Konoha's Sandaime Hokage - Hiruzen Sarutobi, a legend who had once stood like a towering shadow over an era - fell here, on the battlefield.
The moment his body finally stilled, even Chiba went quiet.
It wasn't that Chiba revered him. To Konoha, Hiruzen had not necessarily been a "good" Hokage. To Chiba, he had been nothing more than a sharp thorn - an enemy positioned directly against him.
And yet… people were never simple.
Watching Hiruzen drag himself to the very edge of death, still forcing his will forward, still refusing to collapse until he had avenged Sarutobi Asuma - until he had personally killed Hidan, that "immortal" monster - Chiba couldn't help the faint heaviness that settled in his chest. There was a strange finality to it, a kind of grim dignity that only existed at the end of someone who had burned everything they had left.
Maybe… for Hiruzen, this was the best way to die.
And Hidan's immortality - so arrogant, so unnatural - wasn't flawless after all.
At the very least, it couldn't withstand an attack that targeted the soul itself.
That forbidden technique - Shiki Fūjin ("Reaper Death Seal") - didn't merely kill. It sealed what lay beyond flesh. Perhaps, in the end, it truly was the cleanest answer to abominations like Orochimaru… and to monsters like Hidan.
Kakuzu stared at Hidan's corpse, and for the first time in a long while, genuine shock broke through his usual cold stillness. His gaze slid to Hiruzen, and the corners of his eyes tightened.
He had underestimated the old man.
"So even you… with that immortal body… died in Sarutobi Hiruzen's hands."
Kakuzu's voice was low, rough, carrying no sorrow - only appraisal.
"Hmph. But you were always too simple. This kind of end was only a matter of time."
Then he looked at Hiruzen again, as if weighing the man's final moments.
"As for Sarutobi Hiruzen… you really were a man."
Shimura Danzō didn't speak.
He stood there, staring at Hiruzen's corpse, as though his mind had slipped into an empty, unfamiliar corridor. He had come here prepared to take the Hokage's seat - prepared, even, to kill Hiruzen if it came to that.
But now that Hiruzen was truly dead…
What filled him wasn't triumph.
It was a hollow, aching bleakness - something that tasted like grief and defeat at the same time.
Danzō let out a long breath. In that exhale, it felt as if he aged a decade. Behind him, Yamanaka Fū and Aburame Torune exchanged a look, then lowered their eyes as well, both men quietly exhaling the same silent lament.
For a brief stretch of time, the battlefield itself seemed to pause - like the world needed a heartbeat to process what had just happened.
Kazekage Rasa, already grievously wounded, stared at Hiruzen's fallen body, and despair washed through him like cold sand.
Is this how it ends?
Rasa. Hiruzen. The joint allied forces… all crushed here?
Hiruzen was dead.
And the battlefield on Kumogakure's side - there had been no news, no signal, no hope.
Rasa's injuries were so severe he could barely remain standing, let alone resist the White Snake Sage's pressure. The Sunagakure forces were being carved apart - driven backward again and again under the savage assault of Ryūchi Cave's serpent tide and Chiba's Ice-Snow Dragon Riders.
For the first time, the unthinkable crept into his mind.
Maybe this really can't be turned around anymore.
"Hokage-sama… perhaps starting this war was a mistake from the beginning…"
Rasa's voice came out like the rasp of wind over a dry grave.
He looked at Hiruzen, and emotion surged - regret, anger, bitterness, exhaustion - too many things layered together. Chiyo and Hiruzen were both elder pillars of the shinobi world, survivors of decades of blood and politics and loss. Seeing him die like this, even she could only shake her head, sighing under the weight of time.
The White Snake Sage turned its gaze toward Chiba.
Waiting.
A quiet question in the air: What now, Mizukage?
Chiba leapt up, landing on the crown of the massive white-scaled serpent's head, and looked down over the battlefield like a ruler surveying a kingdom of ruin.
The Sunagakure shinobi hesitated only a moment - then, as if instinct dragged them back into survival, they crashed into the melee again, clashing with Ryūchi Cave's serpents and the Ice-Snow Dragon Riders in chaotic, brutal waves.
Rasa forced himself upright.
He was dying - anyone could see it. Every breath looked like pain.
Yet his eyes were still sharp as he faced Chiba.
"Mizukage Chiba… Hokage-sama is dead. This battle was doomed to fail."
His voice tightened, and something darker rose beneath it.
"But the hatred between Sunagakure and Kirigakure runs deeper than the sea!"
"You defeating Sunagakure is one thing - war has victors and losers. But you plundered our wealth, our resources… even the Three Great Secret Arts we rely on to survive!"
That was the true wound - more than casualties, more than territory. It was being gutted from the inside.
"That kind of theft… that kind of root-cutting - I will never forgive you. Sunagakure will never forgive you!"
His chest heaved.
"Today… maybe I'll die like Sarutobi Hiruzen did. But…"
His gaze hardened into iron.
"I won't retreat again."
Chiba parted his lips, about to speak -
When a Sunagakure shinobi stumbled over, nearly tripping over bodies, panic written across his face.
"K-Kazekage-sama!!!"
Rasa's head snapped toward him.
"Speak!"
"An urgent report from the village - Akatsuki members infiltrated Sunagakure, and… and…"
"And what?!"
Rasa's voice cracked, fear cutting through even his fury.
"They took the Shukaku Jinchūriki - your son… Gaara!!!"
For a moment, Rasa's vision went black.
His body, already broken, felt like it was being shoved into the abyss.
The thing he feared most…
Had happened anyway.
Gaara - his son - was one pain among many, but Shukaku… Shukaku was Sunagakure's strategic weapon, passed down across generations like a desperate heirloom of survival. If it was lost during his tenure…
Then history would name him a sinner. A failure carved into Sunagakure's bones.
Only a heartbeat ago, he had sworn he would not retreat.
Now the impulse to abandon everything and race back to the village slammed into him like a sandstorm. He wanted to bring Shukaku back - no matter the cost.
Chiba's eyes narrowed slightly.
So Akatsuki had moved exactly as he suspected.
They struck when Sunagakure's rear was hollow - when the village was exposed, bleeding, unguarded.
Chiba understood the shape of the world after this battle. Whether it was Konoha, Sunagakure, or even Kumogakure… none of them would be his greatest threat in the near future anymore. They were too damaged, too shaken, too occupied with survival.
The greatest threat had finally stepped into the light.
Akatsuki.
And Chiba's mind - cold, precise - began to calculate.
Do I kill Rasa here?
Or do I leave him alive… let him chase Akatsuki, let that pressure serve my future plans?
Before Chiba decided -
Rasa decided for him.
"Chiyo!"
He roared, voice tearing out of his throat.
"Shukaku… is yours to recover!!!"
Then he laughed - a harsh, broken sound that carried shame and resignation.
"As Kazekage, I've already made Sunagakure lose too much. I don't have the face to return."
His eyes sharpened, and his chakra surged like a dying flame flaring one last time.
"Now… only death suits me!!!"
In an instant, Rasa lunged forward - charging straight at Chiba and the White Snake Sage, as if he intended to tear open fate itself.
"Jiton: Satetsu Taisō ("Magnet Release: Great Sand Burial")!!!!"
It was one of Rasa's true finishing moves - an ultimate trump card.
Its power surpassed even Gaara's famous burial techniques.
The air shook.
The battlefield trembled as if the earth had developed a heartbeat of panic.
Golden sand - iron sand mixed with glittering sand-gold - erupted in a violent tide, surging like a crushing ocean. It slammed toward Chiba with the weight of a collapsing mountain, and even the ground beneath their feet began to liquefy - turning into sinking sand-gold that tried to swallow them whole.
This wasn't an attack meant to win.
It was an attack meant to die with you.
Rasa's final strike.
His own executioner's blade.
But Chiba didn't flinch.
The White Snake Sage's massive body coiled and sprang upward, exploding into the sky with terrifying force, evading the collapsing, quicksand-like trap below. The three great elders of Ryūchi Cave could float - how could the White Snake Sage itself not soar?
And as the sand-gold waves rose to devour them -
Chiba lifted one hand.
He didn't shout.
He didn't posture.
He simply answered.
Freezing chakra erupted outward - tenfold, overwhelming, absolute - like the breath of an ancient winter. The golden tide stiffened midair, its violent motion strangled into silence as frost raced across it, crystallizing every grain, locking the entire wave into a frozen monument.
A heartbeat later -
BOOOOM!
The frozen mass shattered and crashed down, smashing into the battlefield in thunderous slabs, breaking bodies, crushing weapons, burying the earth under glittering ice and gold.
And in that same motion, Chiba formed something in his hand.
A spear of ice - dense, hard, razor-sharp - its surface glittering with lethal clarity.
He threw it forward like judgment.
CRACK - !
The ice spear punched through Rasa's torso.
Not "pierced" - punched through, as if his body was only paper in front of it.
Rasa's momentum died instantly.
The spear carried him backward and slammed him into the ground, pinning him there like an insect nailed to a board.
Blood flooded out - dark red against pale ice - staining the spear, dripping down in thick streams that soaked into the dirt beneath him.
"Kazekage-sama!!!"
The scream from Sunagakure's shinobi tore through the battlefield like a knife. The sound wasn't just grief - it was the sound of a village realizing it had just been decapitated.
Chiyo's face went paper-white. Her brows knotted so tightly they looked like they might split her forehead.
"Kazekage-sama… why would you…"
But she had lived too long, endured too much, to collapse into emotion.
Rasa was dead.
And now she had to carry Sunagakure's survival on her back.
Chiyo drew a sharp breath and shouted with everything she had:
"Sunagakure shinobi - "
"RETREAT!!!!"
For a heartbeat, the Sunagakure forces looked dazed - lost, frozen in shock.
Then survival snapped them awake.
Like a dam breaking, they fled - streaming toward the Land of Wind in desperate waves, abandoning the battlefield, abandoning the dead, abandoning everything except the chance to keep breathing.
Maki and Yura - Rasa's right-hand men - roared in rage and charged toward Chiba.
But it was a feint.
Their true purpose was clear: retrieve the Kazekage's body.
Chiba didn't stop them.
Rasa's corpse held no value to him.
And even as Chiyo led the remnants of Sunagakure's forces away, Chiba didn't command Ryūchi Cave's serpents or his Ice-Snow Dragon Riders to chase them down.
Sunagakure was already at the edge of collapse.
Still… it was one of the Five Great Nations.
And in the war that was coming - against Akatsuki - a weakened Sunagakure could still become a useful blade.
When Chiba turned his head back -
Danzō was gone.
So were Fū and Torune.
Kakuzu was gone as well.
He hadn't even taken Hidan's body.
To Kakuzu, death was currency - spent, counted, forgotten. He had seen too many corpses to mourn one more.
Hiruzen's body lay in the blood-soaked earth beside Hidan's, both of them silent in the same red ruin.
Chiba extended a hand casually.
Ice crawled over both corpses, sealing them in frozen coffins, and he stored them away as if he were putting tools back into a box.
Then his gaze shifted.
The real urgency now lay elsewhere.
He had to confirm the battle between Orochimaru and Tsunade - and the situation on Kumogakure's front. The Cloud's forces weren't easy prey.
Chiba swept his hand.
Ryūchi Cave's serpent army surged behind him like a living flood, and the Ice-Snow Dragon Riders formed up like a storm line. Riding the White Snake Sage's white-scaled body, Chiba moved north - toward the other battlefield.
Behind him, only a landscape of slaughter remained.
…
On the Kumogakure front -
Orochimaru and Tsunade had forced the fight into a brutal stalemate that leaned toward domination.
Tsunade was a nightmare incarnate, her monstrous strength exploding with every step as she clashed head-on with the Yondaime Raikage in his lightning chakra mode. Each collision felt like thunder meeting thunder - fists ripping shockwaves through the air, lightning screaming across skin, the earth shattering beneath their feet.
Orochimaru, meanwhile, held off two dangerous opponents alone - Dodai, Kumogakure's seasoned pillar, and Darui, the future Fifth Raikage, whose calm lethality made him far more dangerous than most realized.
Nearby, the Magnet Release shinobi Toroi and the sensory-medical-genjutsu specialist C were locked in a fierce exchange against Ryūchi Cave's elders, Tagitsuhime and Ichikishimahime - techniques and counters weaving together in lethal rhythm, every mistake punished instantly.
Massive serpents - Manda, the Second Manda, Blue Snake - thrashed through the battlefield, tearing into elite Cloud shinobi while the Sound Village's forces fought like desperate wolves. They were inferior in number and overall quality, yes… but they had strange abilities, cruel tricks, and specialist clans Orochimaru had collected like poisonous flowers.
Guren's Crystal Release shimmered through the chaos, her techniques turning the battlefield into a jagged, reflective deathtrap. Around her fought subordinates like Yūkimaru, Kihō, Kirikiri, Nurarihyon, Rinji, Ushizu - each dangerous in their own right. Mixed among them were the Sound Four - Tayuya, Jirōbō, Kidōmaru, Sakon and Ukon - along with shinobi like Akadō Yoroi, Misumi Tsurugi, Zaku Abumi, Dosu Kinuta, and Kin Tsuchi.
The battlefield was evenly matched. It was a massacre without a conclusion. Until Chiba arrived.
When the Yondaime Raikage saw him in the distance - Chiba leading another wave of Ryūchi Cave serpents, backed by the Ice-Snow Dragon Riders - his eyes widened, shock cutting through him like ice.
If Chiba could come here…
Then the other battlefield had already ended.
Meaning Hiruzen… and Sunagakure's forces…
Had fallen.
The Raikage had imagined they might lose to Chiba, but not like this.
Not this fast and not this completely. Chiba's reinforcements surged in.
The Sound forces erupted with renewed energy - cheers, roars, an explosive rise in morale like a starving man suddenly given air. The Cloud forces experienced the opposite.
Their morale didn't "drop."
It collapsed.
They were already barely holding back two of the Sannin, Ryūchi Cave's serpents, and the Sound's abnormal shinobi.
Now they faced Chiba - the one called the strongest in the shinobi world - along with even more serpents…
And the White Snake Sage itself. This wasn't war anymore. This was an execution. The Yondaime Raikage's face darkened.
"Where are Sarutobi Hiruzen and Kazekage Rasa?!"
Chiba lifted his hand.
A frozen body rose into the air - sealed in ice, hovering above the battlefield like a grotesque banner.
Hiruzen Sarutobi.
Clearly visible to everyone.
"Sarutobi Hiruzen is dead," Chiba said evenly.
"And Kazekage Rasa… is the same."
For a moment, the battlefield forgot how to breathe.
The Yondaime Raikage. Orochimaru. Tsunade. Every shinobi present - friend and enemy alike - stared in stunned disbelief.
Two Kage.
Two of the Five Great Nations' shadows. Gone. And the name that stood at the center of it all…
Was Chiba.
Even Orochimaru and Tsunade's expressions twisted into something complicated - old ties, old grudges, old memories colliding with the brutal fact of the present.
As for the Cloud - fear spread like a disease. From the Raikage… down to the lowest shinobi in the ranks.
A kind of dread that didn't come from death itself, but from the realization that death could now arrive in the shape of one man's casual gesture.
The Yondaime Raikage's voice came out strained.
"The Hokage and the Kazekage… dead?"
"Dead by your hand?!"
Chiba simply nodded, as though confirming something mundane.
In truth, Hiruzen hadn't died directly by Chiba's blade - he had chosen mutual destruction with Hidan.
But it was Chiba who had driven him there.
Chiba who had forced the situation until Shiki Fūjin ("Reaper Death Seal") became inevitable.
Whether Hidan existed or not, Hiruzen's death had been sealed the moment he stepped into that final corner.
So yes.
To say the Sandaime Hokage died because of Chiba - Wasn't wrong.
And in that instant, a legend crystallized across the battlefield like ice forming over deep water.
In a single war, two Kage had fallen. The Mizukage's name rose higher than ever before - sharper, heavier, more terrifying. From this day forward, throughout the shinobi world…
Mizukage Chiba would no longer be spoken of as merely powerful. He would be spoken of as a myth made flesh - A god of shinobi standing at the absolute summit of the era.
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