Almost one thousand years ago, right in the middle of an undocumented island west of the land of waves, two similar looking figures stared at each other.
One was tall, pale, with golden eyes and shoulder length pale blue hair paired with antlers atop his head.
The other was similarly tall, one eye gold, the other pale purple. His skin was white with a horn on each side of his head.
"I've finally found you, Isshiki. Such a shame you landed so far away from me…" Oroshiki said with a playful smile.
Ever since Oroshiki had landed on earth, he had found so many fun opponents to fight, but he had never fought a member of his race…
And that's where Isshiki came in.
"Tch, let's get this over and done with." Isshiki spat distastefully, ashamed of having to stoop so low as to fight the weakest member of his race who was only allowed to land on earth because everyone felt bad for him.
Oroshiki rolled his eyes. "I'll show you how strong I REALLY am…" he chuckled.
At that moment…
…Isshiki immediately reached Oroshiki's guard, a black booted kick carved downward with ridiculous force—
—and stopped.
Just centimeters from reaching Oroshiki, the kick froze.
A pale golden layer flickered over Oroshiki's skin.
The man clicked his tongue several times in disappointment. "Didn't see that coming, did ya?"
Nature energy condensed into a thin sheet of armour over Oroshiki's body. The collision sent wind flying in every direction.
Otoshiki didn't blink.
His silhouette with his long antlers remained still inside of the shimmering golden barrier, semi translucent gold flowing over him.
Isshiki twisted midair.
The golden armour shrank.
It vanished.
"Sukunahikona hm?" Oroshiki asked.
The kick completed its swing…
But Oroshiki was no longer there.
He hadn't jumped out of the way, or even teleported.
He had simply slid a fraction of space sideways as the ground itself bulged beneath Isshiki's heel. Hardened nature energy appeared in his place using the wind affinity to send multiple golden crescents flying toward Isshiki.
But he flipped back, palm out.
Multiple black rods rained out of nowhere.
All of them aimed for Oroshiki's joints.
Oroshiki suddenly formed a pair of spectral wings on his back before launching a barrage of spectral golden feathers, each colliding with the black rods midair.
Isshiki's eye narrowed.
He shrank the entire barrage.
Every rod, every feather.
Everything BUT Oroshiki.
For a heartbeat, everything went silent.
Then everything returned to full scale right behind Oroshiki.
A shredder right behind him, just inches away from decimating him.
Oroshiki didn't turn.
Instead, he grinned wide and hardened the layer of gold around his body with the earth affinity.
All of the rods, all of the feathers detonated right into him.
The shockwave split the coastline ten miles away.
When the dust cleared…
Oroshiki was still standing.
His shoulder length pale blue hair flowed in the wind as his bright golden eyes flared for a moment.
Isshiki smiled, "Now this is interesting. Who could've imagined the famous golden eyed coward would have gotten so much better?"
He vanished as he flew forward.
They met each other, both of them charging a punch.
Their fists met.
The shockwave didn't explode outward, instead it imploded.
The entire terrain vanished around their collision point. Space warping like a struck drum.
Isshiki quickly drove a knee toward Oroshiki's ribs.
Oroshiki intercepted it with an arm coated in golden armour, using the Spectral Warrior ability on himself as he saw himself as the pinnacle at this moment.
The gauntlet cracked, but it didn't shatter.
Isshiki's expression turned to surprise as he pressed harder.
Oroshiki's eyes sharpened as he forced nature energy to rise from the ground in spiralling golden pillars, not striking Isshiki directly but holding him in place. Isshiki shrank one pillar, stepped through another, kicked through a third—
But it was just a distraction.
Oroshiki was already behind him, Isshiki didn't even notice him moving, it was like he had erased his presence, or like he hadn't been there at all.
Oroshiki kicked Isshiki's spine, but he twisted and elbowed Oroshiki's jaw.
The impact caused another shockwave to explode outward.
They separated, neither of them sustaining any visible damage.
Isshiki raised his hand, black cubes materialising in the sky.
They were enormous.
Unbelievably dense.
They fell, aiming to crush Oroshiki where he stood.
He didn't bother dodging.
He trusted his eyes.
Using 100% of the earth affinity, golden lattice structures erupted upward like cathedral ribs, bracing for the descent.
The first cube struck, causing the ground beneath them to sink nearly fifty meters into the ground.
The second cube nearly destroyed the construct.
The third vanished mid fall, shrinking before reappearing directly in front of Oroshiki's face.
Isshiki appeared with it and thrust his palm forward.
Oroshiki's head snapped back, but the armour absorbed most of the blow. Golden fractured spiderwebbed across his cheek.
He chuckled, his voice very low, very thrilled.
And then he slammed his forehead into Isshiki's nose.
The impact forced both of them back, Isshiki was sent flying multiple kilometres back as he tumbled and crashed through the earth.
Oroshiki hovered, using the golden armour around him as a means to fly.
"Great, it was worth seeking you out after all." Oroshiki said softly.
Isshiki vanished, condensing the area around him.
Oroshiki's Tenrigan flared brighter and he saw it.
He saw the compression ripple, he saw the micro distortion before Isshiki would expand.
He quickly ducked, Isshiki reappearing with a kick that Oroshiki easily caught.
The golden armour wrapped around Isshiki's skin, Oroshiki imbued the earth affinity to harden it before forcing the fire affinity to override it.
Right before the construct exploded, Isshiki's eye widened and he shrank, escaping the binding.
He then quickly reappeared above Oroshiki and delivered a downward axe kick that split the space around them.
Oroshiki didn't have time, he crossed both of his arms and used the earth affinity to harden the armour.
Impact.
The land beneath them vanished into yet another crater that was starting to fill with water from the coastline and rivers across the land.
Oroshiki dropped to one knee, the armour thinning slightly.
Isshiki didn't want to let this moment go…
But Oroshiki had already moved.
He gathered nature energy beneath his feet and used the water affinity to make it flow, sliding him a half step sideways so that Isshiki's attack cut past his face close enough to stir his pale blue hair but not to harm him.
Black rods appeared out of Isshiki's shoulders and flew forward in a volley, each one angled toward Oroshiki's joints.
Oroshiki extended his hand.
Nature energy manifested as multiple large golden crescents, thin and sharp enough to sing against the air as they intercepted the rods and sliced them all cleanly in half.
Isshiki didn't pause, he attempted to use the exact same plan as before as he shrank all of the crescents and rods before redirecting them behind Oroshiki's back.
They all hit Oroshiki again.
The golden armor rippled across his back, shifting immediately into rigid earth affinity density, thick and unmoving like tectonic plates.
The impact rang out.
The detonation carved a trench miles long through the land behind him, but Oroshiki only moved a single step, his bare feel grinding against the fractured stone.
A very thin line of blood traced the corner of his mouth.
Oroshiki was the first of the two to bleed.
But nonetheless, he smiled.
Isshiki vanished again and reappeared in front of Oroshiki with a palm thrust aimed directly at his sternum.
Oroshiki answered by condensing lightning affinity nature energy around his forearm, golden arcs of lightning snapped violently across his skin as he intercepted, the collision cracking the air as a sound wave broke from a thunderclap stilled the surrounding air.
Isshiki was not fazed and instantly followed through with a knee toward Oroshiki's ribs.
Oroshiki rotated, letting water affinity nature energy soften the impact path, diffusing some of the force before reinforcing it with the earth affinity at the last possible instant.
The shock hurled him backward across the plateau.
He quickly dug his fingers into the ground.
Using the momentum of him flying backward, he poured fire affinity nature energy from his palm into the ground beneath him in a controlled detonation, blasting him forward again in a blur of gold, the propulsion closing the distance faster than Isshiki had anticipated.
Oroshiki's fist connected with Isshiki's abdomen.
At the moment of impact he shifted affinities, earth to maximise weight, lightning to accelerate the strikes penetration, fire to create an internal explosive release and the layered force tore the terrain behind Isshiki as he was launched across the battlefield.
Isshiki forced himself back up mid flight and landed silently.
His expression sharpened.
The sky darkened as massive black cubes materialised once more and immediately fell.
Oroshiki raised both hands again, already having learnt how to counter this.
He raised another lattice of earth affinity nature pillars interwoven with wind edged crescents and lightning filaments, a defensive framework that caught the first wave of cubes that sent tremors through the ground for several miles.
Isshiki then shrank three cubes at once, stepped through the gap they left behind and restored all of them to full size directly above Oroshiki's head.
His eyes flared.
Water affinity constructs flowed around him like liquid shields, redirecting the fall just enough for fire affinity bursts to detonate beneath the cones and halt their descent.
The sky became a swarm of shattering mass.
Isshiki emerged through the debris with an axe kick that split the remaining constructs and drove Oroshiki into the earth with such force that the crust buckled outward in a large ring.
Before Isshiki could press the advantage, lightning affinity constructs manifested as spikes that erupted from the crater in unpredictable arcs, forcing him to evade as Oroshiki rose from the center, golden armour fractured but quickly reforming as the ambient nature energy flooded back into it.
They met again at ground level, finally in close quarters.
Isshiki threw multiple strikes that were all brutally efficient, all of his movements refined to eliminate waste as he finally landed a clean blow across Oroshiki's jaw that shattered the golden armour and sent him skidding backward.
Oroshiki stopped himself by forming a hand seal and raising the ground beneath him to support him before he swept his arm outward, unleashing several wind affinity crescents so vast they shredded through multiple mountains as they raced toward Isshiki.
Isshiki shrank them, shrank himself before reappearing within Oroshiki's reach and drove a fist into his ribs.
Oroshiki caught the wrist.
For a moment, he infused lightning affinity nature energy into the contact point, not to damage but to hopefully disrupt, creating a violent interference that caused Isshiki's internal flow to falter.
That moment was enough.
The armour on his other arm all flowed to his palm and started to crackle and pop as he imbued the fire affinity into the large mass of nature energy.
The energy detonated at point blank range, launching Isshiki high into the atmosphere with an explosion that even caused Oroshiki's ears to bleed and gave him slight whiplash.
Cloud layers split into circles as Isshiki flew through them at ridiculous speeds.
Oroshiki didn't pursue him immediately.
Instead, he drew deeply on the surrounding environment and the battlefield responded.
The ground beneath him stiffened, the air thickened, the moisture condensed until the density of nature energy reached an almost palpable level.
A few moments later, Isshiki descended like a meteor, striking the ground before Oroshiki with enough force to disorient him.
He rose from the crater with most of his clothes singed off, a large wound slowly regenerating at his chest at the point of detonation.
Their eyes met, Oroshiki's eyes playful and arrogant and Isshiki's full of malice and confusion as to how the failure of the Otsutsuki clan could've gotten so powerful.
Isshiki raised one hand slowly.
A singular cube slowly formed above them, larger than the others, heavy enough that its mere existence distorted gravity in the space around it.
Oroshiki answered by condensing all of the gathered energy at once, using all of the affinities.
The earth affinity hardened into a towering exoskeletal frame around him, the second variant of the pinnacle summoning.
Water flowed between its joints for flexibility.
Wind sharpened the edges and made it aerodynamic.
Lightning crackled along its surface.
Fire burned at its core like a source of power.
The two powers stood facing one another amid a large crater that spanned for nearly eighty miles.
Isshiki studied the construct, understanding that it was not made of chakra he could absorb, but hardened environmental energy that would reform as long as the planet beneath them existed.
He realised now it was due to this environmental energy that Oroshiki was able to attain such power.
For several seconds, neither moved.
Then Isshiki allowed the forming cube to dissipate, the distortion in the sky smoothing black into blue.
He turned without a word, space folding around him as he compressed himself into nothingness and vanished from the battlefield.
Oroshiki let the massive construct dissolve, golden fragments scattering into the air.
He stood alone in the wreckage, breathing steadily, armor fading as the world took back the natural energy he had borrowed.
A slow, satisfied smoke curved across his face.
He had pretty much won, the guy ran away!
At this moment, Oroshiki had to be one of the strongest in the world!
…And that's why…
That's why… the fact that he was laying in the middle of the desert, the entire lower half of his body reduced to ashes and his upper body was singed to an unrecognisable degree… was utterly shocking to the shadowy figure that had been observing the exchange.
The person who had only ever lost to Kaguya Otsutsuki and no one else… had just lost to someone that no one even knew of.
"To think that you'd return, only to be reduced to such a state by… an unknown variable." The figure spoke, voice unrecognisable.
Oroshiki's mouth twitched, barely still conscious.
The figure shook its head. "I rushed over after feeling your presence, what a shame." But then it continued. "However… that creature you were facing is quite interesting. Perhaps it could be used as a substitute for a tailed beast? Perhaps it could work… perhaps…"
Oroshiki's mouth moved again, not having any chakra nor any sign of life left. "D-don't. leave. me." he managed, his voice dry, almost painful.
"Oh don't you worry, there's no way I'd ever let such a valuable asset go to waste." The dark figure spoke as it looked off into the distance.