"How is this possible?"
Warden Mui was completely stunned, and the Raikage was equally dumbfounded.
The Box of Ultimate Bliss was famously indestructible.
The Raikage was well aware of this intelligence.
When he came to this island, he had fully intended to use his Lightning Style Armor and Kage-level Taijutsu to physically test whether the Box was truly as sturdy as the rumors claimed.
No matter what, breaking it would require a massive, devastating attack.
But what about Makoto?
He didn'tpower up.
He didn't even make a motion to exert physical force or channel visible ninjutsu.
It was as if he just casually touched the screaming stone face of the Box... and it violently self-destructed into gravel.
'What the hell just happened?'
Did Makoto inject too much chakra at once, causing the Box to explode from sensory overload?
But none of the elite ninja present had sensed any intense chakra fluctuations from Makoto's body.
"Actually, I really wanted to keep this thing intact for a bit to see if Onoki's Particle Style could break through its absolute defense," Makoto sighed, withdrawing his hand and taking out a napkin to casually wipe the dust off his palm.
Only after it had completely shattered did Makoto realize that his earlier internal joke—[The Hidden Stone Village is the strictest father of movie villains]—was completely correct.
The movie villains from the Land of Snow and the Land of Demons who wanted to conquer the world would have theoretically had to march their armies through the Land of Earth, forcing them to face Onoki's Particle Style: Atomic Dismantling Jutsu.
Finally, there was a movie villain—the demonic Box of Ultimate Bliss in Hozuki Castle—that had absolutely no geographical connection to the Stone Village.
But now, looking at the rubble, it turned out that the "indestructible" Box of Ultimate Bliss, being a massive, immobile object, could have easily been enveloped by a Particle Style cube and instantly vaporized into atoms anyway.
Isn't that a complete counter too?
What? You say the demon inside the box, Satori, is a terrifying monster capable of reading minds, sensing good and evil, and effortlessly dodging attacks from KCM Naruto?
Then why bother fighting Satori in the sky?
Just sneak attack the home base—vaporize its core anchor, the Box of Ultimate Bliss, with Dust Release—and wouldn't Satori just disappear instantly?
In the original movie plot, Naruto had to fight Satori in a brutal aerial battle and eventually use Talk-no-Jutsu on Mui's son because the Konoha cast physically couldn't destroy the Box.
Skill issue.
"He's even casually thinking about having that old fossil Onoki try his jutsu on it. What does he take the Box of Ultimate Bliss for? A child's toy?" The Raikage overheard Makoto's muttering and couldn't help but comment, his muscular arms crossed tightly.
"So, Lord Raikage... how did he actually do it? We didn't sense any chakra. We can't figure it out at all," Samui asked quietly, her analytical eyes narrowed.
Her question made everyone else in the Cloud delegation turn their eyes to the Raikage for an explanation.
Even Yugito, who had seemed utterly bored before, shifted her gaze over with keen interest.
"It must be some kind of advanced Space-Time Ninjutsu," the Raikage said, his expression incredibly grim.
"The only thing capable of instantly bypassing a physical [Absolute Defense] without immense kinetic force would be spatial distortion."
The Raikage's mind raced.
He wasn't sure whether Makoto had already mastered this invisible "Space-Time Ninjutsu" when they fought previously at the Waterfall.
If he had already mastered it back then, it meant Makoto had intentionally held back against him.
Otherwise, Makoto could have used this current, invisible spatial-crush ability to instantly cave his chest in during their high-speed clash.
Even if it didn't kill him, it could have cleanly severed his limbs.
No matter how powerful the absolute defense of his Lightning Style Armor was—even if it reached the legendary, impenetrable level of his father, the Third Raikage—it still couldn't withstand an attack that directly warped space itself.
If Makoto hadn't mastered it back then, that implication was even more terrifying.
'How much time has passed since our clash? And now he directly mastered a lethal Space-Time Ninjutsu in such a short period?!'
In any case, no matter what the truth was, it was deeply frightening.
The Raikage even felt a brief wave of existential dread: 'Why does Space-Time Ninjutsu even exist to mock my Lightning Release speed?!'
First, there was Minato Namikaze (Flying Thunder God), who was faster than him
And now there was this kid with invisible spatial crushing.
...
Down in the courtyard, Makoto watched calmly as a massive, swirling mass of pitch-black, viscous chakra began coalescing from the rubble of the shattered Box.
Meanwhile, Uchiha Hikari had already jumped down from the observation platform and landed silently at Makoto's side.
Her Mangekyo Sharingan was spinning.
She was ready to use Eight Thousand Spears to vacuum up the demon's chakra at any moment.
"Wait. Don't rush yet," Makoto said softly, raising a hand to stop Hikari.
Wish-granting devices like the Box of Ultimate Bliss appeared in many myths and pop-culture stories from Makoto's previous life.
It was a classic allegorical trope.
The artifact claims it can grant any wish, but it will always play twisted word games, fulfilling the wish in the most horrific, undesirable way possible.
(Like the Holy grail)
For instance, if you wished to revive a loved one, it wouldn't bring back their soul; it would resurrect their corpse as a mindless, man-eating monster.
As for what moral such allegories were trying to convey, it wasn't always clear.
Was the lesson simply 'There's no such thing as a free lunch'? Or perhaps 'The dead cannot and should not be brought back to life'?
But then again, in Makoto's previous real world, no one could achieve resurrection no matter the cost, so the lesson was moot.
The ninja world, however, had Edo Tensei and Rinne Rebirth, making resurrection a tangible, if forbidden, science.
Pfft. Squelch.
After a long minute of bubbling, the massive black mass of chakra finally coalesced into a tangible, winged humanoid form, gaining physical substance.
In the original movie storyline, the monster known as Satori was merely the product of the Box devouring Mui's son, Muku.
That specific Satori did not represent the full power of the Box of Ultimate Bliss.
Since the Box was an artifact from the era of the Sage of Six Paths, its age was almost comparable to Black Zetsu's.
Over such a long, bloody period of history, countless desperate people had attempted to open the box, meaning it had absorbed an ocean of sacrifices.
The original movie Satori didn't emerge with all the historical chakra stored inside the Box.
It was merely a tailored nightmare created to fulfill Mui's specific wish—to "revive" his son.
At that time, the amount of chakra that Satori possessed was only what it had just absorbed from Naruto's initial Nine-Tails cloak.
But this demonic being forming right now was entirely different.
Makoto hadn't fed it a wish.
He had directly, violently shattered its container.
All the dark chakra the Box of Ultimate Bliss had ever absorbed over a thousand years was now converging into this single, highly unstable vessel.
Actually, the Raikage's earlier paranoid guess about "Space-Time Ninjutsu" wasn't entirely wrong.
Makoto's effortless destruction of the Box wasn't due to some new magical ability he had acquired.
It was simply the result of him using his mastery over Natural Energy to induce a localized Gravitational Inversion.
He had forced the gravity inside the stone to violently repel itself, causing the indestructible Box to tear itself apart at the molecular level.
Scientific research on gravity in the ninja world was virtually nonexistent.
(Pain's Shinra Tensei was just magnetic repulsion masquerading as gravity).
But if we apply astrophysics theories from Makoto's previous world, so-called "gravity" is actually just the curvature of spacetime caused by mass.
So Makoto was technically using a "Space-Time" technique by warping gravity.
There's really nothing wrong with the Raikage's logic.
Moreover, there's something quite fascinating about the ninja world's terminology.
Although scientific research on astrophysics is almost nonexistent, it's surprising that ninjas accurately use the combined term "Space-Time Ninjutsu".
Logically speaking, whether it's Minato's Flying Thunder God or Obito's Kamui, they essentially only control "Space" (teleportation and dimensions).
Where does the "Time" aspect come into "Space-Time"?
In most other fantasy works, time manipulation and spatial portals are clearly distinguished as separate magic schools.
Only in the ninja world are "Time" and "Space" consistently referred to as a single, inseparable package deal.
But according to the Theory of Relativity from Makoto's previous life, this naming actually makes perfect scientific sense.
Because time and space are inherently inseparable into a four-dimensional fabric.
'I wonder which great, analytical master came up with this remarkably accurate nomenclature centuries before the invention of the telescope?'
"MUKU?!"
Warden Mui, watching from the high balcony, saw the grotesque, winged humanoid figure materializing before Makoto and became extremely agitated.
He recognized the twisted face of his son buried in the monster's chest.
"MUKU! MY SON!"
Just as Mui was about to blindly jump down from the high platform to embrace his long-lost, resurrected child, the Raikage moved with a blur of lightning.
Ay grabbed the back of Mui's collar like he was picking up a stray chick, violently yanked him backward, and followed up with a brutal elbow strike to the Warden's chest that knocked him flat onto the stone floor.
CRACK.
"Stay put, you fool!" the Raikage snorted coldly, his eyes narrowed at the monster below.
Anyone with even half a brain could see that the "Muku" forming in the courtyard was not a human boy, but a highly unstable, extremely dangerous abomination.
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