The dimly lit, cavernous mindscape felt colder than usual. Water, thick and dark as ink, clung to the soles of Naruto's sandals, rippling outward with every subtle shift of his weight. Before him stood the towering iron gates of the Eight Trigrams Seal—a colossal cage that had defined every waking moment of his fifteen years on earth. But today, the rusted bars did not feel like a prison. They felt like a threshold waiting to be crossed.
Minato Namikaze stood at the center of the flooded chamber. His spiritual form flickered with a faint, iridescent pale-blue aura, his white Hokage cloak swaying against an unfelt wind. Beside him, Kushina Namikaze watched with wide, teardrop-shined eyes, her ethereal crimson hair floating around her like a halo of flame.
Minato raised his hands, his fingers executing a rapid, fluid sequence of hand seals. The air thrummed with a heavy, magnetic vibration. The intricate black sealing formulas painted across the massive iron lock began to glow with a brilliant golden light, squirming across the metal like living serpents.
"It's time, son," Minato whispered softly, his voice carrying the quiet pride of a father who had placed the weight of the world on his child's shoulders and watched him carry it without breaking.
With a final, decisive palm strike against the center medallion, the Eight Trigrams Sealing Formula shattered.
The sound of snapping chains echoed through the endless dark. With a deafening, metallic groan that shook the subterranean space to its foundation, the heavy iron gates began to swing backward, unsealing the barrier that had separated vessel and beast for a decade and a half.
From the impenetrable darkness behind the bars, a colossal figure stepped into the pale light. Kurama, the Nine-Tailed Fox, towered over the chamber, his nine massive tails swaying slowly behind him like fiery, mountain-carving plumes. His blood-red eyes, slitted and ancient, burned with an intensity that could melt steel.
Yet, there was no hatred in those eyes. Only a deep, mutual understanding forged in blood, pain, and ultimate trust.
Kurama slowly lowered his colossal, fur-covered right arm. His massive, razor-clawed fist stopped inches above the dark water, hovering directly in front of the young blonde.
Naruto looked up at the great beast. A broad, confident grin spread across his whiskered face. Without a moment of hesitation, Naruto raised his right arm, balled his hand into a tight fist, and bumped his knuckles against the giant fox's claw.
The instant their knuckles connected, the entire spiritual realm violently quaked.
It was not a destructive force, but a profound spiritual resonance. Their two distinct chakra signatures—the raw, infinite sea of demonic power and the buoyant, resilient vitality of the Uzumaki—melded together into a single, seamless matrix. The dark water beneath their feet burst into violent waves as a blinding pillar of golden light erupted from their point of contact, shooting straight into the heavens of Naruto's psyche.
In the physical world, sitting cross-legged upon the ancient stone slabs of the battlefield, Naruto's body reacted immediately.
The corrosive, blood-red shroud of Nine-Tails chakra that had been burning the right half of his face and body began to rapidly evaporate, sizzling into harmless steam. The harsh, demonic energy receded into his pores, only to be instantly replaced by something far more magnificent. A blinding, sun-like radiance ignited from his core, spreading across his skin and clothing. The crimson shroud turned into a vibrant, brilliant golden flame. Patterns of light formed along his chest, hands, and shoulders, mimicking the magatama seals of antiquity, while golden chakra flames flickered around his neck like a regal mantle.
Inside the seal, however, the joyful union was abruptly shattered by a violent atmospheric distortion.
The sewer-like mindscape suddenly folded in on itself. The iron gates, the rusted pipes, and the pale light vanished into thin air. Naruto and Kurama felt themselves plunging downward through a lightless void, descending into a subterranean depth far below the standard layer of the Eight Trigrams Seal.
When Naruto's feet finally touched solid ground again, the familiar sound of sloshing water was gone. The ground was cold, smooth, and pitch-black, stretching endlessly into an abyssal void. The air here was sterile, ancient, and heavy—so dense that breathing felt like inhaling liquid ice.
Kurama shifted instantly, his massive shadow looming protectively behind Naruto. The fox lowered his head, his ears pinned back as a low, rumbling growl vibrated deep within his chest.
Naruto slowly looked around the endless black expanse. His heightened sensory abilities, amplified to impossible levels by his new golden form, tingled violently. A presence lurked in this darkness—a soul so old, heavy, and calcified in its own dogma that it made the surrounding space feel claustrophobic.
Naruto and Kurama exchanged a brief, silent glance. They didn't need words. The shared memory stream connecting their minds told them everything they needed to know.
He was here. The original ghost haunting this bloodline.
Naruto casually placed a hand on his hip, completely unfazed by the oppressive killing intent lingering in the air. He let out an exaggerated sigh that echoed sharply against the empty void.
"Why don't you just come out?" Naruto called into the dark, his voice dripping with relaxed, casual arrogance. "There's really no need for the whole hiding-in-an-emo-corner routine. That creepy, theatrical entrance doesn't work on me, buddy."
For a few tense seconds, the abyss swallowed his voice in absolute silence.
Then came the sound of clapping.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
The applause was slow, deliberate, and entirely devoid of warmth. From the thick shadows fifty paces ahead, a figure stepped forward into the pale aura emitted by Naruto's golden cloak.
He appeared to be a young man of roughly nineteen years. He wore flowing, high-collared white robes adorned with the six black magatama symbols around the neckline. A crisp white cloth headband was wrapped around his forehead, holding back spiky, auburn-brown hair that framed a sharp, handsome face. His pale eyes carried a strange, luminous quality—ancient and serene on the surface, but burning with a fanatical, unyielding zeal beneath.
This was Ashura Ōtsutsuki, the younger son of the Sage of Six Paths.
"What a defiant, arrogant parasite you are," Ashura spoke, his voice carrying a strange, dual-layered echo that rattled the teeth in Naruto's skull.
Naruto blinked. He slowly turned his head to look up at the massive fox behind him. "Did this guy just call me a parasite, Kurama?"
"I believe he did, Naruto," Kurama replied dryly, his crimson eyes locked onto the intruder.
Naruto turned back to face the ancient spirit, throwing his hands out in genuine bewilderment. "Why am I a parasite, Ashura? Seriously, explain it to me. And while you're at it, which family did I supposedly destroy?"
Naruto's relaxed posture suddenly vanished. His blue eyes hardened into chips of arctic ice, gleaming dangerously through his golden mantle.
"Take off those rose-tinted glasses and look around you. Your precious 'family' was already shattered into dust long before I took my first breath. There was nothing left for me to ruin. It was just you, clinging to a pathetic, childish philosophy that you could force broken pieces back together by sacrificing my life."
Ashura's serene expression twisted into a glare of sudden, explosive fury.
"Shut up!"
His roar echoed like thunder through the void, causing the dark ground beneath their feet to crack.
"Do you seriously think I am blind?! Do you think I cannot see what transpired? I saw your soul fall into this vessel from another world! I saw the memories of that world! I saw how you connected with Kurama there, and I saw how the real Naruto and Sasuke reconciled! They forged a bond! They became brothers again!"
Ashura slammed his fist against his chest, his pale white chakra flaring outward in a violent wave. "They fulfilled their destiny! And you... you came here, stole this body, and severed that sacred thread!"
Naruto stared at the angry ghost for a long moment. Then, slowly, a cold, breathless laugh escaped his lips. He threw his head back and laughed, the sound entirely devoid of humor, bouncing off the walls of the abyss.
"Are you trying to joke with me, Ashura?" Naruto asked, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye as his smile instantly dissolved into a venomous scowl. "Or are you just lying to yourself? A 'sacred thread'? A 'brotherhood'?"
Naruto took a heavy step forward. The golden chakra burning around him flared aggressively, pushing back Ashura's pale aura.
"In that timeline you love so much, Sasuke tried to murder the original Naruto dozens of times! He helped plunge the entire world into a catastrophic war, threatened to slaughter the leaders of the five nations, and blew off the original guy's arm! And what was the grand resolution? The original Naruto just smiled, shrugged it off, and called him his best friend without Sasuke even offering a proper apology for the thousands of lives he ruined!"
Naruto pointed a finger sharply at his own chest.
"I am not him, Ashura. I carry his body and I walk this land, but I am not some tragic, brainwashed martyr you can shove onto a predetermined path just because it makes your stupid grand philosophy comfortable! That story in my world was a fictional lesson written for children! But this—this is real life!"
The ground beneath Naruto's feet shattered as he released a fraction of his spiritual pressure.
"Here, actions have real consequences! People die! Families disappear! Villages burn to the ground! Choices matter! If someone tries to cut my throat, I don't give them a lecture on peace—I put them in the ground. You're just throwing a god-given temper tantrum because I refuse to play the victim in your twisted little drama."
Ashura grit his teeth, his expression darkening as he stepped forward to meet Naruto's pressure. "I am trying to save the world! I am trying to preserve the Uchiha! They are my brother's descendants—they are my family!"
"And what about your own descendants, you hypocrite?!" Naruto roared back, his voice booming over the void like a war drum.
Ashura froze, his pale eyes widening slightly.
"What about the Uzumaki?!" Naruto spat, taking another aggressive step forward. "What about the Senju?! Weren't they your children too? Where was your so-called divine reincarnation cycle when Uzushiogakure was being slaughtered into ash?!"
Silence blanketed the cavern, thick and suffocating.
"The Uzumaki clan was completely wiped off the face of the earth!" Naruto yelled, his voice cracking with genuine, bitter rage. "Their home was destroyed, their mothers and children slaughtered by the allied nations because they feared their sealing jutsus! Hashirama Senju died years before the Uzumaki were annihilated! So tell me, Ashura—where was your soul shroud then? Where were you when your own blood was crying out in terror as they were butchered?!"
Ashura looked away, his jaw tightening as he maintained a stubborn, stony silence.
"The Senju clan vanished from history right after!" Naruto continued relentlessly, refusing to give the ancient ghost a single inch of breathing room. "They died out in petty ninja wars until almost nothing was left! But no—Ashura Ōtsutsuki doesn't care about his own blood! Ashura only cares about getting justice for the Uchiha! What about the children you had with the woman you loved? What about their legacy?!"
Naruto closed the distance until he was standing a mere arm's length from Ashura. He pointed his index finger directly at the center of the spirit's chest, hovering barely a millimeter from his white robes.
"Answer me," Naruto demanded coldly.
"It... it was the natural course of history," Ashura deflected, though his voice lacked its previous absolute conviction. A flicker of ancient guilt danced in his pale eyes. "There was nothing I could do from beyond the grave for every earthly tragedy. History moves as it must. But what you did to your own brother in this life is unforgivable! We are bound by fate!"
Naruto stared at him, utterly dumbfounded by the sheer, impenetrable insanity of the man standing before him.
"My brother?" Naruto repeated softly, his voice dropping to a dangerous, deadly whisper. "Sorry to break it to you, ghost, but my parents died the very day I was born. I was raised as an orphan. I don't have a brother. I am an only child."
"I am talking about Sasuke Uchiha, you ignorant moron!" Ashura yelled, his frustration boiling over as he reached out to grab Naruto's collar.
Naruto effortlessly slapped Ashura's hand away with a lightning-fast wrist flick.
"Let's get one thing straight," Naruto said, his eyes narrowing into deadly slits. "If we are talking about actual living family connected to me by blood, let's look at the facts. At this very moment, there are exactly four people left alive in this world who carry the Uzumaki bloodline. Four."
Naruto held up four fingers right in front of Ashura's face.
"First, there's Karin—my blood cousin, whom I had to personally rescue from a psychotic snake cult while you were floating around crying over Sasuke. Second, there's Tsunade—the absolute last living descendant of your Senju line. Third, there's Nagato—another broken Uzumaki who was manipulated by the world's misery. And fourth, there's me. That is it. That is the entire living sum of your blood lineage, Ashura. Four people. Sasuke Uchiha is nothing to me but a rogue ninja and an international terrorist."
Ashura stared at Naruto, his breath catching in his throat as the raw truth of the statement hit him.
"If it weren't for your interference, everything would have aligned!" Ashura shouted desperately, his white chakra churning around his body like a dying tempest. "Naruto would have realized his destiny! He would have saved Indra! You are ruining everything!"
A low, terrifying rumble echoed from above.
Kurama stepped forward, his massive paw coming down with enough kinetic force to send shockwaves tearing through the subterranean ground. The sheer density of the Nine-Tails' killing intent was so absolute that it physically flattened the pale aura surrounding Ashura.
"You shut your mouth, Ashura," Kurama growled, his voice a deep, reverberating bass that vibrated through the dark abyss.
Ashura whipped his head around, glaring up at the beast. "Stay out of this, Kurama! You are a creature of chakra—you do not understand the grand burden my father left us!"
Kurama bared his massive, dagger-like fangs, saliva dripping onto the dark floor and sizzling like acid.
"I do not understand?!" Kurama roared, his voice shaking the fabric of Naruto's soul. "I was there, you arrogant brat! I stood upon the earth and watched humanity tear itself apart in the bloodbath left behind by you and your brother! I watched you abandon your father's dream of Ninshū—a bridge to connect human souls—just so you could invent Ninjutsu to rip out each other's throats!"
Kurama's crimson eyes burned with centuries of unadulterated malice.
"You and Indra fought for a millennium! Your conflicting ego-driven ideals dragged the entire mortal world into an endless cycle of war! Your past reincarnations captured, enslaved, and weaponized my siblings and me dozens of times to fuel your petty family feud! Hashirama Senju locked me in a cage and treated me like a weapon of war! So do not dare lecture us about hatred or destiny! If you weren't the old man's son, I would crush your soul between my jaws right now!"
Ashura looked up at the Nine-Tails, his expression cold and completely dismissive. "I am not your brother, Kurama. I am the son of the Sage of Six Paths, and the brother of Indra Ōtsutsuki. You are merely a mass of chakra created to serve a purpose."
Naruto burst into another fit of mocking laughter. "Wow, Kurama. This guy really is a special kind of idiot. No wonder Hashirama thought of you as nothing more than a giant battery."
Naruto crossed his arms, looking down at Ashura with profound pity. "Here's a quick history lesson for you, ghost. Your father separated the Ten-Tails and created the nine Tailed Beasts long before you were even a glint in your mother's eye. Kurama is vastly older than you. Show some damn respect to your elders."
Ashura sneered, turning his back slightly. "I do not care about your petty technicalities! My mission was to protect humanity! To ensure chakra was used for peace! But you have corrupted the path! Which is why... I had to suppress this vessel from the very beginning!"
Naruto froze.
The casual, mocking expression on his face shattered instantly. His eyes narrowed as the pieces of a puzzle he had pondered for years suddenly slammed together with terrifying clarity. He slowly raised a hand to his chin, his golden aura pulsing erratically.
"Wait a minute," Naruto whispered, his voice dangerously low. "Hashirama Senju was your previous reincarnation. He had massive chakra reserves, instant Wood Release, an immortal physical body, and natural mastery over Sage Mode. He was called the God of Shinobi."
Naruto looked directly into Ashura's eyes.
"So why was the original Naruto a dead-last idiot? Why couldn't he even mold basic chakra to create a simple illusion clone? Why was his physical body completely uncoordinated despite carrying the blood of the Uzumaki clan?"
Kurama let out a dark, murderous chuckle behind them.
"The seal," Kurama growled softly, the truth dawning on him as well. "It wasn't just the Nine-Tails' chakra messing with his control. Ashura's dormant soul was buried deep inside Naruto's subconscious, terrified of Indra's eventual return. To keep himself hidden, his lingering spirit passively suppressed Naruto's natural potential! He placed a subconscious lock on the boy's spiritual energy, bottlenecking his innate Uzumaki genius and turning a child of two legendary bloodlines into an incompetent fool... just so he would remain a malleable vessel!"
Ashura did not deny it. He stood tall, his jaw set, his silence confirming every single word.
"It was necessary," Ashura stated coldly, his pale eyes flaring with absolute fanaticism. "The vessel needed to be humble. It needed to suffer so it would seek love and connection—so it would reach out to Indra with an open heart. A genius would have destroyed Indra. A fool saved him."
A suffocating, dangerous silence settled over the abyss.
Naruto closed his eyes. He took a long, deep breath, letting the golden flame of Kurama Link Mode wash over his nervous system. When he opened his eyes again, all trace of warmth, humor, and mockery was gone. There was only absolute, uncompromising lethality.
"You crippled a child's entire life... for a story," Naruto said quietly.
"It does not matter what you think, parasite," Ashura spat, raising both hands as his pale chakra erupted into a towering pillar of light that tore through the black ceiling of the mindscape. "Once I destroy your foreign soul, I will send you back to whatever hell you crawled out of! Kurama will be locked back behind the iron gates! Indra will be freed! And the course of history will finally return to the path it was meant to follow!"
Naruto drew his custom chakra-conductive trench knife from his hip. The blade hummed violently as bright golden wind chakra saturated the metal, extending its reach by two feet.
"Then I guess we're done talking," Naruto said.
Ashura didn't waste another second. His hands blurred into an ancient hand seal. Floating behind him, eight massive, dark spheres of hyper-compressed chakra materialized, swirling wildly around a central orb.
"Gyuya Sengan!" Ashura shouted.
With a sweeping gesture of his arm, he launched the cluster of massive, spinning spheres directly at Naruto. The kinetic force of the attack ripped the dark floor open, launching a wave of pressure that threatened to crush everything in its path.
Naruto didn't retreat an inch. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, channeling a massive wave of wind-natured chakra into his hands.
"Wind Style: Wind Blade!" Naruto roared, thrusting his hands outward in a sharp, horizontal arc.
A colossal, razor-sharp crescent of compressed wind tore through the air, traveling at hypersonic speeds. The Wind Blade collided head-on with Ashura's Gyuya Sengan.
BOOM!
A blinding explosion ignited the abyssal space, shattering the pitch-black sky into thousands of glowing fragments. The shockwave blasted outward, kicking up a storm of spiritual energy that tore at Naruto's golden mantle.
Before the smoke could even begin to clear, Ashura emerged from the flames, moving with terrifying speed. In his hands, a jet-black truth-seeking staff materialized, spun through the air, and thrust straight toward Naruto's throat.
Naruto ducked beneath the strike, the black staff missing his cheek by a hairsbreadth. He drove his wind-infused trench knife upward, aiming for Ashura's ribs. Ashura parried with the butt of his staff, generating a shower of blinding sparks.
The two demigods engaged in a breathless, high-speed melee combat. Steel clashed against black sphere-metal; sparks illuminated their faces in rapid, rhythmic flashes. Ashura's martial mastery was millennia old—fluid, precise, and relentless. Every strike aimed for a lethal pressure point. But Naruto, possessing the heightened reflexes of his golden form and the refined combat knowledge of a modern warrior, matched him blow for blow.
They clashed blade against staff, forced backward by the sheer kinetic rebound, only to launch themselves back into the fray a fraction of a second later.
"You cannot change destiny!" Ashura roared, parrying Naruto's knife and swinging his staff in a wide arc that forced Naruto to jump backward.
Mid-air, Ashura's staff altered its atomic structure, morphing instantaneously into a massive, ornate wooden bow. Ashura pulled back the spiritual string with a single hand, generating five glowing arrows of pure, compressed chakra.
He released the string. The arrows screamed through the air like artillery shells.
Simultaneously, Ashura wove a single-handed seal with his free hand. "Fire Style: Fire Blast!"
A torrent of superheated, bright-orange flames erupted from his mouth, engulfing the five chakra arrows mid-flight. The arrows absorbed the fire, transforming into raging, spiraling missiles of liquid flame.
Naruto landed lightly on his feet, his hands instantly slamming together.
"Water Style: Water Wall!"
A massive, towering wave of high-pressure water erupted from the dark ground, forming a dense, swirling dome around Naruto and Kurama. The flaming arrows slammed violently into the water barrier.
The heat was so intense that the water instantly vaporized upon impact, creating a massive explosion of superheated steam that filled the entire subterranean cavern, blinding both combatants.
Ashura materialized above the steam cloud, his pale eyes glowing through the haze.
"Earth Style: Earth Dragon Bomb!" Ashura proclaimed, his voice echoing from all directions.
The ground beneath the steam ruptured violently. A gargantuan, serpentine dragon made of dense, spiky rock burst forth from the void. It unhinged its stone jaws, firing a continuous, rapid-fire barrage of massive, house-sized boulders down at Naruto's position.
Naruto sprinted through the steam, dodging the falling boulders with effortless grace. He flipped sideways, vaulted off the side of a rising rock pillar, and launched himself high into the air above the Earth Dragon.
Mid-air, Naruto twisted his body into an explosive, roundhouse stance.
"Water Style: Water Dragon Kick!"
A massive, spiraling torrent of high-pressure water erupted from Naruto's leg as he kicked the empty air. The water materialized into a roaring, majestic Water Dragon that shot downward, opening its jaws wide and swallowing the barrage of Earth Dragon boulders whole, neutralizing their momentum.
Naruto landed squarely on the head of his Water Dragon as it rode through the air. He clapped his hands together, his golden chakra crackling with blue arcs of raw electricity.
"Lightning Style: Lightning Shock!"
Naruto plunged both hands directly into the mane of his Water Dragon. Millions of volts of lightning electrified the massive body of water. The electrified Water Dragon slammed headfirst into Ashura's stone Earth Dragon.
The resulting collision was catastrophic. Electricity arc-welded the rock, causing the stone dragon to superheat and explode into millions of glowing, electrified shards that rained down into the dark expanse.
Through the shower of falling rock, Ashura raised his right hand, his fingers spread wide.
"Lightning Style: Lightning Shot!"
Ten hyper-concentrated beams of white-hot lightning erupted from his fingertips, cutting through the darkness like laser fire.
Naruto spat violently. "Wind Style: Wind Ball!"
He exhaled a compressed gale-force sphere of wind that intercepted the lightning beams mid-air, causing them to refract and scatter harmlessly into the black sky.
Right on cue, Kurama leaned his massive head forward over Naruto's shoulder. The fox opened his jaws wide, a dense, swirling sphere of dark purple and crimson chakra rapidly condensing between his teeth.
"Let's see how your divine body handles a direct hit from this, brat!" Kurama snarled.
"Bijuudama!"
The colossal Tailed Beast Bomb shot forth, tearing through the air and generating a sonic boom that shattered the ambient atmosphere.
Ashura's eyes widened in rare shock. He crossed his arms in front of his face, channeling every ounce of his white chakra into a defensive barrier.
The Tailed Beast Bomb detonated directly against his chest.
BOOM!
A mini-sun erupted inside the mindscape. A blinding dome of purple destructive force consumed Ashura, burning away the darkness of the subterranean cavern for miles in every direction.
When the light finally faded, Ashura was hurled across the ground, tumbling violently before skidding to a halt on one knee. His pristine white robes were torn, scorched, and stained with ethereal blood. He coughed violently, clutching his chest as his breathing came in ragged, painful gasps.
Yet, despite his battered state, the fanatical fire in his pale eyes burned hotter than ever.
"Never..." Ashura rasped, slowly, painfully forcing himself to stand up. "I will never let a parasite ruin my father's legacy... I will never let you destroy our family!"
Ashura slammed his bloody palms together in a final, desperate seal.
"Wood Style: Wood Golem!"
The ground beneath Kurama exploded violently. A colossal, wooden titan—easily matching the Nine-Tails in sheer size—erupted from the dark depths. It possessed a terrifying, horned demon mask for a face and dozens of thick, muscular wooden arms sprouting from its back.
The Wood Golem wrapped its massive limbs around Kurama's torso, locking the giant fox in a crushing bear hug before violently slamming Kurama into the ground with catastrophic force.
Kurama roared in frustration, his massive claws raking across the Golem's wooden face, tearing deep, splintered gouges into the ancient bark.
"Damn it!" Kurama growled, struggling against the draining properties of the Wood Release. "Just like Hashirama... this bastard's Wood Style drains chakra on contact! Naruto, we need to end this right now!"
Naruto looked across the battlefield at Ashura, who was standing atop the Wood Golem's shoulder, his hands clasped together as he fed the construct his remaining energy.
Naruto's face settled into a cold, decisive resolve.
"Kurama," Naruto said softly. "Let's show this ghost what happens when two partners actually fight as one."
Naruto crossed his index and middle fingers.
"Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
In a massive, deafening explosion of white smoke, thousands of golden Naruto clones materialized across the dark expanse, filling the void as far as the eye could see.
Simultaneously, Kurama closed his eyes, concentrating his immense chakra reserves. "Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
Two massive bursts of smoke erupted beside the original fox. Two identical, full-sized Nine-Tails clones emerged, roaring in unison as they charged the Wood Golem.
The mindscape descended into absolute, magnificent chaos.
Thousands of Naruto clones swarmed Ashura, raining down a continuous, relentless barrage of Rasengans, Wind Blades, and elemental strikes. Ashura fought like a demon possessed, manipulating Wood Dragons and wooden bindings to crush dozens of clones every second, but for every clone he destroyed, three more took its place.
Meanwhile, the two Kurama clones tackled the Wood Golem from both sides. One clone pinned the Golem's multi-armed back to the ground, while the second clone forced its jaws open, thrusting its massive head forward to charge a Tailed Beast Bomb directly inside the Golem's mouth.
BOOM!
The Wood Golem's head was completely obliterated in a shower of burning timber.
While the clones kept Ashura utterly overwhelmed, the original Naruto and the original Kurama sat down in a cross-legged meditation stance in the quiet space behind the battle.
Naruto closed his eyes. Kurama lowered his massive head.
Together, they reached out into the surrounding spiritual realm, pulling in the massive, raw stores of ambient Natural Energy floating within Naruto's soul matrix. They fused the Senjutsu perfectly with Kurama's divine chakra and Naruto's own Uzumaki vitality, achieving a state of absolute, flawless harmony.
A blinding, holy light erupted from their bodies.
Ashura, having finally destroyed the last wave of shadow clones with a massive wave of Wood Release spikes, turned around, panting heavily—only to freeze entirely.
The air in his lungs turned to ice.
Standing before him was a titan that transcended mortality.
A colossal, glowing golden avatar of the Nine-Tails towered over the void. Its translucent body sparkled with divine Senjutsu markings, nine fiery tails sweeping majestically through the black sky. Suspended safely within the crystalline, glowing crown of the avatar's head sat Naruto, his eyes open, burning with the iconic, cross-slitted pupils of a Perfect Sage in Nine-Tails Chakra Mode.
Naruto looked down at the battered spirit of Ashura Ōtsutsuki. His dual-layered voice, harmonized perfectly with Kurama's bass, vibrated through the very fabric of reality.
"I built this attack specifically for narrow-minded ghosts like you, Ashura," Naruto declared.
The Golden Kurama Avatar raised both of its massive hands. In its left palm, a colossal, golden Rasenshuriken materialized, glowing with the blinding light of a thousand suns and screeching with hypersonic fury. In its right palm, a second, equally massive Golden Rasenshuriken ignited, saturated to the brim with raw Senjutsu energy.
At the exact same time, the Golden Avatar opened its jaws wide. A hyper-condensed, pitch-black sphere of dark chakra—a Tailed Beast Bomb twice the size of a standard one—rapidly compressed between its teeth.
Three apocalyptic, world-ending attacks, held simultaneously by a single entity.
Ashura stared up at the golden god before him. For the first time in his thousand-year existence, the fanatical certainty in his pale eyes shattered. There was no divine righteousness left in his expression. No talk of destiny. No talk of brotherhood.
There was only pure, unadulterated fear.
"No..." Ashura whispered, his voice trembling as he stepped backward. "This... this isn't how the cycle ends..."
"The cycle ended the day I decided my own path," Naruto snapped coldly.
Naruto pointed his finger directly at Ashura.
"I will destroy your soul before you ever get the chance to rewrite my life again. Go back to the abyss, Ashura!"
The Golden Kurama Avatar hurled both golden Rasenshurikens forward with terrifying force. At the exact same microsecond, it fired the colossal Tailed Beast Bomb from its mouth.
The three apocalyptic attacks fused mid-flight into a singular, blinding, golden-black wave of absolute destruction that tore through the subterranean void, vaporizing the dark ground, the air, and the very concept of the seal itself as it closed in on the terrified spirit.
Ashura opened his mouth to scream, but his voice was completely swallowed by the blinding, holy light of a new dawn.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you'd like to support my work and read extra chapters before they're released publicly, I've officially started my Patreon!
At Patreon.com/Godofwhatif
By joining, you'll get:
• Early access to upcoming chapters.
• Extra chapters exclusive to Patreon.
• A chance to support the story and help me continue writing consistently.
If that sounds interesting, I'd love to have you there. Thank you all for your continued support!