Crack!
The ink-black sky finally leaked a faint trace of brightness. The rain stored in the clouds was nearing exhaustion.
Dark clouds churned and spiraled, hanging low above the summit of Raikōzan.
The downpour still slammed down like a waterfall.
Humm!
A violent wind wrapped around Konome Taketori, forming a strange circular domain.
Inside that domain, aside from the figure in the orange mask, everything else seemed to pass through an impossibly fine sieve. Rain was shredded into a thinner mist and pushed outward in a bizarre ring.
Two severed, bloody fingers dropped into the water, and pale pink threads of blood spread across the surface.
"Your space time ninjutsu is mediocre," Konome Taketori said, hoisting Samehada onto her shoulder as she tilted her head, studying the intangible Uchiha Obito in front of her.
His right hand, the one that had touched the owl mask, was mangled and dripping blood.
He was only still standing because the Mangekyo's dynamic vision let him directly see chakra's glow. Otherwise, with her wind release that could slice even waterfalls apart, he would already be minced into paste.
Uchiha Obito's eyes swelled with killing intent.
The pain surging through his fingers stabbed at his nerves. Ever since the night six years ago when he attacked Konoha and killed Minato and Kushina, he had not been this humiliated.
Bzzzz!
Sickle-weasel-like strands of wind churned through the air.
Layered air rippled, casting off strange waves.
Obito let the wind release pass through his body as he stepped closer and closer to Konome Taketori, his crimson Sharingan locking her down completely.
Konome Taketori kept the wind shaving past her nonstop. Her palm tightened around Samehada's hilt as she continuously siphoned chakra that had once belonged to Kisame Hoshigaki.
Her illusory chakra core hammered wildly as high-quality violet chakra transformed into wind release and sprayed from every pore.
Of course she understood what Obito was waiting for.
He wanted to stall until her technique ended, then use Kamui to absorb her outright.
It was a clever plan. Against most shinobi, it would work.
Because in the shinobi world, the vast majority of ninjutsu had to be performed step by step with hand seals. Like solving a formula, the caster followed a fixed sequence. If you missed a step, the technique failed.
If you changed things midway, it caused all sorts of strange problems, and the jutsu collapsed.
Power, duration, everything was fixed.
Like pressing a skill in a game, you waited for it to end or cool down and there was nothing you could do about it.
Rigid. Stiff.
But Konome Taketori did not have that weakness.
Because she was the creator of all her own jutsu.
Unlike those so-called "strong" who learned a few powerful techniques and could only use them without understanding why they worked.
Every technique she used was not only refined beyond mastery, she understood the principles, the costs, the reasons behind each step, what might go wrong, and how to adjust for it in real time.
That meant she could dynamically tune everything.
Power. Size. Range. Duration. Even the arc of each release, its shape, its degree of nature transformation.
As long as chakra was sufficient, her ninjutsu had no limits.
Like this.
Her chakra core flashed. Konome Taketori's gray pupils tightened as she observed her own chakra as if reading lines on her palm, every thread of nature transformation perfectly clear.
Reduce output efficiency.
Slow the attack tempo.
Adjust the intervals.
Use Byakugan's three hundred sixty-degree vision to lock onto the enemy's fatal points, then compensate with attacks from countless angles.
Obito's defense was not strong. Wind release did not need to reach absolute extremity. She only needed enough power to cleanly sever flesh and bone.
Range did not need to be wide either.
When Obito attacked, Kamui's absorption range was only about one meter. To avoid being baited or misled, she kept her wind blades at two meters.
She adjusted the jutsu's form continuously.
Outside.
Humm.
The wind around her weakened, the domain shrinking rapidly. Even the frequency dropped sharply. More rain slipped into the cutting range and was not shredded, falling intact into the lake.
Obito's eyes lit up.
That was clearly the sign of a technique nearing its end.
Maintaining intangibility, he moved closer and closer, ensuring that the moment her jutsu ended, he could touch her and finish it.
Second by second passed.
Yet the "weakened" wind release stubbornly held, still slicing at Obito's heart, throat, and brain without pause.
Konome Taketori held Samehada and occasionally drew chakra from it.
Her internal chakra remained constantly full.
Thanks to the massive reserves Kisame had provided, she could keep releasing wind at this level.
He truly lived up to the title "tailless Tailed Beast." The chakra inside Samehada was like an ocean. Maintaining this intensity for two hours would not even be a problem.
As Konome Taketori's offense refused to stop, Obito was the one who cracked first.
Kamui's intangibility could only last five minutes at a time. He had already remained inside her wind domain for four minutes.
Yet her chakra was still overflowing, and her ninjutsu showed no end.
If this continued, he would die.
Whoosh!
Obito suddenly retreated, trying to pull out of the wind's cutting distance in an instant.
Konome Taketori knew his weakness. She was not going to let him leave.
She had been counting the seconds.
From the moment his fingers were severed and he entered intangibility, exactly four minutes and three seconds had passed.
Fifty-seven seconds until he would be forced to become tangible again.
Kraaa!
Lightning release armor covered her body with a chorus like a thousand birds. Her dynamic vision and neural reflexes now surpassed even the Mangekyo's tracking.
Boom!
The water exploded into a crater beneath her foot.
A figure wrapped in crackling lightning smashed through the waves, chasing Obito as he tried to flee.
Her two-meter wind domain extended with her, cutting all vital points without pause, denying him even a breath.
Buzz.
Snap.
Invisible wind slashed repeatedly while lightning electrolysis split the rain itself.
Their figures raced in a line.
The one ahead was weightless, unreal, like a feather, like a shadow that did not belong to the world.
The one behind was brutal and heavy. Every step punched a huge depression into the water, blue lightning crawling outward across the lake.
Uchiha Itachi, carrying Kisame on his back, and the Root shinobi kept retreating, avoiding the stray electric arcs that scattered outward.
Aburame Ryoma watched the chase, seeming to understand something. He signaled Arashi and Die.
All three nodded.
Itachi saw the movement and chose to stay silent.
He steadied Kisame with one hand to show no hostility, while the other hand, hidden inside his sleeve, formed seals. A simple genjutsu lulled Kisame into sleep before he could shout a warning.
None of that disturbance drew Konome Taketori's attention.
She stayed glued to Obito, and her lightning speed prevented him from opening distance.
Humm!
Wind release ran through Obito's body, shredding the rain that passed through him into dust.
"Four minutes, seventeen seconds!"
Konome Taketori called out the remaining duration aloud, watching Obito's Mangekyo spin in rising panic. She kept her physical pressure constant and layered on psychological warfare.
Kamui looked unbeatable.
But using it was clumsy.
In intangible state, he could not use any ninjutsu.
Duration was only five minutes.
Absorption range was pathetically short.
Long-range absorption was only about one meter and could be dodged by fast shinobi. To guarantee success, he had to grab the target first.
That was the price.
If you used Mangekyo Sharingan like a cheat to step into a realm you did not truly own, you paid a cost.
A sudden, overwhelming ocular technique, used without understanding its principles, was a black box. It would always come with strange, rigid limitations.
And as she had said before.
A true strong person could wield their power freely.
A shinobi who only relied on one powerful technique to bully others was never truly strong.
Leaving Kamui aside, Obito's own fundamentals were only around Kakashi's level.
Boom!
The rain grew even harsher.
In the blink of an eye, they had already circled the summit once. Obito had no answer to the shadow clinging to him.
Kamui's time limit was approaching. He needed a breakthrough.
Obito's body suddenly stalled, as if inertia vanished. Konome Taketori, unable to turn in time, passed straight through him.
Obito plunged into the water and sank rapidly.
Kamui could not be deactivated in a high-density solid area like deep water, underground, or inside a human body.
But diving could block the enemy's vision and let him reappear from a blind spot.
If he could gain just two seconds of breathing room, he could reset Kamui's duration.
A beautiful plan.
Reality disagreed.
Watching Obito swim under the water like a fish, fleeing desperately, Konome Taketori's lips curved slightly. Her Byakugan glowed a faint gray as it locked onto him.
Ocular power was not exclusive to the Uchiha.
Her three hundred sixty-degree vision expanded, and no matter how he hid, he was transparent under her sight, clear as day.
She ran along the surface in perfect sync, always directly above him.
Even if he slipped into rock, he could not escape that gray gaze that saw through everything.
In flashy tricks, Byakugan could not compare to Mangekyo Sharingan.
But in long-range perception, Sharingan could not come close.
Obito fled farther and farther, not daring to surface.
That blurred blue silhouette stood above his head, shadowing him wherever he went.
Even her sensing was this terrifying?
Kamui had twenty-three seconds left.
Too late.
He scanned around, and then his eyes snapped to four figures standing on the water.
Obito's gaze brightened.
His intangible body shot up from beneath the lake.
Wind release came to meet him, and the blue lightning silhouette chased after him, but he ignored it all.
He passed through Konome Taketori's body and rushed straight toward Aburame Ryoma and the other three.
He intended to use her teammates as a living shield.
If she could not unleash dense wind blades without shredding her own people, she would have to hesitate.
And in that hesitation, he would gain breathing room.
Humm!
Wind threads slashed, but could not touch the unreal phantom.
Ryoma's group attacked too, and their strikes fell into empty air.
Five seconds left.
Obito's eyes flashed with urgency.
He passed through their bodies and appeared behind them.
Bzzzt!
Konome Taketori's lightning-charged pursuit was blocked by her "teammates," and even the wind release that clung like a shadow faltered.
She can't attack now.
Obito finally relaxed slightly and prepared to drop intangibility.
At that instant.
Humm!
A ruthless gale pierced straight through Aburame Ryoma and the other three, slicing Obito's head cleanly into two.
They didn't resist?
No one answered him.
Blood seeped along a thin line at the crown of his head.
Obito's vision went black, and he dropped into the water with a heavy splash.
Pink spread across the lake.
Buzz.
The four Root shinobi that had been "cut down" suddenly dissolved into a swarm of kikaichu, flying toward the rocks in the distance.
Bang bang bang!
The real Aburame Ryoma and the others released their transformation technique, sprinted over, and regrouped with Konome Taketori.
"How is it?" Arashi asked urgently.
Die closed his eyes, sensing carefully, then confirmed the body sinking below had no trace of life left.
"He's dead. Completely."
Ryoma exhaled hard.
From the way the enemy kept avoiding Konome Taketori's pursuit, his "invincible intangibility" clearly had a time limit.
And it was likely already near the end.
Thinking from the enemy's perspective, it was natural he would use them as a human wall to block Konome Taketori's attacks.
So Ryoma had warned Arashi and the others in advance.
They transformed into rock.
Their kikaichu mimicked them as decoys.
Once the enemy took the bait, Ryoma signaled Konome Taketori to strike.
And the strange masked shinobi was finally cut down.
Ryoma stared at Konome Taketori, who carried Samehada calmly, not a single injury on her body.
His eyes held a strange shock.
That space-time shinobi had left even Orochimaru helpless, yet Konome Taketori had killed him like it was simple.
Earlier, when Die said she had beaten the blue-skinned shark monster, it hadn't felt real.
Now, seeing it with his own eyes, he understood the gap.
No overwhelming spectacle.
No mysterious, bizarre techniques.
Just despair.
Her fundamentals were too solid. Too comprehensive. Too complete.
No matter how strange the enemy's ability was, she could find the simplest, most optimal solution instantly.
That was not good news.
A faint unease crawled through Ryoma's chest.
She was Danzo's disciple.
If one day he truly moved against Danzo, then the stronger Konome Taketori became, the higher the chance they would fail.
The tense atmosphere on this side began to loosen, already shifting into thoughts of what came next.
On the other side.
Uchiha Itachi, still carrying Kisame, clenched his fist tightly.
Don't relax yet.
That man still has Izanagi.
Madara wouldn't not use Uchiha forbidden techniques.
Itachi knew the enemy's intelligence, but he could not openly warn Ryoma.
That helpless anxiety left him restless, unable to sit still.
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