A Quiet Contest

Lin was indeed right. That sword probably truly possessed the power to seal people away. The instant he touched its edge, he felt as though his entire body was about to be sucked inside.

Obito recoiled in alarm, but the Susanoo that had touched the Totsuka Blade was draining away from his body. It was an extremely strange and painful sensation, because Susanoo was practically one with the ninja who summoned it.

Obito hurriedly dispelled his Susanoo and returned to human form, narrowly escaping the danger of being sealed away.

Uchiha Itachi swung the Totsuka Blade again, but Obito had now learned how to deal with it. He fled about like a flea. It looked utterly pathetic, but it worked remarkably well.

After widening the distance between them, Uchiha Itachi threw out the magatama in his hand again. The damage they could inflict was still quite spectacular, but it was far less devastating than the world-shaking destruction from before.

Obito could not exactly say he was handling it with ease, but he was not under much pressure either. Anyone who had fought Nagato would find facing other enemies incredibly easy.

Yet he did not relax in the slightest. After all the magatama had missed, Uchiha Itachi stopped maintaining his Susanoo as well. The orange-red giant vanished, and the battlefield became exceptionally quiet.

This was the quietest moment in the Land of Rain that night. Aside from the clouds still slowly rotating in the sky and the raindrops that had changed from violent to fine, there was no other sound.

Even the thunder was gone. Nagato had just exhausted all the power within the storm clouds, and now they could not even bring themselves to rain as diligently as before.

Still, the rain continued to fall slowly onto Nagato's corpse, soaking