Chapter 341: Tailed Beasts Unleashed
Naruto wiped a streak of blood from his chin, his chest heaving like a broken bellows. He shot a glance across the ruined terrain at Gaara, who mirrored his miserable state. The once-impenetrable armor of sand was flaking off the Sunagakure shinobi's skin in jagged, useless chunks.
A suffocating weight pressed down on Naruto's lungs. The gap between them and their enemy was an absolute chasm. Whether it was decades of blood-soaked combat experience, flawless ninjutsu execution, or sheer tactical supremacy, they were being dismantled with terrifying efficiency. They were completely outmatched.
'Damn it! Are we really going to lose to this old bastard right here?'Naruto gritted his teeth, his fists trembling at his sides.'Teacher is still watching!'
A fierce, burning indignation flared in his chest, chasing away the exhaustion.
"I can't lose!"
Naruto squeezed his eyes shut. The sounds of the battlefield faded as his consciousness sank deep into the abyss of his own mind.
Inside the dark, damp sealing space, water dripped endlessly from the ceiling, echoing in the gloom. Behind the massive, towering iron bars, the colossal form of the Nine-Tails lay curled upon itself, deliberately feigning sleep.
"Hey! You overgrown, stinky fox!" Naruto stood directly in front of the cage, planting his hands firmly on his hips as he shouted into the darkness. "It's time to pay the rent!"
A massive, slit-pupiled crimson eye slowly cracked open in the shadows. The beast's gaze dripped with ancient, heavy disdain.
"Hmph. You are far too noisy, you wretched brat," the Nine-Tails rumbled, its deep voice vibrating the very water at Naruto's feet. "Do not bother me."
"Don't pretend to be asleep!" Naruto stomped his foot, sending a splash of murky water into the air. "The old man outside is about to flatten us! That guy even had the nerve to call me a brat who doesn't know his place!"
Naruto pointed a thumb at his own chest. "I'm your landlord! If the landlord gets beaten to a pulp, shouldn't you, the freeloader tenant, do something about it?!"
The Nine-Tails fell silent for two long seconds, seemingly processing the sheer audacity of Naruto's twisted logic. With a heavy, metallic groan of chains, the massive fox shifted its posture, rolling over to present its giant, furred back to the boy.
"That is simply because you are too weak. Do not attempt to push the responsibility onto me."
"You bastard!" Naruto's voice cracked with rising panic and anger. "Are you going to lend me your power or not?! If you don't, once I'm beaten down and killed, you'll be dragged down and shamed right along with me!"
The giant fox's ears twitched slightly.
"Hmph… what an utterly troublesome brat."
Finally, the Nine-Tails let out a long, impatient snort that sent a gale-force wind through the bars.
In the next instant, an incomparably vast, violently dense, and purely hateful crimson chakra surged out from the gaps in the iron gate. The sheer malice in the energy made the air boil.
"Use it sparingly! Do not come crawling to me every single time you face a hurdle!" the fox growled, its voice echoing like thunder. "And do not die! Dying at the hands of an old relic like that would be far too disgraceful!"
...Outside in the physical world.
Hiruzen Sarutobi, who had just shifted his stance to deliver the final, lethal blow to both Naruto and Gaara, abruptly froze. His seasoned instincts screamed at him. He snapped his gaze toward Naruto, his weathered face tightening with sudden uncertainty.
A terrifying, suffocating chakra—one that sent a literal chill down the Third Hokage's spine—was frantically gushing out from the blonde boy's body.
Gurgle… gurgle…
The sound was sickening, like a cauldron of thick blood boiling over. The dense red chakra seeped out from every pore on Naruto's skin, instantly enveloping his entire body and condensing into a grotesque, bubbling Tailed Beast cloak. The sheer heat of it scorched the earth beneath his sandals.
One… two… three… four tails.
Behind Naruto, four distinct tails forged of hyper-dense, corrosive chakra lashed out wildly, whipping the air into a frenzy and melting the stone they struck.
"This chakra… it is the Nine-Tails!" Hiruzen's expression changed drastically, the casual confidence vanishing into absolute, grim solemnity.
At that exact moment, on the opposite side of the battlefield, Gaara slowly closed his pale eyes.
"Hyahahaha! Is it finally my turn to slaughter, Gaara?!"
The manic, bloodthirsty shrieks of Shukaku vibrated through the sealing space in Gaara's mind.
"Shukaku," Gaara's voice echoed back, flat, cold, and entirely devoid of fear. "Lend me your power."
Shukaku's hysterical laughter abruptly died in his throat. The massive beast tilted its sandy, tanuki-like head, peering down at the boy with a deeply mocking, golden gaze.
"Oh? You are finally willing to beg me for help? Did you not always despise my power before?"
"Now, I need it."
Shukaku stared at the emotionless boy for a few heavy seconds. Then, the beast threw its head back and burst into an even more arrogant, deafening roar of laughter.
"Hyahahahaha! Good! Very good! Gaara! I actually like the vicious look in your eyes now!" Shukaku spread its massive, patterned arms wide. "That's more like it! Go! Tear that annoying old man to bloody shreds! My power—use as much of it as you want!"
In the physical world, violent, eerie violet patterns rapidly crawled across the right half of Gaara's face and torso. The sand around him began to swirl with a life of its own, and when his eyelids snapped open, his regular eyes had been replaced by Shukaku's unique, terrifying cross-shaped golden pupils.
On the shattered battlefield, two completely different yet equally catastrophic Tailed Beast chakras erupted simultaneously.
The air itself seemed to groan and warp under the immense atmospheric pressure, the very fabric of the environment unable to bear the strain of their combined malice.
"Naruto… and this Suna brat called Gaara… they can both actively harness the power of a Tailed Beast?" Hiruzen muttered, his grip tightening painfully around his staff.
Before the Hokage could formulate a countermeasure, Naruto burst forward.
He crossed the distance in a fraction of a breath. It was too fast. It was so impossibly fast that even a veteran of a thousand wars like Hiruzen could only barely catch the trailing crimson afterimages.
"Old man! Take this!"
Naruto's voice was distorted, layered with a demonic, guttural roar. A massive, elongated claw forged entirely of boiling Tailed Beast chakra slammed fiercely toward Hiruzen's head.
Hiruzen shouted a battle cry, instantly bringing his Adamantine Staff up horizontally across his chest to block.
CLANG!
The deafening shriek of metal striking hyper-dense chakra shattered the sound barrier. Hiruzen felt a colossal, inhuman force surge through the staff and directly into his bones. His arms trembled violently under the sheer kinetic weight. The ground beneath his feet exploded, and he was forced into an uncontrollable backward slide, his sandals carving two deep trenches into the earth for dozens of meters.
'Such immense physical power!' Hiruzen thought, his jaw locked in exertion.
But before he could even regain his footing, an overwhelming, suffocating tide of yellow sand surged at him from all directions, blotting out the sky.
"Sand Drizzle!"
Gaara's merciless follow-up attack had arrived. Countless hyper-compressed sand bullets rained down from the heavens with the velocity of shrapnel, perfectly covering every single one of Hiruzen's escape routes.
"Earth Release: Multiple Earth-Style Wall!"
Hiruzen dared not show even a fraction of carelessness. His hands blurred through a complex series of seals, instantly summoning four thick, towering walls of solid rock around his perimeter.
Puff! Puff! Puff! Puff!
The seemingly insignificant grains of sand possessed terrifying, armor-piercing kinetic energy. The first thick earth wall was instantly riddled with hundreds of holes, crumbling into dust.
Then the second wall shattered.
Then the third.
Seeing his absolute defense being shredded like wet paper, Hiruzen had no choice but to channel his chakra into his weapon, rapidly enlarging the Adamantine Staff to shield his vital organs.
Clink! Clank! Clink!
The dense, rapid-fire sounds of sand bullets ricocheting off the diamond-hard staff rang out incessantly.
Just as the barrage began to thin, a shadow fell over the Hokage. Naruto descended from the sky directly above him, the four crimson tails whipping wildly in the wind.
"Taste this!" Naruto's monstrous roar echoed across the heavens.
In his right hand, a massive, violently spinning sphere of chakra howled. The pure blue energy was heavily corrupted by the crimson Tailed Beast chakra, turning it into a lethal, unstable vortex of destruction.
"Great Ball Rasengan!!!"
Hiruzen's pupils constricted to pinpricks. The sheer gravitational pull and area of effect meant he couldn't possibly dodge in time. He could only pour every last drop of his remaining chakra into the weapon in his hands.
"Enma! Adamantine Prison Wall!"
The Adamantine Staff instantly multiplied and extended, transforming in a blur of motion to form a giant, jet-black, impenetrable cage of interlocking staves directly above Hiruzen's head.
The very next second, the Rasengan made contact.
A colossal, world-ending roar tore through the battlefield, followed instantly by a dazzling, blinding pillar of red light that shot straight up into the clouds. A terrifying, physical shockwave spread frantically in all directions from the point of impact, uprooting trees, shattering boulders, and flattening the earth for hundreds of yards.
When the howling winds finally died down and the thick smoke cleared, the landscape was unrecognizable.
On the ground, only a massive, seemingly bottomless crater remained.
In the dead center of the scorched pit lay Hiruzen Sarutobi. His body was battered completely beyond recognition. The entire left half of his torso had been obliterated into nothingness, and what remained of his upper half barely retained a human shape.
Panting heavily, the crimson chakra slowly receding from his skin, Naruto stared down into the pit. "He… he should be dead now, right?"
However, a few breaths later, the eerie silence of the battlefield was broken.
There was no blood pooling beneath the ruined corpse. Instead, the scattered, grayish fragments at the bottom of the pit suddenly stirred. Like thousands of pale, ghostly scraps of paper, the debris lifted from the dirt, drawn upward by some invisible, magnetic force.
Slowly, methodically, the paper-like ash began to converge back toward Hiruzen's ruined remains.
Arms, thighs, a shattered chest cavity… the obliterated flesh and bone rapidly reconstructed itself, regenerating the legendary shinobi back to perfect condition at a visible, horrifying speed.
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