"Th... this... is... is just like back then... just like back then!"
Her pale eyes gradually widened as she stared at the massive creature swaying in the distance, her face slowly stiffening as she murmured under her breath.
The dust from that explosion... the skyward roar after the dust cleared...
She had seen it before. The memory was exceptionally vivid. Even this increasingly dense crimson Chakra filling the surroundings, Chakra that seemed like hatred given physical form and sent chills rising from the depths of her heart, that suffocatingly oppressive feeling of Chakra—she remembered it clearly. She might never forget it for the rest of her life.
Because that time had been the closest she had ever come to death, and the time she had nearly lost Chiba, whom she loved most.
This was...
This was a tailed beast? Just like back then, this feeling of Chakra... No! It was even more oppressive, colder, and more terrifying than last time! At this moment, a faint tremor had already risen in her heart.
At that moment, as she looked at the enormous crimson fox in the distant cloud of exploded dust, its nine tails lashing as it roared and scattered the dust around it—a fox so huge that she could see its entirety from this far away even without Byakugan vision—Yukina quietly swallowed.
Yet what frightened her was not its immense size, but the cold and ominous Chakra in the air, growing denser after the dust had erupted and been swept away by its tails. It carried a distinctly horrifying sense of hatred. That immensely oppressive Chakra weighed heavily upon her shoulders.
Chakra belonging to a true tailed beast!
At the same time, her mind was firmly filled with the image of that enormous demon cat, bathed in blue flames, roaring