Unraikyo—the sacred gorge dedicated to the training of Jinchuriki—could no longer be called a "gorge."
The dual explosion of the Tailed Beast Bomb and the Great Spiraling Ring had created a synergistic effect far greater than a simple sum of their parts. Several mountain peaks within a radius of kilometers had been leveled, and a colossal crater—a thousand meters wide and over a hundred deep—now marked the center of the valley.
A severed river was currently surging into the pit, carrying debris and jagged rocks. Inside the crater, the exposed layers of rock had been baked into a glassy, vitrified state by the unimaginable heat.
The battered, massive form of the Eight-Tails, Gyuki, struggled to rise from the rubble as the crystallized earth cracked and collapsed around it.
"Cough... Brother... you alright? This rap... is out of sight~" A mouthful of blood sprayed from Killer Bee's lips, yet he didn't forget his rhythmic cadence.
Bee had used his Tailed Beast form to shield Ay, but his own back had been shredded by the blast, leaving a mess of charred flesh and exposed bone.
"Bee!" Ay rushed to support his brother as the Tailed Beast Shroud flickered and died.
If Bee hadn't shielded him with that mountain-sized body, the Fourth Raikage would be the one lying dead or dying right now. Ay hoisted Bee onto his back and sprinted toward the village at a desperate pace.
The image of the explosion still flickered in his mind like a recurring nightmare. The village...
When Ay reached the outskirts and stood upon a high peak, his heart stopped. The center of Kumogakure looked as if it had been wiped away by a giant eraser. The Raikage Building was gone. Multiple peaks that had once held the village's core infrastructure had been snapped like twigs.
Thick black smoke billowed from every corner of the village. Medical ninjas blurred through the haze, frantically searching for survivors. The rising chorus of wails and screams pierced through the soot, filling the Fourth Raikage with a profound, soul-crushing sense of guilt.
"Raikage-sama!" Two figures landed beside him.
He looked up to see Yugito Nii and Dodai.
"Killer Bee!" Yugito's pupils trembled when she saw Bee's condition.
As a fellow Jinchuriki, she knew Bee's strength better than anyone. In an era where the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki remained inactive, Bee was the strongest weapon on the planet. To see him broken like this... it was unthinkable.
"Bee... he protected me." Ay's fists clenched until his knuckles turned white.
Ever since his father, the Third Raikage, had died, Ay had been terrified of losing his brother to a similar ambush. He had banned Bee from leaving the village to keep him safe. But today, a mysterious enemy had brought the fight to their doorstep, and once again, his brother had paid the price to save him.
"What happened with the explosions in the village? Where are the intruders?" Ay handed Bee over to a team of arriving medics and turned his narrowed eyes toward Dodai.
Dodai, the elite Jōnin who had enjoyed the absolute trust of the Third Raikage, spoke with a heavy voice: "The battle was over by the time I arrived."
"What about Darui and the others?!" Ay's voice cracked with desperation.
"Darui, Cee, and Samui sustained minor injuries. But Mabui..." Dodai's lone eye reflected the ruins of the village center. "She was too close to the blast and couldn't evacuate in time. She is currently in critical condition."
"As for the other participants... two Jōnin are confirmed KIA. Two Jōnin and three Special Jōnin are critically wounded. Seven Chūnin are confirmed KIA, and sixteen more have been drained of their chakra; we don't know if they'll survive."
"Furthermore... the blast leveled the central district. Total casualties among the villagers and low-level ninja are estimated to be no less than two hundred."
Because Kumogakure was built into the peaks rather than on an open plain like Konoha, the mountains had acted as baffles, absorbing much of the shockwave. Additionally, since the village functioned primarily as a military base, most "civilians" possessed some chakra and were counted among the combat losses.
Still, the loss of seven elite officers, over twenty Chūnin, and hundreds of residents was a catastrophe equivalent to a major defeat in a world war. Had the main Cloud forces not been stationed at the borders of the Land of Frost and Hot Springs, the death toll would have been astronomical.
And to top it off, their "Strategic Nuclear Weapon," Killer Bee, was incapacitated.
BOOM!
Ay slammed his fist into the mountain wall, cratering the rock. "Did we catch them? Any of them?!"
Dodai shook his head grimly.
"Based on the reports from Darui and Cee, the two hovering enemies vanished the moment the explosion occurred. They... likely weren't human. They were Summoned Beasts."
"WHAT?!" Ay's eyes bulged with rage. The idea that two creatures—mere summons—had pinned down dozens of his elite shinobi was a stinging humiliation.
"How did they get in?"
"I've interrogated the gate guards and the shinobi who were with Bee," Dodai said, handing over a file. "The enemy used Genjutsu to hijack a merchant caravan. He entered under the name 'Danzo.' This is his sketch."
Ay looked at the drawing of the sunny, bright-eyed boy and felt his blood boil.
"Mobilize every intelligence asset we have! We MUST find this man!" Ay crumpled the sketch into a ball. "Post a bounty at the Black Market! Seventy million rye for his head! Ten million rye for any confirmed intelligence leading to his location!"
Seventy million was an astronomical sum—higher than the bounty on many Jinchuriki. For context, Utakata, the Six-Tails Jinchuriki, was only worth fifty million.
Ay didn't actually expect a bounty hunter to kill this monster. He wanted the information out there. He wanted every other village to look at this man as a threat. If this "Shura" crossed paths with anyone else, the Cloud would hear about it through their network of spies.
"Understood!" Dodai signaled a subordinate to execute the order immediately.
"And one more thing..." Ay looked at the massive hole where his village used to be. His voice was hollow. "Contact Konoha. Accept their terms. We are ending the war."
Rumble...
The storm clouds, briefly scattered by the explosion, reconvened over the Hidden Cloud. The rain began to fall, smelling of acrid smoke, washing over the wounds of the village.
The pain of war settled over Kumogakure like a shroud.
In the year 54 of the Konoha calendar, news of the devastating assault on the Hidden Cloud by a lone mysterious ninja spread like wildfire. Every hidden village scrambled to send spies to assess the damage.
Shortly after, the Hidden Cloud conceded to Konoha's peace terms. The tail-end of the Third Shinobi World War finally sputtered to a close. The world was entering a fragile era of peace.
Simultaneously, a mysterious ninja named "Danzo," codename "Shura," appeared on the black market with a staggering seventy-million-rye price on his head.
————
Deep within the Root Base, Konoha
Danzō Shimura stared at the updated bounty list brought by his subordinates. Looking at his own name—"Danzo"—and the massive price tag attached to it, he flew into a blind, murderous rage, shredding the bounty poster into a thousand pieces.