Chapter 282: Super Shinra Tensei
For the first time.
The first time.
The first time.
Pain — Nagato — had, for the first time, encountered an enemy on this level.
In the rare occasions he'd actually needed to fight, every opponent he'd ever faced had been crushed, overwhelmingly, without exception. Even Orochimaru, one of the legendary Sannin, had gone down beneath a single Shinra Tensei.
If there was one thing this battle had in common with every fight that had come before it—
It was total domination.
Except this time, he wasn't the one doing the dominating. He was the one being crushed.
Twenty hundred-meter Demon-Gate Barriers now blotted out nearly the entirety of Pain's field of vision, screaming toward him with a terrifying howl, aimed straight at the Deva Path she'd just sent skidding into the ocean.
It was hard to believe.
I'm facing a human being.
The Deva Path — thrown by his own Shinra Tensei moments earlier — had already pulled himself back up out of the water, and his expression no longer carried the same detached calm as before.
Five Pain bodies, and twenty colossal gates bearing down on him.
"So this is it, then. Overwhelming raw power alone, applied to crush the enemy outright..."
The Deva Path stared at the massive black shapes bearing down on him, his expression grim.
Under normal circumstances, he'd have dismissed a fighting style like this without a second thought. Brute strength was nothing but crude force. Nothing elegant about it at all.
But now, he understood.
When raw power reached a high enough threshold, it stopped being merely quantitative. It became something else entirely.
Like this Hokage.
At that moment, the Deva Path moved.
Facing the massive demon-faced gates bearing down on him, he pressed forward instead of retreating.
Chibaku Tensei!
The first use of it pulled the Naraka Path — the single most critical body among the six — down safely against the ocean's surface, holding it in place.
Then the Rinnegan scanned rapidly.
The Human Path — abandon it. Already caught under three of the gates. No hope of extraction now. Could still consider reviving it later using the Naraka Path, once the fight had settled.
Within moments, Deva made his decision: sacrifice the Human Path, and instead turn his focus to the Asura Path and the Preta Path.
Both of these bodies were critical combat assets among the six — worth preserving, worth using to drag out the fight and slow the Hokage down.
With that decided, he pointed both hands at the two bodies still off-balance in midair, activating Chibaku Tensei a second time.
As for the Animal Path—
Abandon it, for now. The earlier exchange had already made it clear: the Animal Path's summoning technique meant nothing at all against this Hokage. Every summoned creature was just an oversized, stationary target.
With the Asura and Preta Paths secured, the wave of twenty demon-gates came crashing down over the Deva Path like an unstoppable tide.
Facing a number and scale like that, even someone who considered himself a god had no choice but to brace for it fully.
He hovered above the ocean surface, arms spread wide, and the water around him surged outward, radiating from his position.
Shinra Tensei!
This time, compared to the last—
Several times stronger.
The hundred-meter-tall colossi scattered apart in every direction under the force of the blow, waves rising hundreds of meters high in their wake.
Some of the gates even went skipping across the ocean's surface like flung stones.
But the Deva Path felt no relief at having weathered that attack.
Because—
The Hokage was already there.
A streak of pink light shot across the water's surface at blistering speed, the sea splitting into a straight line of towering waves in her wake.
Her target: the Deva Path, still recovering from his own Shinra Tensei.
Five seconds.
Enough time for the Hokage to kill him ten times over.
But Pain had no intention of simply standing still and accepting death.
Two black shapes shot out from beside the Deva Path.
The Asura Path and the Preta Path.
The Deva Path fell back at the same moment, buying himself distance — time he'd need to charge another Shinra Tensei.
Even though the distance he'd gained meant nothing to a speed like hers. She'd close it in the blink of an eye regardless.
The Asura Path reached the Hokage first, six thick arms tearing free of the black cloak with red clouds, an iron tail bristling with cold, sharp menace behind it.
Six arms reached for her, meaning to pin her in place and buy the Deva Path more time.
But even at full speed, the Hokage still had strength to spare. She twisted her body in midair and drove a kick straight into the Asura Path's chest.
She held nothing back on that kick.
In an instant, the Asura Path's entire body shattered apart, countless metallic components exploding outward in every direction.
A single kick, and that massive, towering body simply burst apart at the torso.
Against a gap in raw power this absolute, everything the Asura Path attempted was futile from the start.
Only the lower half of its body remained, sent skidding hundreds of meters away by the residual force of that same kick.
And then the Preta Path arrived, right on schedule.
A pair of arms closed around the Hokage in the brief instant between one motion and the next, catching her while her old momentum had spent itself and new momentum hadn't yet built.
The Asura Path had only ever been the decoy. Pinning the Hokage down with the Preta Path was Nagato's real objective.
Sealing Technique — Chakra Absorption Seal!
The Preta Path unleashed its signature ability.
The Hokage felt her chakra begin to drain, pulled out of her control, flowing straight toward the Preta Path.
"You like absorbing chakra, do you?"
The Hokage let out a cold laugh, and with a single flex of both arms, tore free of the Preta Path's grip entirely.
She twisted her body and appeared above the Preta Path, one hand pressed against its shoulder to steady her weight.
A single midair flip brought her behind it, and with her arm bent into an elbow strike, she drove it straight into its back.
A crisp, sickening crack reached her ears. Her expression didn't shift.
As the strongest medical shinobi in the shinobi world, she knew exactly what that sound meant — its spine had shattered under the blow.
Not just the spine. Every internal organ inside had been reduced to pulp in the same instant.
The so-called six Pains were nothing but the corpses of a handful of jōnin, repurposed as puppets.
To her—
Every single one of them was worthless.
Even having gone through consecutive fights against the Great Toad Sage and Hagoromo just yesterday, she was operating at barely sixty percent of her usual chakra.
To have any real chance of standing against her, you'd need a body like Obito's, forged in Steel Release itself.
Anything less, and getting caught within arm's reach meant certain death, with nowhere even to leave a corpse.
Or, alternatively, you'd need speed and reflexes at the level of Minato Namikaze, extreme enough to avoid any physical contact with her entirely.
But even someone like Minato would only be delaying the inevitable, in the end.
Absolute physical strength. Absolute power. Absolute speed.
That was the Hokage.
Even if Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki himself were restored to sixteen years old, he couldn't say with confidence that he'd beat this Fifth Hokage as she stood right now.
Having killed two Pain bodies within moments, the Hokage grabbed the corpse of the Preta Path and drove it forward, straight at the Deva Path, using it as a shield.
Meanwhile, the wreckage of the Asura Path — the pieces she'd kicked apart earlier — had all lifted off the water under the Deva Path's control.
Then launched, all at once, straight at the Hokage.
Countless fragments turned into rows of steel nails, screaming toward her — but every last one of them slammed into the Preta Path's corpse held in front of her instead, blooming into sprays of red as they struck.
Within a blink, the Preta Path she was carrying had become nothing more than a hollowed-out husk of shredded flesh.
"Moo!"
At that moment, the Naraka Path had finally located the Animal Path — still floating, paralyzed, atop the water after being crushed by the falling gates — and began healing it.
The instant it regained function, the Animal Path immediately activated the Summoning Jutsu.
The water buffalo, sent flying earlier and nowhere to be seen since, was summoned back into existence.
And not only that.
A giant bird, a rhinoceros, a crab, a wild dog, a lobster, a centipede, a chameleon — all summoned in the same instant.
Creatures of the air, land, and sea, all at once, converging together.
The scene looked, for a moment, almost like a zoo.
Except every one of these animals would have been far too enormous to actually belong in one.
"How boring."
Watching the massive beasts trampling across the waves toward her, the Hokage's emerald eyes flickered with something close to weariness.
A whetstone...
Thinking of the role Black Zetsu had cast her in, a cold smile curled at the corner of her mouth.
Then I'll break the blade.
A thread of gold flame flickered to life in her emerald eyes, unnoticed until it was already there.
She tossed the ruined Preta Path aside and turned her cold gaze on the first of the summoned creatures — the rhinoceros — barreling toward her.
Slowly, she raised her hand.
Through the rhinoceros's own eyes — through the Rinnegan's link — Nagato could see the shock reflected there.
One hand.
Pressed flat against the massive horn on the rhinoceros's head.
The Hokage didn't move. Not even a fraction.
The seawater beneath her churned violently as the rhinoceros strained with everything it had to shove her back.
But behind the Hokage now — there was nothing but a wall of perfect stillness. A Pure Land of calm.
"Done playing yet?"
She said, quiet, as though everything unfolding in front of her was simply the most natural thing in the world.
That pale, delicate hand — a young woman's hand — kept advancing, one small step at a time.
Slender fingers, pale white, veins faintly visible beneath the skin on the back of her hand. A hand that, by all rights, should have belonged to someone fragile enough to want protecting.
And yet, under that single hand, a beast dozens of meters tall was being forced backward, one step at a time, over and over.
No matter how it struggled, no matter how it raged, in front of this Hokage it might as well have been a kitten baring its teeth at her.
At the same moment, the water buffalo, the wild dog, the centipede, the lobster, and the giant bird had all closed in, surrounding her completely, attacking from every direction at once.
Sky. Beneath the waves. All four directions at once.
Nowhere to dodge to. Nowhere to retreat.
Facing a situation like that, the Hokage's expression remained as calm and undisturbed as a lake beneath a starry, windless sky.
Flame kindled across the delicate, boneless-looking hand still pressed against the rhinoceros.
Gold. Chakra flame.
Which meant what came next was—
"Yang Release — Mountain Lord."
The Hokage said it plainly.
A golden, divine tiger appeared over the water's surface, and then vanished, in what felt like the same instant.
Everything happened so fast it might as well have been an illusion.
And in that instant, the rhinoceros in front of the Hokage was simply — gone.
No.
It hadn't vanished.
It had been scattered — across the entire, endless surface of the ocean.
Blood and shredded flesh dyed the water red as far as the eye could see.
A thick, overpowering scent of blood filled the air above and below the waves.
Under normal circumstances, blood that concentrated should have drawn every shark for miles.
But around the Hokage, aside from the creatures the Animal Path had summoned, there wasn't a shark to be found. Not even a single small fish.
Nothing but slow-moving shellfish and sea urchins remained anywhere near this stretch of ocean.
Because—
Yang Release.
A raw, overwhelming disparity in the very concept of life force itself, driving every creature sensitive enough to detect danger to flee this water in a blind panic.
The Deva Path stared at the pink-haired figure ahead of him, unable to believe what he was seeing, his body momentarily frozen in place.
And by now, the remaining summoned beasts had all closed in around her.
The gold flame wrapped around the Hokage's hand had spread now across her entire body.
...
Through the lens of the Rinnegan, one by one, each summoned creature fell beneath her fists.
This was — pure, unadorned taijutsu, in its most distilled form.
And now, the Hokage was coming for him.
She took a single step forward, and the ocean's surface beneath her feet detonated.
Like a bomb had gone off in the water itself.
The Deva Path understood, by now, with total clarity: if he didn't do something drastic, there was no version of this fight he could win.
And in the next instant, through the Rinnegan's sight, the Hokage had already closed the distance completely.
A fist landed on flesh.
But this flesh belonged to — the Animal Path.
At the critical moment, the Animal Path had used the Reverse Summoning Jutsu to summon itself directly in front of the Deva Path — and not just the Animal Path. The Naraka Path arrived right behind it.
Two Pain bodies, both thrown directly in front of the Deva Path as a shield.
Under the sheer, overwhelming force of her blow, all three Pain bodies were sent skidding rapidly across the water toward the deep ocean.
And the Hokage followed, close behind, without pause.
At that moment, mid-flight, the Deva Path let out a furious shout.
"SUPER SHINRA TENSEI!"
This time, his Shinra Tensei didn't just target the Hokage — it enveloped the Animal Path and the Naraka Path along with her, all at once.
Given the overwhelming gap in power between them, Pain understood clearly: even if he somehow managed to preserve the Naraka Path afterward, it wouldn't matter.
Because the Naraka Path alone stood no chance whatsoever against this Hokage. There was no way she'd give him the time he'd need to use it to repair the others.
Which meant, right now—
Everything, on one final throw.
An invisible, savage repulsive force erupted across the ocean's surface.
This Shinra Tensei was beyond anything imaginable — like a nuclear bomb detonating across the vast, endless sea.
An invisible storm of wind and wave radiated outward from the Deva Path in every direction.
A massive, gaping crater opened up in the ocean's surface.
As if some god had scooped out a chunk of the sea itself with a giant spoon, leaving behind a wound that could never quite heal back into place.
The force of that single Shinra Tensei sent an enormous tsunami rolling outward in every direction.
Even as strong as the Hokage was, the blast was enough to force her back, all the way to its outer edge.
But—
That was all it accomplished.
The Deva Path hovered in midair, breathing hard, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the Hokage in the distance.
Below him, the ocean's surface was already slowly closing back over the crater.
"Impossible... how is it possible that even a Shinra Tensei on this scale couldn't..."
The Deva Path stared at the Hokage — the sun-pattern still marked across her forehead, standing there completely unharmed — and for the first time, something flickered across his usually cold, indifferent Rinnegan eyes.
The Hokage recognized exactly what that flicker was.
Helplessness. Powerlessness.
Or, put another way — despair.
A being who'd always called himself a god, always believed himself unbeatable, now watching that very arrogance — that faith in the Rinnegan's own invincibility — get shattered outright by an enemy who hadn't even needed to try particularly hard.
Pain was strong. Genuinely strong. Just not strong enough.
If it had been Nagato himself, in his own body, healthy and whole, facing her — that might have given the Hokage some real trouble.
But Pain, as he currently was—
"I don't like the rain."
"It's like the snow back in the Land of Frost. Always gray. Always gloomy."
"I really don't like it."
The Hokage looked up at the sky. As the Deva Path moved, the range of the Toad Rain — Free Motion technique moved with him.
The sky stayed heavy and overcast above her, rain mixing with seawater as it fell across her upturned face.
(End of chapter.)
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