Every man has a breaking point. Saiki had watched his loved ones be threatened over and over again. In the past, he lacked the power to end it. Now, he had plenty, and his patience was officially exhausted.
Fast. Too damn fast!
Saiki's raw physical specs were already high-Kage tier. Combined with his Lightning Style mastery and the all-attribute multiplier of his Senjutsu chakra, he was a force of nature.
SHRED!
Saiki, transformed into a streak of blue-white lightning, tore past the two Root guards. They didn't even have time to blink before their bodies—along with their "sturdy" weapons—were sliced into four neat pieces.
In Saiki's estimation, his Senjutsu chakra was of a higher quality than even the Six Paths chakra. Infusing it into a blade meant nothing was "hard" anymore; he could core a Tailed Beast with a toothpick.
"How is this possible?!"
Danzo's face went pale. He hadn't realized Saiki's growth was this catastrophic. His two elite guards, personally trained killers, hadn't even managed to register Saiki's movement before dying.
Shocked into action, Danzo's hands blurred through signs.
"Wind Style: Vacuum Wave!"
With a sharp whip of his head, Danzo exhaled a blade of high-pressure air.
CLANG!
The move was simple, yet it left Danzo's eye bulging. With a single, effortless flick of 'Thunderstorm', Saiki parried the Wind Style—a strike capable of severing steel and stone—as if it were a common fly.
To an observer, it looked easy. But only a handful of people in the world possessed the reaction speed and Kenjutsu precision to deflect a high-speed vacuum blade at point-blank range in the dark of night.
CRASH!
BOOM!!
The deflected wind blade tore into the dense Konoha forest behind them, leveling a dozen ancient trees with a deafening roar.
Looking at Saiki, whose body was wreathed in crackling blue static, Danzo felt a surge of primal terror. After only two exchanges, the thought entered his mind for the first time: I might actually die here.
Danzo coveted Saiki's power, yes, but when his own life was on the line, he was a cornered rat.
Saiki wasn't going to give him another opening. As Danzo's hands met to form another seal, Saiki unleashed a horizontal slash.
WHIRRR!!
The blade tore through the atmosphere, producing a high-pitched sonic hum.
Danzo was still a Kage-level fighter. Even with the gap between them, his experience allowed him to throw his body into a desperate roll. Saiki's strike missed his torso, slamming into the earth behind him.
BOOM!!
The ground shattered, a trench of unknown depth snaking out for fifty feet.
Seeing the raw power of the strike, Danzo realized that a single hit meant instant death. The realization that Saiki was actually trying to murder him—and had the means to do it—broke his composure.
"Saiki Shiroya! I am an Elder of the Hidden Leaf! To strike at me is to commit high treason! Are you defecting from the village?!" Danzo roared, his voice a mix of terror and indignation.
Saiki let out a cold, hollow laugh. "Treason? Who says? And since when did being a 'Village Elder' make you immortal?"
Seeing Saiki wouldn't stop, Danzo finally ripped the bandages from his right eye, revealing the crimson glow of a three-tomoe Sharingan.
This wasn't Shisui's Kotoamatsukami eye yet. He couldn't cast an absolute-control illusion through bandages.
Of course, even the ultimate illusion might not work on Saiki. With his Pre-natal Qi protecting his spiritual core, his mind was functionally a fortress against external manipulation.
Even the Sharingan has limits. If it were absolute, the Fourth War would have ended with a single look from Madara.
The red eye locked onto Saiki. Danzo unleashed a pre-programmed Genjutsu, hoping to stall the boy's movements. Saiki felt a brief ripple in his chakra, like a pebble dropped in a pond.
Seeing Saiki freeze for a heartbeat, Danzo thought he had won. He was met instead by Saiki's blade.
Because of the momentary distraction, Danzo couldn't fully clear the arc. The blade sheared a chunk of flesh from his shoulder. Even a man of his iron will couldn't suppress a pained grunt.
Danzo realized instantly that he was outclassed. He was a survivor above all else. He slammed a smoke bomb into the dirt and turned to run.
As he sprinted, Danzo's mind was in chaos. How am I losing to a ten-year-old brat?!
Saiki followed at a leisurely pace. If he wanted Danzo dead now, the man wouldn't have made it ten steps.
He was letting Danzo run so the old man would lead him straight to the heart of Root. He intended to burn the entire hive to the ground.
As for the political consequences? Saiki didn't care.
The Leaf had the Anbu, didn't it? Were they really so incompetent that they needed a shadow-cult of brainwashed slaves to keep the peace?
To Saiki, Root was a cancer. If he killed Danzo, he had to ensure the man's loyalists didn't target Nono'u or Tsunade in retaliation.
In the original timeline, Root survivors had planned the "Nue" project to destroy the village just to avenge their master. Root was a cult of extremists.
Some of them might be "innocent" victims of brainwashing, but to Saiki, they were just cogs in a machine that needed to be dismantled.
SHRED!
Danzo's pace slowed for a fraction of a second due to the pain. Saiki's blade hissed through the air, taking a few strands of Danzo's hair with it.
Danzo felt the physical sting of the air pressure against his scalp.
"LORD DANZO!"
As they neared the Root base perimeter, the sentries finally noticed the pursuit. Several masked ninja swarmed the path.
"STALL HIM!"
Danzo didn't look back, sprinting through his subordinates and leaving them to face the monster behind him.
The Root operatives knew Danzo was powerful. Seeing him in such a pathetic, retreating state terrified them, but their conditioning was absolute. They launched themselves at Saiki.
"Fire Style: Great Dragon Fire!"
"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
They launched a point-blank Fire-Wind combination. The wind fanned the flames into a white-hot inferno. Everywhere the heat touched, the grass was instantly vaporized into ash, and the earth began to crack.
Saiki could have countered in a dozen ways, but he was at the gates of Root. Knowing they'd have arrays and traps waiting for him, he stopped playing around and manifested his Auspicious Cloud.
BOOM!
He began drawing natural energy to fuel the cloud. The misty rain began to fall. The combined A-Rank inferno slammed into the veil... and failed to make the mist flicker.
Seeing their ultimate combo neutralized, three more Root ninja launched a coordinated binding attack.
"Lightning Style: Four Pillar Bind!"
"Lightning Style: Thunderbolt!"
Earth pillars erupted to form a barrier, designed to suppress chakra and physically lock the target, while a barrage of Lightning Ninjutsu hammered the center.
Looking at the lightning dancing off his Auspicious Cloud, Saiki offered a bored critique. "Decent effort. Too bad it's useless."
Saiki swung his blade. The air hummed with a high-pitched whine.
BOOM!!
The radiant blade-qi shredded the lightning barrier and bisected the lead Root operative before he could even blink. The strike didn't stop there, carving a massive trench into the earth behind him.
Before the survivors could process the death, Saiki slammed his foot into the ground, shattering the earth and vanishing.
"LOOK OUT!"
Someone screamed a warning, but it was too late. Saiki blurred through two of them, leaving two more corpses in his wake.
The remaining squad members fared no better. Saiki moved like a streak of lightning between them. Every flash of his blade resulted in another head or torso hitting the dirt.
These men were elite killers, but against Saiki, they were just straw targets.
However, their sacrifice had bought Danzo exactly thirty seconds—enough time for the old rat to scramble into his hole.