Even with both Hanzo and Danzo shouting for their men to stop him, it was too late.
The ground split open under Nagato's feet, shaking like an earthquake.
From the depths rose something massive, an ancient, skeletal monster of stone and chakra.
The Gedo Statue tore its way out of the earth, its roar echoing through the rain like thunder.
Konan screamed his name, begging him to stop, but Nagato couldn't hear her anymore.
His eyes were empty of reason, filled only with loss and rage.
Black rods burst from the statue's body and shot straight into his back, pinning him to it.
His scream turned into a growl as the rods pulsed, linking his chakra to the creature's core.
A wave of pressure followed, crushing the air itself.
The statue opened its mouth, and a massive spectral dragon exploded out, swirling through the battlefield.
It moved like a storm, ripping the souls out of shinobi before they even realized what had happened.
Root and Amegakure soldiers dropped one after another, their bodies collapsing mid-step, eyes blank and lifeless.
The few who tried to run didn't make it far; the dragon devoured them all, their souls streaming into its jaws like smoke.
Nagato stood in the center of it, shaking, bleeding, bound to the monster he'd called.
His face twisted between pain and fury, and the world seemed to bend around his chakra.
Up on a nearby ridge, Obito watched through the rain beside Black Zetsu.
Obito muttered, watching the carnage below. "The Rinnegan and the husk of the Ten-Tails… even half-awake, they're terrifying. Let's see how Danzo gets out of this."
Black Zetsu's voice was calm, almost amused. "The more he draws on that power, the faster it burns him out. That's how the statue feeds, on the user as much as the enemy."
"Good," Obito said. "Let him drain himself. Weak enough to control, strong enough to be useful."
Black Zetsu's eyes narrowed. "Still, impressive. Sixteen years old and wielding that much of another man's eyes. The Uzumaki bloodline really is something else."
Obito said nothing, watching the rain fall over the massacre below.
The souls kept screaming, but only the wind carried their voices.
Down below, Danzo and Hanzo fought their way through the madness, moving fast and ruthlessly, using what was left of their men as shields.
The soul-dragon tore through everything that moved, and only the quickest survived.
They ducked behind debris, chakra flaring, hearts pounding.
When the dragon's roar finally faded for a moment, they dared to look back toward the center.
The red-haired boy stood there, barely standing, breath ragged, blood running down his face.
Behind him loomed that monstrous statue, and its presence alone felt heavy enough to crush the world.
Then Hanzo saw his eyes.
The rain caught the reflection, circles upon circles, rippling like the surface of water.
For a heartbeat, even Hanzo forgot to breathe. The Rinnegan.
It wasn't supposed to exist.
A power that belonged to myth, to the Sage of Six Paths himself, seen only on some murals.
That shouldn't exist in real life.
And now it burned in the face of a half-dead teenager.
He turned sharply to Danzo, his voice cracking with something between panic and disbelief.
"Danzo! That's the Rinnegan! We can't fight that, our men are gone! We need to fall back, now! Create a diversion if you have to, but we're leaving!"
Hanzo had never admitted fear in his life, but this wasn't fear; it was instinct.
That boy's chakra wasn't something a human should have.
It dwarfed even his prime.
But beside him, Danzo didn't move.
The older man's eyes widened, trembling with greed.
His voice came out cracked and manic.
"The Rinnegan… mine! This is destiny! I, Danzo Shimura, will rule the shinobi world!"
Hanzo turned to him, stunned.
The spymaster was smiling like a lunatic, hands flashing through seals, and then—
Some wooden coffins erupted from the soaked earth, slamming open in front of him.
Danzo's eyes glinted as the coffins thudded open.
Four shadows began to stir inside them.
Edo Tensei—the forbidden jutsu of legends.
Not the crude, half-stable prototype his teacher had once used.
After all, Tobirama's original concept had been designed for something far simpler, to be paired with his Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags, another powerful jutsu he created.
The revived bodies didn't need to retain their full power or consciousness; they were just disposable weapons, animated corpses thrown into suicidal detonations against the enemy.
Tobirama died relatively young before he could refine the technique further.
But Danzo had perfected what his teacher couldn't.
He had made it better now. Much better.
It was like an advanced and more complex, next-level usage.
The main idea now was finding the genetic materials of the strongest legends of the past and using them to their fullest potential, at your fingertips.
His summons didn't just keep their full strength from life; they were still indestructible, as they could regenerate endlessly and fight without tiring.
Their chakra looped between body and soul, spiritual energy drawn back from the Pure Land the moment it ran dry, refueling the physical half again.
So, they still weren't stronger than in life, but they could fight forever.
And unlike Tobirama's version, Danzo's could even restore the full personality and mind of the dead if it suited him, an option that made control easier when the summoned willingly shared his purpose, at the moment.
In fact, Danzo was convinced that his current version of Edo Tensei far surpassed even Orochimaru's.
Orochimaru had been the first to try and successfully improve upon Tobirama's original prototype, yes, but Danzo had been the one who helped him gain access to it in the first place, jointly, from Hiruzen.
He'd personally shared the scrolls, the notes, and the early frameworks, even exchanged findings with him for a time, before Orochimaru hit a bottleneck eventually in it, in the past, and lost his interest in bringing it further.
But later, recently, when Danzo tried to push the research further again, to try and elevate it beyond Orochimaru's past limits, with more renewed focus than ever, for their faction's future plan, regarding Ryusei Nishida, he was dismissed.
Orochimaru brushed him off, claiming he had "no time," probably already neck-deep in one of his secret projects instead of working for the "village's benefit".
The memory still burned and made Danzo even more infuriated with Orochimaru at present.
Yeah, this was all tied to the true reason Danzo even achieved all of that now, not for his current mission, obviously; it was due to something else entirely - the big crisis Ryusei Nishida had caused months ago.
After that boy's defiance to die, his obvious alliance with Tsunade, and his hostage play with the Fire Daimyō, Konoha's leadership had gone into panic mode.
The council spent nights searching for any advantage, any forbidden weapon to regain control. Inevitably, they dug up Tobirama's old Edo Tensei notes.
Hiruzen divided the documents between three people: himself, Homura, and Danzo.
A safety measure, in case one, probably mostly Danzo himself, got too ambitious.
Hiruzen himself wouldn't touch something this dark. He needed others to handle it.
Homura and Koharu were his choices, trusted, capable, and influential elders, predictable, and already under his thumb.
Danzo almost laughed at that. Homura and Koharu were bureaucrats, not field men.
What could they possibly do with something this complex?
He already had the infrastructure, network, the manpower, and no moral restraint.
Root's laboratories worked night and day under his orders, test subjects, and even researchers, dying one after another until they finally cracked it and improved it.
While Hiruzen and the other two were still struggling with the old formulas, Danzo's team had already moved ahead.
He now had the perfected version and the four best samples available.
He'd been saving this for Ryusei soon, to finally destroy him once and for all, as they planned, soon after this Ame trip.
In their minds, this jutsu would be the decisive edge.
But if fate wanted to hand him the Rinnegan first, then so be it.
From the coffins stepped Sasuke Sarutobi, Kagami Uchiha, Izuna Uchiha, whose DNA had been secretly taken by Tobirama, much earlier in history, and even Mito Uzumaki herself.
Each figure was silent, the mist of the Pure Land still clinging to them.
They looked whole, real, terrifyingly alive.
Danzo didn't want them free-willed today.
He slapped the talismans onto their backs the instant their forms solidified, seizing control before their minds could awaken and start asking questions.
It would've been less chakra expensive to leave them conscious, to let them fight for him, on their own, but there was no time to explain anything presently.
He also didn't need potential witnesses, dead or alive, in the future, after he acquired this.
Also, his new Senju-infused body strained under the pressure, veins bulging, chakra thrumming painfully through every limb, yet he could hold the connection, barely.
Sacrifices, DNA, all prepared long ago inside those coffins.
Now, it was just a matter of summoning together.
Four blinding pillars of chakra connected heaven and earth, anchoring their souls into his command.
There had been talk of bringing back other legends, the White Fang, for example, but his researchers failed to summon him, for reasons still unknown.
As for Hashirama and Tobirama? Never.
That had been the one thing even Danzo and Hiruzen both agreed on.
The Second created the jutsu; the First was too powerful to be contained by anything.
Reviving them would mean losing their current power and ambitions within the village, instantly, and Danzo would never risk that.
Still, he knew Hiruzen could summon the same four if he wanted.
They both had the samples, and it would come down to who could supply more chakra in a tug-of-war over control in the future if they also managed to master this jutsu eventually and wanted to summon them at the same time.
Hiruzen, with his reserves and the entire village's support, would win that contest easily.
That's why Danzo had to move fast, strike first, and make the outcome irreversible.
Now he had four undead titans bound to his will, a working Izanagi system with ten Sharingan on his arm, and Hashirama's vitality coursing through his veins.
He looked up through the rain at Nagato, at those godly eyes glowing in the storm.
The Rinnegan was his. His destiny.
For the first time in years, Danzo's heart pounded not from fear but from direct desire.
He believed it now, some higher power must have been watching him, rewarding his sacrifice, his ambition, his resolve.
This was no coincidence. This was fate.