Kaedehara Kazuha had no idea what Beika Town was actually like.
Judging by Conan's grief-stricken expression, however, he could tell it was once a vibrant, peaceful place where people lived in harmony.
"Do not lose heart," Kazuha offered gently. "One day, you will find a way back to your homeland."
Conan let out a long, weary sigh.
"Thank you, but I don't hold out much hope."
"My home world sits at a critically low dimensional tier," Conan explained, staring down at his hands. "The power ceiling between our reality and those invaders is simply insurmountable."
Kazuha tilted his head in thought. "A dimensional tier? A world's power ceiling?"
Conan adjusted his glasses, organizing his thoughts.
"To put it simply, it is the absolute limit of destructive output a world's physical laws can sustain."
"The ultimate weapon in my original world was the nuclear warhead."
"Yet the vanguard that breached Beika possessed the raw firepower to vaporize an entire planet."
"The disparity in baseline parameters was absolute."
Kazuha frowned, struggling with the concept.
"If that is true, are lower-tier dimensions simply doomed to be consumed by higher-tier realms?"
Conan shook his head.
"Not necessarily."
"A world's dimensional tier can be upgraded and reinforced."
"How does one achieve that?" Kazuha asked.
"I still don't know," Conan admitted, looking toward the glowing spatial rift. "I'm still searching for the answer through the Door of Truth."
Kazuha stroked his chin. "How would the shinobi world measure up against the conquerors who destroyed your home?"
"There is no comparison," Conan said bluntly. "This world might endure for a few hours longer, but nothing more."
"Even a standard foot soldier in their vanguard possesses destructive power comparable to the Kage of this land."
Kazuha felt a chill run down his spine.
A common rank-and-file grunt matching the apex combatants of the ninja world?
What kind of apocalyptic civilization was roaming the dimensional sea?
If an armada like that locked onto the elemental nations, extinction was guaranteed.
Outside the belly of the beast, Mufasa had finally wrapped up the heavy lifting.
Through raw electromagnetic manipulation, he dragged the hundred-mile mass of pulsating flesh dead into the center of the transmutation matrix.
CRACKLE!
Dense, interwoven arcs of golden lightning erupted from his hands, weaving into colossal electromagnetic cables that pinned the biomass securely to the desert floor.
The dormant abomination twitched in discomfort, but the heavy magnetic netting kept it locked firmly in place.
Mufasa dusted off his hands, looking thoroughly satisfied with his handiwork.
"Alright, that takes care of the setup."
"Time to ignite the forge and harvest this god-flesh."
Just as Mufasa prepared to ascend and channel his chakra into the outer ring, the surging energy fluctuations rattled the interior of the mass.
Inside the spatial sanctuary, Conan's eyes snapped wide in sheer panic.
"He has to stop immediately!" Conan yelled, leaping to his feet.
"If his energy violently clashes with the spatial barrier of this villa, it will trigger a dimensional spark!"
"A spark functions like an astronomical beacon across the void, broadcasting this world's exact spatial coordinates."
"If high-tier dimensional predators catch the scent, an invasion armada will descend, and this entire reality will be wiped from existence!"
Kazuha's heart skipped a beat.
"How do we warn him in time?"
The surrounding biomass had sealed them in an impenetrable cocoon of dense Otsutsuki flesh, blocking all standard sensory communication.
Conan gritted his teeth, his eyes flashing with resolve. "I'll force open the Door of Truth. You handle the talking."
"Understood!" Kazuha agreed instantly.
High in the sky, Mufasa was just about to engage the transmutation array when a heavy, mechanical creak echoed beside his ear.
It sounded like an ancient, iron-banded door grinding open on rusted hinges.
Mufasa raised an eyebrow, glancing toward the sound.
Hovering unsupported in the empty air beside him was an ornate, bronze-plated archway flanked by weathered red brick walls and flickering streetlamps.
It looked as though the grand entryway of an old European manor had been cleanly excavated and suspended in the sky.
Mufasa blinked, genuinely bewildered.
Down on the dunes, the Allied Shinobi Forces were equally dumbfounded by the bizarre spatial anomaly.
What kind of trick was the Kazekage pulling now?
Suddenly, Hidan dropped hard to his knees, tears of religious ecstasy streaming down his painted face.
"Lord Jashin!" Hidan bellowed toward the heavens, throwing his arms wide.
"O great and glorious deity, you have finally heard the prayers of your most devoted disciple!"
"The sacred gates to the underworld have opened!"
Kakuzu glanced down at him with undisguised contempt.
The maniac spent every waking hour raving about his blood god.
"Don't tell me that ridiculous cult of yours actually has an address," Kakuzu muttered.
Hidan sneered up at his partner with manic pride.
"Hmph! Keep your mouth shut, you greedy fossil!"
"That is the divine threshold! Once I step through those gates, I will receive true, unconditional immortality instead of stitching together stolen organs like a scavenger!"
"The Lord of Jashin has sent his herald to receive me!"
Kakuzu rolled his eyes so hard it physically hurt.
'Stop daydreaming, you lunatic.'
'If your god came to pick you up, why did the front door open right in the Kazekage's face?'
'Did your deity drop by just to ask Mufasa for directions?'
High above, Mufasa watched the ancient bronze doors slowly swing inward, shifting his stance into a guarded combat posture.
This battlefield was getting more absurd by the minute.
First came extraterrestrial invaders in bathrobes, then a hundred-mile flying meat pie covered in golden Rinnegan, and now a Victorian door floating in the clouds.
Had reality itself completely lost its mind?
Dense electromagnetic lightning crackled across Mufasa's right palm.
If some cosmic abomination crawled out of that doorway, he was going to blast it straight back into the void with a point-blank particle cannon.
Before he could unleash the strike, a familiar, youthful voice drifted through the portal.
"Lord Mufasa!"
"Lord Mufasa! Can you hear me?!"
Mufasa paused, the lightning fading to a dull hum.
'Wait a second... I know that voice.'
"Kazuha? Is that you in there?"
"It's me!" Kazuha's voice confirmed hurriedly.
Mufasa's brow furrowed in utter disbelief. "What in the world are you doing playing around inside a floating door?"
The bronze gates opened fully, revealing Kazuha's translucent silhouette standing upon the stone threshold.
His physical body remained anchored deep within the dimensional pocket; only a projected phantom could project through the Door of Truth.
"Lord Mufasa, we are trapped deep inside the belly of this flying entity!"
Mufasa was taken aback. "How did you manage to get eaten by an oversized meatloaf?"
"It is a very long story," Kazuha replied with an anxious sigh.
"I must deliver an urgent warning first."
"You cannot use destructive, overwhelming force to crush this entity!"
"If an external shockwave ruptures the Snow Mountain Villa, the resulting collision of dimensional frequencies will ignite a dimensional spark, exposing the coordinates of this reality."
"Once higher-tier predators trace the signal to this sector, the shinobi world will face absolute extermination!"
Mufasa processed the warning in less than a second.
"Got it. I follow."
Kazuha blinked, completely caught off guard by the immediate response.
"You... you actually understand?"
Kazuha could barely wrap his head around concepts like dimensional tiers, multiverse clusters, and cosmic beacons after an entire lecture.
Did his boss genuinely grasp the existential threat after just two sentences?
Seeing Kazuha's dumbfounded expression, Mufasa couldn't help but chuckle.
"What's so hard to understand about that?"
"It's the most standard world-expansion progression trope in existence."
"Anyone who has read a serialized web novel or played a modern gacha game knows how map-unlocking mechanics work."
Kazuha stood there, looking even more confused than before.
What in the world was a 'gacha game'?
Regardless of the bizarre terminology, the immediate crisis still hung in the balance.
"What is your command, my lord?" Kazuha asked, steadying his focus.
Mufasa stroked his chin, calmly weighing the tactical variables.
To put it in gaming terms, the fundamental question was whether he wanted to unlock the high-level endgame server.
Power scaling was always a harsh mistress.
While his personal combat metrics were undeniably top-tier in this world, an enemy civilization whose rank-and-file grunts rivaled Kage-level shinobi was an entirely different beast.
Worse, according to Conan, these interdimensional conquerors didn't just conquer territory—they devoured the conceptual identity of their targets, assimilating entire populations into generic, faceless background props labeled 'Citizen A' or 'Passerby B.'
That was an uncomfortably terrifying setting.
If he lost or surrendered, he wouldn't even get to keep his personality—he'd be reduced to a nameless extra sweeping the streets of an alien metropolis.
That was completely unacceptable.
He was the protagonist of his own story, not disposable scenery.
Defeat meant total conceptual erasure; surrender meant becoming a background prop.
The only acceptable outcome was absolute victory.
The problem was that he was essentially a solo player carrying an entire server of dead weight.
Mufasa glanced back down at the Allied Shinobi Forces shivering in the desert sand.
'Good grief.'
'Their baseline performance is completely pathetic.'
'A single celestial invader in a white bathrobe was enough to turn their entire military hierarchy upside down.'
'If an actual interdimensional war armada warped into high orbit, the Five Great Shinobi Nations would be reduced to ash before they could even weave a hand sign.'
Preparing for interdimensional total war was completely unavoidable.
If he had remained ignorant, that would be one thing—but now that he knew apex predators were prowling the cosmic void, sitting idle was suicide.
He had originally planned to beat the four great nations into submission, force them to sign labor reform treaties, and kick back in a private resort while counting stacks of cash.
Instead, the universe was handing him an endless mountain of cosmic overtime.
It seemed his fate as an overworked manager followed him across every reality.
"Lord Mufasa?" Kazuha prompted, noticing the silence. "Have you reached a decision?"
Mufasa gave a firm, resolute nod.
"I have."
"Let the spark ignite."
Kazuha and Conan, who was anchoring the portal from the other side, stared in complete shock.
"My lord... are you truly unafraid of exposing this world's coordinates?!"
"Fear is just a symptom of inadequate firepower," Mufasa said with an easy grin.
"The God-Emperor sitting upon his Golden Throne paid no heed to the horrors of the warp, burning his own soul as the Astronomican to guide humanity across the stars."
"Setting off a tiny dimensional spark in our backyard is nothing compared to that."
Recalling the glorious lore of the Imperium, Mufasa couldn't resist reciting a dramatic verse:
"In the golden age of the Emperor, the Primarchs rose in majestic might.
With chainsword and bolter in hand, they laughed as the Chaos Gods fell in the night.
Let the lesser realms mock my ambition, I ponder their terror for mere seconds at best.
Life is a battle for glory—a true warrior never backs down from the quest!"
Kazuha didn't understand half of the cultural references, but the unyielding, heroic fervor behind the words stirred his blood.
"What are your orders, Lord Mufasa?"
Mufasa chuckled softly. "We proceed boldly, but we plan with precision."
Being fearless didn't mean being a reckless brute.
"I understand the stakes," Mufasa continued. "I still intend to transmute this entire biomass into a Philosopher's Stone."
"If you trigger the transmutation matrix, the Snow Mountain Villa will be destroyed alongside it," Kazuha warned.
"Which is why I'm going to surgically carve your villa out of its stomach first," Mufasa explained. "Once you're safe, I'll incinerate the rest."
"Carving into its core will definitely wake the beast from its slumber," Kazuha cautioned. "Its combat power cannot be underestimated."
Mufasa nodded casually.
One look at the dense cluster of golden Rinnegan covering the tissue told him everything he needed to know.
Wielding two or three Rinnegan was enough to dominate the entire ninja world; an entity sporting hundreds was an apocalyptic nightmare.
"I know," Mufasa replied smoothly. "But it has to be done."
"If I can't even butcher an overgrown slab of sushi, how am I supposed to handle an armada of interdimensional conquerors?"
"Head back inside, seal the blast doors, and brace the villa's defensive array."
"Understood!" Kazuha saluted, stepping back into the portal as the bronze doors sealed shut and dissolved into mist.
Mufasa turned his gaze downward and descended toward the Allied Shinobi Forces.
Hovering over the assembled ranks, he pointed a single thumb back toward the hundred-mile mass pinned behind him.
"You all witnessed how terrifying that thing is."
"The alien freak who sliced the moon in half was swallowed whole by that meatball in less than a minute."
"It's currently digesting its meal—and the second it wakes up, it's going to devour every living soul on this continent."
A wave of panicked murmurs rippled through the allied ranks.
Mufasa's voice hardened, carrying the weight of absolute authority across the dunes.
"Running away is useless."
"Hiding in your villages is suicide."
"This is an existential crisis for the entire shinobi world."
"Whoever considers themselves an apex combatant, step forward right now!"
The moment his words landed, Kaguya Otsutsuki drifted gracefully through the air, landing at his side.
"I am at your command, Father."
Mufasa nodded approvingly—having a celestial goddess back you up immediately set the standard.
Madara Uchiha was the second to leap forward, crossing his arms with a feral smirk.
"I, Uchiha Madara, claim the vanguard! Who dares contest my right?!"
Hashirama Senju sighed, stepping up beside his lifelong rival with an easy smile.
Tobirama Senju stepped forward next, followed closely by Nagato.
Tsunade cracked her knuckles, marching out alongside Jiraiya.
The Raikage and the Tsuchikage stepped into the circle.
Orochimaru slithered forward with a sinister grin, while Gaara and Itachi Uchiha smoothly took their positions.
Mufasa scanned the elite lineup with immense satisfaction.
"Alright, everyone under the age of seventy, step to the back."
Onoki's jaw dropped in sheer outrage. "Wait a minute! That leaves me as the only active fighter?!"
Mufasa shot him a deadpan look. "My mistake—we're calculating total lifespan from birth to the present day, including years spent in the Pure Land."
That instantly qualified the reanimated Hokage and Madara.
Mufasa pointed a finger at Onoki. "Onoki, pack it up and head to the rear—you don't make the cut."