When the retreating shinobi looked back, intricate geometric patterns were already blazing across the desert floor.
The veteran ninja across the alliance wore grim, uneasy expressions.
"That brat set a trap right beneath our feet?!" Madara barked, his arms crossed tightly.
The transmutation circle wasn't overly massive, but it precisely covered the exact area where the allied vanguard had just stood.
Hashirama turned toward Tobirama, the master jutsu creator. "What kind of formula is that? A sealing array?"
Tobirama stared intently, struggling to parse the foreign alchemy matrix from another world.
"I have no idea," Tobirama admitted, shaking his head. "It doesn't match the principles of any known sealing jutsu. The geometric patterns look more like architectural blueprints."
"Have you ever seen anything like this, Great Toad Sage?" Hashirama called out.
The Great Toad Sage puffed nervously on his pipe, completely out of his depth.
"Croak... I have lived for centuries, yet I have never witnessed such runes."
The other Kage began debating in hushed, anxious whispers, reaching no consensus.
Madara scoffed at their futile guessing game. "There is no point in standing around muttering like fools. Just ask him."
"Hey, brat!" Madara shouted toward the sky. "What kind of trap did you lay under our feet?!"
High above, arcs of black and gold lightning danced across Mufasa's frame as he manipulated magnetic fields to elevate the glowing transmutation circle from the sands.
He still had enough breath to casually banter back. "Haha! Just a little ultimate formation I put together for a special occasion."
"What kind of occasion?!" Madara demanded.
Mufasa spread his hands wide with a theatrical grin. "Well, I guess the cat is out of the bag."
"I originally wanted to be reasonable and friendly, but all I got was whining, lectures, and threats. So I might as well lay my cards on the table."
"In truth, I am a ruthless, anti-shinobi extremist."
"The array beneath your feet is a Philosopher's Stone Transmutation Matrix."
"My backup plan was simple: if I couldn't win the war, I'd activate the matrix, sacrifice all your flesh and blood, and forge the ultimate Philosopher's Stone."
"A classic mutual destruction protocol."
None of the shinobi knew what a Philosopher's Stone was, but the word 'sacrifice' made their blood run cold.
A collective chill swept through the Allied Shinobi Forces as they stared at the intricate, glowing lines etched into the sand.
To think they had been standing right on top of a meat grinder the entire time.
"What a barbaric lunatic!"
"To think Sunagakure produced such a monster! We should have wiped them out years ago!"
The reanimated Kage hurled bitter condemnations into the wind.
Jiraiya leaned closer to Tsunade, whispering skeptically, "Is it just me, or is he totally making this up?"
Tsunade huffed, crossing her arms. "Of course he's talking out of his ass. A sly fox like him would never go down in a suicide pact."
"Besides, he's ridiculously protective of his own village. He'd never sacrifice his own ninja."
"He probably set that up as a final deterrent in case negotiations completely fell through."
If Mufasa had overheard her, he would have given her a solid thumbs-up.
'At least someone gets me.'
Kaguya, however, took his words with dead seriousness. "Father, there is no need for mutual destruction. I can slaughter them all for you."
Mufasa chuckled warmly at her eager devotion. "It's nice having a reliable big sister around to handle the heavy lifting."
"These old-fashioned shinobi just love clinging to useless grudges."
"Why fight over dirt when we can build a shiny new world together?"
Hashirama laughed heartily, breaking the tension. "Haha! See? He was just pulling our leg."
Madara clicked his tongue in pure disgust. "Tch. When you have the power to reshape continents, why waste your breath bluffing? Anyone who defies you should be crushed underfoot."
Hashirama gave him a sideways look. "Since when were you so obsessed with dancing and crushing people?"
Madara went completely silent, refusing to answer.
As they bickered, the Philosopher's Stone matrix finished anchoring itself into the desert's magnetic grid.
Mufasa admired his handiwork with genuine pride. "Man, that's a masterpiece."
He tapped into his mental link with Altair. 'How does it look, sweetie? Dad prepared quite the fireworks show for you.'
Within the core control chamber of Sunagakure's fortress, the silver-haired Saber, Altair, smiled softly. 'Thank you, Father.'
To forge a complete divine vessel for his daughter, Mufasa needed the core essence of a Philosopher's Stone to construct the ultimate physical vessel, paired with a sovereign soul.
Laying this matrix across the desert was never about settling a petty dispute with the shinobi nations.
With his current combat parameters, he could solo the entire ninja world without breaking a sweat; resorting to mutual destruction was utterly pointless.
His original blueprint had been to capture Black Zetsu and Obito after the dust settled, throw them into a cloning loop, and harvest enough biological mass to forge the stone.
He had basically planned to run an industrial Zetsu farm.
That plan was rendered obsolete the moment this colossal flying meat slab wandered onto his battlefield.
It was an unexpected stroke of pure luck.
A condensed, hundred-mile biological mass packed with god-tier Otsutsuki flesh was more than enough raw material to transmute a flawless core.
Mufasa cracked his knuckles and got straight to work.
Dragging a hundred-mile airborne meat island into position was backbreaking labor.
Most of its bulk was still drifting outside the geometric boundary of the transmutation circle.
First, Mufasa wove massive electromagnetic tethers, hauling the sluggish mass forward like a gargantuan kite.
When that proved too slow, he flew directly beneath the tissue, using localized magnetic pulses to paddle it along like a barge.
Still dissatisfied with the pace, he swooped behind the entity, bracing his boots against the air to shove the massive meat slab directly into the center of the ring.
Through sheer persistence and absurd magnetic output, he finally wrestled the colossal anomaly into the kill zone.
Outside, Mufasa was wrestling with the titan, while inside the biomass, the dormant creature continued mindlessly digesting Momoshiki.
It possessed the rudimentary intelligence of a newborn—capable only of feeding, sleeping, and waking up to feed again.
Mufasa loved opponents with zero cognitive capacity.
However, the violent magnetic fluctuations outside began rattling the isolated Snow Mountain Villa nested deep within the creature's belly.
The spatial sanctuary began to shudder.
Conan pushed his glasses up, frowning in deep concern.
"What kind of force is powerful enough to rattle my sanctuary's spatial ward?"
While the villa functioned as a self-imposed quarantine, it also served as an absolute defensive barrier.
If he stepped outside its perimeter, the foreign dimensional laws of this world would gradually erode his reality-bending authority, stripping his power or killing him outright.
He had to remain inside.
Kaedehara Kazuha suddenly sensed the familiar, intricate rhythm of electromagnetic manipulation.
His eyes lit up with relief. "It's my boss! He's here, and he's making his move!"
"We're saved!"
Conan's eyes widened in genuine disbelief.
From within the belly of the beast, he could feel the terrifying upper ceiling of power represented by those golden Rinnegan—an apex entity of this dimensional realm.
"Can your leader truly overcome this colossal monstrosity?"
Conan referred to the biomass as an 'alien beast.'
To his analytical mind, the creature's internal composition felt like an erratic, reality-distorting anomaly.
Much like his own existence in this world.
"To put it simply," Kazuha replied with a calm smile, "the sense of security this villa gives me isn't even one ten-thousandth of what he provides."
Conan was visibly taken aback.
Through their interactions, he knew Kazuha was not a man prone to wild exaggeration.
"If he is truly that formidable, he might actually neutralize this beast," Conan mused, stroking his chin.
Kazuha smiled brightly. "Then we'll be able to step out once he wraps this up."
Conan's expression instantly darkened.
"Wait."
"If his power is great enough to shatter the beast, and it breaches the dimensional ward of this villa... it could spell absolute disaster."
Kazuha looked puzzled. "What kind of disaster? Haven't you been waiting for a chance to break free?"
Conan shook his head, letting out a weary, haunted sigh.
"I still don't fully understand how you drifted into this world, nor how I was torn from the streets of Beika."
'The Beika world?' Kazuha listened intently, suspecting this might hold the key to his own scattered memories.
"In my original world, I was a detective," Conan explained, a self-deprecating smirk touching his lips. "I spent my days hunting down the truth behind bizarre homicides."
"Everywhere I stepped, murder seemed to follow like an unshakeable curse."
"People started calling me the 'God of Death Elementary Student.'"
"I lived a relatively peaceful life in Beika Town, taking occasional trips with my friends."
"Until one day, a dimensional rift tore open above the town, casting a massive shadow across the sky."
"An army of foreign entities poured through the breach, launching an unprovoked invasion. The local police force stood no chance against those grotesque invaders."
"I scrambled to evacuate Ran and Kogoro into this very mountain retreat."
"Perhaps it was the sheer volume of death surrounding us, or perhaps an erratic twist of cosmic fate..."
"Just as the invaders breached the estate, my latent authority over death awakened, unlocking the Door of Truth."
"I tapped into the portal's spatial distortion, using its power to slip through reality and wash ashore in this world."
"I fell into a deep stasis here, slowly recovering my depleted energy."
"Eventually, the local population in the Land of Tea discovered my presence. The strange death aura radiating from my dormant body terrified and fascinated them. They revered me as a dark deity, even offering human sacrifices in exchange for the promise of immortality."
"Things remained that way until recently."
"During my slumber, I repeatedly opened the Door of Truth to trace the coordinates of Beika, investigating the origin of those invaders and why they targeted our realm."
Kazuha listened with bated breath, feeling the weight of the mystery. "And what did you find?"
"There is always only one truth."
"Which is?"
"Dimensional Convergence."
"Convergence?" Kazuha echoed.
"The multiverse contains countless standalone realities," Conan said solemnly. "Certain civilizations developed the terrifying capability to breach dimensional barriers."
"Ambitious conquerors began weaponizing their entire realities into dimensional warships, invading and assimilating neighboring worlds."
"What do they gain by consuming other universes?" Kazuha asked.
"They seek to forge the 'Prime Reality'—the absolute, singular universe."
"Because of that, no world can afford to leak its spatial coordinates into the cosmic void."
"Once a world is exposed, the apex predators wandering between dimensions will trace the signal straight to its doorstep."
"And that brings absolute annihilation."
"What kind of annihilation?" Kazuha pressed.
"The total erasure of identity," Conan said quietly, his voice cracking with grief. "The inhabitants of an assimilated realm are reduced to mere background noise in the conqueror's world."
"They become generic bystanders—nameless, faceless extras labeled Person A, B, or C."
"That is how my home, Beika Town, ceased to exist."
Conan slumped his shoulders, drowning in bitter sorrow.
His closest companions—Heiji Hattori, Kaito Kid, Sonoko Suzuki, Haibara Ai—everyone he had ever known and loved had been stripped of their unique traits, their memories erased, reduced to background props in an alien reality.
Beika Town had become nothing more than a forgotten footnote on a cosmic ledger.
For his home and the people who lived there, it was absolute, irreversible obliteration.