The Tailed Beast Bomb—far larger than even the Tailed Beast that launched it—hurtled forward like a falling meteor, over a hundred meters in diameter.
BOOM!
A blinding white light swallowed the battlefield.
The deafening explosion didn't just drown out every other sound—it erased them. The air vibrated with raw force as shockwaves tore through everything. Towering peaks crumbled like fragile toys; the surrounding mountains were pulverized into dust.
The forest? Gone. Flattened in an instant—obliterated within a ten-kilometer radius by the unstoppable storm that followed the blast.
"Hold on! Don't get blown off!"
Clinging tightly to the feathers of their giant black eagle summon, the Konoha Shinobi didn't dare lift their heads. Before the detonation, they'd sensed something was wrong—and immediately retreated several kilometers, flying high into the sky aboard the massive bird summoned and controlled by the Nara clan.
But even at that distance and altitude...
The blast's fury reached them.
The black eagle wobbled violently in the storm, like a leaf caught in a hurricane. Even the skilled Nara handling it struggled to keep the summon from spinning out of control.
Time passed.
The world-shattering explosion finally subsided.
"...Is it over?"
One Konoha shinobi cautiously lifted his head, his voice hoarse, his eyes wide with disbelief.
Before this, all he could do was close his eyes and pray—pray that the searing light wasn't his last sight.
Even so, the brightness was impossible to ignore. It was like staring into the sun itself.
And now…
"...T-this..."
No one could finish their thoughts.
Because what lay before them wasn't a battlefield—it was a wasteland.
The lush forest, once stretching as far as the eye could see, had vanished. In its place was a scorched, barren plain—cracked earth and broken stone stretching for miles. The devastation was unimaginable.
"Who… won?"
"Did Lord Naraku survive…?"
The question hung heavy in the air.
Surely no one could have lived through such a catastrophic explosion... right?
But then—
"Look—there! In the sky!"
A soft, blue glow hovered amidst the dust and smoke. Suspended in midair like a divine figure, Hyuga Naraku floated—unscathed.
"Lord Naraku!!"
"He did it! He actually did it!"
"He's a god… He's an actual god!"
The Konoha shinobi burst into cheers. Their voices cracked from the strain, their eyes wide in awe as they watched the man who had defied the wrath of a Tailed Beast.
Hyuga Naraku—who had caught and returned a Tailed Beast Bomb spanning over a hundred meters.
Hyuga Naraku—who had stood against Eight Tails, and emerged without a scratch.
"Over there… that's Eight Tails, right?"
Someone pointed toward a shredded mass of flesh: octopus-like tentacles scorched and smoking.
"...Did we really kill it?"
"No," Naraku said coldly, his pale blue eyes scanning the scorched battlefield.
"They escaped."
At the last moment, **Gyūki—the Eight Tails—**had wrapped itself and the Fourth Raikage in its massive tentacles, shielding them both.
After the explosion, they left behind a severed tentacle as a decoy—and fled.
When some shinobi flew down to check, their faces turned grim. "He's right… it's just a tentacle."
"Commander, what are your orders?" asked Nara Shikaku, stepping forward, his tone respectful—more so than ever before.
His reverence for Naraku had grown—not just because the man had toppled Hiruzen Sarutobi and dismantled the rotten foundation of the previous leadership…
…but because of this:
Power.
Divine, undeniable power.
"We chase them," Naraku said with a faint smile. "We don't stop until we hit Cloud Shinobi Village itself."
"Cloud… Shinobi… Village!?"
Shikaku's brow creased.
"That's… a little too bold, isn't it? Dangerous, even."
Even as much as he trusted Naraku's power… attacking another hidden village outright?
They didn't know what Cloud might be hiding—what last-resort measures the Raikage still had up his sleeve.
Naraku's eyes turned sharp.
"This isn't just retaliation for what they tried to do to me," he said flatly.
"Cloud is a threat to peace. Always has been."
Cloud had always been the most militant of the Five Great Nations.
The Third Shinobi World War? It had officially begun when Sunagakure was caught in internal strife after the disappearance of the Third Kazekage.
What did Cloud do?
They didn't wait.
They attacked.
It was Cloud's aggression that ignited the flames of war.
And during that same war? Cloud waged battles against all the other Great Nations—Konoha, Iwagakure, Sunagakure.
Unlike Konoha, which was forced into conflict, Cloud had actively pursued it.
It wasn't just leadership—it was the culture.
They were a nation of warriors. A nation of war.
"People like them," Naraku said, "won't stop until someone beats the arrogance out of them."
"Once and for all."
"And that's what I'm going to do."
His tone left no room for argument.
Cloud Shinobi's long record of crimes was infamous.
They kidnapped young Kushina Uzumaki when she first came to Konoha—trying to take her back and turn her into a Jinchūriki.
During the time of the Fourth Raikage, they tried to abduct Hinata Hyuga—an act so bold, they even demanded her father's head afterward.
They raided the Land of Trees, attempting to steal forbidden jutsu—even the Raikage himself had gone on that mission.
They were not victims.
They were predators—from the top down.
"When Kushina was kidnapped, Hiruzen didn't even retaliate."
"And when Hinata's father was nearly taken, what did Hiruzen do?"
"He almost handed me over as a scapegoat."
Naraku's gaze hardened.
"But Hiruzen's gone now."
"And I'll show them—Konoha is no longer weak."
A roar erupted from the Konoha shinobi below.
"That's right!"
"Cloud has always pushed us around—we've had enough!"
"No more rolling over and playing nice! Not for thieves and kidnappers!"
"We're not Sarutobi's Konoha anymore!"
Their eyes were wild with fervor.
Where once they had bowed their heads in diplomacy—even submission—they now stood tall under Naraku's shadow, remembering what it felt like to be proud of their strength.
Shikaku exhaled slowly and nodded.
This was no longer the same Konoha.
Not under Sarutobi. Not under compromise.
Under Hyuga Naraku… it had found its backbone again.
Today, they had suffered zero losses.
The enemy? Nearly three thousand Cloud Shinobi—wiped out.
The only survivors were:
The Fourth Raikage, fleeing like a broken man.
Killer Bee, unconscious from his injuries.
And the Two-Tails Jinchūriki, Yugito Nii, captured in battle.
Her unconscious form lay gently atop the back of the black eagle, still wrapped in her cloak of singed fur and torn armor.
"She was lucky," Naraku said. "She lost consciousness before the final explosion. And she hadn't yet lost full control of her Tailed Beast form."
Had she stayed transformed… she'd have been vaporized with the rest.
Naraku turned to address the others, his white robe fluttering in the wind, his voice calm—cold, yet resolute.
"Now that we're agreed," he said,
"Let's pay a visit to Cloud Shinobi Village."
"Strike them while they bleed."
"Yes, Lord Naraku!" came the roaring response.
And the sky above the Land of Lightning trembled—black eagles slicing through the air, the storm of Konoha's vengeance soaring toward Kumogakure.