The northern sector of the isolated dimension was caught in a continuous, violent upheaval.
There was no earth to shatter, only the dense, black obsidian-like rock forged by Itachi Uchiha's spatial technique. This dark stone was being systematically pulverized, not by the heavy impacts of brute force, but by the relentless, invisible grinding of opposing gravitational fields.
High in the dark, starless sky, Momoshiki Otsutsuki floated. His pristine white robes were spotless, untouched by the dust of the ruined terrain below. The translucent veil over his head shifted slightly in the winds generated by the combat. His pure white Byakugan stared downward with absolute, undisguised contempt.
Standing on the fractured stone below was Neji Hyuga.
He wore the traditional, loose-fitting robes of his clan, but his physical presence was entirely transformed. The black lines of the Karma seal crawled up the left side of his neck, extending across his pale skin to frame his left eye.
However, it was not the Karma that commanded the immediate space around him. It was his eyes.
The pale, featureless white of the standard Hyuga bloodline was gone. His eyes glowed with a brilliant, shifting luminescence—a core of piercing blue surrounded by a radiating, starry white light. The Tenseigan.
A dense, cyan-colored chakra cloak enveloped Neji's body, flaring like green fire. Floating in a perfect, slow orbit behind his back were six spheres of absolute black matter. The Truth-Seeking Orbs.
"You possess the eyes of my ancestors, human," Momoshiki spoke, his voice echoing coldly across the void. "You wield the Tenseigan, a power reserved for the celestial lineage, yet you crawl in the dirt. It is an insult to witness such divine sight wasted on a lower life form."
Neji did not respond to the taunt. He maintained his stance, his feet rooted firmly to the rock, his right hand extended forward with two fingers raised, his left hand resting near his waist. His breathing was slow, perfectly measured. Nanami Kento had taught him that engaging in conversation with an arrogant opponent only served to validate their ego.
Silence was the ultimate counter to arrogance.
Momoshiki's eyes narrowed. He raised his right hand, pointing the dark, pulsing Rinnegan embedded in his palm directly at Neji.
"I will take those eyes from your corpse."
Momoshiki descended.
He did not fly; he manipulated gravity to pull himself toward the earth with the speed of a falling meteor. As he closed the distance, he threw his left hand forward.
A massive torrent of compressed wind and fire erupted from his palm—a combination technique he had absorbed from the chaotic skirmishes of his past. The flaming tornado roared toward the ground, intending to incinerate Neji before he could step away.
Neji did not step away.
He brought his hands together, channeling the cyan chakra of the Tenseigan mode. He thrust his palms forward.
"Eight Trigrams: Mountain Crusher!"
A concentrated, massive wave of Gentle Fist chakra shot upward. The pure, blunt-force energy collided with the flaming tornado. Because the Gentle Fist emitted pure chakra rather than an elemental nature, the fire could not consume it. The impact blew the center out of Momoshiki's attack, scattering the flames harmlessly into the dark sky.
Momoshiki passed directly through the gap in his own dispersed jutsu, dropping into close-quarters range.
He swung a heavy, sweeping kick aimed at Neji's head.
Neji raised his left forearm, catching the kick. The physical force behind the Otsutsuki's strike was immense, threatening to shatter the bone, but the cyan chakra cloak and the dense reinforcement of the Shibai cells held the arm completely intact.
Neji pivoted, utilizing the momentum of Momoshiki's kick to spin his own body. He drove a rigid two-finger strike directly toward the center of Momoshiki's chest.
Momoshiki sneered, raising his right hand to intercept the blow. He intended to use the Rinnegan in his palm to absorb the chakra driving the strike, leaving the human vulnerable to a lethal counter.
Neji's eyes flashed with absolute, cold calculation.
A fraction of an inch before his fingers touched the Rinnegan, Neji completely shut off the chakra flow to his hand.
The glowing cyan energy vanished from his fingertips. Momoshiki's absorption technique caught nothing but empty air.
Without the chakra buffer, Neji's physical, hardened fingers bypassed the absorption completely and struck the hard flesh of Momoshiki's palm. The raw, physical impact, augmented by the pure muscle density of the Karma seal, snapped Momoshiki's wrist back violently.
Momoshiki grunted in surprise, his arm forced upward.
Neji stepped entirely inside the pale alien's guard.
"Eight Trigrams: Sixty-Four Palms," Neji whispered.
His hands became a blur of cyan light.
Two palms. Four palms. Eight palms.
He struck Momoshiki's chest, shoulders, and abdomen with relentless, blinding speed. However, he did not inject standard chakra into the strikes, knowing the Otsutsuki physiology could potentially absorb it. Instead, he utilized the unique gravitational repulsion of the Tenseigan at the exact point of physical impact.
Sixteen palms. Thirty-two palms.
Every strike delivered a microscopic, localized blast of gravity that physically crushed the tissue and bone beneath Momoshiki's white robes.
Sixty-four palms!
The final double-palm strike hit the center of Momoshiki's sternum. The concentrated gravitational burst launched the Otsutsuki backward. Momoshiki skipped violently across the black stone, tearing a deep trench through the rock before skidding to a halt.
Momoshiki pushed himself up to one knee. His pristine white robes were torn, and a thin trail of dark blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
He stared at the human, his pure white eyes wide with a mixture of shock and rapidly boiling rage.
"You suppress your chakra at the moment of impact," Momoshiki realized, wiping the blood from his chin. "You strike with physical gravity rather than energy. A crude, primitive method of bypassing my eyes."
"A shinobi uses the tools required to dismantle the target," Neji replied, his voice calm and unbothered. "Your eyes can absorb ninjutsu, but they cannot absorb pure force. You are entirely reliant on your absorption. In a contest of pure martial technique, you are lacking."
Momoshiki stood up. The aristocratic, detached elegance was gone. His face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred.
"You dare lecture a god on technique?!" Momoshiki roared.
He raised both of his hands above his head. The Rinnegan in his palms glowed with a terrifying, dark red light.
He drew upon the vast, stolen reserves of chakra he had accumulated from harvesting countless worlds. He did not aim to engage in hand-to-hand combat again. He intended to erase the entire sector of the dimension.
Above Momoshiki, the dark sky began to burn.
Massive, churning spheres of elemental destruction materialized in the void. A colossal bird forged entirely of white-hot fire, a massive serpent composed of rushing, pressurized water, and a towering golem of jagged, hardened earth.
He had summoned the pinnacle of elemental shape manipulation, amplifying them with his own divine chakra.
"Perish, insect!" Momoshiki commanded, throwing his hands downward.
The three colossal elemental constructs descended upon Neji simultaneously. The heat, the pressure, and the crushing weight converged on a single point, intended to vaporize the Hyuga prodigy completely.
Neji did not move to run. He did not command his Truth-Seeking Orbs to form a defensive dome.
He lowered his hands, letting them rest at his sides. He closed his glowing Tenseigan eyes.
He reached deep into the core of his integrated cellular structure, tapping into the divine genetics of Shibai Otsutsuki that Nanami had safely anchored within his body. Neji bypassed the standard flow of chakra, grasping the unique, rule-breaking power of the Shinjutsu he had awakened.
Neji opened his eyes.
"Ame-no-Mihashira," Neji spoke softly.
Heavenly Pillar.
There was no visible barrier. There was no dome of light or shield of chakra.
Exactly thirty feet in every direction around Neji, the fundamental laws of physics and spatial movement simply ceased to function for anything containing hostile intent.
The colossal fire bird, the rushing water serpent, and the massive earth golem struck the invisible, thirty-foot boundary simultaneously.
They did not explode. They did not bounce off.
The moment the constructs crossed the threshold of the Ame-no-Mihashira, their forward momentum was reduced to absolute zero. The roaring flames, the rushing water, and the falling stone hung perfectly frozen in the air, suspended exactly thirty feet from Neji's face.
Momoshiki's eyes widened in sheer disbelief. He pushed more chakra into his Rinnegan, attempting to force the attacks forward, but the connection was entirely severed.
Within the thirty-foot radius of Neji's domain, energy was absolute and subject only to his command. Any hostile force entering the perimeter was instantly locked in spatial stasis, its momentum erased. It was the ultimate, divine evolution of the Hyuga clan's Eight Trigrams defensive circle, expanding from a physical parry into a reality-warping domain.
Neji raised his right hand, pointing his index and middle fingers toward the frozen elemental constructs.
With a simple, fluid motion, he swept his fingers to the side.
The Ame-no-Mihashira obeyed the command. The spatial lock broke, and the domain reversed the intent.
The massive fire bird, the water serpent, and the earth golem were violently thrown backward, their trajectories perfectly reversed. They shot back up into the sky, colliding with each other in a catastrophic, blinding explosion of steam, shattered rock, and fire that illuminated the dark dimension.
Momoshiki was caught in the shockwave of his own reflected attacks. He was thrown violently out of the air, crashing hard into the obsidian floor.
He rolled across the jagged rocks, his white robes scorching from the heat. He pushed himself to his feet, panting heavily. The arrogance was completely stripped away, replaced by the panicked realization that he was losing the engagement.
He looked at the human walking calmly through the settling dust.
"A Shinjutsu," Momoshiki rasped, his voice trembling with a mix of fury and fear. "You possess a divine miracle. You stole the flesh of my ancestors to forge a domain of absolute stillness."
"I stole nothing," Neji corrected, stopping twenty paces away. "It was freely given by a man who understands that power belongs to those who possess the discipline to wield it. You lack discipline. You steal the jutsu of others and rely on overwhelming force. When that force is halted, you have nothing left."
Momoshiki bared his teeth, looking like a cornered animal.
He reached into his robes, pulling out a handful of red, glowing pills—the compressed chakra fruits he had harvested from lesser worlds. He intended to consume them, to force his power higher, to break the human's domain through sheer, raw attrition.
Before he could place the pills into his mouth, a sudden, sharp sensation ripped through Momoshiki's mind.
He froze. His hand halted near his lips.
The connection he shared with his guardian and subordinate, Kinshiki, was suddenly and violently severed. The deep, heavy chakra signature that had always lingered in the back of his awareness vanished completely into the void.
Momoshiki's eyes widened. He turned his head slowly, looking toward the southern expanse of the dark dimension.
"Kinshiki," Momoshiki whispered, the word slipping from his lips in stunned realization.
His guardian, the colossal warrior whose physical strength was unmatched among their scouting party, was dead. He had been executed by the human in the green attire.
For a fraction of a second, the battlefield was silent.
Neji watched the alien's reaction. He noted the sudden drop in Momoshiki's guard, the realization of his comrade's death. Neji did not hesitate or offer sympathy. He stepped forward, raising his hands to deliver a fatal strike to the distracted enemy.
But Momoshiki did not grieve.
A low, dark, vibrating sound began to escape Momoshiki's throat. It was a chuckle. It grew louder, shifting into a cold, hysterical laugh that echoed across the dark stones.
"Dead," Momoshiki laughed, his white eyes locking back onto Neji. The panic of losing his own fight was completely eclipsed by a sickening, absolute greed. "Kinshiki has fallen to the insects."
Momoshiki lowered the hand holding the small chakra pills, letting them drop uselessly to the ground.
"It is acceptable," Momoshiki declared, his voice dropping into a dark, resonant tone. "He swore an oath to surrender his power to me when the time was required. His death merely expedites the harvest."
Momoshiki raised his right hand high into the air. He flared his Rinnegan, pushing his remaining chakra to its absolute limit, overriding the spatial distance of the dimension itself.
"The time has come, Kinshiki! Surrender your flesh to your master!"
Miles away, in the crater where Rock Lee had left the shattered body of the giant, the bedrock trembled.
Kinshiki's massive, broken corpse suddenly levitated from the rubble. The body was enveloped in a violently glowing red light.
Neji's Tenseigan flared. He saw the massive spike in chakra occurring in the distance, and he saw the trajectory.
"He is summoning the corpse," Neji realized, his mind racing through the tactical implications. "He intends to absorb it."
Neji did not wait. He engaged his movement, blurring forward to strike Momoshiki down before the technique could complete.
But he was too late.
Through the dark sky, moving at a speed that tore the atmosphere apart, a streak of blinding red light shot toward them. It was not a body anymore. As Kinshiki's corpse flew across the miles of empty space, Momoshiki's technique violently compressed the flesh, the bone, and the dense, alien chakra.
The colossal giant was crushed inward, condensing into a single, glowing, blood-red fruit the size of a peach.
The red fruit shot directly into Momoshiki's outstretched hand.
Momoshiki grasped the pulsing fruit. He looked at Neji, who was closing the final few paces, his palm thrust forward for a lethal strike.
Momoshiki did not dodge. He brought the red fruit to his mouth and bit down, tearing the flesh of his former guardian and swallowing it whole.
The change was instantaneous.
Neji's palm strike entered the thirty-foot range of his own Ame-no-Mihashira, intending to carry the lethal kinetic force directly into Momoshiki's chest.
Before Neji's hand could connect, a shockwave of pure, unadulterated power exploded outward from Momoshiki's body.
The force of the explosion was so immense, so utterly dense with alien chakra, that it shattered the very fabric of Neji's Shinjutsu. The invisible boundary of the Ame-no-Mihashira cracked and fractured like fragile glass under the weight of the expanding energy.
Neji was caught in the blast. The cyan chakra cloak protected his body, but the kinetic force lifted him off his feet, throwing him violently backward across the jagged rocks. He rolled, digging his boots and hands into the stone, tearing long gouges into the earth before coming to a halt thirty paces away.
Neji stood up, his breathing sharp, his Tenseigan eyes wide.
The dust cleared.
Momoshiki Otsutsuki had transformed.
His pristine white robes were gone, replaced by a dark, form-fitting shell of black and red chakra. His pale skin had darkened to a deep, bruised crimson. The short horns on his head had grown massive and jagged, curling upward like a demonic crown. The Rinnegan in his palms glowed a fierce, sickly yellow.
But the most terrifying addition was the third eye that had torn open perfectly in the center of his forehead. A massive, glowing yellow Rinnegan staring directly forward.
The ambient temperature of the dimension spiked. The black stone beneath his feet began to melt, turning to sluggish magma simply from the passive heat of his new form.
Momoshiki tilted his head, his yellow third eye fixing upon Neji.
"You forced me to consume my guardian," Momoshiki's voice was no longer singular; it was a terrifying, overlapping chorus of two entities speaking as one. "I will make you suffer for the indignity."
Momoshiki did not dash. He simply appeared.
His speed had tripled. He broke the sound barrier without creating a sonic boom, standing directly in front of Neji before the Hyuga's mind could even process the movement.
Neji reacted purely on instinct, bringing his arms up to block.
Momoshiki threw a right hook.
The strike connected with Neji's forearms. The cyan chakra cloak, which had easily deflected strikes moments ago, fractured instantly. The raw, physical power behind the blow was astronomical.
Neji was launched backward, the bones in his forearms fracturing under the impact. He crashed into a massive pillar of obsidian, shattering the stone column entirely.
Before Neji could fall to the ground, Momoshiki was there again.
He drove a knee into Neji's stomach, forcing the breath violently from his lungs. Momoshiki then grabbed Neji by the throat with his left hand, lifting the Hyuga off the ground, and slammed him down into the bedrock with a force that created a massive crater.
Neji gasped, coughing up a spatter of blood. The healing properties of the Shibai cells immediately went to work, knitting his fractured forearms and bruised ribs back together, but the regeneration was struggling to keep pace with the overwhelming damage.
"Your domain is broken," Momoshiki mocked, standing over him. "Your eyes are too slow. You are nothing but a fragile bag of flesh and stolen power."
Momoshiki raised his foot, intending to stomp directly down onto Neji's skull.
Neji forced his chakra into the Truth-Seeking Orbs orbiting his back. He commanded the black spheres to flatten and merge, creating a solid, impenetrable dome of black matter directly above his body.
Momoshiki's heel slammed into the Truth-Seeking dome.
The black matter groaned. It was designed to erase any ninjutsu and repel all physical attacks, but Momoshiki's physical density in his transformed state was absolute.
CRACK.
A hairline fracture appeared in the unbreakable shield.
Momoshiki brought his fist down, driving a second, heavier blow into the dome. The fracture spider-webbed outward. The black shield was failing.
Neji lay beneath the cracking dome, his mind racing. He was entirely on the defensive. His Shinjutsu had been overwhelmed by sheer brute force, and his physical speed could no longer match the transformed alien. If the dome broke, he would be subjected to a fatal strike before he could re-establish a guard.
I must redirect the impact, Neji calculated, blood trickling from his lip. I must drop the shield voluntarily and use Palm Rotation the exact microsecond he strikes.
Momoshiki raised his hand high, gathering a massive, swirling sphere of dark red chakra into his palm. It was an overcharged, concentrated blast of raw destruction, intended to shatter the dome and incinerate the human beneath it.
"Die," Momoshiki decreed, bringing the dark sphere down.
Neji braced himself, preparing to drop the shield.
The strike did not connect.
A massive, heavy sound of shifting air tore through the immediate space.
Before Momoshiki's hand could touch the cracking black dome, a colossal, ethereal red skeletal arm erupted from the shadows to Neji's left.
The giant red hand caught Momoshiki's descending strike directly in its palm. The dark red chakra sphere exploded against the ethereal bone, sending a shockwave of fire and force across the crater, but the skeletal arm did not yield a single inch.
Momoshiki halted, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the massive red construct that had intercepted his kill shot.
A figure stepped calmly out of the shadows, walking through the settling dust to stand beside the crater where Neji lay.
Itachi Uchiha wore his dark cloak, the fabric billowing gently in the wind of the explosion. His eyes burned with the intricate, bladed design of the Mangekyo Sharingan. The black lines of his Karma seal pulsed brightly against his pale skin, syncing perfectly with his visual prowess.
The colossal red ribcage and arm of the Susanoo radiated from his body, casting a blood-red light over the dark battlefield.
Itachi looked down at Neji, his expression calm and devoid of panic.
"You held the line perfectly, Neji," Itachi spoke, his voice quiet, steady, and carrying the absolute, reassuring weight of a veteran commander. "But the parameters of the engagement have shifted."
Itachi turned his gaze upward, locking his Mangekyo Sharingan onto the transformed, hovering form of Momoshiki Otsutsuki.
"You are not fighting alone."