Naruto's indifferent expression finally shifted. Hovering amid the wreckage like a god above mortal ruin, he looked at Might Guy shrouded in blood-red steam, and for the first time since the slaughter began, genuine curiosity flickered in his purple ripple eyes.
"The Eight Gates..." Naruto murmured. "I've seen Lee use them before. Interesting. Teacher Guy, I hope your Eight Gates can give me a real surprise."
His tone was still lofty, still dismissive, as though he were granting an insignificant challenger the privilege of entertainment. He judged Guy from above, like a king glancing down at a final rebel on the edge of death.
***
Guy's entire body trembled under the crushing load of the technique. Even so, he did not charge at once. Blue vapor roared around him as he bellowed, "The Seventh Gate of Shock - Open!"
A violent surge of azure steam burst into the sky. The force of it twisted the air and drove gravel skittering across the broken battlefield. Then, without hesitation, Guy shouted toward the distance, "Sasuke! Go!"
Sasuke cast him one deep look. There was no time for words, no room for sentiment. Bleeding, barely standing, he used the last scraps of chakra left in his body and vanished into the distance.
Naruto glanced once toward the direction Sasuke had fled, but he made no move to pursue. A faint smile tugged at his lips.
"No matter where you run," he thought, "I'll bring you back."
Then his attention returned fully to the man before him.
***
Guy saw that same disdain still lingering on Naruto's face, and in that instant, his thoughts flew back across the years.
He remembered his father, Might Duy. He remembered that weathered, smiling face, the man who had burned his life away to protect what mattered. He remembered the inheritance passed from father to son - not talent, not genius, but the refusal to bow before despair.
He remembered Konoha. He remembered his students. He remembered every stubborn effort, every failure laughed off, every youthful vow shouted into the wind.
And then Guy grinned.
It was the same dazzling smile that had always made him look a little ridiculous, a little foolish - but tonight that smile held an iron resolve that could not be shaken.
"The Eighth Gate of Death..."
"Open!!!"
There was no thunderous blast. No spectacular explosion. And yet, in the instant those words fell, the entire battlefield changed.
The blue vapor around Guy burned crimson in a heartbeat. Blood-red steam burst from every pore of his body, poignant as fresh blood and magnificent as the evening sky before nightfall. The earth split. The air groaned. Even the sky itself seemed to have been stained red.
His hair rose wildly. His skin flushed scarlet. Every drop of blood in his body seemed to ignite. Life itself was being burned into power.
At that moment, Might Guy was no longer merely a ninja. He was a red sun descending upon the world.
***
"What?!"
Naruto's face finally changed for real.
He had remained calm before the Five Kage. He had toyed with Sasuke. He had watched armies die without so much as a wrinkle in his brow. But now, staring at the figure wrapped in scarlet steam, he felt something he had not felt in a very long time - danger.
This was not a simple increase in strength. It was not just faster, stronger, or fiercer than before. It was a complete transformation, a leap across an abyss. The violent force pouring from Guy's body was hundreds of times greater than what the earlier gates had displayed.
Even Naruto's Rinnegan stung.
"This power..." Naruto murmured, his tone stripped of mockery. "It's unbelievable."
He no longer looked at Guy as prey. He looked at him as a true opponent.
Across the real ninja world, hearts leaped into throats.
"What kind of technique is that?!"
"Even that monster is taking him seriously?!"
"Might Guy... he..."
At the Ninja Academy, Lee stared at the sky so hard his eyes nearly burst from their sockets. Neji and Tenten were equally stunned. None of them had ever imagined that their normally overenthusiastic, often absurd teacher carried power like this in his body.
Guy himself, in the real world, looked up at the blood-red figure in the sky and laughed, proud to the point of tears. "That's it! That's how youth should burn!"
To countless watchers, this was no longer just a battle. It was the final blaze of a life staked on conviction - the most tragic and most dazzling bloom of all.
***
In the heavens, Naruto's expression lost all traces of playfulness. Cold disdain disappeared. In its place remained only sharp concentration.
"Teacher Guy," he said quietly, "come."
"Let me witness your conviction."
Guy could no longer answer properly. His blood was boiling. Every cell in his body was screaming. The agony was so intense it was beyond pain, as though millions of steel needles were driving into his flesh and marrow at once. But when he heard Naruto's words, a strained smile still spread across his face.
My conviction, he thought. My conviction is to protect.
Protect the village. Protect the next generation. Protect the things precious to others, even if I have to burn away the last of myself.
The lotus that safeguards Konoha... bloom one last time!
Without the slightest hesitation, he moved.
"Evening Elephant!"
Boom--!
The air itself was compressed by pure force and blasted outward. A gigantic crimson shockwave, visible to the naked eye, roared across the battlefield faster than sound, warping the space around it as it hurtled toward Naruto.
"First step!"
Naruto's Rinnegan spun violently. Truth-Seeking Balls rushed together in front of him, forming a dark barrier shot through with godlike power.
The Truth-Seeking Ball shield makes its first appearance!
BOOM!!!
The collision sounded as if the sky itself had cracked open. Naruto's black barrier trembled violently, and his whole body was driven back dozens of meters, his heels carving two deep trenches into the ruined earth beneath him.
"Second step!"
The second crimson air cannon came immediately, fiercer than the first, never giving him the chance to recover.
Naruto's pupils contracted. He no longer dared meet the attack head-on. His body blurred as he tried to evade.
"Third step!"
As though he had seen straight through Naruto's intentions, Guy's third blast sealed every route of retreat at a vicious angle.
"Shinra Tensei!"
Naruto had no choice but to unleash repulsive force again. The invisible shockwave roared outward, colliding with the incoming blast - but the Evening Elephant smashed through the force with savage momentum, shattering the repulsion and driving onward.
"Fourth step!"
"Fifth step!"
The battlefield vanished beneath a storm of blood-red impacts. One after another, the compressed air cannons descended like meteors, hammering the space around Naruto without pause.
The earth split apart. Dust and debris filled the sky. The very heavens trembled under the barrage. Under that frenzied assault of ultimate taijutsu, Naruto could only weave, dodge, and defend with his Truth-Seeking Balls.
For the first time in the battle, the self-proclaimed destroyer of the world was forced fully onto the defensive.
***
The real ninja world watched in suffocating silence.
Taijutsu... could actually reach this level? A man without the Sharingan, without a tailed beast, without some legendary bloodline - he was pushing that overwhelming monster back with nothing but his body, his will, and the flames of his own life.
In Konoha, Genma Shiranui, Ebisu, and others who knew Guy well had tears in their eyes before they even realized it. Kakashi's exposed Sharingan brimmed with pride and grief so intense it looked like it might cut him apart from within.
Outside the Akatsuki base, even Itachi Uchiha, ever cold and self-contained, watched the burning figure with a trace of respect in his eyes. Against absolute despair, this man had still chosen to charge straight forward.
But the assault could not last forever.
In the sky, Guy's storm of attacks suddenly stopped.
He dropped to one knee. The blood-red steam around him flickered like a candle in the wind, bright one moment, weak the next. His life was burning out. The body that had forced itself beyond all limits had begun to collapse.
Even so, he raised his head.
His eyes locked on Naruto, who hovered in the air looking slightly disheveled for the first time. His cloak had been shaken loose in places. Dust clung to him. The monster still stood - but he had been shaken.
And that was enough.
The last of Guy's strength, the last ember of his life, the last unyielding light in his soul gathered into a single final attack.
He slowly lowered himself into a starting stance.
It was beautiful in a way only something born from utter resolve could be - a posture carved from the act of spending one's life without regret.
"Night..."
The word scraped from his throat, hoarse and ragged, as if spoken from the depths of hell.
Crimson steam surged violently toward his right leg. It compressed, spiraled, and condensed until a tiny sphere of scarlet force formed around his foot, radiant and terrible like a newborn sun.
"...Guy!!"
Space began to bend. The ground beneath him collapsed layer by layer as though the world itself could no longer bear the pressure of that kick.
Naruto's expression changed drastically.
For the first time since he had descended as the destroyer of the world, he felt the unmistakable scent of death closing in on him.