"Pfft—"
That sound wasn't the All-Killing Ash Bones piercing Isshiki Ōtsutsuki's body.
Instead...
Something had plunged into Isshiki Ōtsutsuki's eyes!!!
Sasuke Uchiha, who also possessed a Rinnegan, saw it clearly. "It's Madara Uchiha."
The Seventh Hokage, Naruto Uzumaki, who had been standing beside him looking puzzled, immediately remembered. Wasn't this the Rinne Prison that had given him and Sasuke so much trouble during the Fourth Shinobi World War?!
Madara's clones, which only the Rinnegan could see!
"And Madara Uchiha now has two Rinnegan, so he has four clones."
Now thirty-two years old, Sasuke Uchiha could see everything clearly.
Madara Uchiha had deployed two clones, one on either side. One dug into Isshiki Ōtsutsuki's special golden right eye while the other seized his left Byakugan, forcibly ripping both eyeballs straight out from beneath his eyelids!!
Isshiki Ōtsutsuki had already been battered into a miserable state by their one-sided assault. Now, with both eyes gouged out, blood no different from a human's streamed from the two gaping sockets. The sight was not only frightening, but downright disgusting.
Still, no matter how disgusting it was, the sight lasted only an instant.
Because the very next moment after Madara Uchiha's two Rinne Prison clones tore out both of Isshiki's eyes...
"Pfft—"
Across two dimensions, using Naruto's shadow clone to communicate, Obito Uchiha and Kakashi Hatake precisely calculated the entrance and exit points of Kamui's Dimension and sent in the All-Killing Ash Bones that Ōtsutsuki Kaguya had spent more than three hours preparing!
Isshiki Ōtsutsuki dodged the first attack, only for Tobirama Senju to send him right back with the Flying Thunder God Technique. The second time, he tried to shrink himself with the Dōjutsu in his right eye and evade it, only for Madara Uchiha's Rinne Prison to gouge out both of his eyes!
With no other options left, the All-Killing Ash Bones stabbed him straight through the heart from behind!
Obito Uchiha grinned. "Beautiful! Another perfect stab right through the heart!"
Kakashi glared at him, as if to say that aside from Naruto, Obito was the biggest troublemaker here.
Madara Uchiha's mouth twitched. He had no idea why, but somehow he felt personally offended.
"I never thought... I would actually lose to you people..."
Isshiki Ōtsutsuki's body began turning gray around the bone protruding from his heart.
"He can still stay alive after being stabbed through the heart?" Izuna Uchiha exclaimed.
Having lost both eyes, Isshiki lowered his head, as though instinctively trying to look at his own wound.
The ferocious expression he had worn before was gone. Instead, his face had become calm.
"I never thought I would lose to that woman a second time."
The Seventh Hokage Naruto said, "I don't really like using the word 'fate,' but all of this really does feel like it was arranged by fate."
He looked at Minato Namikaze, then let his gaze pass over Madara Uchiha, Obito Uchiha, and Kaguya in the other dimension.
If not for fate, he truly couldn't imagine how he could have ever gotten another chance to meet these people. Forget Obito Uchiha. Even Madara and Kaguya had somehow ended up fighting on his side.
Sasuke Uchiha stepped forward and stood atop one of the black cubes Isshiki Ōtsutsuki had dropped, looking down at him from above.
"You lost, Isshiki."
Isshiki Ōtsutsuki's body gradually began to resemble Obito's during the Fourth Shinobi World War, crumbling from the wound as flakes like bone ash fell away. Neither of them said anything more.
In the end, Isshiki Ōtsutsuki left them with one puzzling statement.
"My soul may be about to disappear, but the will of the Ōtsutsuki will never be destroyed."
He turned his face toward Hashirama Senju.
His body had already crumbled into gray bone, leaving only his head lying on the ground.
Blood ran down his cheeks from the two empty sockets, yet those pitch-black holes remained fixed on Hashirama as though a pair of eyes still existed within them.
"The God Tree…"
"Sooner or later, it will help the Ōtsutsuki evolve once again."
With those words, even Isshiki Ōtsutsuki's head crumbled away, leaving nothing but a pile of ash.
Whether it was because they had finally killed him or because of the words he had left behind, everyone inside Kamui's Dimension remained silent for several minutes before Minato Namikaze finally spoke and told Obito to take everyone outside.
They also needed to announce that the lockdown had been lifted.
Nearly four hours had passed since Isshiki Ōtsutsuki first appeared, putting all of Konoha into a state of emergency and sending every non-combatant into the shelters.
Locked together with Amado in the most heavily secured location in Konoha, Kawaki had long since run out of patience.
Sai, who had been assigned to guard them, still wore his usual expressionless face. But the way his interlaced fingers kept unclasping and tightening again revealed how he truly felt.
"I've been waiting for almost four hours! I'm not waiting any longer!! Let me out! Otherwise, I'll get out my own way!"
Kawaki raised his right hand. It was already beginning to transform into a monstrous claw as he prepared to attack Sai and the encrypted door keeping them inside.
Amado smoked one cigarette after another. "If you go out there, you'll only make Isshiki Ōtsutsuki stronger and put the Hokage and the others at an even greater disadvantage."
"That's still better than letting the Seventh Hokage die because of me!"
Kawaki remembered the only familial affection and acknowledgment he had ever received in his life.
Once people finally obtained something like that, they became greedy. They wanted to hold on to it forever, and they became afraid of losing it.
He couldn't imagine returning to that hellish life he had once lived. Even more than that, he couldn't imagine how he was supposed to keep living in such a hollow world if the Seventh Hokage-sama were no longer in it...
"You should've listened to me from the beginning. I could've handed myself over to Isshiki Ōtsutsuki and made him swear never to invade Konoha or hurt the Seventh Hokage. That would've been enough."
Amado said, "Once the Ten-Tails is planted, sooner or later the God Tree will drain every last bit of life from this planet. When the entire planet has become barren, do you really think Konoha or your Seventh Hokage will still exist? By then, Isshiki will have taken over your consciousness. He'll use your own body to personally plunge this world, and your Seventh Hokage-sama, into despair."
In the end, Kawaki was only fifteen or sixteen years old. To them, his way of thinking was exactly what one might expect from a teenager that age, someone willing to throw everything away for the feelings in his heart.
What a pain...
Sai suddenly realized with dismay that he had somehow picked up Shikamaru's catchphrase.
But then Kawaki suddenly froze, staring blankly at his palm.
Isshiki Ōtsutsuki's Kāma on his palm was disappearing.
It was the permit that allowed Isshiki Ōtsutsuki to reincarnate through him, or rather, the "door" through which Isshiki Ōtsutsuki's soul could enter the house that was Kawaki's body.
"The Kāma... it's disappearing..."
Sai hurried over to inspect it. "It really is gone?! What... what's happening?! What does this mean?!!"
Amado finally let out a breath of relief.
"Looks like choosing you people was the right decision."
Sai demanded, "What do you mean?!"
"Isshiki Ōtsutsuki..." Kawaki murmured. "He's dead."
Amado nodded. "That's right. Hokage-sama and the others must have defeated Isshiki Ōtsutsuki."
The moment he finished speaking, Sai received a Mind-to-Mind Transmission from his wife, telling him that the restrictions on everyone could be lifted. Hokage-sama and the others had already returned.
"!!"
The moment Kawaki heard that, his first thought was whether the Seventh Hokage-sama was safe.
[Everything is fine. You've already been given permission to go see him. But Sai, you'd better prepare yourself.]
Sai froze when he heard the second half of Yamanaka's message.
[Because the people who helped Naruto and Sasuke defeat Isshiki Ōtsutsuki this time...]
[You'll never guess who they are.]
Konoha lifted its state of alert.
Everyone heard that Boruto and Young Naruto were at Lightning Burger, and since it happened to be lunchtime, they all followed the Seventh Hokage there.
Boruto stubbornly insisted on using his own allowance to treat Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, the three visitors from the past.
The Seventh Hokage Naruto simply smiled and paid for everyone else.
When Kawaki burst through the door and saw that his Seventh Hokage-sama was unharmed, all the tension left his body at once. He sagged against the doorway, experiencing for the first time what it felt like to have his legs go weak from fear because he had been worried about someone else.
"Ah! It's that handsome guy from before!"
Young Naruto pointed at him, wondering if this was the same Kawaki who had once traveled back to the time of their Chūnin Exams.
"You're... the Seventh Hokage-sama when he was young!"
"I knew it was you!!" Naruto was delighted to see him again. "It's only been a few months, I think, but with all the traveling back and forth through time, it feels like forever, dattebayo!"
Kawaki stared at him. "Were you the ones who saved the Seventh Hokage of this era?!"
Young Naruto pointed toward the adults' table, where his dad and the others were sitting.
"It was Dad and the others. We weren't allowed to fight this time."
Naruto and Sasuke were still clearly unhappy about that. Both of them looked as though they desperately wished they could have joined the battle.
Boruto felt exactly the same.
With so many important figures present, Lightning Burger had closed to regular customers and was serving them exclusively.
The young Konoha shinobi from three different eras had pushed several tables together.
The adults had done the same, joining several large tables so they could talk while they ate.
As for Konoha's Ramen Ichiraku, Madara Uchiha, Hashirama Senju, and the others had already eaten there several times after Naruto took them there in the world of the mission scrolls.
But hamburgers, french fries, and Coke, foods that had only appeared by Konoha's eightieth year, were completely new to the people from the Warring States Period. Even Young Naruto, Young Obito, and the others had never tried them before.
Naruto had a hard time deciding what to order.
Boruto seized the chance to play host and tried to order his own favorite, the ten-times-spicy burger, for him.
"Smack!"
Kawaki immediately stopped him, cold and uncompromising like a knight determined to protect his master.
"The Seventh Hokage-sama doesn't like strongly flavored food. If you like it, order one for yourself."
"Huh?!!" Boruto jumped up and started arguing with Kawaki. "He's my dad, you know!"
The implication was obvious. Wasn't Kawaki being a little too controlling?
Kawaki replied, "The Seventh Hokage-sama is my teacher. If you want to recommend an extra-spicy burger..." He pointed at Young Sasuke Uchiha. "Give him the ten-times-spicy one."
Sasuke rejected the offer with a scowl. "Extra tomatoes, no spice. I'll pay for it myself."
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