Seals did not have to be formed with the hands alone.
Feet worked just as well. Jiraiya had proven it years ago while invading the Rain Village and fighting Pain.
After a few practice runs Ronin had mastered the same trick. For him it had never been difficult.
While one part of his attention kept the Fire Style dragons suppressing the Troupe and another maintained the Water Style barrier, the Sharingan locked onto the figure still struggling inside the dragon's jaws. Amaterasu ignited without a word.
Black flames swallowed Nobunaga in a single heartbeat. Even as the swordsman refused to draw his blade, the fire consumed him.
The weakness of Nobunaga's ability was painfully obvious—especially the long, deliberate charging motion. The moment he failed to complete the draw inside Amenotokotachi, every chance he had was already gone.
Perhaps if, when the second fire dragon carried him away, he had simply abandoned the obsession with a perfect one-hit kill, he might have cut his way free. Instead he clung to the idea. In Ronin's eyes that stubbornness sealed his death.
Four meters of En was the absolute limit of his effective range. Keep him outside that circle and the strength of the ability no longer mattered. Mid-to-long-range combat was exactly where Ronin excelled.
Bitterness flooded Nobunaga's mind. He had been the one who pushed Franklin to develop the cooperative technique. He wanted revenge for Uvogin. He had been certain that once he forced Ronin out of that protective shell he could close the distance and reduce the man to minced meat in a single exchange.
All of that confidence and pride shattered the instant he reached the critical threshold.
His body sank into sluggishness. He never even received the chance to draw the blade at his waist and explode into the technique. With raw force he might still have pulled the sword free, but the true power of the drawing cut would never manifest.
He had no idea how Ronin had done it. Looking at the target standing so close yet completely unreachable, despair settled over him.
That despair vanished the moment the fire dragon blasted him clear of the sealed zone. Hope returned—especially when the residual Nen Franklin had left on his body detonated the dragon and hurled him toward Ronin at even greater speed. Excitement and bloodlust peaked. For a brief instant the burning pain no longer registered. All that remained was the anticipated pleasure of cutting the target down.
Deeper despair swallowed him again.
Once more a fire dragon seized him and carried him away. The blade never left its sheath.
While the flames dragged him off he understood with perfect clarity that a single draw would have sliced the dragon apart. He simply refused. The strongest strike he had prepared was reserved for Ronin, not for a meaningless construct of fire.
In the middle of that stubborn, despairing struggle the black flames closed around him.
The dragon released its prey. Nobunaga, wrapped in Amaterasu, fell toward the ground.
He hit the floor without caring about the continuous agony. One hand still rose. The despair in his eyes began to fade—along with his remaining flesh and vitality.
Black Nen rose from the burning body.
Post-mortem Nen.
Under the successive assaults of the fire dragons and Amaterasu, Nobunaga was already dead. His obsession refused to let him fall. The newly born post-mortem Nen drove him forward even while the black flames continued to eat him alive. A hand burned down to bone remained locked on the hilt of a blade whose scabbard had already been reduced to ash.
The four-meter En expanded in a sudden, violent surge.
The dead man could no longer wait. He intended to deliver his strongest slash before the flames left nothing behind.
Ronin registered the change the instant it occurred. The shift to post-mortem Nen was impossible to ignore; the pressure it carried was real. The En that swallowed him in the next breath only sharpened the sense of danger.
The Yin Seal on his forehead unlocked at once—yet the figure of Nobunaga, still wrapped in black fire, had already appeared directly in front of him.
Fast.
Too fast.
The speed far exceeded anything Ronin had anticipated. It was not pure physical velocity. It was Emission-type spatial traversal.
An Enhancer who leaned toward Emission?
Only after death had the ability opened to its absolute limit—the level that would normally require years of dedicated training.
Under the Sharingan's gaze the drawing cut was clearly visible, lightning-fast.
Metal rang.
The blade slammed into the kunai Ronin had raised. The force was heavy, yet the kunai neither broke nor forced him back a single step.
He acknowledged the speed and power of the draw. It changed nothing. The velocity still fell inside the Sharingan's predictive range, and the raw strength remained inferior to an Enhancer who specialized in nothing else. Even with the boost of post-mortem Nen, Nobunaga was still only trash in front of the current Ronin.
Continuous metallic impacts filled the air as the dead swordsman launched slash after slash like a man possessed. Hundreds of strikes landed. Not one of them broke the defense of the kunai.
"He chose wrong," Ronin thought, "but it was the only choice left to him."
The instant Nobunaga's form vanished, the Sharingan shifted a fraction and the kunai reversed in Ronin's grip. When the figure reappeared behind him the blade was already waiting on the exact trajectory of the next cut.
The mistake had been the application of the Emission ability. If Nobunaga had placed the spatial traversal onto the sword itself rather than his own body, Ronin might have struggled to keep up. Even with the Sharingan locking onto the blade's exit point, the reaction window would have been almost nonexistent.
Instead Nobunaga had applied the traversal to himself. That choice granted rapid approach and free movement inside his own expanded En, yet the extra time required for a human body to reorient and strike after each jump gave Ronin the margin he needed.
It had still been the only viable path after death.
Without expanding the En to enable full-body traversal, Nobunaga would never have closed the distance at all. A long-range slash would have fallen squarely into the Emission category and lost critical power. Knowing that Ronin possessed the strength to face Uvogin head-on, the only realistic route to a sure-kill drawing cut was close range, where the Enhancement aspect could fully erupt.
From the very beginning, therefore, Nobunaga had already been destined to fail.