In his True Sage Mode, Saiki's movement—already lightning-fast—was now a blur that defied the laws of physics.
After executing Koharu with a single stroke, he materialized in front of Homura Mitokado. His blade, shimmering with a lethal white radiance, aimed straight for the man's vitals.
Homura's face was a mask of pure terror. He hadn't expected Saiki to reach this level of godhood. He desperately unleashed a Body Flicker to dodge.
But Saiki had already calculated the trajectory. He tilted his blade by a fraction of a degree. The arc of light hissed through the air, seemingly touching nothing, but the thin, vertical line of blood appearing on Homura's neck told the final story.
Homura's eyes bulged. He couldn't understand how he could die so easily.
Everything was happening too fast. Before the survivors could even process the shock of Saiki's transformation, two of the village's legendary elders were already cooling in the dirt.
But there was no time for grief. Saiki's blade was already lunging toward the Hokage.
Despite his shattered composure, Hiruzen Sarutobi was a Kage for a reason. His decades of combat conditioning allowed his body to react before his mind could even register the threat.
He swung the Adamantine Staff across his chest, bracing for a fatal impact.
However, against True Sage Saiki, the "unbreakable" properties of the staff were a myth. Saiki's strength was now cosmic, and his blade was infused with the ultimate destructive power.
CRACK-SHRED!!
The sound of metal being effortlessly pierced echoed through the clearing.
"How... is this... possible?"
Hiruzen looked down. His eyes were wide with a mix of disbelief and agony. The longsword had punched through the center of the "invincible" Adamantine Staff and continued its path directly through Hiruzen's chest.
Enma's physical durability was legendary—they called him "Adamantine" because even the legendary Kusanagi blade couldn't scratch him.
But Saiki had just treated the staff like a block of soft tofu, skewering it and the Hokage in one fluid motion.
While a thrust was technically less lethal than a slash, Saiki's blade was radiating a continuous discharge of Senjutsu blade-qi. The internal trauma to both Enma and Hiruzen was catastrophic; the transformation jutsu could no longer be maintained.
POOF!
A massive cloud of smoke erupted. The Adamantine Staff vanished, replaced by the white-furred Monkey King, who was currently pinned against Hiruzen's chest by the blade.
"RUN, HIRUZEN!" Enma roared, blood spraying from his mouth.
He reached out with his massive, corded arms, intending to grab Saiki in a death-grip. He knew he was dying, and he planned to use his final seconds to stall the boy so his friend could escape.
But Saiki wasn't going to be caught.
SHRED!
Saiki leaped backward, yanking the blade out of the two of them with a wet squelch.
As he landed, he performed a lightning-fast reverse-flick of his wrist. A single arc of light flashed. Enma, who had just lunged forward to sacrifice himself, saw his head leave his shoulders before his feet even hit the ground.
At that moment, the remaining Anbu finally managed to snap out of their trance.
This entire sequence—from the deaths of Koharu and Homura to the skewering of the Hokage—had taken less than five seconds.
The Anbu were paralyzed by a mix of duty and pure, biological terror. The rain from Saiki's Auspicious Cloud was neutralizing every Ninjutsu they threw, making them effectively useless.
They resorted to a desperate, point-blank volley of kunai and shuriken—the fastest tool in their kit.
Saiki harbored no personal grudge against the rank-and-file. He didn't view the Anbu as "evil," just as cogs in a broken machine. This was evidenced by the fact that most of the ninja he'd struck earlier were only severely wounded, not dead.
But "no grudge" didn't mean he would allow them to interfere. If they stood between him and Hiruzen's head, they were targets.
Saiki's blade blurred into a shimmering web of light. A localized storm of slashes swept through the Anbu ranks. Those who were lucky were merely crippled; those who weren't were reduced to pieces.
With the entrance of the True Sage Mode, a qualitative gap had opened between Saiki and every other human on the field. In a heartbeat, everyone except for him and the bleeding Hokage was on the ground.
Saiki's gaze locked back onto Hiruzen. The Hokage was a ruin of a man—bleeding from a cored chest, staring at the decapitated corpses of his lifelong friends and his legendary summon. His face was a mask of disbelief, fury, and ultimate despair.
Saiki walked toward him with a slow, rhythmic pace. Every footfall sounded like a death-knell in Hiruzen's ears.
"What... what kind of monster are you?" Hiruzen whispered, his voice wet and trembling. He couldn't fathom how a ten-year-old child could possess the power to dismantle a Great Village's high command in seconds.
Saiki looked at him with clinical indifference, as if observing a dying insect. Finally, he spoke. "This version of me... isn't this exactly what you wanted? You wanted a weapon. Well, here it is."
Hearing the answer, Hiruzen stared for a second, then let out a dry, hacking laugh.
The old Saiki had been a slacker who just wanted to hide in the Academy. But the rot of the village had squeezed him until he had no choice but to push back.
It had been a simple equation, but the village elders had miscalculated the variables. They had thrown a blood-stained piece of meat into a pool of sharks, assuming they were the predators.
They failed to realize that Saiki was a landmine disguised as a meal.
Hiruzen had allowed Danzo's "dark" methods to be used against Saiki because Danzo was his shadow—the one who handled the dirty work so Hiruzen could remain the "Benevolent Father."
They had poked a hornets' nest with a stick, and now the hive was burning them alive.
Regret?
No. Hiruzen was beyond that now.
As he laughed, the look in Hiruzen's eyes shifted from despair to a toxic, bottomless hatred—a final, insane flash of suicidal resolve.
Like Danzo before him, Hiruzen Sarutobi prepared to take his enemy with him to the grave.
"Saiki Shiroya... you are an abomination. For the sake of the Leaf, I cannot allow you to draw another breath."
He roared his final proclamation of "Justice." His chakra flared in a violent, final burst as he lunged at Saiki. Behind him, a towering, translucent figure wreathed in a funereal white shroud materialized—a demonic entity with a dagger in its mouth and a prayer-bead necklace.
Saiki watched the summon with the same detached, cold gaze. He sensed the soul-devouring energy of the jutsu immediately.
"The Reaper Death Seal? Fine. My next strike... will sever... the bonds of all sentient life!"
Speaking words that were hilariously chuunibyou yet terrifyingly accurate, Saiki swung his blade.
There were no flashy effects. No explosions. Just a single, silent line of absolute white light.
Hiruzen stopped mid-lunge, inches from Saiki's chest.
A thin red line began to trace its way down from his forehead to his groin. Under the pull of gravity, the Third Hokage's body split perfectly in two. A localized fountain of red and white sprayed the grass.
But the bisection didn't stop with the man. The towering Reaper behind him—the fundamental law of death itself—was also sliced clean in half. With a silent, soul-piercing shriek that vibrated in the very air, the Death God dissolved into a void of nothingness.
Saiki's claim of "severing sentient life" was literal.
The Reaper Death Seal was unique; once the soul was locked, the target was doomed even if the caster died. But Saiki's Senjutsu strike had erased Hiruzen's soul before the contract could complete, and then proceeded to "kill" the entity of death itself.
The Reaper was a singular conceptual entity. By "killing" it here, Saiki had effectively deleted the Reaper Death Seal from the archives of reality. Anyone attempting the seal in the future would find only an empty void.
On this single winter night, the entire High Command of the Hidden Leaf had been erased by one boy.
As Saiki stood in the silence of the carnage, he looked toward the horizon. He didn't know where history was heading, but one thing was certain: the age of rules was over. The age of the storm had begun.