The Kamui vortex in the sky continued to expand.
And it was becoming increasingly unstable.
They could already hear the furious, agonized roars of the newborn Ten-Tails coming from within, mixed with the constant cracking of spatial barriers shattering apart.
Crack.
Crack—!
The entire dimension was like a balloon inflated to its absolute limit.
At any moment, it could burst with a deafening bang and dump everything trapped inside onto this already fragile world.
"Damn it! Are we really supposed to just sit here and wait to die?!"
Naruto gritted his teeth and glared unwillingly at the sky.
He wanted to charge up there.
He wanted to smash that vortex apart with a Rasengan.
But he knew—
Doing that would only accelerate its collapse.
"No."
A voice suddenly sounded.
Calm.
Yet carrying an unquestionable force.
It was Sasuke.
He was still supporting Naruto, but his gaze seemed to pierce through layer after layer of spatial interference, locking firmly onto the core of the raging vortex.
"There's still one way."
Every gaze instantly turned toward him.
"Shikamaru was only half right just now."
Sasuke's voice was exceptionally clear.
"We're characters inside a game, and the game itself is crashing."
"But we forgot something."
"In the battle just now, two people temporarily obtained 'administrator privileges.'"
He glanced at Naruto beside him.
Naruto froze.
Then his eyes widened as he understood.
Kai's true nature had been that of a higher-dimensional "programmer."
And the two of them—
Using the two kinds of "code" he had never been able to understand, "bonds" and "love"—
Had directly destroyed his core logic.
In a sense—
They had already become this world's new antivirus software.
Or perhaps...
Its "system administrators."
"You mean..."
The light returned to Naruto's eyes as he looked at Sasuke.
"That collapsing dimension and the Ten-Tails inside it are both messes Kai left behind."
Sasuke's thoughts were extraordinarily clear.
"They're like malicious software that refuses to uninstall, along with all the residual files it leaves behind."
"If we want to clean them up, brute force from the outside won't work."
"We have to enter the system itself."
"And remove them from the root."
"You want to enter that collapsing dimension?!"
Kakashi exclaimed.
"How is that any different from suicide?!"
"If we don't go in, everyone dies."
Sasuke's voice held no emotion whatsoever.
"If we do, there's still a chance."
It was the cruelest possible reality.
He turned toward Naruto.
Within his Rinnegan was reflected Naruto's face—
A face already filled with determination.
"Scared, loser?"
"I already told you!"
Naruto grinned, revealing a row of white teeth.
"As long as I'm going with you, there's nothing for me to be scared of!"
"But..."
His expression quickly became serious again.
"How do we get inside?"
"Can your Rinnegan still do it?"
Sasuke's expression darkened.
"No."
"That last battle consumed too much."
"If I forcibly open a passage into an unstable dimension like that..."
"My eye will be destroyed."
The atmosphere froze once again.
Just then—
A hoarse voice sounded from nearby.
"Mine..."
"Can still do it."
Everyone turned.
Kakashi slowly walked toward them with one hand covering his left eye.
Blood was already beginning to seep from beneath his fingers.
That eye—
The Mangekyō Sharingan that had once belonged to Obito.
"Kakashi-sensei!"
"This eye of mine originally came from the same source as that dimension."
Kakashi's expression was remarkably calm.
"Kai may be dead, but the spatial coordinates are still lingering here."
"With the chakra I have left..."
"If I use everything I've got, I should be able to open a temporary passage large enough for the two of you to enter."
"But if you do that, your eye..."
Sakura looked at him worriedly.
"It's only one eye."
Kakashi smiled.
That smile was as lazy as ever.
Yet beneath it was a quiet resolve.
"Compared to the entire world, it's nothing."
"And besides..."
"I suppose this is my last chance to do something for that idiot Obito."
He looked toward Naruto and Sasuke.
"No one knows what you'll encounter in there."
"But all of us..."
"We'll be waiting here for you to come back."
"Yeah!"
Naruto nodded heavily.
Sasuke also gave a silent nod.
"Sakura."
Kakashi turned toward his final student.
"Yes!"
"Once those two go inside, they'll almost certainly lose all connection with this world."
"No one knows what will happen out here afterward."
"Maintaining order."
"Treating the wounded."
"Keeping everyone calm..."
"I'll leave all of that to you."
Sakura's eyes reddened.
Even so, she nodded firmly.
Her expression was more determined than ever before.
"Leave it to me, Sensei!"
"I'm the Fifth Hokage's student, after all!"
It was only a brief exchange.
Yet it felt almost like a final farewell.
"Then..."
Kakashi took a deep breath.
"Are you ready?"
The Mangekyō in his left eye began spinning wildly.
"Anytime!"
Naruto and Sasuke answered simultaneously.
"Kamui!"
Blood poured from Kakashi's left eye like crimson tears.
The space before him began twisting.
Unlike the enormous, violent vortex hanging in the sky—
This distortion was stable.
Controlled.
And utterly resolute.
Slowly, a dark entrance formed.
Barely wide enough for two people to pass through.
"Go!"
"I can't hold it for long!"
Kakashi's entire body began trembling.
Naruto and Sasuke exchanged a glance.
Neither hesitated.
One after the other—
They stepped into that unknown dimension already heading toward destruction.
The instant their figures vanished—
Boom!
The passage slammed shut.
Kakashi could no longer hold himself up.
He dropped onto one knee.
The light in his left eye disappeared completely.
Its once-crimson color faded into a lifeless gray-white.
"Kakashi-sensei!"
Sakura hurriedly caught him.
"I'm fine..."
Kakashi gasped heavily.
Then raised his head toward the enormous vortex in the sky, which was still expanding.
"Now..."
"All we can do is believe in them..."
...
On the other side.
Passing through the spatial tunnel felt like being thrown into a washing machine on full spin—
Then stuffed into a sack filled with broken glass.
By the time Naruto and Sasuke finally regained their senses and felt solid ground beneath their feet—
Both of them sucked in a sharp breath.
This was—
The interior of the Kamui dimension.
Except now...
It could hardly even be called a "dimension."
The sky had transformed into waterfalls made from countless streams of data.
The ground consisted of shattered fragments of scenes from Obito's memories.
A broken Hokage Rock.
The streets of Konoha.
And the forest where Rin had died...
Those fragments floated through the air like islands that had lost all gravity.
They drifted chaotically.
Collided.
Shattered.
Then dissolved into even more meaningless strings of corrupted data.
The entire world resembled a computer desktop so thoroughly infected by a virus that it had reached the blue screen of death.
And at the center of that collapsing world—
The newborn Ten-Tails was bound by countless enormous chains formed entirely from streams of data.
Half of its body was flesh.
The other half—
Pixelated blocks.
It thrashed and roared in madness.
ROOOAAAR—!!!
Every struggle caused the already fragile dimension to collapse even further.
But what truly alarmed Sasuke—
Was what he saw above the Ten-Tails' head.
A faint cluster of light hovered there.
Weak.
Flickering.
Almost extinguished.
And the shape of that light—
Was unmistakably Kai.
"His remains..."
Sasuke understood instantly.
"We destroyed his core program."
"But some residual data survived."
"Like a ghost, it attached itself to the Ten-Tails and is still trying to carry out his final command—"
"Stabilize."
Sasuke's expression grew darker.
"But it's too weak."
"Instead of stabilizing anything, it's mixing with the Ten-Tails' rampaging energy."
"And making the collapse even worse."
Naruto clenched his fists.
"Then what do we do?"
"Blast it away together with the Ten-Tails?"
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