Simultaneously, as the war outside had begun, Shanks was sitting calmly inside his office.
However, unlike his usual appearance, he was not wearing the casual clothes he normally preferred—his kimono with a haori draped over it.
Instead, he was dressed in the clothes he typically wore whenever he personally entered battle.
A white shirt.
Black pants.
And over them, his long black overcoat bearing the Uzumaki symbol on its back.
The atmosphere inside the office was unnaturally quiet.
Shanks had already expected that an attack inside Uzushiogakure itself would eventually happen. Because of that, even while the external battlefield raged outside the village, his focus had never completely relaxed.
Then—
Suddenly, multiple alarms began ringing throughout Uzushiogakure.
The sharp warning sounds echoed across the entire village.
Clearly, invaders had breached the barriers of Uzushiogakure.
The moment the alarms rang, Shanks slowly snapped his eyes open.
An invisible pressure spread from him instantly as he activated God's View to locate the invaders.
And soon enough—
He found them.
From different locations throughout Uzushiogakure, invaders suddenly began emerging from underground.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The ground cracked apart in streets, alleys, and hidden corners as hundreds of figures surfaced from beneath the earth.
These were a special unit of the Hashirama cell-modified ninjas. Unlike the others, these ones were defective subjects that had somehow survived instead of dying completely.
Or rather—
Their original bodies no longer truly belonged to them.
Different White Zetsu had taken over those bodies like parasites, controlling them from within.
Around five hundred of them appeared throughout Uzushiogakure simultaneously.
The moment these White Zetsu-controlled bodies emerged, the Shadow Guards who had already been instructed to remain alert for such surprise attacks immediately moved into action. Hidden presences began appearing across rooftops and streets while weapons flashed under the dim light.
They had clearly been prepared for this exact scenario.
But before the Shadow Guards could fully engage—
The entire sky suddenly darkened.
Rumble...
Thunder roared continuously above Uzushiogakure.
A terrifying pressure descended upon the entire village like the wrath of a god.
Inside his office, Shanks had activated his Conqueror's Haki—
Abyssal Domain.
The moment the ability spread across Uzushiogakure, the atmosphere itself became suffocating.
It was as though the world had fallen into darkness.
Among the invading White Zetsu, those whose willpower was too weak—nearly three hundred of them—were instantly overwhelmed by the terrifying force of the Conqueror's Haki.
But the Abyssal Domain version was far more horrifying than ordinary Conqueror's Haki.
This ability did not merely knock enemies unconscious.
It attacked the spirit itself.
The affected White Zetsu suddenly froze in place as fear overtook their expressions. Their bodies trembled violently before many of them collapsed onto the ground screaming.
Inside their minds, terrifying illusions had manifested.
Illusions of the things they feared the most.
Because many of these White Zetsu had inherited fragments of memories from the bodies they parasitically possessed, their fears varied wildly from one another.
Some suddenly saw horrifying figures from their stolen memories approaching them through endless darkness.
Others saw monstrous tentacles dragging them into an abyss.
Some witnessed themselves being devoured alive.
And for a few whose White Zetsu consciousness had become more dominant than the host body itself, the fear became even more primal and incomprehensible. They saw Kaguya,,, Ten-tails.
The illusions directly assaulted their spirits.
Many White Zetsu immediately collapsed unconscious foaming at the mouth, while others screamed and clawed at themselves in madness, unable to distinguish illusion from reality anymore.
Meanwhile, thunder continued rumbling endlessly above Uzushiogakure as Shanks calmly sat within his office, his gaze cold and completely emotionless.
But things were only about to get even worse for the invaders.
The White Zetsu who had fallen under Shanks' Conqueror's Haki had unknowingly been marked by it.
And the next moment—
CRACKKKK!!!
The sky above Uzushiogakure exploded with deafening thunder.
Immediately, hundreds of bolts of lightning descended from the darkened heavens.
Their number was nearly identical to the number of White Zetsu affected by the Conqueror's Haki—around three hundred.
The lightning struck them directly.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Blinding pillars of lightning crashed across different parts of Uzushiogakure with terrifying precision, completely engulfing the marked White Zetsu. The streets trembled violently while buildings shook from the sheer force of the impact.
This was another one of Shanks' Conqueror's Haki techniques—
Heaven's Judgment.
The affected White Zetsu did not even have time to react properly before being struck. Their bodies convulsed violently under the lightning before being burned black almost instantly, turning into charred corpses and ash.
However, the lightning did not behave identically for everyone.
Some White Zetsu were killed by the very first strike, causing the lightning to immediately move toward another target instead of wasting additional attacks on a corpse.
Some stronger or more resilient modified bodies somehow survived the first or even second strike.
But Heaven's Judgment did not stop.
A third bolt would descend.
And if they still survived—
A fourth.
The dark heavens continued roaring endlessly as divine punishment rained down across Uzushiogakure.
Soon enough, every single one of those three hundred affected invaders had been completely annihilated.
And all of this—
From the activation of Abyssal Domain to the end of Heaven's Judgment—
Had happened within less than two or three minutes.
Just like that, the invaders' numbers had already been reduced by more than half.
The remaining two hundred White Zetsu-controlled ninjas did not flee or hesitate. Their expressions remained unnaturally blank as they continued carrying out their mission without fear.
Their objective was simple.
Attack the people of Uzushiogakure.
Some rushed toward civilian districts.
Others targeted important buildings and strategic areas.
But before they could advance far—
They were intercepted.
The Shadow Guards moved.
And these were not ordinary shinobi.
They were elites among elites within Uzushiogakure.
Silent figures blurred across rooftops and streets with terrifying speed. The moment a White Zetsu noticed one of them, death had already arrived.
Slash.
Heads flew into the air before bodies could even react.
Some Shadow Guards killed their opponents within a single move.
Others needed only two.
Even when the White Zetsu attempted using Wood Release, it made little difference. A few Shadow Guards directly countered with their own Wood Release techniques, suppressing the attacks effortlessly.
Others simply relied on their overwhelming speed combined with Haki.
Black lightning-like Haki coated blades and fists as the Shadow Guards tore through the invaders mercilessly. Wood constructs were sliced apart instantly while the White Zetsu themselves were butchered before they could properly retaliate.
The streets of Uzushiogakure quickly became battlefields filled with shattered wood, burned corpses, and pools of blood.
And thus—
The complete extermination of the White Zetsu invaders inside Uzushiogakure had begun.
Shanks slowly stood up from his seat.
The atmosphere inside the office remained calm despite the chaos consuming the village outside. He casually stretched his shoulders before slightly twisting his neck from side to side.
Crack. Crack.
Soft cracking sounds echoed from his body as though even his muscles had been asleep for too long.
A faint smile appeared on Shanks' face.
Then, through telepathy, his voice directly reached Guy and Antares.
"I'm going to deal with another force. It seems they're being led by someone fairly powerful."
Shanks lightly rolled his shoulders once more as the pressure around him subtly increased.
"Their numbers should at least be enough for me to warm up and have a decent battle. I haven't fought personally for quite a long time."
For a brief moment, a dangerous glint flashed within his eyes.
"And if I stay idle for even longer, I might start getting rusty."
At the very end, Shanks let out a small chuckle.
The next instant—
He disappeared from his office.
Not even a trace of his presence remained behind.
Meanwhile, within the Land of Fire, a massive force was advancing at terrifying speed.
Around ten thousand White Zetsu moved across the terrain like an endless pale tide, while behind and among them marched nearly two thousand modified shinobi enhanced with Hashirama cells. Their movement shook the surrounding ground slightly as they rapidly closed in toward the shoreline of the Land of Fire.
From there, they intended to directly launch an assault toward the shores of the Land of Uzumaki.
Leading this enormous army was the reanimated Second Tsuchikage.
The atmosphere around the battlefield was eerily heavy as the army continued moving forward in organized formation.
But suddenly—
The Second Tsuchikage's expression slightly changed.
Right in front of him, space itself began fluctuating unnaturally.
A strange mark resembling a king's crown suddenly appeared floating in mid-air. The air around it distorted violently as ripples spread outward like cracks across reality itself.
The Second Tsuchikage immediately stopped moving.
And the moment he stopped, the modified shinobi behind him also halted.
Soon, even the countless White Zetsu advancing from the rear gradually came to a stop as confusion spread through their ranks.
The crown-like mark continued glowing ominously for a brief moment.
Then—
It disappeared.
And standing in its place was a single man.
A man who appeared to be somewhere in his thirties.
His red hair flowed gently in the wind while his long black overcoat swayed behind him. Beneath it, he wore a white shirt and black pants, and at his left side rested a sheathed sword.
He simply stood there calmly in front of an army numbering over twelve thousand.
As though their existence meant absolutely nothing to him.
Shanks Uzumaki.
The Uzukage of Uzushiogakure.
----
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