Chapter 173: Clash of Titans
The wind howled across the battlefield, carrying the chill of the never-ending rain. Droplets fell in endless curtains, soaking the earth, the fighters, the dead—all equal before the storm.
Ragnar walked.
Step by unhurried step, he advanced into the heart of the second great clash between the three major ninja villages. His pace was neither rushed nor delayed, but each footfall seemed to land with immense weight—not upon the mud, but upon the hearts of every observer. Shinobi on all sides found themselves holding their breath, afraid that even the slightest exhale might trigger some cataclysmic shift in the world's balance.
Some people are simply born to stand at the center of everything. Where Ragnar moved, eyes followed. Thousands of them. Konoha, Iwa, Suna—all watched.
And in those eyes, a thousand different emotions warred: surprise, awe, terror, hope, hatred, desperation. A cocktail of human feeling, shaken and stirred by the presence of a single individual.
Rustle. Rustle.
The sound of his footsteps mixed with the grinding of wet gravel beneath his soles, a quiet rhythm that somehow dominated the cacophony of the battlefield.
"Ragnar!" Tsunade's voice cut through the rain, surprise evident in her tone. She hadn't expected him to come. Not now, not at this moment of near-total defeat. But as she looked at the place where the Tailed Beast Bomb had detonated harmlessly in the sky, everything clicked into place. Of course. There was only one explanation for that impossible deflection.
Around her, the Konoha ninja who recognized Ragnar—and after the first great battle, that was nearly all of them—felt their spirits ignite. This was not just a reinforcement. This was him. The hero of their village. The living legend who had turned an entire army to ash.
"Rakshasa!"
"Rakshasa!"
"RAKSHASA!"
The chant began quietly, then swelled into a roaring wave that crashed against the rain. Konoha's morale, moments ago shattered and broken, reknitted itself into something fierce and unbreakable. Their champion had arrived.
Hatake Sakumo watched from his position, still hemmed in by the Third Kazekage's sand iron. His expression was complicated—relief warring with concern. He had wanted to shield Ragnar from this, to keep the boy's growing legend from becoming a political liability. But as he looked at the exhausted, grateful faces of the Konoha ninja, he couldn't deny the truth.
If Ragnar hadn't come… we would all be dead.
The thought was a cold stone in his gut. And now, with the Five-Tails Jinchuriki enraged and the Third Kazekage observing from the wings, the situation was more volatile than ever.
Ragnar walked past the Konoha ranks. Ninja parted before him like waves before a prow, their eyes solemn, reverent. They made way for their king.
Finally, he stopped before the Sannin.
"Where have you been?" Tsunade demanded, the worry beneath her sharp tone evident. "The battle started hours ago!"
"Tsunade," Orochimaru interjected, his serpentine eyes gleaming with anticipation, "now is not the time for such questions. I believe Ragnar-kun is eager to engage the enemy."
"Ragnar! You're here!" Jiraiya's grin was wide, genuine relief flooding his features. "Man, am I glad to see you!"
Ragnar's gaze swept over them—his comrades, his friends, battered but alive. A faint nod. Then he looked past them, towards the hulking figure of Gōki and the three massive tails writhing behind him.
"Leave it to me."
Five words. Quiet. Certain. Absolute.
He stepped forward, passing the Sannin, putting distance between himself and the Konoha lines until he stood alone in no-man's land.
It was a scene the veterans of the first great battle recognized instantly. Ragnar, alone, facing an entire enemy force. The image that had become legend.
But this time, the enemy was not merely an army of shinobi.
This time, the enemy was a Tailed Beast.
In the Suna command post, the Third Kazekage's eyes narrowed to slits. He studied the young figure standing alone against the might of Iwa's ultimate weapon.
"So this is Rakshasa," he murmured. "Young. So terribly young. And yet…" He could feel it, even from this distance. The weight of presence. The absolute certainty in that solitary stance. "If the situation proves manageable, I will ensure you do not leave this battlefield. At your age, you are already Sunagakure's greatest future threat. I will not allow that future to arrive."
His hand twitched, sand iron shifting restlessly around him. Waiting. Watching.
Nōhei had lost all composure. His face was a mask of hysterical fury and primal terror. "GŌKI!" he shrieked, his voice cracking. "KILL HIM! THAT IS THE RAKSHASA! HE IS IWAGAKURE'S GREATEST ENEMY! DESTROY HIM AND YOU WILL BE A HERO! A TRUE HERO OF THE VILLAGE!"
The words pierced through Gōki's dulled consciousness.
Hero.
The word echoed in the hollow spaces of the Jinchuriki's mind. He had never been a hero. He had been a weapon. A tool. Something to be feared and despised, used and discarded. But hero… that was different. That was acknowledgment.
For the first time in longer than he could remember, something flickered in Gōki's dead eyes.
Gururu…
The red chakra coat around him intensified. Blood-red bubbles formed and burst along his skin. The three massive tails behind him writhed, then lashed together, slamming into the ground with earth-shattering force.
BOOM!
The impact cracked the bedrock. The entire battlefield shuddered, shinobi on all sides stumbling as the ground bucked beneath them. Using that titanic force as propulsion, Gōki launched himself forward.
He didn't run. He flew. His body shot through the rain like a cannonball, leaving a trail of white cyclonic vapor in its wake. And from his back, white steam erupted in massive plumes—not just exhaust, but a boiling of chakra so intense it screamed through the air like a train whistle.
Ragnar's Observation Haki was already active, reading the flow of chakra. He had sensed many things in his battles—the cold precision of jonin, the burning fury of vengeance, the desperate flailing of the doomed.
This was different.
Gōki's chakra wasn't just flowing. It was boiling. Like water superheated past its limit, reaching a state of violent, unstable expansion. The white steam was the visible manifestation—chakra pushed to its absolute physical limit, stimulating every cell, every muscle fiber, to heights no normal body could achieve.
"Boil Release: Unparalleled Strange Power!"
Gōki's voice emerged, faint but distinct. A bloodline limit. One of the rarest in the shinobi world.
His fist came forward.
The punch didn't just strike—it obliterated the space it traveled through. The air itself compressed, then detonated. A hurricane-force gale preceded the blow, gouging the earth into a massive trench. If a mountain had stood in that fist's path, it would have been punched through, a perfect hole bored through solid rock.
The Blood Succession Limit of Boil Release, layered atop a Tailed Beast Cloak, amplified by three tails of raw demonic power. This was not addition. This was multiplication beyond all sane measure.
Against this, Ragnar did not dodge. He did not evade.
He raised one hand.
"Gravity Suppression."
BOOOOOOM!
(End of Chapter)
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