At this moment, within the mysterious and unpredictable void of the Kamui dimension.
Shuang Uchiha's hands were clamped tightly around Rasa's.
Her stunningly beautiful face was now a mask of extreme tension, her eyes locked onto the massive crater outside.
Her voice trembled slightly as she whispered:
"Is she dead?"
Rasa shook his head slowly, his tone measured:
"How could it be that simple? The force of hundreds of explosive tags detonating at point-blank range is staggering, yes."
"But an entity like that won't die so easily. At most, she's been severely wounded."
Just then, within Rasa's sight.
Above the heads of the civilians and Yugakure ninjas outside, silk-like threads of various colors were surging toward the crater like a rising tide.
As long as she could still harvest the power of their faith.
It meant she was definitely still drawing breath.
Yet, it was curious—she had completely cut off the flow of faith from the village.
Didn't the bastards in the Great Sage Lands have any objection to this?
Or had I guessed wrong, and those creatures weren't stealing faith at all?
Hearing Rasa's explanation.
Shuang's grip on Rasa's hand tightened instinctively, as if trying to anchor herself to him for safety.
Outside, the few dozen ninjas and thousands of civilians who had escaped the collapse stood in a tense silence.
Seeing no movement in the pit, anxiety flared again, and they began to edge cautiously toward the rim.
At the same time, over a hundred more Yugakure ninjas arrived, rudely shoving civilians aside to reach the front of the crater.
Among them, a pot-bellied veteran ninja in his sixties struggled through the crowd to reach the edge.
He took one look into the abyss, and his face turned a sickly shade of grey.
"What happened here?" he stammered nervously.
A middle-aged ninja recognized him and whispered urgently:
"Lord, there was a massive explosion in the main office building ten minutes ago..."
After hearing the brief report.
Beads of sweat rolled down the old man's liver-spotted face like a broken string of pearls.
A deep, uncontrollable terror gripped him, and his voice cracked with a shiver:
"From the look of it, that Great Presence may have met with disaster..."
"Without her protection, we don't have the strength to hold this village. We have to flee while we still can..."
The second the words left his mouth, a faint sound echoed from the depths of the silent crater.
Splash!
Hearing the sound, the old man's heart leaped with a brief moment of hope.
She's alive!
But then, a specific memory struck him, and his fear intensified tenfold. He turned with a violent start and screamed:
"EVERYONE! RUN!"
The moment he finished the shout, the old veteran turned feral.
He used every ounce of his strength to shove aside anyone in his path.
He scrambled away in a mindless panic, as if a primordial nightmare were about to burst from the ground behind him.
Seeing their former leader so utterly broken by fear.
The other Yugakure ninjas lost their composure instantly.
They surged backward like a collapsing dam.
They trampled over the civilians without a second thought.
Their only coherent thought was survival.
Slosh! Slosh! Slosh!
The strange sound from the abyss grew louder, as if something gargantuan were breaking through its shell.
Suddenly, hundreds of slender, supple, translucent tentacles erupted from the darkness of the pit!
They swayed in the air like lithe cobras, showcasing a hypnotic, lethal grace.
Each limb was a shimmering, translucent pale blue, glowing with a faint luminescence under the light—a dreamlike sight that inspired both awe and primal dread.
The old veteran, already several hundred meters away, couldn't resist a glance back.
He witnessed the terrifying beauty of those emerging limbs.
At that sight, his body locked up as if he'd hit a wall. His legs gave out, and he crashed face-first into the dirt with a heavy thud.
His entire front slammed into the ground with violent force.
Yet, even then, he didn't stop. Trembling uncontrollably, he used his hands and feet to crawl and scramble away with desperate intensity.
The civilians who hadn't moved yet were paralyzed.
When they saw those ethereal tentacles rising from the abyss.
Their gazes went hollow, locked onto the swaying limbs with a vacant stare.
"So... beautiful!" they whispered.
The hundreds of tentacles thrashed in the air like enraged pythons before striking with lightning speed toward the civilians.
Each limb darted out, wrapping tightly around the bodies of the helpless people.
With an irresistible force, it dragged them down into the crushing darkness of the pit!
Bizarrely, not a single person resisted.
They maintained their expressions of wonder, their mouths still whispering praises even as they were dragged to their deaths.
Within seconds.
A devastatingly beautiful, massive jellyfish slowly ascended from the crater.
Her colossal form towered over ten meters high, a majestic underwater fortress of light radiating a terrifying, divine authority.
Her body was a dreamlike pale purple, a color like the first light of dawn shimmering across a deep lake.
Her surface sparkled with an alien luster, as if crafted from the finest celestial gems. It was a sight of heart-stopping beauty, like a vivid hallucination brought to life.
If those hundreds of tentacles weren't currently crushing the life out of hundreds of civilians.
This could have been hailed as a scene of absolute magic—a masterpiece of nature that would never be forgotten.
The pale purple queen rotated her eight gem-like eyes, scanning the surrounding landscape with predatory focus.
"DAMNED MALE RAT!"
"TO DARE SCAR MY FORM WITH EXPLOSIVE TAGS!"
"I WILL FIND YOU! I WILL TEAR YOUR SOUL INTO A THOUSAND PIECES!"
A dual-layered, melodic female voice, ethereal yet dripping with murderous rage, drifted from her wide mouth and chilled the air like a sub-zero wind.
Then, the hundreds of civilians trapped in her grasp began to change.
Their bodies shrivelled at a visible rate, their essence being sucked out until they dissolved into a fine mist, leaving only their empty clothes to fall silently to the earth.
As the hundreds of people vanished into vapor.
The color of the Jellyfish Queen deepened into a richer, more vibrant purple.
The hue became so saturated it looked like it could drip liquid light, her beauty becoming increasingly seductive and sinister, like a poisonous flower blooming in the void.
After consuming every last civilian in her reach.
The Jellyfish Queen's eyes snapped onto the few dozen Yugakure ninjas fleeing in the distance.
Her rage cooled into a terrifying, soft detachment as she spoke with that same ethereal resonance:
"I have sheltered you for decades."
"Now, it is time for your contribution."
Dozens of tentacles whipped out like bolts of lightning, carving jagged, unnatural arcs through the air as they pursued the deserters.
The remaining limbs continued to harvest the civilians left on the surface, a systematic and heartless reaping.
Inside the Kamui dimension, Rasa watched the slaughter.
He murmured thoughtfully to himself:
"So that's it. I think I understand the mechanics of her power now."
"Mmh. I wonder if she would make a useful Summoning Beast?"
Shuang Uchiha stood beside him, letting out a weary sigh and shaking her head.
The Ninja World was savage to its core, though perhaps such a swift death was a mercy in its own right.
It was certainly better than being a test subject in a glass vat, suffering eternal torture without the release of death.
At that same moment, in Mount Myōboku.
A colossal toad, currently dozing in a state of lazy lethargy, suddenly stirred.
He blinked his eyes open in surprise, staring toward the horizon.
The creature was massive and bloated, his dark green skin covered in deep, ancient folds of age.
Upon his head sat a tall, pointed hat inscribed with mysterious runes and patterns that hummed with primordial sage power.
"Lord Great Toad Sage, what is the matter?"
A small, elderly toad barely a few dozen centimeters long, with dark green skin and black spots, looked up in concern.
The Great Toad Sage, Gamamaru, parted his massive jaws to reveal uneven, ancient teeth. His voice was a low, slow rumble:
"That jellyfish... she is losing her temper."
He let out a dry, gravelly chuckle, muttering as if in a half-dream:
"That creature has been hiding in the human world for so long, performing her shady little deeds. I knew she'd eventually cross paths with a real powerhouse."
"I just didn't expect it to happen this soon..."
The small green toad, Fukasaku, nodded in agreement.
"Indeed. Why couldn't she stay in her own ocean? She's insisted on lingering in the human lands for decades. Every few generations, a new monster of a man appears. It was always a dangerous gamble."
The Great Toad Sage fully opened his clouded yellow eyes and spoke flatly:
"If she stayed in the deep sea, with her unremarkable history, who would ever worship her?"
"But her own power is pathetic; she wouldn't dare offend us. Even in the human world, she's too terrified to preach openly or sign a contract with a legitimate human. She can only scurry about in the shadows with her little tricks..."
"After all this time, even if her strength has grown, her mind is still that of a scavenger. Hmph. She has no place on the grand stage."