Chapter 310 - 310: Hagoromo Arrives. Ryusei Won’t Kneel

Hagoromo's gaze settled on Ryusei with the weight of a world looking at an anomaly.

"You," he said, voice calm but carrying an ancient edge. "Your existence stains the balance of this realm. Souls do not merge as yours has. Bloodlines do not fuse as yours did. Power does not accumulate in the way you force it to. You are a distortion… a contamination. I came to correct it."

Ryusei didn't move.

He felt that presence.

It wasn't human.

It wasn't even just a man returning after a thousand years.

"This isn't a man anymore," Ryusei thought quietly. "It's the planet's immune system given shape."

Hagoromo continued, eyes sharpening.

"You remake what was never meant to coexist. You sever threads I wove. You climb toward heights that no mortal should touch. Tell me, boy… what are you?"

Ryusei exhaled once, slowly.

"Someone who refuses to die," he said.

Hagoromo tilted his head slightly. "Defiance is not an answer."

Ryusei's expression didn't change.

"Hagoromo," he replied evenly, "you're the last person who gets to talk about what mortals should or shouldn't touch."

For the first time, the Sage's eyes tightened.

The name hit him like a whisper from a forgotten era.

No mortal alive should know it.

No history book held it.

Not even the Uchiha stone tablet dared use it.

That one word told Hagoromo more about Ryusei than everything else combined.

"You speak a name erased from the world," Hagoromo said, voice dropping, "yet you do not stumble over it. You do not fear it. You do not misunderstand it. That is impossible."

Ryusei shrugged lightly, though his chakra coiled.

"Impossible things happen around me a lot."

Hagoromo watched him for a few seconds, silent, calculating, disturbed for the first time since manifesting.

"So you truly are not of this world."

Ryusei's response came without hesitation.

"Does it matter? I'm here now."

Hagoromo's aura rose, a quiet, crushing pressure.

"It matters," he said, "because you stand between the world and ruin. And I will remove you if I must."

Ryusei's chakra surged in answer, layered and monstrous, his new Tenseigan flickering, his various fusions humming through his body like a living engine.

He smirked.

"You can try," he said, "but you're just one more roadblock. One last gatekeeper. And I've spent my whole life breaking through those."

Hagoromo's expression finally hardened.

"Then come, Ryusei Senju. Let us see if your existence can justify itself… before I erase it."

The moment Hagoromo spoke, Ryusei rose higher into the air and tightened his focus. Because now, far above the sky, a different battle was already raging.

High in the upper atmosphere, nearly breaching into low orbit, Ryusei's Tenseigan and Hagoromo's Rinnegan were colliding.

Their gravitational influence had already started dragging in spatial debris from above, real celestial fragments, drifting meteoroids, ancient dust stone, and chunks of frozen matter that normally floated harmlessly in near-space.

Now they were being pulled down into the clash, caught between two titanic forces.

Every shift of Ryusei's chakra tugged one set of meteor fragments his way.

Every pulse of Hagoromo's gravity dragged another cluster toward himself.

They crashed together mid-descent, bursting into trails of molten streaks that rained down like controlled meteor showers between the two of them, each side trying to redirect the orbiting debris and weaponize it.

The sky warped under the pressure, thin currents of the upper air tearing open as more spatial rubble from the edge of space joined the chaotic spiral overhead.

...

At the same time, Kazuki's body finished its transformation in the distance, the shift so violent that the ground buckled under him.

A deep, ancient pulse rolled out from his frame, unmistakably different from Hiashi's earlier berserk state.

Tobirama felt it instantly.

His head turned sharply toward the source.

He knew that presence.

Or rather, he recognized the signature of the one now puppeteering it.

"The Sage himself…" Tobirama murmured under his breath.

And the moment he realized it, he also understood the rest.

Kazuki was Hagoromo's final backhand.

The last puppet, the hidden reserve.

A piece the Sage had probably prepared centuries ago.

He knew this was no longer a battle anyone alive could contain.

So he moved.

Kazuki's newly awakened form, cold, regal, and brimming with an unnaturally refined Otsutsuki chakra, stepped forward, every bone in his body humming.

The ground fractured beneath him with each step.

Tobirama flickered to the ridge beside him, eyes narrowing as he watched the chaos erupting below.

He didn't like the situation.

He didn't like the ally.

But he understood necessity.

So he stood beside Kazuki without a word.

Across the ruined clearing, Ashina, Nagato, Kiyomi, Tsunade, Kanae, Renjiro, Pakura, and Fugaku all braced themselves simultaneously.

They felt the same thing.

A new monster had stepped onto the field.

And Tobirama, in silent acknowledgment of the Sage's intentions, aligned himself at Kazuki's side, a reluctant but decisive cooperation, to confront the eight of them together.

The next phase of the war was about to begin.

Tsunade's aura blazed back to full brightness.

Ashina's chains glowed darker and heavier.

Nagato's golden eyes reopened, storming with external natural energy.

Kiyomi's giant black Susanoo hammered the ground once.

Kanae's Byakugan sharpened, frost condensing around her palms.

Renjiro's blood shimmered with fresh yang.

Pakura's heat warped the air.

Fugaku's reddish Susanoo rose, scarred but ready.

And all of them looked at Kazuki.

Even hardened shinobi felt their instincts drop into a cold pit.

Then everything broke loose at the same time.

Nagato moved first.

A tremendous pressure condensed between his hands, forming a vast blade-shaped slash of natural energy, nearly invisible but bending space as it cut downward.

Kazuki met it head-on.

He didn't dodge.

He grew, a coat of bone erupted across his forearms, twisting into a drill that spun so fast natural energy spiraled around it.

The titan-sized blade shattered on contact, splintering into gale-like particles that rained across the battlefield.

In the same breath, Kanae stepped forward, palms glowing white with cold.

Her frost surged outward, so dense it distorted sound, freezing entire vectors of movement.

Time seemed to slow around Kazuki—

Until the bone cracked through it.

A forest of sharpened spikes erupted from under her feet, forcing her into a perfect Hyūga rotation, detonation-level frost spiraling from her spin, and destroying hundreds of bone pillars at once.

The shockwave rolled across the field like a winter storm breaking stone.

Pakura arrived next.

Her Mirage Cloak blurred in a halo of heat, afterimages circling like predators, each throwing a beam of concentrated scorching wind.

Kazuki responded with one flex of his spine.

Thousands of bone bullets rained outward from his ribs, curving through natural energy currents he controlled.

Heat made them glow red and white.

Pakura burst into six blazing mirages, dodging through melting bone.

Tobirama stepped forward to support.

Gale pressure, frostfire, abyssal water, and spectral phasing blended seamlessly as he released a barrage meant to break openings, not kill.

Renjiro dashed in through the chaos.

His body flickered red from the yang in his bloodstream, each step cracking the ground.

A downward slash of his wind-lightning tanto split the air into a massive wave.

Giant tendrils of blood are emerging from the ground around Kozuki

Kazuki caught his slashes with giant, sharp spikes erupting from his sides.

He angled them, deflecting the slash upward into the sky.

He also used his own giant bone tendrils to disperse his blood underground.

Tsunade followed immediately since she finally got an opening to come closer.

Five Gates exploded open inside her body, her fist pulling the air with it as she vaulted upward.

Her punch hit Kazuki full in the chest—

And cracked him.

Cracked him deeply.

Bone shattered, dusted, reformed, shattered again.

Kazuki slid back several meters, the ground ripping open beneath him.

Tsunade landed, breathing hard but steady.

Kazuki looked at the fist-shaped crater in his chest, watched it regrow layer by layer, then silently acknowledged her.

Yet it changed nothing in the end.

Fugaku and Kiyomi struck next.

Twin Susanoo hammered down on him, the red giant from Fugaku, the black titanic shell from Kiyomi.

Kazuki met both with his bare hands, bone armor forming gauntlets thicker than steel beams, full of natural energy.

The collision cracked the plateau.

Tobirama appeared behind the two Uchiha, teleporting more bone spikes toward them, then reappeared beside Kazuki, defending his blind spot with elemental bursts. Ashina finally arrived.

His black chains tore across the air, each link coated in all five chakra natures mixed with external natural energy.

They spiraled like dark comets, slamming into Kazuki from every angle, impacting so hard they bent bone.

Kazuki reacted by launching a cocoon of bone spikes outward, ripping across the terrain.

Ashina's chains reeled back, dragging chunks of the cocoon with them but remaining intact.

Then Kazuki moved for the first time with killing intent.

He swept his arm once, and a rain of sharpened bone spikes poured down from above like a falling forest.

A single bone lance, coated in the pale shimmer of his ash-killing essence, grew from his other palm.

One touch would erase anything it pierced.

Kanae saw it first and struck from range with a hyper-condensed frost palm, freezing the air itself and slowing the lance.

Nagato layered gravitational palms on top of it, curving the trajectory away, while also creating a giant 'roof' over their heads.

Renjiro dashed forward, slicing the lance midair with a wind-lightning arc.

Pakura melted the pieces with scorching bursts.

Kiyomi hammered the rest to dust with her black Susanoo.

Kazuki simply regrew another one.

Tobirama nodded once at him.

Kazuki didn't respond.

His eyes were fixed on the eight opponents.

He raised his hand.

The ground erupted.

Dozens, then hundreds, of bone giants clawed upward, each animated by natural energy, their bodies forming a skeletal army that stretched across the battlefield.

Ashina's chains whipped in huge arcs, cutting through swathes of them.

Pakura's heat turned dozens into vapor.

Kanae froze entire waves in place and shattered them with rotation.

Renjiro carved through giants like they were wet paper.

Fugaku and Kiyomi ground their way forward with Susanoo shapes.

Nagato ripped through the barrage by unleashing a blinding vortex of violently rotating natural energy, a spiraling storm so dense and chaotic it shredded the incoming spikes while keeping a safe margin from his allies.

The clash spiraled into a storm of bone, ice, flame, natural energy, sealing chains, rotation bursts, and giant spectral weapons.

And still Kazuki and Tobirama advanced together, step by step.

Kazuki's bones tore the ground.

Tobirama's elements carved precise openings.

Kazuki used them instantly, hurling killing ash bones in narrow windows where they nearly pierced their targets.

Thanks to Kanae and her prompt warning about their nature and direction, they mostly dodged them or dealt with them on time in some way.

But, still, Pakura nearly lost her face one time.

Renjiro nearly lost his entire torso.

But each time, someone saved someone else at the very last moment.

Perfect synergy, born of months of fighting under Ryusei's banner.

It dragged the battle into a grinding stalemate.

Kazuki was stronger.

Tobirama was faster.

But Ryusei's eight had numbers, angles, coordination, and overlapping specialties honed over countless battles.

The battlefield froze.

Both sides braced for the next shift.

And the stalemate held, razor-thin and trembling, as the clash waited for Ryusei himself to enter the field against Hagoromo.

Meanwhile, Ryusei himself, even while still locked with Hagoromo, waiting for who would make the first move directly, took a peripheral note of the clash unfolding in the distance. He already understood the truth.

That new being wasn't on the level of Ashura anymore. It was even stronger. And Hagoromo, fully awakened, was stronger still.

To Ryusei, this Kaguya ancestor felt like a being brushing the peak of Six Paths, while both Ryusei and Hagoromo, in their own ways, had already stepped into the earliest threshold of true Ōtsutsuki territory.

Kazuki's power was deceptive. At first glance, it resembled the same overlooked Dead Bone Pulse Ryusei remembered from Kimimaro in his past life's story. But that comparison meant nothing here at present.

It was one thing when a sickly human experiment wielded those bones. It was another thing entirely when a perfect Ōtsutsuki-grade physique, with far higher density, higher chakra pressure, and a demigod-level baseline, wielded them.

Add to that an abnormal, advanced sage mode tailored to his body, one that accelerated bone spread, hardened them beyond steel, sharpened them like blades of compressed chakra, and let him spawn them faster than most shinobi could blink, through natural energy constantly, and the result was terrifying.

And that wasn't even the true threat.

The All-Killing Ash Bones were.

Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a Kaguya-exclusive ability in the original story.

To Ryusei's senses, they felt like pure Yin–Yang erasure, an internal virus-code deletion, a conceptual attack rather than a physical one.

If one of those spikes touched you cleanly, you didn't lose an arm; you ceased.

Even with all of his allies' restored chakra and numbers, Ryusei didn't expect them to defeat Kazuki outright.

He didn't expect them to win. He only expected them to survive, to hold Kazuki just long enough, to keep him occupied by inches until Ryusei could eventually strike back, like always.

Because the real battlefield was the one standing in front of him right now.

Hagoromo. The true hidden summit of this world, and the living shape of what it meant to defy destiny itself.

A towering obstacle Ryusei would have to break with his own hands if he wanted to reach the pinnacle of the food chain here, required for the ultimate power and freedom he'd been clawing toward since the very moment he arrived in this world.