Arata's three slashes were undeniably powerful—but Deep Forest Emergence was terrifying in its own right. Its coverage spanned more than ten kilometers.
This wasn't residual shockwave damage.
This was the pure area of effect of a ninjutsu.
Within that range, countless intertwined roots spread in every direction.
This was precisely the jutsu that had once allowed Hashirama Senju to suppress Uchiha Madara—once unleashed, the battlefield itself became the domain of a Wood Style user.
Against these roots, Arata's slashes still cut through everything in their path. However, with his keen perception, he noticed something off almost immediately.
Every time a slash passed through a root, its size shrank slightly—and its speed slowed.
It was as if the lightning energy within the slash was being absorbed by something.
Recalling the traits of Wood Style from canon, Arata quickly understood.
So that was it.
These roots weren't meant to attack him—they existed solely to interfere with and weaken his offense.
In the original story, even the Nine-Tails had been immobilized the moment it was entangled by these roots. And that was despite its overwhelming physical power—power that, even in a chakra cloak, allowed it to brute-force techniques like Pain's Shinra Tensei.
Yet a fully unleashed Nine-Tails had still been restrained by what looked like nothing more than tangled roots.
Wood Style was clearly anything but simple.
Arata had already closed the distance to Madara earlier. Under normal circumstances, his slashes should have reached Madara in the blink of an eye.
Instead, nearly a full breath passed.
Only then did the three slashes finally break through the dense forest and reach the position Madara had been standing in.
But by then—
There was no one there.
Madara and White Zetsu were gone. Even the Gedo Statue, which had just been summoned, had vanished into a cloud of white smoke.
Seeing this, Arata knew that today, he had lost his chance to completely eliminate Uchiha Madara.
The old man might have declined in strength, but his mind was still razor-sharp. He clearly understood that continuing the fight would benefit neither side—and so he withdrew immediately.
Compared to his battle with Hashirama all those years ago, Madara had clearly become far more pragmatic. He no longer allowed provocation to drive him into a reckless, life-or-death struggle.
As for Madara's hiding place—Arata roughly knew it was somewhere underground, but the shinobi world was vast. Tracking him down would be anything but easy.
Just the Land of Fire alone could take years to search. And with White Zetsu involved, Madara could be buried far deeper underground than anyone could guess.
At this point, Arata understood that today's battle had truly reached its end.
Still, it wasn't a total loss.
In a single day, he had broken through to Super Kage Peak and awakened his Devil Fruit ability—barriers that had refused to budge despite months of training.
As expected, intense combat was the greatest catalyst for growth.
Pressure bred progress.
If the entire shinobi world consisted of nothing but ordinary Kage-level opponents, his strength might never have advanced this far.
Just like Hashirama and Madara back then—without pushing each other relentlessly, neither would have reached such heights alone.
In Arata's view, from this point onward, the only beings in the shinobi world capable of challenging him were Uchiha Madara and the shadow lurking behind everything—Black Zetsu.
All others were no longer worth considering.
And with that, the Second Great Shinobi War was finally approaching its conclusion.
Once the battle fully ended, Arata immediately dispelled his Lightning Armor.
Three major battles in a single day—without the natural energy he absorbed when the Monkey Sage died, he would have collapsed long ago.
Even now, he was at his limit.
Sitting on the ground, Arata panted heavily, trying to steady his breathing.
"Looks like my training still isn't enough… just this much fighting, and I'm already in this state."
If anyone else heard a Super Kage Peak monster saying something like that, those stuck at chūnin or jōnin level would probably feel too ashamed to face the world.
What weighed on Arata most, however, was the fate of the Uzumaki clan.
He had thought his arrival might change things—but in the end, several key figures were still lost. Even Uzushiogakure itself had sunk beneath the sea.
And if he remembered correctly, the scroll that recorded all of the Uzumaki clan's ninjutsu had likely been destroyed during his clash with Madara.
Given the sheer devastation of their battle, even a Super Kage at the early stage wouldn't have survived—let alone a single scroll.
Thinking of that, Arata's expression darkened further.
Not only was the scroll gone—the bodies of Uzumaki Mito and Uzumaki Suigetsu had vanished without a trace as well.
Earlier, with Madara right in front of him, Arata hadn't dared to retrieve their remains. Now, he realized they had been completely erased.
One of them had been Tsunade's grandmother.
For all his power, Arata couldn't deny it—he had failed to protect the people most important to his wife.
That thought extinguished any remaining sense of triumph from having forced Madara to retreat.
Turning around, Arata looked toward the distant sea—and immediately felt a vein pulse on his forehead.
"…Did Madara and I go a little too far?"
In the distance, a colossal tsunami was rolling toward him.
Everyone knew Arata had come here to aid the Uzumaki clan. The battlefield had never strayed far from the coast.
And with explosions spanning tens of kilometers, the right-side coastline of the Land of Fire had been blasted into a massive depression.
That massive depression had already reached the shoreline, even swallowing the area where Uzushiogakure once stood.
Aside from the seawater that had instantly evaporated, the rest had been violently forced back over a distance of more than ten kilometers.
Now, it was surging back.
The displaced seawater had piled up into a wall of water towering over two hundred meters high.
Even Arata's Lightning Armor Third Gear was less than half its height.
Next to this tidal wave, even the tallest mountains of his previous world felt insignificant.
Once this tsunami crashed down and flooded the massive crater left by the battle, the Land of Fire would lose dozens of square kilometers of territory.
And this—
Wasn't caused by war.
It was merely the aftermath of a battle between Arata Itsuki and Uchiha Madara.