Kakashi walked over as well.
He looked at his three students, a trace of relief and pride showing in that perpetually lazy eye of his.
Then he walked over to the place where the container holding "Itachi" had previously been.
There was nothing there now.
Not even the faintest trace of chakra remained.
"It's over."
He spoke softly.
As though announcing it to everyone—
And as though trying to convince himself.
At last, thunderous cheers erupted across the battlefield.
The shinobi embraced one another, many bursting into tears of joy.
A war that had nearly destroyed the entire world had finally come to an end in a way none of them could ever have imagined.
Not far away, Gaara stood quietly watching Naruto laugh and fool around with his companions.
The tension that had remained on his face all this time finally eased, replaced by a faint, gentle smile.
Uncle Killer B, meanwhile, immediately launched into an impromptu rap.
"Yo, yeah! Final boss is finally down!
Naruto and Sasuke, best around!
Peace has come to every town!
Everybody party now!
Fool! Idiot!"
The atmosphere was peaceful.
Almost idyllic.
And yet—
Only a small handful of people sensed something faintly wrong.
"Shikamaru."
Temari walked over to her husband, her brows furrowed.
"Don't you think... something feels strange?"
"Yeah."
Shikamaru looked up at the sky, his expression grave.
"It's too quiet."
"And... too 'clean.'"
Kai was gone.
The Ten-Tails clones he had brought with him had also dissolved into streams of data and vanished.
Aside from the people still standing there and the destruction left behind by the battle, the entire battlefield was unnaturally clean.
Like a blank sheet of paper that had just been formatted.
"That troublesome guy might be gone, but I've got the feeling he left us an even more troublesome mess."
Shikamaru sighed.
"Hopefully I'm just overthinking it."
Just then—
A Hyūga clansman responsible for reconnaissance suddenly let out a horrified shout.
"W-What is that?!"
Everyone followed the direction of his finger.
Far beyond them, at the very edge of the horizon—
A towering sand dune suddenly "flickered."
Like an image suffering from a bad signal.
For a fraction of a second, it vanished completely.
Then it abruptly reappeared.
As though nothing had happened.
If several thousand pairs of eyes hadn't witnessed it at the exact same time, everyone would have assumed they were seeing things.
"Spatial instability?"
A sensory-type shinobi spoke uncertainly.
Before the words had even finished leaving his mouth—
Something even stranger happened.
"My Water Release!"
A Kirigakure shinobi suddenly screamed.
He had only wanted to use Water Release: Water Formation Wall to wash some of the sand from his body.
But what came spraying from his mouth—
Was not water.
It was a huge swarm of colorful...
Butterflies?
The butterflies fluttered their wings and filled the air.
Then, halfway through their flight, they dissolved into meaningless streams of data and disappeared.
"What the hell is going on?!"
"My Earth Release isn't working either! My hand seals are correct, but the chakra inside my body just won't transform!"
"The sky!"
"Look at the sky!"
Everyone looked up in horror.
Across the clear blue sky—
A crack suddenly appeared without warning.
It wasn't a physical fracture.
Rather—
It looked as though an image had been torn open, exposing countless multicolored lines of endlessly scrolling code behind it.
The crack existed for only an instant.
Then some invisible force forcibly "glued" it shut again.
But everyone had seen it clearly.
Panic began spreading like a plague.
"W-What the heck is happening, dattebayo?!"
Even Naruto was dumbfounded.
Sasuke's Rinnegan remained locked on the sky.
His pupil had contracted to the size of a needlepoint.
The expression on his face was even more solemn than when he had been facing Kai.
"It isn't space that's unstable."
His voice was dry.
"It's this 'world' itself."
"It's becoming unstable."
Kakashi instantly understood.
His expression turned incomparably ugly.
"That guy, Kai... he wasn't merely an invader."
"While analyzing this world and attempting to modify it, he had already turned himself into part of this world."
"Like a system patch."
"And we..."
"We just forcibly deleted that patch together with the virus attached to it."
Sakura's expression tightened.
"Then what happens?"
Shikamaru answered instead.
His voice was filled with bitterness.
"A system that's been stuffed full of random patches, infected with a virus, and then had one of its core programs forcibly uninstalled..."
"What do you think happens to something like that?"
He looked around at the battlefield.
"This."
"It crashes."
The world—
Was collapsing.
Not because some external force was destroying it.
Instead—
The most fundamental rules holding reality together were beginning to break down.
Randomly.
Chaotically.
Without order.
And without any way to predict what would fail next.
"The worst part isn't even that."
Sasuke's gaze shifted directly above the battlefield.
The space there had begun distorting violently.
Like the surface of water after a stone had been thrown into it.
A massive—
And painfully familiar—
Vortex was slowly emerging from nothingness.
It was a Kamui spatial vortex.
But it was far larger than any Kamui Obito or Kai had ever used.
And far more violent.
Countless arcs of black lightning danced along the edge of the vortex.
Every flash was accompanied by the agonized shriek of space itself being torn apart.
"Obito's Kamui dimension..."
Kakashi murmured.
"Kai is dead. The eye he transplanted has lost its source of power too."
"That dimension..."
"It's collapsing along with him!"
"And then what?"
Naruto suddenly had a very bad feeling.
"And then..."
Sasuke spoke one word at a time.
"The new Ten-Tails he locked inside it will be thrown back out."
"Along with the entire collapsing dimension."
"And it'll crash straight into this world..."
"This world that's already collapsing too."
Two worlds on the verge of collapse—
Were about to collide.
That would not be—
One plus one equals two.
It would be—
One plus one...
Equals zero.
Complete annihilation.
Total—
Irreversible—
Nothingness.
Panic washed over everyone like freezing seawater.
They had only just survived one apocalypse.
Only just believed they had finally reached the dawn of peace.
Yet in the blink of an eye—
They were facing an even more hopeless situation.
One with no apparent solution.
The laws of the world itself were falling apart.
The earth beneath their feet could turn into butterflies at any moment.
And hanging above them was a "dimensional bomb" that could explode at any second.
Against an enemy like this—
You didn't even know where to throw your punch.
"W-What do we do?"
"What are we supposed to do?!"
A young shinobi clutched his head.
His mind was already on the verge of breaking.
"Don't panic! Maintain formation!"
A senior shinobi beside him barked sharply.
Yet the trembling of his hands betrayed the fear in his heart.
"It's useless."
Shikamaru closed his eyes.
At this moment, the calculating ability of his mind seemed utterly powerless.
Every strategy—
Every plan—
Was built on the assumption that the rules of the world remained stable.
When even "one plus one" could suddenly equal "apple"—
All tactics lost their meaning.
"We're like characters inside a game..."
"Except now we're being forced to face the fact that the game itself is deleting its database and shutting down."
Shikamaru slowly opened his eyes.
His voice was heavy.
"There's nothing we can do."
The despair hanging over the battlefield—
Was even heavier than when they had faced Kai.
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