Facing Uchiha Shin's oncoming killing blow, Otsutsuki Momoshiki instinctively reacted.
"Shinra Tensei!"
A devastating repulsive force exploded from his body, aimed at repelling everything within range.
But what greeted his eyes next was an impossible sight.
A fist.
A monstrous, descending fist—like a divine hammer crashing from the heavens.
As it tore downward, space itself groaned and cracked, warping from the sheer kinetic pressure.
The "Shinra Tensei" he had unleashed was like a soap bubble—burst instantly, without resistance.
The fist rained down relentlessly, and in that moment, only one word echoed in Momoshiki's mind—
Death.
"AAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!"
Panic flooding his veins, Momoshiki triggered every last drop of chakra, dredging out his deepest, most forbidden potential.
In a single flash, a ripple of eerie, paradoxical energy spilled from his body—
Time.
The moment froze.
Uchiha Shin's fist hung still in mid-air.
The entire universe snapped into stasis.
"Hmph?"
Uchiha Shin's Mangekyō flared slightly as he registered the phenomenon—time freeze.
Momoshiki stood before him, visibly weakened but not hesitating. He seized the moment with lethal decisiveness.
"Kagura no Tsurugi: Crimson Burial!"
Momoshiki condensed a deep crimson chakra, forging a jagged, oversized naginata in his hands.
With a roar, he cleaved the weapon downward, its edge screaming toward Uchiha Shin's skull like a meteor breaking orbit.
Simultaneously, Momoshiki activated another layered jutsu.
"Ryūhebi no Gekirin!" (Dragon-Serpent Judgment)
BOOM—BOOM—BOOM!
Meteor fragments drifting in space suddenly pulsed, reshaping mid-air into grotesque creatures—chimeras with dragon heads and serpentine bodies, their maws gaping wide as they lunged toward Shin.
Frozen in time, Uchiha Shin saw it all—like an unwilling spectator in his own death scene.
"Move! Move, damn it! I'm ordering you to MOVE!!!"
"Hachimon Tonkō no Jin: Shimon, KAI!!!"
The Eighth Gate—The Gate of Death—flared open!
Perhaps due to his past dimensional travel, or maybe because of the residual DNA from absorbing Otsutsuki Shibai, Uchiha Shin had also brushed against the secrets of time.
Even inside this stasis, his consciousness churned. His chakra ignited.
Raging torrents of raw, undiluted chakra detonated within him. Time groaned. Reality rippled.
And then—he moved.
Momoshiki's eyes widened in pure disbelief.
Uchiha Shin shattered the time freeze and unleashed all of his might in a single, world-breaking blow.
"DIEEEEEEEEE!!!"
BAAAANG!!!
A beam of incandescent light blasted from Shin's outstretched fist.
The column of energy vaporized space itself, drowning Momoshiki in a blinding, white void.
His summoned "Ryūhebi" creatures disintegrated upon contact, shredded into glittering particles before they could howl.
The naginata—so powerful just moments ago—was obliterated into fine red dust.
Momoshiki turned to flee. Too late.
The beam grazed him—and half his body evaporated in an instant.
The blast continued through space, a line of light slicing through the darkness, cleaving celestial bodies, moons, debris, and even time-distorted fragments of forgotten jutsu. It left an open wound across the galaxy itself.
As the chaos waned, Uchiha Shin reached out and grabbed what was left of Otsutsuki Momoshiki with one hand.
The upper half of his scorched body twitched.
"How... can a mortal like you...?"
Momoshiki murmured, his tone blank—like a god coming to terms with mortality.
Then he saw Shin's face up close and froze.
"Heh. Trying to brand me with Karma? Are you brain-dead?"
Uchiha Shin scoffed coldly but didn't interfere.
Why should he? Momoshiki was willingly uploading his genetic data. Why stop a gift?
The moment Momoshiki completed the Karma seal, a blinding light ignited from Uchiha Shin's core.
"Amaterasu: Seishin Zetsumetsu!" (Heavenly Flame: Soul Annihilation)
A searing spiritual fire erupted from his body—burning karma itself, erasing even the lingering echoes of Momoshiki's soul.
There would be no resurrection.
No possession. No rebirth. Just erasure.
"I'm not some vessel to be hijacked by space parasites," Shin muttered.
The Otsutsuki's karmic resurrection technique was a farce to him. It required soul anchoring—a fixed spiritual foothold. Without that, Karma was nothing but a data download.
Shin felt the foreign Otsutsuki data invade his body—and smirked.
He copied and decompressed it on his own terms.
Still holding Momoshiki's charred upper torso, Uchiha Shin opened a rift in space and summoned the massive Ten-Tails—the one previously held by Isshiki Otsutsuki.
He tossed Momoshiki's broken body straight into its gaping maw.
GULP.
The beast devoured him instantly. Its body began to convulse and mutate.
The metamorphosis into a Divine Tree began.
But in this isolated dimension, the sacred tree had nowhere to root.
"You'll be useful later. Stay frozen."
Uchiha Shin snapped his fingers, halting time in this dimension once more. The Ten-Tails and Divine Tree would remain in suspended animation.
Meanwhile, he began decoding the enormous data set now imprinted in his cells.
The Otsutsuki's genetic knowledge was dense—terrifying in scope.
It would take time to digest it fully.
But already, Shin had unlocked two new techniques:
[Kōmyō Seirei no Shukufuku] (Radiant Spirit of the Sage) and [Haō no Kōgeki] (Overlord Armament).
"That first one's pretty mid when Momoshiki uses it," Shin mused.
"But this version of the Divine Tree? Ridiculous."
It absorbs all ninjutsu and chakra unconditionally—then reflects it back, amplified severalfold.
Further evolved, it could consume any form of energy, using it to either regenerate or power up.
He whistled.
"And time-freeze… that one's pure-blood exclusive. Only the highest-tier Otsutsuki can cultivate it."
His thoughts shifted to Haō no Kōgeki—a power that allows weaponization of chakra itself.
Any shape. Any size. The quality and strength directly tied to the user's own chakra reserves.
A truly scalable ability.
After internalizing these new powers, Uchiha Shin turned toward the still-dazed Otsutsuki Kaguya.
She remained rooted to the spot, shell-shocked.
She'd witnessed time freeze.
But unlike Shin, she hadn't broken free.
If she had been in his place, her best hope would have been to tank the hit with her immortality—and even that wasn't a guarantee.
Seeing her flushed face, Shin raised an eyebrow.
"Don't worry," he said with a smirk. "I never expected you to be useful anyway."
Her cheeks reddened. Her lips curled into a pout.
In silent retaliation, she stepped forward and gently bit his shoulder.
A territorial nibble, not unlike a tsundere dinosaur.
She was humiliated—utterly sidelined in this battle. And she knew it.
Truth be told, among the Otsutsuki, Kaguya was something of an anomaly.
A goddess in name—but a pacifist in spirit.
The rest of her kin were brutal conquerors, born to ravage worlds and harvest chakra.
By comparison, Kaguya's lack of combat instinct made her feel obsolete.
Good thing Uchiha Shin wasn't the kind to lash out over it.
Still holding that moment in his palm, Shin turned away.
Momoshiki and Kinshiki were dead. Their threat neutralized.
But this wasn't the end. It was only the beginning.
The Otsutsuki High Council would eventually sense their deaths.
In a few hundred—or a few thousand—years, stronger monsters would come.
Shin had no intention of sitting around and waiting.
"It's time to set sail."
He raised his hand.
"Tengoku no Gyōten!" (Heaven's Royal Pivot)
The "primordial spherical space" he had woven—stretching across the solar system—began to pulse and expand.
It devoured the galaxy in seconds.
Then, with calm determination, he activated his ultimate space-time ninjutsu:
"Sekai no Mon." (Gate of the Worlds)
A rip tore open across reality—a portal into unknown dimensions.
He stood before it, cloak whipping in the cosmic wind, eyes alight with divine fury.
Uchiha Shin… was going world-hopping.
And the gods had no clue what was coming next.
[End of the story]
[End Of Book]