On the main battlefield, Brook had only just reappeared when Killer B, the Eight Tails jinchuriki, launched himself at him in a furious attack.
But with the Kamui Sharingan, Brook simply let the assault pass through empty air.
"Where did you take Yugito?!"
Killer B roared, the cloak of Eight Tails chakra around him already extending into eight writhing tails. It was the unmistakable stance of a perfect jinchuriki.
"If you want to go there too, I can take you."
Brook laughed and stretched out one hand toward him.
"I just don't know how much longer she can hold on."
His gaze was full of mockery as he looked at Killer B.
"If you don't resist, I can send you straight there. Do you dare?"
He was using the simplest method possible, provoking him head on.
"Bee, don't listen to his nonsense!"
The Fourth Raikage, A, barked out a warning at once.
He had no idea what ability this blindfolded stranger possessed, nor where he might send Killer B if the man agreed.
They had already lost Yugito. They absolutely could not afford to lose the Eight Tails jinchuriki as well, or the entire war would become meaningless.
"Yo, liar, do you dare swear you'll send me to Yugito's side?"
Killer B pointed at Brook and rapped his challenge, clearly unconvinced.
He trusted his own power and Gyuki's strength, but he was worried this mysterious man might just throw him into some random mountain or wasteland and make him miss the war entirely.
That outcome was unacceptable.
Still, he wanted to save Yugito. If he could really be sent to her location, then maybe he could rescue her and find a way back to the battlefield afterward.
"Heh. I'm above lying to someone like you."
Brook chuckled.
If Killer B still refused, then Brook would simply take action himself. He had more than enough ways to deal with an Eight Tails jinchuriki.
"Don't fall for it!"
The Fourth Raikage roared again, itching to tear the blindfolded man apart and punch his idiot brother at the same time.
Did this fool not have a brain?
Meanwhile, Killer B had already entered a rapid discussion with Gyuki inside his body, trying to judge whether the stranger was telling the truth.
He probably isn't lying. But he gives off a very dangerous feeling. We'd better not go, Gyuki warned in a grave tone.
Just looking at Brook made him uneasy. The strange disturbance he had sensed the night before might very well have come from this man.
"But if that's true, then Yugito and the Two Tails are already in serious danger! We have to save her! Ushioni, I trust your strength!"
Killer B answered firmly.
Even Gyuki had sensed danger, which only convinced him that Brook might be telling the truth. If so, then Yugito really might not be able to hold out much longer.
Fine, then. I'll listen to you this time, kid. Worst case, you die, and I wait for another jinchuriki later.
Gyuki let out a helpless sigh.
The tailed beasts were immortal beings, after all. If the enemy truly was too strong, then at most he would lose this host he happened to like more than the others.
"Hey! We're not losing!"
Killer B stepped forward without hesitation and grabbed Brook's hand, deliberately releasing all resistance to the power of space around him.
"Lying is for dogs. Let's go."
He stared at Brook's face, his expression serious.
"Not bad. You've got guts."
Brook laughed.
Then, right under the furious roar of the Fourth Raikage, he vanished along with Killer B.
"Killer B!"
A's eyes went bloodshot with fury.
"Ha! With both jinchuriki gone, Kumogakure is finished!"
Jiraiya burst into laughter and immediately attacked.
"Sage Art: Needle Jizo!"
His white hair hardened into countless sharp needles and shot toward the Fourth Raikage in a dense storm.
"Damn it! If anything happens to Killer B and Yugito, Kumogakure and Konoha will fight to the death!"
The Fourth Raikage roared, his Lightning Release Armor blazing brighter as he forced himself to face two opponents at once.
"Hmph! You're the ones who invaded first! Now that your two jinchuriki are gone, what right do you still have to fight Konoha?"
Fugaku Uchiha sneered as the first stage of Susanoo rose around him and slammed into the Fourth Raikage head on.
"And let me tell you something else. Lord Brook has already crushed Iwagakure. The Third Tsuchikage, Onoki, and the Five Tails jinchuriki have both been captured!"
The more Fugaku said, the more excited he became.
Disrupting the enemy's rhythm through information warfare was one of the basics taught at the Academy, but in this moment, the thrill in his chest was completely real.
"Impossible! Absolutely impossible! That old bastard Onoki marched out with tens of thousands of ninja! How could he lose?! You think that kind of nonsense can fool me? Dream on!"
The Fourth Raikage refused to believe a word of it.
To him, it was obvious battlefield trash talk, and it did nothing to shake his fighting spirit.
"We're not lying this time. If Lord Brook hadn't already handled Iwagakure, Konoha would never have concentrated its main force here against Kumogakure."
Jiraiya laughed loudly.
"That's exactly why Brook was able to come here so fast and help deal with your two jinchuriki!"
The Fourth Raikage still roared in denial, but a trace of unease had already begun to spread through him.
If it were true, then both Kumogakure and Iwagakure would have suffered a devastating defeat.
Not to mention, who exactly was that blindfolded monster?
"Ha! Just wait. This time, Konoha is going to crush you brutes completely!"
Fugaku sneered and unleashed a massive fireball that swallowed the Fourth Raikage whole.
But the Fourth Raikage burst straight through the flames without slowing down and smashed into Fugaku's Susanoo.
"Hell Stab!"
The lightning wrapped chop struck like a blade, shattering Fugaku's early Susanoo form and sending him flying.
"Damn you all!"
A had no interest in thinking any further. He refused to believe that Iwagakure had truly fallen, and he still believed that Killer B and the Eight Tails could handle that mysterious enemy.
Unfortunately for him, reality had already begun moving in the opposite direction.
The instant Brook arrived at the extraction site with Killer B, Killer B twisted his body and tried to counterattack while still gripping Brook's hand.
But Brook casually blasted him away with a single Shinra Tensei.
"That's rude, little brat."
Brook grinned.
Then, in no hurry at all, he reached up and loosened the black ribbon over his eyes, revealing the deep purple Rinnegan beneath.
Even if he had to deal with two jinchuriki at once, he would settle it quickly.
-------------
The moment the Eight Tails, Gyuki, saw the Ten Tails' shell, panic exploded inside him.
At last, he understood what that strange tremor from the previous night had been.
If their enemy were just another ninja, then even if Killer B died, even if Gyuki himself was torn apart, he could still revive one day. But if he was absorbed by the Ten Tails, then that would be the true end.
"Run! We can't win against that thing!"
And when he saw Brook's Rinnegan, his fear deepened even further. Just like the Two Tails, Matatabi, had done, Gyuki frantically urged his jinchuriki to escape.
With the Ten Tails' shell present and the Rinnegan watching over the battlefield, how could any tailed beast possibly fight back?
But when Killer B saw Matatabi bound by that withered monster, he did not retreat. Instead, he charged straight in, trying to cut through the chakra chains and pull Yugito free.
"It's useless."
[Universal Pull!]
[Wood Release: Wood Dragon Technique!]
Brook raised one hand, and the invisible force yanked Killer B back at once. At the same time, a giant wooden dragon burst out of the ground, coiling around Killer B's half transformed body and draining his chakra without mercy.
"Oh no! He can use Wood Release too!"
Gyuki was shaken to the core. Every one of these methods was a natural enemy of the tailed beasts.
Then, before he could even finish reacting, an even more horrifying sight appeared.
A giant blue Susanoo rose into the air, seized the half tailed Killer B in one hand, and squeezed down so hard that the sound of cracking bones rang out from inside the chakra cloak.
"Killer B! Stop resisting! Give me control and go all the way into full tailed beast form!"
The instant Gyuki roared, Killer B blacked out under the pressure, and the Eight Tails finally took over completely. His body swelled, twisted, and burst free, transforming into the massive form of the tailed beast itself. With a violent surge of power, he broke out of Susanoo's grip.
"Who are you?! Why do you have the Rinnegan and the Ten Tails? Why can you use Wood Release and even Susanoo?!"
The Eight Tails roared furiously, but the fury in his voice could not hide the fear beneath it.
After Konoha was founded, all the tailed beasts had been captured by Hashirama Senju and sold off to the various hidden villages like goods. That humiliation was burned into Gyuki's memory forever. And now, seeing Wood Release again only brought back that same crushing sense of helplessness.
"More talk won't help."
Brook looked at him coldly.
"Return to the Ten Tails."
His Rinnegan flashed, and he used the gravity of the Deva Path once more.
"Hmph. Come back here."
[Universal Pull!]
The giant body of the Eight Tails was dragged backward by force.
At the same time, Susanoo's great sword came crashing down, its blade packed with chakra. The slash cut straight across Gyuki's body and severed two of his tentacles in one stroke.
Then Brook followed it with another technique.
[Wood Release: Several Cloth Bag Technique!]
Six enormous wooden hands erupted from the ground, each one locking down another of Gyuki's remaining tentacles. In a blink, the Eight Tails was restrained from every direction.
Brook did not stop there.
[Sealing Technique: Adamantine Sealing Chains!]
Using Kushina's Uzumaki sealing techniques, he layered yet another restraint onto the Eight Tails and completely locked him in place.
"That's boring."
Brook withdrew his Susanoo, clearly unimpressed.
A jinchuriki, even one as strong as Killer B, was still too weak for him now.
At this point, the only opponents he truly cared about were the Sage of Six Paths and Isshiki Otsutsuki.
He leaped back onto the Ten Tails' shell. By now, Matatabi's chakra had already been drained to the point where she could no longer maintain her full tailed beast form.
"Stop struggling."
[Sealing Technique: Nine Phantom Dragons!]
Nine more chakra dragons surged out from the shell of the Ten Tails, wrapped around the Two Tails, and tore Matatabi straight out of Yugito's body, dragging her into the monster's maw.
The moment the tailed beast was ripped free, Yugito's life force collapsed, and her soul began floating toward the Pure Land.
Brook merely snorted.
"Chiyo's [One's Own Life Reincarnation] can save a life, so why can't I use Hashirama's Yang Release chakra to do the same?"
He reached out and pulled Yugito's drifting soul back before it could fully leave. Then he transformed her into one of his own ghosts, stuffed that soul back into her corpse, and poured Yang Release life force into the body.
"Without the Underworld's true power of reincarnation, this world's so called resurrection is really that simple."
At that moment, Brook understood even more clearly why ordinary mortals in this world could create techniques like [Impure World Reincarnation], [Living Corpse Reincarnation], and [Rinne Rebirth], all of them playing with souls and life itself.
This world's laws really were far too loose.
He laughed, feeling as though his grasp over the powers of the Underworld and Hell had deepened again. It was as if controlling the boundary between life and death was slowly becoming second nature.
Without wasting time, he also extracted the Eight Tails from Killer B and fed Gyuki into the Ten Tails' shell.
After that, he repeated the process and revived Killer B as well.
Their memories remained intact, but their souls had now been marked and left with a hidden back door by Brook. From this point on, both of them were already under his control.
Since the Sage of Six Paths wanted powerful souls for himself, Brook had no intention of handing them over. As long as these people were not truly dead, Hagoromo had no excuse to interfere unless he killed them himself.
With three tailed beasts already absorbed, the Ten Tails began to change further. New tails slowly started to form behind it, and several eyes opened across its body. The aura it gave off grew even more terrifying.
Brook continuously sent his soul power into the Ten Tails, trying to eliminate any hidden back doors left behind by either Kaguya Otsutsuki or the Sage of Six Paths.
The power of Jin, the Western Underworld God, was still greater than anything the Otsutsuki clan had shown so far. Perhaps only the true Otsutsuki God could compare.
But that Otsutsuki God had already perished together with the Northern Underworld God, Hirasaka. As for the strongest remaining Otsutsuki now, it should be Otsutsuki Shibai, who had devoured countless God Tree fruits and stood infinitely close to the level of a true god.
Brook could not help sighing.
"The complete Ten Tails I've been chasing after so desperately is still just livestock raised by the Otsutsuki. A farming tool used to drain a planet dry and grow a God Tree fruit."
His eyes darkened.
"The road ahead is still long. I still don't know how powerful those Otsutsuki higher ups really are after devouring that many God Tree fruits."
Whether it was Otsutsuki Shibai, who rivaled a god, or Jin, the Western Underworld God, they were both beings Brook could not yet contend with.
At last, he dismissed the Ten Tails' shell.
If he could kill Isshiki Otsutsuki, he would obtain Isshiki's alternate dimension and gain a place to store the Ten Tails properly. But by the time he reached that point, Brook might already have fused with the complete Ten Tails himself.
Still, Isshiki also possessed that juvenile Ten Tails of his own, and Brook fully intended to steal that as well.
He threw the unconscious Yugito and Killer B into the Kamui dimension, then returned to the main battlefield together with Animal Path Danzo.
By now, Kumogakure's morale had visibly dropped. With both jinchuriki gone, and with Konoha still pressing the assault, thoughts of retreat had already begun spreading through the Cloud forces.
Brook appeared on the battlefield once more and immediately turned his attention to the souls of certain shinobi from special families, harvesting useful inherited techniques from them.
Even though he was already extremely powerful, he did not underestimate these family arts at all. More techniques were always useful, and among them, he found himself especially interested in the Partial Expansion Technique.
Then his gaze suddenly shifted.
"Hm? A Storm Release user?"
He smiled faintly.
"Well, sorry about that."
The next second, he vanished in a blur, appeared beside the unfortunate Kumogakure ninja, and pulled him straight into the Kamui dimension.
.....
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03]