Rain hammered the metal roof of the Amegakure arena, turning every surface slick and echoing each impact. On the benches, Shizune gripped her cloak tighter, watching the center stage where Tiel and the Raikage squared off.
"Lady Tsunade," Shizune whispered, "you need to stop this fight. Tiel will be powerless against the Raikage."
Tsunade didn't blink. "Shizune… the Raikage should be the one worrying."
Shizune froze. "Eh? What do you mean?"
Tsunade leaned forward, eyes narrowing with a dangerous, amused spark. "Tiel is faster than Minato. And to be honest… I also want to fight him."
Shizune slapped both hands over her mouth. "Tsunade-sama! You'll make the situation worse!"
"Or better," Tsunade muttered. "Tiel's ninjutsu is the most unique I've ever seen. No hand seals. Space-time movement like Minato—but he doesn't need marked kunai. he can go anywhere he wants. Instantly."
Meanwhile in the arena, the Raikage grinned, lightning crawling across his fists like hungry serpents.
"Tiel," A the raikage announced, cracking his knuckles, "if I win this, you join Kumogakure."
Naruto tilted his head. "Because you want a personal meatbag to punch whenever someone reminds you of Minato?"
A the raikage snorted. "Wrong. You'll be my D."
Naruto blinked. "...D?"
A the raikage jabbed a thumb into his own chest. "I'm A. Killer B is B. You—Tiel—you'll be D. My new junior. We'll form the strongest unit alive."
Naruto's grin stretched slow, amused. The brown-haired guy who loves family, pride, and punching problems straight into the ground.
He rolled his shoulders. " You want a trio."
A the raikage smirked, lightning crawling brighter across his body. "Bonus if I can make it a trio. The more people who can keep up with me, the stronger my village becomes."
Naruto lifted Dainsleif, its edge humming with a wrongness that didn't belong in this world. "I'm afraid it'll be the opposite. You can't keep up with me."
A the raikage was already behind him. The arena floor cracked under the speed of the Raikage's movement, blue raiton surging around his frame like a living thunder god.
"You talk too much, Tiel." A's arm whipped out. "Raigyaku Suihei!"
A the raikage backhanded horizontal chop—simple, brutal, fast enough to tear the air into a shockwave.
Naruto didn't dodge. He smiled. "Spatial rupture."
The world split. Jagged black tears ripped open mid-swing—thin, crescent slashes like fractures in the air itself. They carved across the arena in layered arcs, each one bending reality like paper.
A twisted away with pure instinct, lightning screaming across his limbs as he barely cleared the first three ruptures. A fourth cut kissed his elbow—shallow, but enough to slice the armor clean and draw a thin line of blood.
A the raikage stumbled back, eyes wide.
"My raiton that covered my skin blocks most ninjutsu. How did your slash cut through it?" His tone was less anger and more shock.
Naruto lowered the blade, golden eye gleaming. "I cut space. If the space is damaged, your armor doesn't matter. what defense you have—if the boundary breaks, so do you."
A's jaw tightened. Offensive use of space–time ninjutsu… Minato only used it for speed. But Tiel—he's using it for direct attack. That—
Naruto casually finished the thought. "And that makes my attacks almost undodgeable. So, like what I said to Tobi… I'll say it to you now. Do you want to continue? Because your raiton doesn't have the strength to pierce space."
A didn't hesitate. "I'll gamble, then," he growled. Blue lightning exploded outward, crackling in layers across his skin. "Close range!"
He blitzed forward—not with finesse, but with raw, crushing power—aiming to smash through Naruto before another spatial tear could form.
Naruto swung Dainsleif upward.
A struck downward with his bare hand. The impact erupted like thunder, the entire arena ringing as the Raikage's palm met the flat of Dainsleif's bone-forged edge. Sparks of raiton burst against the warped magic residue in the blade. The ground beneath both fighters cratered from the collision pressure.
A's teeth gritted. "If you can't swing your sword properly— you can't build momentum for your space cut technique —you'll be in deep trouble."
Naruto smiled. "I guess so. After all… this sword is made of bone."
What followed was not Naruto toying with a weaker opponent. It was a dead-even collision of monsters.
A the raikage slammed forward, fists like meteor hammers, every blow wrapped in compressed lightning. Naruto met him step for step—parrying, sidestepping, slicing micro-tears into the air for defensive displacement. Every time Dainsleif carved the world, A forced his body through the distortion with brute chakra reinforcement, skin burning from the proximity.
A the raikage hammered Naruto's guard—one strike, two, a dozen—and Naruto absorbed the force, posture sliding back only a fraction each time. Naruto countered with spatial tears that carved trenches into the steel arena floor, and A dodged by micrometers, hair singed, lightning flickering violently around him.
Both of them felt it. Stalemate.
A the raikage wasn't as fast as Minato—but his raw physical speed, added to Lightning Release Mode, kept him just ahead of Naruto's lethal slashes. Naruto wasn't being overwhelmed, but for the first time in this journey, he wasn't dominating either. Every spatial rupture required timing. Every calculated swing was met by the Raikage's overwhelming force.
Naruto stepped forward, bone sword humming.
A the raikage stepped forward, lightning exploding.
The two forces collided again—this time sending a shockwave that rattled the entire village. On the benches, Tsunade's drink spilled. Shizune grabbed the railing..
A the raikage smirked through the strain. "You feel it, don't you?"
Naruto's expression stayed calm, but there was a spark behind the eye.
"Yes," he said. "You're a pain in the ass. Strong enough that my casual swings won't cut space in time."
A's the raikage muscles coiled, every fiber of him buzzing with murderous voltage. Lightning thickened around his body until he looked more like a thunderbolt than a man.
"And you—aren't like any shinobi I've ever fought."
He clenched his fists. A shadow crossed his eyes—sadness, resolve, duty. "But sorry, Tiel… your ninjutsu is too good. Too dangerous. If someone guides you wrong, you'll break the balance of the shinobi world."
Then his voice boomed across the arena.
"Lightning Straight!"
A the raikage vanished. shockwave erupted where he had been standing, the stone beneath his feet turning to dust as he launched forward with the same technique he once used against Minato—his fastest, most lethal straight-line punch, designed not to kill, but to utterly incapacitate.
Naruto—arrogant, grinning, assuming the Raikage couldn't tag him—miscalculated.
A's the raikage fist slammed into Naruto's stomach with enough force to bend metal.
The impact cracked the air itself. Naruto's body shot across the arena like a fired cannonball, smashing into the far edge. Lightning detonated around him, obscuring the view in a violent burst of blue-white arcs.
Shizune gasped, standing from the bench. "Raikage-sama—! That's too much! Tiel will die!"
A the raikage held out a calming hand. "No need to panic, Shizune. Lightning Straight only incapacitates. I didn't aim to kill."
He inhaled once, voice low but firm.
". Tiel is young. Ridiculously powerful. But childish. If the wrong person fills his head with ideology… he could become our worst nightmare."
Tsunade didn't answer. She was staring past him. Her finger rose slowly, pointing at the far end of the arena. "Raikage … you better keep your eye on your opponent."
A's the raikage whipped his head toward Naruto.
The lightning haze peeled away, revealing Tiel—Naruto—standing in the scorched center of the arena. He was upright but barely, coat in tatters, smoke drifting off his body.
Thin line of liquid slid down his forehead. Gold. droplet of golden blood rolled over his eyebrow and hit the stone with a small metallic ting.
Naruto stared at it. For a brief moment something inside him cracked—. sensation crawled up his spine that he hadn't truly felt in centuries. Pain.
The very thing Bernkastel had beaten out of his perception, forcing him to transcend it until he forgot what pain meant at all.
For the first time since stepping across dimensions, a low-ranked being from a low-ranked world had injured him.
He blinked. A small golden tear slid from his eye.
"…ouch."
He touched the blood and looked at his fingers, breath steady but edged. These low-dimension creatures… touched me. They hurt me. And I allowed it.
His restraint snapped.
"OUCH—OWWWW—AAAHHHHHHHHH!"
The roar shook the arena, not from agony but from sheer insult, outrage, and disbelief—like a god offended by a pebble thrown at his face.
Naruto's grip tightened.
Dainsleif splintered in his hand, the bone blade shattering into pale fragments of magic that scattered into nothing.
In the same instant, a storm of golden circles spiraled open behind him. Gate of Babylon—hundreds now—stacked in layers, humming with spears, swords, chains, axes, relics, and artifacts. The arena floor cracked under the pressure of the unleashed treasury.
Shizune fell back onto her hands.
Tsunade's jaw went tight.
A the Raikage felt his heartbeat punch once against his ribs,. What kind of monster did I provoke?
More portals opened—fifty, seventy, a hundred—until they formed a lethal constellation around Tiel, all aimed outward.
Naruto inhaled slowly. His voice came out calm again, almost gentle.
"This is the first time I've bled on this land."
The golden portals flared brighter, each weapon ready to fire at a thought.
Naruto tilted his head at A the Raikage, his smile soft in a way that didn't match the apocalypse blooming behind him.
"A the Raikage… ready for round two?"
A the Raikage inhaled—ready to think, ready to gauge, ready to plan—
—but Naruto didn't wait.
A golden spear flashed out of the nearest Gate of Babylon, fired like a divine sniper shot. It tore through the air and struck A the Raikage's shoulder, forcing him to stagger and clamp a hand over the wound.
Naruto lowered his hand lazily. "I won't miss again, brown boy. Pick up the pace. Are we turning this into a kill match, or should we both mind our own business?".
A the Raikage's jaw locked. "Even if you're strong, Tiel… I am the Fourth Raikage." Raiton flared around him, thicker, sharper, the air sizzling. " like you, I don't tolerate someone injuring me that easily."
Lightning surged—pure cobalt fury.
"Lightning Straight!"
A the Raikage blasted forward at maximum speed, fist cocked back, thunder screaming in his wake.
Naruto's smile deepened. One of the golden portals rotated, aligning perfectly. A weapon slid out—a divine relic shaped like a thunderbolt trapped in metal.
The Vajra. The weapon of gods.
Naruto aimed it casually, almost politely… then fired.
The collision boomed like thunder slapped the earth.
A the Raikage was blown backward, skidding across the metal arena floor, raiton flickering violently around him.
Naruto rested the divine weapon on his shoulder. "Legendary armaments always triumph over modern tricks," he said, voice light, teasing. "And right now? You have no idea how many god-grade weapons I'm holding."
fresh line of Gates flared open behind Naruto—dozens more—each humming with weapons that did not belong to the shinobi world.
A the Raikage steadied his breath, chest rising and falling under the rain. His thoughts churned hard and fast.
That chain alone was terrifying… And that sword—Dainsleif—cutting space itself… And now this? A weapon that spits lightning like a nature's wrath… Kirigakure would go to war just to steal something like that.
Naruto smiled wider, reading every tremor of panic as if it were written on A's face.
"No time for time-out, brown boy." barrage of golden swords and spears erupted from the Gates, streaking through the rain like blazing meteors. A the Raikage exploded into motion, body becoming lightning, dodging each projectile by hair-thin margins. Weapons tore through steel pillars and detonated across the arena in shattering waves. Every second narrowed the gap between survival and death.
Rain and sweat blended on A's skin as he flashed from point to point within the storm of god-forged death.
I need to get close. That's the only thing he can't defend against—yet.