"Next, we may have to face a war we might not be able to win."
Facing their gazes, Chiba's Slug Sage Art clone turned serious. After a brief pause, he spoke.
A war we might not be able to win? Both Hirohiko and Yukina froze upon hearing those words.
What did that mean? Would they lose the war against Uchiha Nobuhiko?
As they stood there stunned, that same startled thought arose in both their minds.
"What do you mean?"
Then, almost instinctively, they both asked.
"If you ask me what it means, I don't know either. It's just that my original body urgently sent me a message earlier. Besides asking whether I had rescued you, he informed me that we would soon face a war we might not be able to win."
Chiba's Slug Sage Art clone seemed quite helpless. With a bitter smile, he spoke.
Though he was Taki Chiba's clone, as a Slug Sage Art clone, his existence had practically reached the pinnacle of physical clones. He still possessed a degree of independence. His consciousness and understanding were based on Taki Chiba, and like other physical clones, he could not betray his original body and would obey its orders.
But that did not mean he did not value his life. In fact, as a physical clone who could almost exist permanently, his self-awareness of survival was far more concrete and intense than that of other physical clones, who knew they could not exist for long—or were not even aware of existence and survival in the first place.
A war they could not win or something like that clearly meant his original body was sending him to die.
Chiba's Slug Sage Art clone understood his original body's grasp of the war situation very well.
If his original body said