"Rumble—!"
The thunderous roar of trembling air spread far into the distance, crashing against the transparent Barrier wall and sending ripples across its surface.
"Crack, crack!"
The Barrier's fissures, which had already stopped spreading, seemed to be shaken open once more by the sound. The cracks branching upward like tree limbs extended a little farther outward.
However, the blue-white light filling the Barrier and the fierce, twisting Lightning Snakes within it had dimmed. A faint gloom slowly settled over the enclosed space.
The lightning pillar, which had expanded to over five meters and devastated the forest atop Hokage Rock Mountain—splitting the ground into a spiderweb of cracks and leaving the trees toppled, charred, and utterly ruined—finally dissipated into the air as its power ran dry. All that remained was a circular crater still belching black smoke.
"Crack, crack! Crack-crack-crack! Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack!"
At the same time, as that dimness descended, the pitch-black, sharply angular wall standing in front of everyone slowly began to crack. At last, with a loud bang, it shattered into fragments and vanished amid the ground, which looked as though it had been plowed over.
It also revealed the white-haired young man behind it, staring at the tree-like transparent fractures in midair with a puzzled expression. His shoulders were hunched, his eyes tightly shut, as if refusing to open them would mean nothing bad had happened.
"Is that... a Barrier?"
At that moment, everyone's attention was drawn to the tree-like transparent cracks. They did not notice that the lightning pillar had vanished, that the wall protecting them had collapsed, or even the white-haired young man who had repeatedly shattered their common sense.
"Yeah."
After the question was asked, someone among the children nodded and spoke.
What lay before them was practically obvious.
The Barrier had cracked.
"Then, is this