Chapter 187: The Legend of the Fourth Hokage Comes to an End (Bonus Chapter)
Stelle fished a military ration pill from her pocket, tossing the bitter sphere into her mouth and biting down hard. The metallic tang of herbs flooded her senses. A barrage of shuriken whistled through the air toward her. She swayed, letting the deadly steel graze past her clothes, before her hand snapped out to snatch one of the spinning blades mid-flight. With a flick of her wrist, she hurled it back, weaving a one-handed sign. The single blade multiplied into a dense swarm—the Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique—raining iron death back upon her attackers.
She plunged back into the surging crowd of enemy shinobi. A brutal wave of taijutsu erupted as she shattered jaws and caved in ribs, her movements a blur of lethal efficiency. This time, however, her trajectory was deliberately angled toward Mu, the bandaged Second Tsuchikage. A ruthless logic played out in her mind: since the other great nations had already lost their second-generation Kage, it was only fair that the Land of Earth lost theirs too. He had to die.
Before she could close the distance, the clatter of wooden joints echoed across the battlefield. Chiyo used her Puppet Collection to form a grotesque wall of hidden blades that completely severed Stelle's line of sight. To her immediate right, the air crackled with violent lightning as the Third Raikage took his stance. A triangular formation. Were the three legendary figures actually putting aside their pride to combine their ultimate techniques against her?
The solid ground beneath her boots suddenly liquefied. The earth churned and bubbled, rapidly transforming into a viscous, dragging mire. It was a massive, coordinated assault from the Iwagakure shinobi—a large-scale Earth Release: Swamp of the Underworld.
Stelle did not panic. She raised a hand, her chakra surging downward to forcefully alter the physical properties of the bedrock hidden deep beneath the mud. With a deafening rumble, a colossal pillar of solid rock erupted from the depths, bursting through the swamp and lifting her high above the sinking trap. Using the pillar as a springboard, she launched herself directly into the clustered ranks of the Iwa shinobi. Searing heat gathered in her palm, rapidly condensing into a massive, blinding Flame Bomb.
Then, without warning, her fingers spasmed. A violent tremor wracked her entire arm. The roaring sphere of fire in her palm warped, its perfect spherical shape distorting wildly before the concentrated chakra completely collapsed, scattering into harmless sparks of residual heat.
The world tilted. Her vision abruptly plunged into a dim, suffocating darkness. The chaotic roar of the battlefield—the explosions, the screams, the crackle of lightning—was instantly muted, stripped away into an eerie silence. She froze mid-step, her body locking up entirely as if ensnared by a high-level genjutsu. Her five senses had simply shut down.
It was the absolute limit of her physical endurance.
The only sound left in her universe was the frantic, deafening thud of her own heartbeat. She was a prisoner inside her own flesh, utterly paralyzed. Control had slipped through her fingers. One second. Two. Three. Four. Five. In the hyper-accelerated perception of a shinobi, those five seconds stretched into an agonizing eternity.
And on a battlefield of monsters, five seconds was an eternity.
The Third Raikage, a monster forged of pure speed and lightning, was not one to miss such a fatal opening. He would notice her sudden stillness instantly. The very moment her sight and hearing violently snapped back into existence, the deafening screech of a thousand birds filled the air. The Raikage was already there. His hand, wreathed in concentrated, blinding lightning—the legendary Hell Stab, the Strongest Spear—had already plunged cleanly through her chest, obliterating her heart.
A violent shudder tore through her frame. Blood erupted from her lips, but her eyes remained terrifyingly calm. With terrifying speed, her hand snapped up, gripping the Raikage's thick forearm. She squeezed. Sinister purple flames erupted from her palm, crawling hungrily up his arm and searing his Lightning Release Chakra Mode. The intense, unnatural heat forced the massive man to rip his arm free and violently leap backward to avoid being consumed.
The sudden withdrawal of his arm left a gaping, hollow void in her chest. Stelle swayed, her balance entirely shattered. A horrific torrent of crimson gushed from the fatal wound, painting the mud at her feet. She stumbled backward, her boots dragging heavily against the earth. Her knees buckled, nearly sending her crashing to the ground, but through sheer, unnatural willpower, she forced her spine straight, steadying her swaying form.
Her physical eyes were failing, but her sensory perception remained razor-sharp. Through the haze of pain, she locked onto the Second Tsuchikage. Mu was already weaving hand seals, a blinding cube of white light forming between his palms—Dust Release, preparing to erase her entirely. She didn't hesitate. In the next fraction of a second, the space where she stood tore open. She vanished, reappearing directly in front of the bandaged Kage. The suffocating, oppressive aura of her Hell Realm Domain exploded outward, swallowing them both.
Gasps echoed across the battlefield. None of the surrounding shinobi could comprehend how a woman with a hole in her heart could still command such godlike, unavoidable speed. Stelle condensed the absolute last dregs of her chakra into a single, lethal strike. A heartbeat later, the dark barrier of the domain shattered and vanished. Mu collapsed heavily into the mud. His life force was entirely extinguished. Even his signature Fission Technique was utterly useless against the absolute annihilation of her domain; he was dead before he hit the ground.
The Third Raikage and Chiyo immediately abandoned their offensive, retreating dozens of meters backward to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the dying Hokage. A deep, terrifying wariness flashed in their eyes. They kept their gazes locked onto Stelle's every twitch, their muscles coiled tight. They knew the danger of a cornered beast; they feared her final, dying breath would drag them straight to the Pure Land with her.
Her heart was gone. No matter how monstrous her vitality or how deep her chakra reserves, she was already a walking corpse. There was absolutely no strategic value in risking their own lives to strike a woman who was merely seconds away from bleeding out.
Stelle stood rooted in the center of the devastated clearing. She didn't move an inch. A steady stream of blood soaked through the white fabric of her Hokage robe, dyeing the already stained garment into a horrific, dripping crimson. Right before their eyes, the vibrant hue of her hair rapidly leached away, turning a dull, lifeless snow-white. It was the tragic, obvious mark of a life force entirely burned away, leaving her looking as frail as an ancient elder.
"So the intelligence from all those years ago was true..." Chiyo murmured, her aged eyes narrowing at the tragic sight. "Ida Mutzuki overused a forbidden technique. Her body has been rotting from internal injuries this entire time."
"She is a monster," the Third Raikage muttered, a rare trace of lingering dread lacing his deep voice. "If not for those hidden injuries, we would have been forced into a war of attrition. She might have actually held us off long enough for Konoha's reinforcements to arrive. Uchiha Madara was a nightmare, but his disciple... she is something far worse." He glanced at Mu's corpse, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck. If she had targeted him with that final, desperate burst of speed instead of the Tsuchikage, he would be the one rotting in the mud right now.
Chiyo stared at the dying woman. Seeing the Fourth Hokage finally stripped of her terrifying combat prowess, an unbidden memory of Kazushi surfaced in the old puppeteer's mind. Her throat tightened. Her voice grew hoarse, carrying the complex grief of reminiscing over a lost comrade, mingled with a solemn respect for the fall of a true titan.
"Fourth Hokage," Chiyo called out over the pouring rain. "Your strength, your sheer ambition... you broke the fragile balance of the Five Great Shinobi Countries. The entire world has been suffocating beneath the weight of your shadow. For the sake of the future, you had to die here today."
The surviving shinobi from the allied nations watched Stelle closely. Her once-powerful aura was now nothing more than a flickering candle in the wind, threatening to extinguish at any second. Emboldened by her stillness, a few brave souls crept forward. A tentative hand flicked a single shuriken. The blade spun through the rain and buried itself deep into her shoulder. She didn't even flinch.
"She's done! She's completely lost her ability to fight!" an Iwa jonin screamed, his voice cracking with euphoric relief.
But that relief was painfully short-lived. In the very next second, the advancing shinobi scrambled backward, retreating in a chaotic, terrified stampede like a receding tide.
Amidst the heavy, weeping curtain of rain, the dying Fourth Hokage slowly lifted her chin. Her dull eyes stared straight ahead, piercing through the allied forces.
"This round... you win," she whispered, though her voice carried effortlessly over the storm.
She coughed, a bloody smile pulling at her pale lips. "But remember this fleeting moment of victory. Cherish it. Because in every future war, with every drop of blood spilled and every comrade you bury, you will be violently reminded of how utterly ignorant and foolish you were today."
Her tone shifted, dripping with a deep, engineered martyrdom. "Though I die today, I die for a cause greater than myself."
Her eyes hardened into chips of cold ice. "And I will never leave my corpse behind for my enemies to defile, nor will I allow my comrades to risk their lives recovering an empty shell."
The dying embers of chakra within her suddenly ignited into a raging inferno. The energy went entirely berserk. A blinding, pale blue aura erupted from her flesh, so dense it practically materialized into a physical substance. The violent chakra wrapped around her broken body, flickering and roaring as it continuously expanded, solidifying into a terrifying sphere of unstable power.
The sheer atmospheric pressure warped the environment. The heavy rain plummeting from the heavens abruptly halted. Caught in the gravitational pull of her rampaging energy, the water droplets defied gravity, flowing backward and spiraling upward into the sky. They were caught in a violent vortex, swirling frantically around her glowing form, completely unable to touch the ground.
A suffocating, apocalyptic pressure slammed into the allied forces. Hearts hammered against ribcages; scalps tingled with the primal instinct of imminent death. An unstoppable, paralyzing wave of pure terror surged through the ranks. All thoughts of victory evaporated. They didn't even have time to scream orders. They simply turned and ran for their lives.
But no matter how fast they sprinted, they could not outrun a god.
Stelle turned her head, casting one final, lingering gaze toward the distant horizon where Konohagakure lay. Then, without a shred of hesitation, she detonated the critical mass of chakra.
In a fraction of a second, the pale blue energy expanded outward in a catastrophic shockwave. A colossal, blinding white sphere of pure light swallowed the battlefield, turning the dark, stormy night into a searing, artificial noon.
Every single thing the white light touched was instantly decomposed at a molecular level. The jagged rocks, the muddy earth, the low-hanging storm clouds—even the ambient light itself seemed to be devoured. The desperate shinobi who hadn't managed to clear the blast radius were silenced instantly, their bodies annihilated and vaporized into nothingness by the blinding radiance.
The eruption of light lasted for only a fleeting second, yet to those witnessing it, it stretched into a terrifying eternity. It was followed by a moment of absolute, deafening silence.
Then, the physical shockwave hit.
A tidal wave of concussive force swept across heaven and earth, carrying millions of tons of pulverized rock and ash. In the distance, massive boulders shattered like glass, and entire mountain faces collapsed in catastrophic landslides. The sheer kinetic force of the aftershocks violently split the faraway canyon wide open, violently reshaping the very geography of the land.
It took a long time for the violent tremors to finally cease. When the dust and steam slowly cleared, the spot where Ida Mutzuki had stood was gone. In its place lay a massive, bottomless abyss, a smoking crater carved directly into the crust of the earth.
The undisputed number one powerhouse, the woman who had single-handedly suppressed the entire Ninja World, Ida Mutzuki, had chosen to exit the stage on her own terms—leaving not even a single shard of bone behind.
A mournful clap of thunder rolled across the distant horizon. Jagged forks of lightning interlaced across the black sky, briefly illuminating the devastation. The dense, freezing rain resumed its relentless downpour, gathering into vast, sweeping sheets that washed over the ruined battlefield. The torrential water quickly began to scrub away the blood, the ash, and the lingering traces of the massacre, leaving only that silent, abyssal crater to bear witness to the legend that had just ended.
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