Uchiha Keizumi stood in place, feeling the increasingly violent tremors coming from the earth beneath his feet— even the small stones by his feet were bouncing wildly.
Expressionless, he murmured softly.
"Tailed Beast Ball…"
In the next moment, he slowly lifted his head, and the crimson light in his eyes flared brilliantly.
The pattern in those eyes was no longer that of an ordinary Mangekyō Sharingan. It was a far more complex, more sinister, and deeper pattern!
As if two different Mangekyō Sharingan patterns had perfectly nested and fused together.
Forming a qualitative transformation!
Forming a brand-new pair of eyes imbued with eternal power!
This was the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan!
[Rumble, rumble, rumble—!!!]
As his ocular power was fully unleashed, the ground roared with an even more violent sound than before. A colossal crimson skeletal frame, immense beyond imagination—like a terrifying demon god crawling up from the deepest depths of hell—erupted from the earth behind him!
And that was only the beginning.
As the skeleton rose, countless streams of crimson chakra surged forth like a torrent of molten lava, swiftly constructing powerful, corded muscle fibers upon the skeletal frame.
Immediately afterward, layers of heavy, ancient, and fearsome crimson armor covered the massive body of Susanoo, piece by piece, like a living thing.
Upon the armor burned blazing crimson flames of chakra.
The extreme heat radiating from those crimson flames caused the ground beneath its feet to begin melting and boiling from a distance.
A churning, bubbling lake of molten lava spread outward without end.
At the moment when the Three-Tails' Tailed Beast Ball expanded to its absolute limit—
This hellish demon god-like Susanoo finally revealed its complete form.
Standing over 210 meters tall, its colossal body loomed like a moving mountain, silently towering between heaven and earth.
The shadow it cast was vast enough to cover an entire small shinobi village!
A pair of enormous wings, so exaggerated in size that upon close inspection they seemed to have viscous molten lava slowly flowing within them, suddenly unfurled from the back of Susanoo!
The crimson glow of the lava appeared to illuminate the clouds in the sky.
As the wings beat, scorching gales swept forth.
Uchiha Keizumi's figure was securely protected within Susanoo.
Under Uchiha Keizumi's control, the Complete Body Susanoo raised one arm—larger than a house—and thrust it sharply toward the void!
[Buzz—!!!]
Endless Lava Release chakra converged, and in an instant, a colossal molten greatsword thicker and heavier than ever before condensed into form.
The blade of that sword was as wide as an enormous gate panel, and along its edge, molten lava flowed slowly.
It emanated an aura of terrifying power that could burn all into ash!
…
"What is that…"
Feeling the waves of heat surging toward them and staring fixedly at the towering molten giant in the distance, Ao could not help but widen his eyes.
Terumī Mei murmured in shock, "I… I think I've seen similar records in some ancient texts kept in the village decades ago. This seems to be a dōjutsu unique to the Uchiha clan of Konohagakure…"
…
On the other side, the Tailed Beast Ball in the Three-Tails' massive jaws had now expanded to a staggering size—almost a quarter of its entire body!
The Tailed Beast chakra on its body had clearly dimmed and weakened from excessive output.
"Roar—!!!"
With the last of its strength, it let out a hysterical, sky-rending roar that seemed to tear the heavens apart!
That ultra-massive Tailed Beast Ball, condensed with all its power and capable of destroying mountains and reshaping terrain, shot out from its enormous mouth like a rampaging beast of annihilation!
The launch of the Tailed Beast Ball made no sound at all!
Or rather…
The sound had already been left far behind!
At a speed far beyond the limit of visual perception, the Tailed Beast Ball sliced through space silently, devouring and distorting even light along its path, and hurtled straight toward the distant Susanoo with overwhelming force!
However…
The Tailed Beast Ball that had gathered all the power of the Three-Tails—enough to completely wipe most of a shinobi village off the map—before the colossal Complete Body Susanoo, seemed like nothing more than a leather ball tossed by a child, utterly insignificant!
Facing the Tailed Beast Ball roaring toward him with an aura of utter destruction, the cold gaze hidden beneath the thick battle helm of the Complete Body Susanoo did not waver in the slightest.
Its enormous hands, clad in crimson armor, gripped tightly around the hilt of that molten greatblade.
Just as the Tailed Beast Ball was about to crash into the chest armor of the Susanoo—
[Swoosh—!!!]
A crimson arc of searing heat suddenly slashed out at lightning speed—so fast it surpassed even the reaction time of elite shinobi!
The trajectory carved by the blade seemed to split open space itself for a fleeting instant!
At the very moment when the molten blade's edge touched the dark surface of the Tailed Beast Ball—
An utterly eerie and absolute silence, as though all things had returned to stillness, instantly shrouded heaven and earth.
The initial shockwave of that destructive collision surpassed the limits of ordinary hearing.
Observers in the distance even felt as though both time and space had frozen.
It was as if the entire world had turned into a motionless black-and-white oil painting.
The next instant—!
[Zzzla—!!!]
Like a red-hot sword cutting into a slab of butter, or like waves of scorching heat melting away snow—
The moment the molten blade met the Tailed Beast Ball, that highly compressed, unstable mass of energy failed to produce the earth-shaking explosion everyone expected.
Instead, the molten blade's edge cleaved it perfectly in two—cleanly, effortlessly, without the slightest resistance!
[Boom!!!]
[Boom!!!]
The Tailed Beast Ball, split with precision, lost the balance and stability of its Yin-Yang chakra energies.
It turned into two slightly smaller spheres of pitch-black energy, shrieking sharply as they howled past the Complete Body Susanoo on both sides.
Then they shot off toward the distant horizon behind it.
Almost simultaneously, in two different regions several kilometers behind the Susanoo, two massive fireballs—each as large as towering mountains—erupted violently into the sky!
The blinding radiance instantly lit up the heavens, for a brief moment even outshining the brilliance of the sun!
The terrifying shockwaves of the explosion struck a heartbeat later, and the destructive gales they carried roared like a divine calamity, shredding and scattering the clouds high above into tatters.
On the ground, massive rocks as large as houses were uprooted one after another, then torn apart and ground into the finest dust while still in midair.
The vast stretch of primeval forest behind was instantly annihilated under the searing heat and shock of the explosion's core.
Only two enormous, pitch-black craters with glassy edges were left behind!
Even separated by several kilometers, the ground beneath Uchiha Keizumi's feet was still trembling and groaning violently.
Like a high-magnitude earthquake, fierce fissures spread outward like a spider's web.
Behind the Complete Body Susanoo, two enormous mushroom clouds mixed with fire and dust slowly rose.
At the same time—
The slash of the Complete Body Susanoo that had split the Tailed Beast Ball did not lose any of its momentum!
Along the blade's path, a crescent-shaped shockwave of crimson heat, formed from highly condensed Lava Release chakra, swept forth!
The shockwave, visible to the naked eye, was like the scythe of Death itself.
It effortlessly split and melted the earth ahead, plowing a straight and deep chasm whose edges flowed with dark red magma.
That molten strike, moving with the speed to tear through all things, headed straight for the Three-Tails, whose chakra was now severely weakened and whose massive body stood frozen in place!
The towering crimson slash of molten energy was so high it even surpassed the mountain-sized form of the Three-Tails Isobu.
It filled its entire field of vision!
The single eye of the Three-Tails, its breath greatly diminished from expending its strength on the Tailed Beast Ball, suddenly widened to the limit.
Reflected within its pupil was that searing crimson, growing ever closer, flooding the whole world before it!
Fast!
Too fast!
So fast that it couldn't even lift its claws to defend!
Its vision was already completely swallowed by that all-devouring red of destruction!
Not even the corners of its sight could perceive anything else.
It was as if, in all heaven and earth, only that fatal slash remained.
The next second—!
[Pshhh—!!!!]
There was no earth-shattering impact, only a muffled, chilling sound like a blade slicing through thick hide!
The crimson molten slash engulfed the massive body of the Three-Tails completely!
Its proud, heavy shell—tough enough to withstand the bombardment of ninjutsu—was rendered utterly useless before that molten strike.
In an instant, the extreme heat melted through it, and the terrifying impact that followed tore it apart completely!
A crimson arc of light flashed vertically through the very center of the Three-Tails' body!