Chapter 195: Not Worthy of Carrying His Shoes
The ground, already pulverized by the Mokujin (Wood Golem), trembled anew.
But this was not a simple tremor. It was a deep, groaning shift in the very fabric of the world.
The Wood Golem that had dwarfed Kakuzu... was now, itself, dwarfed. It was merely the base for what was to come.
Standing upon the golem's head, an even more colossal, nightmarish statue was rising.
A Buddha, so incomparably massive that its head rose to pierce the clouds.
And behind it...
Countless gigantic arms, densely packed and overlapping, fanned out like a peacock's tail of death, blocking out the sky.
The sky was completely obscured by the silhouette of this Great Buddha.
The sunlight vanished.
The world plunged into a dim, oppressive shadow.
Mokuton Hijutsu: Shin Sūsenju! (Wood Release Secret Technique: True Several Thousand Hands!)
[Inorin's Note: Shin Sūsenju is the ultimate jutsu of Hashirama Senju, the Shodai Hokage. It summons a colossal wooden statue of truly god-like proportions, wielding thousands of fists.]
Kakuzu, all five of his hearts frozen in his chests, looked up.
His mouth was agape.
He was staring blankly at the slowly rising, continent-sized construct.
At this moment, Kakuzu's brain—the calculating, brilliant, century-old mind of a financial genius and S-rank shinobi—had completely stopped thinking.
His threads, his Jiongu (Earth Grudge Fear), which gave him his immortality, were recoiling. They were instinctively trying to pull back into his body, to hide from this... this thing.
He had seen wars. He had seen Kage. He had seen Tailed Beasts.
This was not any of those.
This Thousand-Armed Great Buddha before his eyes... this was a true deity. This was the end of the world.
A voice, amplified by chakra, yet still retaining its hint of casual, terrifying playfulness, came from the very top of the Great Buddha's head, miles above him.
"Kakuzu."
Kakuzu didn't even flinch. He couldn't. He was paralyzed.
"Don't you claim to have fought against the Shodai Hokage, Senju Hashirama?"
The words, spoken calmly, echoed across the silent, shadowed land.
Kakuzu's body, his entire being, suddenly stiffened with a new, dawning horror.
"Then," Akira's voice continued, "you should be very familiar with this jutsu, right?"
"This... this is the power a 'God of Shinobi' should possess."
"What was the scene of your so-called fight like, Kakuzu? Tell me."
The question was a spike of ice through his very soul.
Kakuzu's proudest achievement, the singular boast, the capital he had used to build his reputation for an entire century...
...was mercilessly, and casually, exposed as a fraud at this moment.
"I… I…"
Kakuzu trembled. His stitches strained. He couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe.
And then... a sound.
A sound of ten thousand trees groaning.
The thousands of giant arms behind the Great Buddha, miles up in the sky...
...simultaneously...
...clenched into fists.
Countless colossal fists, each one the size of a mountain, blocking out the last vestiges of light.
They were raised high.
They were aimed at Kakuzu, a tiny, insignificant speck on the ravaged earth below.
He was completely, and utterly, terrified.
Seeing Uchiha Akira about to launch an attack—an attack that wouldn't just kill him, but would erase the very landscape he stood on...
Kakuzu let out a desperate, rattling, inhuman wail.
"I… I DIDN'T! I WAS BRAGGING! A LIE! IT WAS A LIE!"
"I never fought with Hashirama-sama!"
"Back then… back then, I only... I only saw Shodai-sama from afar! From a very long distance!"
His voice was a desperate, cracking shriek.
"I just... I just threw a single shuriken at him… and then I RAN! I ran away without looking back! I ran for three days!"
"I DIDN'T DARE TO GET CLOSE AT ALL!"
"I WAS WRONG! HOKAGE-SAMA! AKIRA-SAMA! I KNOW I WAS WRONG!"
Kakuzu, the S-rank immortal, fell to his knees, his forehead pressed into the dirt and gravel.
"I SURRENDER! I SURRENDER!"
"DON'T KILL ME! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!"
"I am willing to submit! I am willing to do anything for you! I can earn money for you! I can kill people for you!"
"My life is yours! My hearts are yours! Everything I have is YOURS!"
A small pause. The fists still hung in the sky, threatening oblivion.
"Oh? Is that so?"
Akira's voice remained calm, showing no emotion.
"Then tell me again, Kakuzu... who is more powerful?"
"Me... or the Akatsuki Organization's leader, Pain, who calls himself a 'god'?"
The question sent a final, electric shiver down Kakuzu's spine.
This was… a side-choosing question?
No! This wasn't a question! This was a death trap!
His analytical mind, rebooted by pure survival instinct, screamed.
He had seen Akira's power. He had only heard of Pain's.
The calculation was instant. The answer was absolute.
Even half a second of hesitation, and those thousands of fists above his head would smash him, and his five precious hearts, into a fine red paste!
Kakuzu, in that moment, used every flattering, groveling word he had ever known in his century of life.
"OF COURSE, IT IS YOU, AKIRA-SAMA! YOU ARE THE TRUE GOD! THE ONLY GOD!"
"That Pain?! What is he?! He is nothing!"
"He's not even fit to carry your shoes! He is an insect!"
"His Rinnegan? Compared to yours, compared to THIS," he gestured wildly at the god-construct above them, "it is simply a speck of light! A glowworm's flicker!"
"Akira-sama, you are the Rikudō Sennin (Six Paths Sage) reborn! No! You are even GREATER than the Six Paths Sage!"
Kakuzu's will to survive erupted to its absolute peak.
He racked his brain, piling all the most exaggerated, most desperate, and most sycophantic words he could think of onto Uchiha Akira.
What Akatsuki Organization? What Pain? What loyalty?
Those things had been thrown to the back of his mind, forgotten.
As long as he could live, he would not hesitate to twist Pain's head off right now and deliver it on a platter.
From his perch atop the Shin Sūsenju, Akira looked down at the pathetic, groveling state of the immortal bounty hunter.
He chuckled slightly.
[This guy... he truly embodies the phrase "the older, the more afraid of death" to the absolute extreme.]
[However, this is also good. An obedient, terrified dog is always more useful than a wolf that might bite back at any moment.]
"Didn't you join the Akatsuki Organization?" Akira asked indifferently, his voice echoing.
"A MISTAKE! I can betray them immediately!" Kakuzu answered without a single thought.
"What is the Akatsuki Organization! A collection of fools!"
"From now on, I, Kakuzu, will only serve Akira-sama! Only you!"
"Very good."
Uchiha Akira nodded, satisfied.
As Akira's words fell, the colossal Thousand-Armed Great Buddha, the Shin Sūsenju that had blotted out the sun...
...began to slowly dissipate, crumbling into motes of light and wooden fibers in the air.
The sky-obscuring shadows receded.
Sunlight, warm and life-giving, once again poured down.
Kakuzu felt completely, utterly drained. He collapsed to the ground, his body a trembling, stitched-together sack, panting heavily.
Uchiha Akira's figure, no longer miles in the sky, appeared before him, standing on the ground.
"I'll spare your life."
Upon hearing this, Kakuzu felt as if he had been granted a great pardon. He kowtowed frantically, slamming his head into the rocky earth.
"Thank you, Akira-sama! Thank you, Akira-sama, for sparing my life!"
"From now on," Akira continued, "you will follow my orders."
"For now, you will lie low within the Akatsuki Organization. You will continue to be a member. You will serve as my eyes, and my ears, within Akatsuki."
"Yes! Yes! I understand! Anything!" Kakuzu nodded repeatedly, his face still in the dirt.
"Later, when the time is right..."
Akira changed the subject, throwing out a condition—a reward—that Kakuzu could never have anticipated.
"You will manage my finances."
"Manage… finances?"
Kakuzu, for the first time, stopped kowtowing. He slowly raised his head, his green, glowing eyes wide with confusion.
He had spent his entire life obsessed with money. He had an extraordinary, almost supernatural, sensitivity to those two words.
"Come with me."
Uchiha Akira did not explain further. He directly reached out and placed his hand on Kakuzu's shoulder.
"Amenominaka!"
[Inorin's Note: Amenominaka is Akira's Mangekyō Sharingan ability, allowing instantaneous spatial teleportation to his marked coordinates.]
Buzz—!
Space distorted, and the two figures instantly vanished from the barren plain.
The next second, when Kakuzu's vision cleared again, he found himself in an enormous, cavernous, underground space.
The air was cool, dry, and smelled... it smelled... perfect.
And the sight before him...
...it made Kakuzu's eyes, which had witnessed a century of turmoil, instantly widen to their absolute limits.
His breathing, his very hearts, stopped.
Gold.
His eyes were filled with gold.
Mountains. Literal mountains of gold bars, stacked high to the ceiling of the massive cavern, emitting a dazzling, holy glow that intoxicated him.
And... banknotes.
Countless banknotes, bundled and wrapped, were stacked neatly on rows of massive, endless shelves. They formed endless, towering "money walls."
This was the Konoha deep underground vault. The accumulation point of all of Konoha's wealth, a fortune built by five Kage.
Kakuzu subconsciously, reverently, stretched out his stitched hand.
It was trembling.
He wanted to touch the mountains of gold bars.
"Gulp…"
Kakuzu swallowed hard. His eyes, his soul, burst with an unprecedented, religious greed and fanaticism.
[Is… is this… heaven?]
[My… my entire life... as a bounty hunter... the meager savings I painstakingly accumulated... compared to this... it is TRASH! It is DIRT!]
[My talent! My true talent! My talent for dancing with money, for managing it, for growing it! It should be displayed here!]
At this moment, Kakuzu's loyalty to Uchiha Akira—to the man who had just terrified him, who had just shown him this...
It instantly soared to its absolute, unshakeable peak.
What Akatsuki Organization? What Pain?
In front of this room... in front of this holy-fucking-mountain-of-wealth... they became utterly, laughably uninteresting.
Uchiha Akira looked at Kakuzu's unseemly, drooling, awestruck appearance and chuckled softly.
The best way to deal with a man who fears death is to show him oblivion.
The best way to deal with a greedy person is to give him an inexhaustible mountain of gold.
"Did you see clearly?"
Akira's voice roused Kakuzu from his divine daze.
"From now on... everything here... will be managed by you."
"YES! AKIRA-SAMA!"
Kakuzu spun around abruptly, his movements faster than any jutsu. He bowed a perfect, crisp ninety degrees to Akira, his voice loud and filled with an unprecedented, terrifying vigor!
"I, KAKUZU, AM WILLING TO OFFER EVERYTHING—MY LIFE, MY JUTSU, AND MY ABACUS—TO AKIRA-SAMA!"
Uchiha Akira nodded with satisfaction.
Space distorted again.
Kakuzu only felt a blur before his eyes, and he was back on the desolate, sun-baked battlefield in the Land of Earth.
He was alone.
Kakuzu glanced at the empty, cratered surroundings... and then recalled the magnificent, golden, underground vault.
For a moment, he was unable to distinguish whether it was reality or an illusion.
"Remember your mission."
Uchiha Akira's voice echoed in Kakuzu's ear, though he was no longer there.
"Any information about the Akatsuki Organization, you can report it directly through Konoha's intelligence channels. Someone will meet you."
With that, the voice was gone.
Leaving only Kakuzu, standing there in a daze, the smell of gold still fresh in his memory.
A new, terrifying, and profitable purpose now filled his century-old heart.
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