It had to be said, a deadline was a wonderful thing.
It could help humans avoid entanglement and hesitation, forcing them to immediately understand what they truly wanted.
When Rei saw the Tailed Beast Ball fired by the Seven-Tails descend over Konoha's central district, while Nagato was too occupied blocking the Tailed Beast Balls fired by three other Jinchuriki to spare any attention, he finally realized that his earlier hesitation had never meant much.
Unless Nagato made up his mind to use Super Shinra Tensei to blast away every incoming Tailed Beast Ball along with all of Konoha Village, there was no second person who could change the fact that Konoha was about to be blown apart from its center.
Rei had been born in Kirigakure.
He had grown up in Kirigakure.
He was unquestionably a shinobi raised under the teachings of the Village of the Bloody Mist.
But after he helped Kirigakure "win" the Third Shinobi World War and became the Fourth Mizukage, what had his own choice been?
It was to reform Kirigakure's system.
It was to find a way to create an opportunity for this shinobi village, whose economic pillar was singular and whose social atmosphere was cold and gloomy, to transform into a normal political entity.
It was to pinch his nose, suppress his anger, and lead those shinobi in the village who knew nothing except killing to explore an entirely new professional system that could provide them with a livelihood after Kirigakure's transformation.
He wanted to use ideas and principles to change Kirigakure, the most cruel and cold-blooded village in the shinobi world.
And in this place once known as the Village of the Bloody Mist, he wanted to cultivate a group of new shinobi who could use ideas and principles alongside him to change the entire shinobi world.
"Since I firmly believe my ideas and principles are correct, what reason do I have to abandon a cause already on the right track for some petty immediate profit?"
As Rei pressed his hand to the back of his neck and gripped the spine that had already broken through his skin under the power of the Dead Bone Pulse, he narrowed his eyes and looked toward the Seven-Tails, Chomei, flying high in the sky and staring mockingly at his "overestimating himself."
"Dance of the Clematis: Hunting Nation."
Amid that soft murmur, the chakra stored inside the bone clone poured into the spine in Rei's hand with all its might.
At an astonishing speed, it transformed into an extraordinarily long white bone whip-sword.
Then he raised his hand and swung, aiming the flexible whip-sword at the Seven-Tails in the sky and the Tailed Beast Ball it had released, slashing fiercely.
The air let out a shrill howl.
The white bone whip-sword, originally only as large as a long whip, expanded wildly the moment it locked onto its target and swung out.
In only the blink of an eye, it grew into a supermassive weapon that could cross the several-thousand-meter distance between sky and earth.
The pale bone blade, tinged with a deathly gray, pierced straight through the Seven-Tails' Tailed Beast Ball.
Then, without the slightest pause, it continued shooting into the sky, piercing through the dozens-of-meters-tall giant insect, the Seven-Tails itself.
Immediately afterward, Rei's bone clone stepped in midair on a temporary wall of air formed by Wind Release, sending his body soaring upward again.
At the same time, the whip-sword in his hand swung violently.
The section of the blade skewering the swelling, bursting Tailed Beast Ball suddenly turned completely gray, broke away from the sword body, and scattered outward.
That gray, carrying an intense aura of deathly stillness, annihilated the chakra that had nearly solidified into physical form.
Just like that, the Tailed Beast Ball powerful enough to blast away a third of Konoha Village vanished silently in the middle section of the whip-sword.
The owner of the whip-sword then coldly swung that enormous weapon linking heaven and earth, flinging his own body high into the sky while smashing the Seven-Tails, whose body had been pierced through, heavily toward the area outside Konoha Village.
Screech—!
The Seven-Tails let out an indescribably sharp shriek as it crashed heavily into the ground outside Konoha Village.
Its massive body, combined with the tremendous force Rei had applied without mercy, made everyone within several kilometers feel the meteor-like impact of the Seven-Tails hitting the earth.
The entire land visibly shook beneath that blow.
"What happened!? Why was the Seven-Tails suddenly shot down by someone from Konoha!?"
Roughly one kilometer away from where the Seven-Tails had fallen, among an Iwagakure squad, the Iwagakure jonin responsible for guarding the Four-Tails Jinchuriki Roshi turned pale at this sudden turn of events.
He snapped his head around and roared at the reconnaissance shinobi in the team.
"Reconnaissance team, immediately gather intelligence from the direction where the Seven-Tails fell! I have never heard of Konoha having a shinobi capable of something like this!"
"Captain! There is no need to scout! Look!"
The reconnaissance shinobi widened his eyes, trembling as he pointed at the whip-sword that still looked incomparably huge and magnificent even from this distance.
It was descending at astonishing speed, mercilessly opening terrifying wounds across the Seven-Tails' enormous body.
And as the sword's hilt, trailing flames, entered everyone's field of vision, every sensory-type shinobi present captured the existence now releasing an unprecedentedly massive chakra fluctuation.
That figure was stepping down from the sky on the gigantic white bone sword hilt, as if intending to pierce the entire earth through in one strike.
There was no intelligence shinobi in the entire shinobi world who would fail to recognize him.
The Fourth Mizukage, Rei Kaguya.
"The Fourth Mizukage!? How is that possible!? Since when did Konoha and Kirigakure have a relationship this good!?"
The jonin of the Iwagakure guard unit immediately felt his hands and feet turn ice-cold.
The elation he had felt from their certain victory was completely cooled by Rei's appearance.
Roshi, the Four-Tails Jinchuriki, who had originally been preparing a third Tailed Beast Ball to attack Konoha proper, subconsciously shifted the direction of his attack toward the area where the Seven-Tails had fallen.
"Should I attack him!?"
"No! Do not! Absolutely do not! Roshi, prepare to retreat immediately! You are an important weapon of war for the village. You absolutely cannot fall into his hands at a time like this!"
While shouting at Roshi, who had transformed into the Four-Tails, the Iwagakure jonin hurriedly organized the surrounding Iwagakure shinobi and prepared to withdraw from the scene.
At the same time, he could not help feeling curious.
Rei Kaguya's whip-sword had clearly already killed the Seven-Tails completely on the spot.
Why was he still riding it downward, looking as though he intended to pierce straight through the entire earth?
That technique, which had created such a massive weapon, should have placed quite a heavy burden on even him, someone who had developed the Dead Bone Pulse to the limit.
What exactly was he planning?
Just as he considered that question, Rei's figure, standing on the hilt, slammed heavily into the Seven-Tails' motionless body.
Splatter.
The Seven-Tails' body, already so badly damaged by the whip-sword that it could no longer struggle, exploded without the slightest suspense beneath that strike descending from the sky.
Of course, as a part of the Ten-Tails and an aggregation of massive chakra, the Seven-Tails would not truly die because of this. It would revive again after two or three years.
But that was already something unrelated to this battle.
After killing the Seven-Tails and its Jinchuriki, Rei changed the hand seals in his hands, carefully distributing and mobilizing the remaining chakra inside the clone.
Then he brought his palms together and shouted calmly:
"I caught you."
Boom—!
Beneath the earth pierced by the white bone whip-sword, violent tremors suddenly appeared, as if an earth dragon had turned over.
The ground seemed to transform into an ocean.
With the region where Rei's bone clone stood as the center, a massive tsunami surged forward, carrying everything on the surface with it as it rushed toward the areas where the three Tailed Beasts were located.
Under the horrified gazes of every Iwagakure and Kumogakure shinobi participating in this battle, the surging earth waves threw them high into the air.
Then, from three different directions, the blades of the white bone whip-sword burst from beneath the ground at the same time, imprisoning all of them between three sections of the whip-sword's blade.
At the same time, a deep blue film of light rapidly expanded.
In the blink of an eye, it formed an enormous barrier that allowed entry but no exit, and was transparent only from the inside outward.
Its range was so vast that even if the entirety of Konoha Village were placed inside, there would still be considerable empty space left over.
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