pattern in his eyes—
Its killing intent crumpled like a punctured balloon.
Kaleidoscope… Sharingan…
It's strong enough to make the Nine-Tails look like a monkey…
(Somewhere, Son Gokū: "Hey, watch your wording."
Kurama: "…Excuse me?")
Even so, Chōmei still struggled. It sucked in chakra, and countless Tailed Beast Balls formed in front of its mouth and were launched in rapid succession.
The white-robed man's Mangekyō spun. Space distorted around him, and the Tailed Beast Balls slipped through his body harmlessly, as though his form were just a mirage.
Chōmei's eyes narrowed. A chill went through it.
It had the sinking feeling it was already inside this man's hand.
Sarada froze.
From her perspective, she hadn't moved at all. The enormous Tailed Beast Balls were coming straight at her. At this distance, she knew she had no hope of resisting.
Facing certain death, Sarada sobbed out, "H-Hey, save me…! Don't you need me as a hostage?!"
"I only need hostages with value," the white-robed man replied coolly. "You're optional."
The Tailed Beast Ball—like a collapsing mountain of chaos—passed straight through his body and detonated directly where Sarada stood.
Boom—
The thunder of the explosion swallowed everything. More Tailed Beast Balls followed, hammering the same spot again and again in a relentless barrage.
When the smoke finally began to clear, the scene that emerged made Chōmei's jaw drop.
The white-robed man stood exactly where he'd been, robe untouched—not even a speck of dust. The earth around him was cratered and shredded, but his silhouette hadn't shifted at all; he hadn't even been stirred like air by the shockwaves.
And behind him… Sarada still stood.
Unharmed.
Chōmei stared, lost.
Had the man intercepted everything at the last instant—or had that tiny human somehow withstood a full-force Tailed Beast bombardment?
"Your eye technique… burns through your ocular power way too fast," the man in white said dryly.
"…"
Sarada was speechless. She had just died dozens of times over in that illusion, forcing her eyes to rewrite reality again and again, clinging to life by sheer will—
And he was complaining she used too much eye power?
Please.
That was a Tailed Beast Ball barrage.
Trading Mangekyō stamina for not being deleted from existence sounded pretty reasonable to her.
Watching all this from nearby, Chōmei practically exploded with outrage.
It was one thing for humans to attack a tailed beast. But to ignore it. Completely. While shielding each other and chatting—
You think you can just stand there and tank everything? Fine.
Let's see how long you last.
Furious, Chōmei gathered even more chakra, spewing a continuous stream of Tailed Beast Balls. Each one glowed with a dangerous light, streaking out in an arc, linking together like a chain of exploding stars.
Just looking at that number, Sarada's heart sank.
She simply… gave up struggling.
The white-robed man exhaled in mild annoyance. "You'll die."
Sarada shook her head. "I'm going to die either way. I'd rather go quickly than… like before."
His lips curled into the faintest smile—cold, amused. The flames of the incoming barrage drew close, the light from the Tailed Beast Balls casting their shadows forward, merging on the ground.
At the last moment, he raised his hand, fingertip pointing toward the oncoming blast. It looked like he intended to intercept it.
In reality… he was locking onto Chōmei through its own chakra barrage.
"Sage Art: Stellar Rasengan."
A massive sphere of chakra formed at his fingertip. Its sheer size made even Chōmei's pupils contract.
This Rasengan dwarfed a normal full-powered Tailed Beast Ball. In truth, it looked more like an attack from the Ten-Tails itself than anything a human should be able to produce.
Chōmei refused to accept it.
No way a human, it thought, even with Mangekyō, can match a Tailed Beast's true power. It's probably just a bigger-looking knockoff… less dense than my Tailed Beast Ball…
But the moment the barrage collided with the thrown sphere, all those assumptions shattered.
The Tailed Beast Balls hit the Stellar Rasengan like fragile eggs. They didn't even make it ripple. In density, in power, they weren't even a comparison.
The massive sphere hurtled toward Chōmei. The Seven-Tails felt the pull of its mass, the weight of that chakra—it truly was like a small celestial body.
Panicking, Chōmei flapped its wings, trying to gain altitude, to escape its trajectory entirely.
The Rasengan flew straight. Its path had been fixed from launch. If it could just get above or around it—
But this was not just any Rasengan.
The Stellar Rasengan didn't just look like a star—it had gravity.
As Chōmei strained its wings, an invisible force clamped down on its body—suction, or rather, a gravitational pull. Its massive frame was dragged toward the sphere, drawn into the overwhelming density of that chakra.
Unwilling to accept such a humiliating capture, Chōmei rallied itself and compressed an insane amount of chakra. A black, ultra-dense Tailed Beast Ball took form in its mouth—far larger, far heavier than the chain blasts from before.
This one was on a completely different level.
The black and blue masses collided, two "celestial bodies" smashing into one another. The shock of their impact disrupted the Rasengan's pull, finally letting Chōmei wrench its body free and shoot into the sky.
The mutual collision spun the Stellar Rasengan violently, stirring up a roaring cyclone. Wind exploded outward in a spiraling torrent, becoming a huge tornado of chakra.
The howling storm ripped across the landscape, tearing entire sections of forest into the air. The earth below was shredded into slurry, gouged, and churned like it had been put through a grinder.
Hovering above, Chōmei let out a shaky breath of relief.
It thought it had dodged disaster. It scanned the ground below with a cold, triumphant gaze, trying to spot the battered, broken human in all that destruction. Victory seemed almost certain—
But then a chill climbed up its spine.
A presence. Above.
It looked up.
High in the sky, the white-robed man stood calmly in the air, Sarada floating behind him as if the wind had no say in where she went. His masked face tilted down, Mangekyō gleaming.
"Fall," he called out. "Either to be destroyed… or to be used by me."
His voice cut through the storm, straight into Chōmei's ears.
Panic crashed over the Seven-Tails.
It might become the first Tailed Beast in history to be killed outright by a human.
Even Kurama had been sealed, and that had taken advantage of Wood Release's natural restraint on tailed beasts. This was different—this was a direct clash of force, and it was being overwhelmed.
The man wasn't even using genjutsu to break its will.
The insult stung worse than the blows.
Chōmei wanted to at least send a warning—broadcast what was happening here to the other tailed beasts, tell them someone was hunting them again, someone who could crush them one by one.
But when it reached outward with its consciousness, it hit an invisible wall. The entire area was sealed off. Even a Tailed Beast's mental resonance couldn't escape.
Total isolation.
"Well, Chōmei," the man in white said, as if speaking to a stubborn animal, "I don't actually want to destroy you. You'll be useful for my plans. At the very least, I can guarantee your power will contribute positively to this world's development."
The Seven-Tails hesitated for only a second—
Then dove.
Straight into the raging chakra maelstrom below.
The high-density chakra of the Stellar Rasengan and the Tailed Beast Ball tore into Chōmei's form. If Tailed Beasts had "blood," it would have been chakra—swirling, mixed-color liquid chakra like what now streamed from Chōmei's torn body.
In the end, a tailed beast was only a construct of chakra.
"Still so stubborn," the man in white said, expression unreadable. "You know I could control you easily with my Mangekyō. The only reason I talked so much was to give you a chance."
The Seven-Tails gritted its teeth against the pain. The chakra torrent ripped deeper than it had expected, a level of suffering that even a Tailed Beast could barely withstand.
"Keep dreaming!" Chōmei roared. "For you humans, it's 'death.' For me, it's just sleeping for a few years before I wake up again!"
"Then I'll just keep you alive," the man replied. "I don't have time to wait for you to respawn."
Once the winds and dust began to settle, the white-robed figure quietly constructed another barrier—a space–time blockade that severed all connection between this place and the outside world.
Only when Chōmei was on the brink of collapse did he slightly adjust the barrier, leaving the tiniest gap—just enough for a single pulse of information to slip through.
After that, he turned back to Sarada.
The chakra storm had ravaged him, too. She was bruised, cut, exhausted to the core—yet somehow, still alive.
Beneath the mask, his lips curved faintly.
In the face of death, everyone wanted to live. She had instinctively diverted a portion of that storm, forced it to twist, to shape itself in a way that pushed her eyes to their limit—accelerating the awakening of her Mangekyō.
After all…
He had already implanted a small amount of Hashirama's cells into her body.
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A/N: Advanced Chapters Have Been Uploaded On My Patreon
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