Thud.
Hanabi Hyuga kept the same posture she had while trapped inside the Water Prison Technique and fell awkwardly into her own room.
"Huh… Where is this?"
Looking around at the familiar surroundings, Hanabi patted her cheeks. After confirming that this was not some hallucination caused by being trapped in the Water Prison for too long and lacking air, she let out a long breath of relief.
Then she lowered her head and looked at the clothes on her body, which had already been torn to rags during battle, as well as the few small wounds that had not yet fully healed. Helplessly, she shook her head.
"I somehow returned to the past for no reason, then got sent back without understanding why… If I told anyone about this, everyone would probably just think I had a strange but extremely realistic dream, right?"
But even if it really had only been a dream, the actions she had taken had still been far too naive and reckless.
She thought that knowing the direction of that piece of history meant she had a chance to change the flow of the future.
She thought that now that she had become a jonin and the heir of the main family, she possessed the ability to rewrite the tragedies that were about to happen.
Only after truly facing an enemy active in that era did Hanabi Hyuga realize just what kind of thick wall stood between herself and those genuine monsters.
"I'm already twenty-seven years old, yet I was suppressed so badly by that guy who looked only fifteen or sixteen that I could barely breathe. I couldn't see even the slightest hope of victory…
"With a monster like that standing in the way, it's no wonder even someone as powerful as Lord Sixth couldn't save Senior Rin Nohara."
Hanabi Hyuga walked to her wardrobe. While choosing a new set of clothes, she could not help thinking,
"But that Rei Kaguya seems different from the other members of the Kaguya clan. He's powerful, but he also has a calm and restrained personality. He doesn't look at all like a descendant of that clan famous for being warlike and bloodthirsty…
"If he didn't die at Obito Uchiha's hands, maybe he could have helped the Kaguya clan avoid its future extermination by Kirigakure? If that happened, perhaps he might even have had a chance to liberate Kirigakure from Obito Uchiha's Bloody Mist ahead of time?"
"Mm… I wonder whether he took my suggestion seriously, and whether he can survive that night dyed red with blood…"
"No, wait!? Wrong, wrong, wrong! Before thinking about that, shouldn't I hurry up and investigate whether the history I know has changed or not!? Uwaaah! Back then, I thought I would never be able to return after going to the past, so I never even considered that it might affect things like this!"
After realizing that she might have accidentally caused a catastrophe, Hanabi Hyuga changed her clothes at more than three times her usual speed.
Then, under Hiashi Hyuga's stunned and disbelieving gaze, she charged out of the Hyuga clan gates with absolutely no ladylike bearing, like a runaway locomotive that had lost control, heading straight for the Konoha Library, where all kinds of historical records were stored.
…
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
"Water Release: Water Formation Wall!"
"Wood Release: Cutting Sprigs Technique!"
The enormous fireball and waterfall-like surge of water canceled each other out, exploding into massive amounts of scorching steam.
Using that steam, which was almost impossible for the naked eye to see through, Obito Uchiha displayed the shurikenjutsu passed down through generations of the Uchiha clan. He fired sharp wooden spikes almost nonstop toward Rei Kaguya's position, making them collide with one another in midair so they could strike their target from even more unbelievable and tricky angles.
But such attacks had no effect.
"Dance of the Larch!"
Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang!
Even denser bone spikes erupted from Rei Kaguya's body. His body also began to rotate lightly, as though he were dancing.
The sharp, pointed bone spikes deflected most of the wooden spikes. Even the few that luckily slipped through were thrown off in direction and force by his spinning body, their remaining power blocked by the hard bone membrane beneath his skin.
Wood Release: Cutting Sprigs Technique, which had once instantly killed more than a dozen Kirigakure Anbu, was nothing more than drizzle brushing against his face before a master of the Dead Bone Pulse.
It could not threaten him at all.
Through the steam that had yet to fully disperse, the Mangekyo Sharingan captured this entire scene in Obito Uchiha's eye.
Cutting Sprigs Technique is useless?
Then how about this!?
Hearing the sudden explosion of footsteps ahead, Rei Kaguya's gaze sharpened, and he instantly entered a state of full alert.
He knew one thing very clearly.
If he did not take the initiative to attack, then Obito Uchiha, whose knowledge base was still essentially that of a dead-last genin, had no ninjutsu capable of threatening him.
Cutting Sprigs Technique might be useful against other fragile shinobi, but using it against him, someone whose physical resistance had been pushed to the limit, could not really be called a massage, but it was at least comparable to scraping.
Under such circumstances, the only move Obito had left that could truly threaten his life was—
Making contact at close range, dragging him into the inescapable Kamui dimension, then slowly wearing down his isolated, helpless self.
And that was also Rei Kaguya's only chance to inflict real damage on him.
Because only when Obito tried to absorb a target or launch an attack would Kamui's intangibility be released for a brief instant.
Here he comes!
Rei Kaguya widened his eyes and swung his blade backward toward the spot behind him where a howling gust of wind had suddenly erupted.
Schlick.
The shining white bone blade split the enormous wooden spike shooting toward him in two, sending the two halves flying into the distance on his left and right.
But Rei Kaguya did not discover Obito Uchiha's figure.
"Here—"
A resentful, furious voice came from underground.
Obito Uchiha, who had burrowed into the ground with Earth Release: Hiding Like a Mole Technique, broke through the earth and reached out with both hands toward Rei Kaguya's feet.
Aside from rage, his crimson eye carried a trace of satisfaction that his plan had succeeded, as if mocking the arrogance of Rei Kaguya, a loser who had assumed he only knew Fire Release ninjutsu.
Slap.
Obito's hands grabbed Rei Kaguya's ankles.
The Mangekyo in his left eye began spinning rapidly, trying to absorb the target before him into the alternate dimension completely under his control.
But almost at the exact moment Obito began activating Kamui's transfer, Rei Kaguya controlled the bones in his ankles and made them burst out through his flesh.
Pfft.
Sharp bone spikes pierced straight through Obito Uchiha's hands. Then they exploded inside his palms, countless fine, pointed bone fragments slicing through his tendons, nerves, and blood vessels before spreading into every corner of his hands.
In a single instant, his hands were almost completely crippled.
"Aaaaaaah—!"
Obito Uchiha let out a miserable scream that no longer sounded human.
The wooden spikes on his body instantly began to grow wildly and irregularly. They nearly showed signs of becoming towering trees in an instant, rolling back toward Rei Kaguya's position.
This sudden change forced Rei Kaguya to abandon the chance to continue pursuing Obito Uchiha. He flipped backward through the air, preparing to widen the distance between them.
"Don't even think… of running!"
Obito Uchiha abruptly raised his head.
The Mangekyo Sharingan, already beginning to bleed, suddenly shone.
In an instant, several towering trees covered in thorns erupted from beneath Rei Kaguya, and under the spatial distortion of Kamui, formed a living cage that sealed off every escape route.
The trees created by Wood Release wound and coiled like enormous pythons, constantly compressing the space Rei Kaguya had to dodge and maneuver. They tried to force him into a dead end from which he could not escape, then completely strangle him with sharp thorns and thick trunks.
"Wood Release: Hell's Chaos… You can't escape!"
Looking at Rei Kaguya, whose body had already been tightly crushed by the giant branches in midair, Obito Uchiha revealed a somewhat sick, mad smile.
He raised his left hand, which was trembling and stuffed full of countless bone fragments, and ignored the heart-piercing pain. As if he wanted to hold Rei Kaguya in his palm and crush him to death, he viciously clenched his fist.
Rip.
The incomparably cruel sound of flesh tearing entered Obito Uchiha's ears.
Although he did not hear Rei Kaguya's agonized scream before death, the face hidden beneath the White Zetsu mask still revealed a stiff smile, as though he had finally completed something.
Rin, I… avenged you…
Now, I'll come find you…
"Sigh…"
An unpleasant sigh passed through the wind and entered Obito Uchiha's ears.
Who…
"I shouldn't have expected to keep hiding after fighting to this point."
That was… the voice of that Kaguya clan Anbu?
He was still alive?
Obito Uchiha abruptly raised his head.
His Mangekyo Sharingan spun rapidly as he looked toward the giant trees that had already twisted together like pythons strangling their prey.
Then, through a tiny gap that could barely allow hair to hang down, he saw Rei Kaguya's calm, fearless face behind the shattered mask.
"You're still al—"
"Dance, Bracken Dance."
Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack!
What entered Obito Uchiha's sight was a massive forest of bone spikes spreading infinitely in every direction, with Rei Kaguya's body at its center.
The giant tree cage formed by Hell's Chaos was forcefully pried open by the even more violent growth of the bone forest.
Shattered wood chips scattered across the ruined earth along with the endlessly growing forest of white bones.
The bone spikes pierced through the stunned Obito Uchiha and once again transformed the entire battlefield into Rei Kaguya's domain.