The forces of Kumogakure had now swelled past twenty thousand shinobi. Led by Killer Bee, Burubi, and Troy, their elite squads had seized control of the battlefield, overwhelming the faltering forces of Iwagakure.

The assault on the war’s front lines surged forward once again.

Day three of the bloodshed had begun.

At the heart of the chaos stood a figure cloaked in radiant white energy, markings glowing across his skin like divine etchings.

Gripped tightly in his hand was a blade passed down through generations—an heirloom of the Hatake clan.

That man was the one known as “Konoha’s White Fang,” Hatake Sakumo—his presence like a war god descended from the heavens!

— — —

Watching Sakumo effortlessly cut down legions of shinobi with a single strike, the Third Raikage, A, could only grit his teeth, muttering under his breath.

“Konoha… that damn village just keeps producing monsters.”

With a sudden crack of thunder, the Raikage shot forward and landed in front of Onoki, the Tsuchikage.

“Hey, old man—can you still fight, or are you about to keel over?” he growled, narrowing his eyes toward Onoki’s heavily bandaged abdomen, where blood still soaked through.

“Hmph,” Onoki snorted, offering no clear answer.

He didn’t need to. He was still trying to gauge Kumogakure’s motives. Why had they suddenly entered the battlefield?

Seeing Onoki remain silent, the Raikage clenched his fists and raised his voice.

“Listen, Onoki. You don’t know how damn lucky you guys are! No—scratch that. You’re cursed with luck! I didn’t come here to save your miserable army—I came to wipe you all out!”

“Seriously, what the hell is wrong with Konoha?! First Hashirama Senju, then Madara Uchiha, Tobirama Senju… now Hatake Sakumo?! Another freak of nature! If I don’t take him down today, Konoha will be trampling over all of us tomorrow!”

“I’m not letting that happen again! You’ve got two options, Onoki: Join me, help me kill this White Fang bastard, and we march on Konoha together… or I kill you right here and now!”

Faced with Raikage’s thunderous demands, Onoki was momentarily frozen. But after a deep breath, he clenched his jaw and nodded, face flushed with frustration.

Not because he was afraid of A.

Even injured, Onoki could still fly using his Earth Release: Light-Weight Rock Technique. As long as he didn’t get careless, there was no way Raikage could touch him.

No, what terrified him… was Konoha.

More specifically—Hatake Sakumo!

Everything the Raikage said struck right at the heart of Onoki’s fears.

Konoha’s power was growing out of control.

The Land of Fire already owned the most fertile territories in the entire continent, and now they had an endless stream of talented young shinobi rising to the surface.

And Hatake Sakumo? That man was an anomaly.

He wasn’t just a powerful ninja. He was a battlefield nightmare—an entire army embodied in a single warrior.

Just one man… holding off ten thousand, and winning.

It was as if Hashirama Senju had been reincarnated.

And the worst part? Sakumo wasn’t the only threat.

Konoha’s next generation was just as monstrous.

Tsunade. Orochimaru. Jiraiya. Dan Kato. And… Hatake Kyūjō.

(Yes, Kyūjō. Let’s just forget about that “Tachibana” alias—nobody liked it anyway.)

The first four had already made a name for themselves in the Second Great Ninja War. Onoki kept a close eye on all of them.

As for Kyūjō… even though he only took on a few S-rank missions—executed with reckless brutality—intelligence reports from other villages estimated his strength to already be near Kage-level.

Compared to that, Iwagakure’s younger generation looked… pitiful.

Even when compared to the other villages, they were lagging behind!

There were just too many Kage-class fighters coming out of Konoha.

And let’s not forget the veterans: Hiruzen Sarutobi. Danzo Shimura. The Uchiha and Hyuga clans.

And now, a man beyond Kage-level had emerged—Hatake Sakumo.

If they ever had to face Konoha in a direct war…

Who could stop them?

What if one day, Konoha decided to dominate the entire shinobi world?

What if Sakumo led the charge?

And hadn’t their own forces already crossed the line in this war? If they didn’t stop Sakumo now… would he one day return for vengeance?

No. The only logical move was to cooperate with the Raikage, unleash the full might of both Iwagakure and Kumogakure, and eliminate Sakumo before it was too late!

— — —

The Third Raikage bellowed: “Lightning Release Chakra Mode!”

The Third Tsuchikage followed suit: “Dust Release: Detachment of the Primitive World Technique!”

As the Raikage shot forward like a bolt of thunder and Onoki hovered above, ready to release a beam of vaporizing chakra, even Sakumo—now deep in “war god” mode—began to feel the pressure.

He had to admit something to himself.

Yes, he was strong.

But his fighting style was still that of an assassin—deadly in close combat, but lacking in large-scale destruction or heavy defense.

He wasn’t like Hashirama, who could summon Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands and level an entire battlefield with a single move.

And now, he was up against two of the Five Great Villages.

More than ten elite shinobi.

Three days and three nights of nonstop battle.

His body was reaching its limit.

Even his Sage Chakra was running dry.

Sakumo took a deep breath and gripped his clan’s ancestral blade tightly.

His expression calmed.

Thankfully… his younger brother had given him a “gift.”

He still had one final trump card.

Gathering the last of his Sage Chakra, he poured it all into his blade. Lightning began crackling around him like divine judgment. Then he slashed out in a wide arc, cutting through the sky itself.

“Secret Ninja Art: Heaven’s Thunder Descends, All Shall Be Severed!”

“Sage Art – Thunderstrike Slash!”

A roar of lightning enveloped the battlefield—an area nearly one kilometer wide.

Then, a single crescent-shaped wave erupted from Sakumo’s position, accompanied by a thunderclap that shook the heavens.

BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!

The thunder rumbled for nearly a full minute. When the dust finally cleared, all eyes turned toward the epicenter—

—but Sakumo’s figure was gone.

The entire area had been reduced to charred earth. Severed limbs and scorched corpses lay scattered everywhere. The joint army of Kumogakure and Iwagakure had suffered catastrophic losses.

But the most horrifying sight was yet to come.

At the center of the crater stood… half a body.

A torso sliced from the waist up—yet still standing upright, unmoving.

The closest person to the blast—

Was the Third Raikage.

“R-Raikage-sama… h-he’s… he’s dead?!” a young Kumogakure ninja cried out, voice trembling.

And with that scream, the entire battlefield seemed to freeze.

A Kage had fallen.

Yet somewhere above, Onoki let out a silent breath of relief.

Thank goodness…

The Raikage’s death hadn’t been in vain.

At the very last moment, before Sakumo could summon his animal companion, Onoki’s Dust Release had landed squarely.

The blast didn’t fully disintegrate him—Sakumo had moved just in time—but it succeeded in erasing his entire right arm… along with the blade that had slaughtered tens of thousands.

For a swordsman-type shinobi like Sakumo, losing his dominant arm was a critical blow.

Onoki estimated that Sakumo would no longer be able to maintain his status as someone beyond Kage-level. At best, even after full recovery, he might just return as a regular Kage-class ninja.

And that was good enough.

Far better than dealing with a second coming of Hashirama Senju.

Although Iwagakure had suffered tremendous losses in the battle, Onoki knew—this was not the time to retreat.

He slowly descended from the sky, landing beside the corpse of the Third Raikage, and faced the surviving elite shinobi of Kumogakure—including Killer Bee himself.

His expression hardened.

“This is no time to mourn!” Onoki’s voice rang out. “I severed the White Fang’s arm—but he’s still alive. If you truly seek revenge… if Kumogakure still burns to crush Konoha… then return home for now. Take your Raikage’s body. Choose your next leader.”

“I give you one month.”

“In one month, I’ll gather every ounce of hatred in the shinobi world—every nation that despises Konoha. Together, we’ll bring it down. That towering mountain pressing down on all of us!”

— — —

This legendary battle—one that shook the entire shinobi world—was only fully understood by Konohagakure three days later, when an official report finally arrived.

And the moment he heard the news, Hatake Kyūjō didn’t waste even a second.

Without hesitation, he unsealed a high-level summoning scroll from his pack and instantly teleported from the village to Mount Myōboku.

Utilizing his sensory technique—Infinity Perception—Kyūjō located his older brother, Hatake Sakumo, in the blink of an eye.

Without slowing down, he leapt into the sky, sprinting across the air itself, and arrived in less than a minute.

There, he found Sakumo seated calmly with his shoulder bandaged, casually conversing with an old toad named Fukasaku.

But just as the conversation continued, a shadow descended from the sky—Kyūjō landed silently, face blank and unreadable.

“Nii-san, would you be willing to take on the role of Hokage… at least for the next few years?”

Sakumo blinked, caught off guard by the sudden request. He stared up at his younger brother, visibly puzzled.

“Kyūjō… what are you talking about? The Third Hokage is still in good health, isn’t he? Besides, you already know—I’ve never had any interest in becoming Hokage. And now that I’ve lost an arm… how could I even qualify?”

But mid-sentence, he froze.

His eyes widened.

“…Wait. You can fly?!”

Kyūjō simply shook his head and chuckled lightly.

There was no longer any reason to hide.

It was time to show everything.

He wasn’t just a gifted shinobi.

He was the God of the Shinobi World—the last of his kind.

Slowly, Kyūjō released the Conqueror’s Haki—Haoshoku Haki—that had been tightly sealed within his body all this time.

A pressureless, invisible force swept outward like a tidal wave from his core, rippling across the entirety of Mount Myōboku.

Within moments, the ground trembled violently.

Even the clouds hovering within a hundred-kilometer radius were blown away—erased completely from the sky.

All the toads—large and small—across the mountain were instantly slammed to the ground by the immense pressure, unable to move a single muscle. The only exception was Great Toad Sage Gamamaru, who had only just awakened from his slumber.

Rising once more into the sky, Kyūjō hovered a hundred meters above the earth.

His voice, calm yet absolute, echoed across the mountain.

“Nii-san, want to fly too? From today onward… it’s no longer just a dream.”

“As for your arm… I can’t heal it. But there’s someone who might.”

“And regarding the Third Hokage’s early retirement… I’ll handle that. The rest, I leave to you, Nii-san.”

As he stood aloft in mid-air—like he was walking upon invisible steps—Sakumo could only stare up, unable to move.

A single thought echoed through his mind:

‘Our father… Hatake Fūka… how on earth did he give birth to someone like Kyūjō…?’

— — —

With his resolve set, Kyūjō wasted no time.

He immediately brought Sakumo back to Konohagakure.

The moment they returned, Kyūjō activated Infinity Perception, expanding his consciousness outward to search for a specific individual.

Orochimaru.

Because even with all his power… Kyūjō couldn’t restore his brother’s lost arm.

Not even Tsunade, the most legendary medical ninja alive, possessed the ability to regenerate a completely severed limb.

But Orochimaru could.

— — —

In a damp, narrow, pitch-black corridor deep underground, Kyūjō stood at the entrance, frowning in discomfort.

Sure, he could’ve just transformed himself or shrunk his body to squeeze in… but everything about this place made his skin crawl.

After a moment of consideration, he raised his voice.

“Orochimaru. Come out. I need your help.”

Meanwhile, deep inside the hidden lab, Orochimaru’s face had turned ghostly pale, his entire body drenched in cold sweat.

He stared toward the sound of the voice from above, panic etched into every feature.

He knew exactly who it was.

Hatake Kyūjō.

And who was Hatake Kyūjō?

Captain of the ANBU’s elite division. The one person no one—absolutely no one—should ever piss off.

And what was Orochimaru doing right now?

Tinkering with human corpses.

Conducting forbidden experiments.

This underground hideout was supposed to be completely hidden from the world… yet ANBU had still found it.

Naturally, Orochimaru was panicking.

But in truth, he was overthinking it.

Kyūjō didn’t care about his experiments at all.

Not one bit.

From Kyūjō’s modern perspective, dissecting corpses for scientific research wasn’t horrifying—as long as you didn’t go around killing people randomly.

As long as Orochimaru didn’t snap and start massacring civilians, Kyūjō had no reason to intervene.

On the contrary… Orochimaru was a rare, irreplaceable genius.

A true talent worth protecting.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

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