"Yagokoro Omikane."
Uchiha Sogetsu's voice carried cleanly over the ruined lake.
His extended finger drifted forward, as if guided by something unseen, and tapped the surface of the onrushing Tailed Beast Bomb.
Time seemed to stop.
"Eh?"
White Zetsu's eyes went wide.
The Tailed Beast Bomb… stopped.
It just hung there in front of Sogetsu's fingertip, a several-meter-wide sphere of compressed chakra frozen in midair, as if one finger were enough to hold it in place.
The sight alone was absurd.
What did he do…?
White Zetsu couldn't see the mechanism, but it didn't need to. Sogetsu had definitely used his Mangekyō. The bomb's unstable shell should have detonated the moment anything interfered with it—yet it sat there, docile.
White Zetsu had never heard of any eye technique that could do that.
"How… how is that possible?!"
Raiga stared, veins standing out around his reddened eyes.
He couldn't accept it.
All that Jūzō had risked—everything he'd bet on that Tailed Beast Bomb, the opening he'd bought with his own life—
—and this was the result?
"It's simple enough," Sogetsu said.
The bomb's surface reflected in his Mangekyō, where countless pinpricks of light seemed to move and shift.
Within his gaze, the Tailed Beast Bomb wasn't just a sphere anymore. Its structure unraveled—chakra ratios, mixing layers, the key point where Yin and Yang intersected, the pattern of compression. Every hidden detail of its formation lay exposed to him like a diagram stripped of its casing.
"The weak point is… here."
He tapped a specific spot with his fingertip.
Pop.
The sound was almost dainty.
The massive, several-meter-wide Tailed Beast Bomb didn't explode.
It simply… came apart.
Like a soap bubble pricked by a needle, it collapsed silently, the black shell dissolving outward into loose chakra that dispersed into the air without so much as singeing the ice.
All that remained was the faint shimmer of released energy, fading quickly.
That was the power of his right eye's Mangekyō technique—Yagokoro Omikane.
An eye that could see through to the core of all things, grasping their underlying structure, then either reconstruct or dismantle any phenomenon it truly understood.
Of course, an ability like that came with a price.
Every time he used it to analyze and deconstruct something new, his eye burned through Mangekyō power at a terrifying rate. Without restraint, ten serious uses would be enough to push the eye right to the brink of blindness.
And that was just for things on his level.
Try to unravel something far beyond his own existence—something on a much higher plane—and the chances of success plummeted. The power expenditure, however, shot up. In the worst case, a single overreach could scorch his Mangekyō out permanently.
"Phew… better not make a habit of that."
Sogetsu let the red pinwheel fade, his eyes returning to their normal black as he pressed his fingers lightly over his right eyelid. A dull ache throbbed behind it.
"The drain's excessive. Deconstructing just one Tailed Beast Bomb cost almost a tenth of my eye power. If I didn't have Hashirama's cells stabilizing things, a few more uses like that and I'd be blind already."
High risk, high reward.
Even so, he didn't like using it.
Compared to the right eye, his left Mangekyō fit his style better.
Unfortunately, that left-eye technique was currently occupied elsewhere, beyond his reach. If it hadn't been, he'd have used that instead.
"What… did you do?"
Raiga's voice broke out of him in a hoarse shout.
He couldn't wrap his head around what he'd just seen.
"You saw it," Sogetsu replied mildly, turning halfway toward him. "I returned the Tailed Beast Bomb to chakra."
"I know that!" Raiga's temples throbbed. He stared at Sogetsu like he was looking at something that shouldn't exist. He couldn't even tell if what he felt was fear, fury, or both.
"I'm asking how. What kind of jutsu can revert a completed technique back into raw chakra?!"
He'd seen strange ninjutsu before. Plenty of them. But nothing like this.
If a technique really existed that could simply… undo ninjutsu after they were fully formed—strip them back to their components and erase their effect—
That wasn't just strong.
That was terrifying.
This has to reach the Mizukage, Raiga realized, a full-body shudder running through him.
If Lord Mizukage doesn't know about this… he really could be assassinated.
The thought had barely taken shape when a blur flickered in front of him.
Sogetsu vanished—
—and appeared right in front of Raiga.
"Since you've seen my eye technique," he said calmly, "I can't let you walk away."
His hand brushed Raiga's neck almost gently.
Shff.
A thin red line opened across his throat.
Raiga's fingers flew to the wound too late, eyes going round, breath cutting off in a wet gasp. Blood bubbled between his fingers and poured out, hot and fast.
He stumbled back a step. Two.
Mouth opening, closing.
No sound but a rough, broken rasp—his severed windpipe leaking air and blood in equal measure.
He reached out, trying to grab the man in front of him. His hand swung through empty air a few times and then fell.
The light went out behind his eyes.
Raiga hit the ice with a heavy thud.
With his death, the current generation of Kirigakure's Seven Ninja Swordsmen was gone.
"Raiga-sama!!!"
The Mist ANBU still standing screamed his name.
Today, in the space of a single battle, they'd watched two of the Seven fall.
From this day on, there would be no Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist—only broken blades and stories.
"Now," Sogetsu said, turning his gaze on them, "it's your turn."
He walked toward them at an unhurried pace.
For shinobi of ANBU caliber, they were not weak. Against him, that barely mattered.
He blurred, reappearing at one man's side. Fingers snapped around a throat.
A twist.
Crack.
One.
Then another.
And another.
By the time the last ANBU was in his grip, pinned by one hand around the neck, there was nowhere left to run.
"S-stop—!"
A roar came from behind him, raw with fury.
"Wa—Water—"
The ANBU in Sogetsu's hand managed to turn his head just enough to see a distant figure. Hope lit his eyes for a heartbeat.
Sogetsu didn't even glance back. He tightened his grip and twisted.
Crack.
The faint glow of hope went out as his neck broke cleanly.
He sagged in Sogetsu's grasp, eyes still open and reaching for someone who'd arrived a few seconds too late.
Sogetsu let the body drop with a casual flick, dusting his palm against his cloak as he turned.
He adjusted his glasses with one fingertip and offered a small, polite smile.
"Ah. Sorry. You spoke a bit too slowly," he said. "I didn't quite catch it. My hand slipped and I snapped his neck."
"Uchiha Sogetsu!"
The voice that answered was deep and vicious.
The man who stepped onto the ice had long black hair whipping in the wind and eyes like dark steel. Chakra rolled off him in oppressive waves; his presence hit like a storm front.
"So that's you," Sogetsu said lightly. "Third Mizukage, I presume?"
"Good," the Mizukage said. "Very good."
His gaze swept the battlefield—the shattered lake, the mangled ice, the bodies. Jūzō. Raiga. The ANBU.
His already-harsh features seemed to sink further into shadow. Rage flooded his eyes, simmering under tight control.
"Look at what you've done." His voice dropped to a killing chill. "Uchiha Sogetsu—I'll kill you here and bury you with them."
"Of course."
Sogetsu's smile didn't waver.
"Though first," he added, lifting a hand and bending his fingers in a taunting little beckon, "you'll have to prove you can."
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