Hagoromo's skill points were essentially all invested into critical hits, so even an existence as overpowered as a Tailed Beast could be pummeled half to death by him in a short amount of time.
Without the control of a Jinchuriki, a Tailed Beast relying solely on its own brain to fight wasn't exactly brilliant; pretty much all they knew was the Tailed Beast Bomb.
The now-unconscious Three-Tails simply floated on the water's surface. Its current appearance was completely blood-soaked, having thoroughly turned into a red turtle.
It couldn't be helped; after all, its body had been riddled with so many bloody holes.
Some tasks weren't quite appropriate to perform on the surface of the lake. Hagoromo thought about it and decided it would be more suitable to move the Three-Tails onto land.
Furthermore, he could let Mirai and the others observe this Class-1 Protected Animal of the ninja world up close, saving them from not knowing what to do if they encountered something similar in the future.
But having Hagoromo carry it himself... it wasn't that he couldn't do it, but it was just too much effort.
So, he fluidly bit his finger and wove the signs, directly summoning the Multi-Headed Dog.
Although the Multi-Headed Dog was huge, it still looked somewhat disproportionate compared to the Three-Tails. However, it was enough for towing operations. After all, they were on water, making it truly a silky-smooth drag.
With its three dog heads biting down on one of the Three-Tails' tails, the Multi-Headed Dog dragged the colossal beast to the shore by walking backward.
As for the severed tail, Hagoromo ignored it. Let it feed the fish; consider it a welfare benefit for the ecosystem that had been constantly plagued by the Tailed Beast.
"Hagoromo, what do we do next?" Having satisfied her curiosity, Mirai asked him.
"Next, Mirai, you need to carefully sense the Three-Tails' chakra. Understand?"
"Understood!"
Hagoromo speaking in such a tone meant this was a major mission for Mirai.
Hagoromo's original thought had been to slice the Three-Tails up piece by piece for research. However, after further consideration, he abandoned the idea. The scene would be a bit too gruesome, and these young children shouldn't be exposed to it.
Perhaps the slightly colder Kimimaro wouldn't mind, but Mirai and Haku... it was already good enough that they could accept a bloody Godzilla. Letting them watch someone butcher such a monster like a chef would be too shocking a sight.
It wasn't exactly about spoiling Mirai, but Hagoromo truly had concerns regarding "early childhood education." After all, he lacked experience in this area. Going too far is as bad as not going far enough, so he maintained the principle of moderation when necessary.
"Next, absolutely none of you are to come near me, nor are you to appear in my direct line of sight. Touching me is an even more strictly prohibited behavior."
Hagoromo said this very seriously.
It wasn't that he didn't want them to see his eyes. In truth, whether they saw them or not didn't matter. It was just that everything that appeared before these eyes held the possibility of "death." Perhaps just a slight, inadvertent movement could cause irreversible consequences. Therefore, prevention and caution were paramount.
Upon understanding the severity of the situation, the group voluntarily retreated a considerable distance. They still carried curious gazes, wanting to see exactly what Hagoromo was going to do, but they absolutely obeyed his orders.
However, for the next five minutes or so, Hagoromo stood there motionless, as if he were trying to force something out but couldn't.
The word "force" was quite accurate, because he was genuinely straining.
Looking at Hagoromo from the front, it wasn't until his face turned slightly pale that he reopened his eyes.
The theoretically highest-tier weapon he possessed was activated once again... Lines of Death weren't needed right now; Hagoromo needed to be more focused.
Next, Hagoromo's pupils weren't so much constricting intermittently as they were literally pulsing to a certain rhythm.
"I see it." Expending a considerable amount of energy, Hagoromo had perceived the "Point of Death."
Under these eyes, the object being cut possessed no physical concepts like density or hardness, nor was there a distinction between hard to cut or easy to cut. Once seen, touching it counted as cutting it, and the target would then be obliterated.
Holding the Iron Sand Sword, Hagoromo gently poked a specific spot on the Three-Tails' neck.
There was even a wound caused by the Railgun in this spot, but a weapon of causality was ultimately different from physical damage. No matter how severe the injury from the Railgun was, it didn't transcend the bounds of convention.
As the tip of the sword touched that point, the Three-Tails' body crumbled to the ground in clumps, silently, like paper in a shredder.
This eerie scene made all three children feel their skin crawl... This was a Tailed Beast, and it just croaked like that?
Subsequently, the flesh and blood composed of chakra melted away rapidly like ice roasting over a fire. Even the bloodstains on the ground vanished completely, as if the Three-Tails had never existed at all.
After accomplishing this, Hagoromo closed his eyes once more.
When he reopened them, he had returned to his normal state, and the color gradually returned to his face.
Only then did he turn his head and wave, signaling for Mirai to come over.
"Mirai, how is it? Can you still sense the Three-Tails' chakra?"
Could this attempt successfully obliterate the Three-Tails? Hagoromo wasn't certain.
The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception could indeed achieve this, but the prerequisite was that he correctly comprehended the "death" of a Tailed Beast. As for obliterating the very concept of the Three-Tails—which would mean not only erasing the Three-Tails completely but also making everyone in the world forget what the "Three-Tails" was—that seemed a bit like a fantasy to Hagoromo.
"The chakra... is still there."
That was fine. Even if the Three-Tails was completely obliterated, the recent battle would leave enough residual chakra behind. It should dissipate shortly.
But Mirai's next words dashed Hagoromo's wishful thinking.
"The amount of chakra is still massive. And, although it's very slow, I feel like they are flowing towards the same direction."
That wasn't "flowing"; that was "coalescing," or perhaps it should be called... rebirth?
"As expected, things aren't that simple."
Hagoromo felt a bit disappointed, but not overly so. Failure wasn't outside his expectations. It merely indicated that his comprehension of a Tailed Beast's death was flawed.
Tailed Beasts were indeed aggregates of chakra, but they shared a common source. To kill a Tailed Beast, one had to at least understand this point. But right now, it seemed Hagoromo was still treating each Tailed Beast as an independent entity...
This, of course, was problematic.
In short, although he had "killed" a Tailed Beast once and harvested a wave of adoring gazes, in terms of his goal and the experiment, Hagoromo had failed.
It was a waste of effort.
However, "test subjects" were rare after all. Aside from this one, the difficulty of acquiring the others was too high. Hagoromo actually wished the Three-Tails could resurrect immediately so he could try killing it again using a different line of thought, but that wouldn't be possible in the short term.