Ōtsutsuki Kuroshiki swept his gaze over the clansmen frozen in midair.
"He died at the hands of a chakra-depleted mortal. Utterly ridiculous!"
Raishiki clenched his fist, his knuckles cracking.
"As for you, Raishiki."
Kuroshiki lifted his chin.
"Your self-important command, your laughable order—before the Chakra Fruit, they're worth nothing. You know it in your heart. You weren't preserving the bigger picture. You just wanted the Chakra Fruit all to yourself."
Raishiki's chest heaved violently.
Because every word Kuroshiki said was true.
"I waited three hundred years."
Kuroshiki spoke in a low voice, and at last, a trace of emotion entered his tone.
It was not anger. It was weariness.
"In those three hundred years, I swallowed the fruits of seventeen low-grade planets. Each one only let me cling to life for a few decades. My body aged, my power drained away, and every time I closed my eyes, I wasn't sure I would ever open them again."
He raised his left hand.
The veins beneath his skin writhed like earthworms.
"But today is different. The legacy of an Otsutsuki in his prime is enough for me to evolve!"
He opened his mouth.
"Enough for me to become an existence second only to Otsutsuki Kōshiki."
He brought the fruit to his lips.
Red light danced across his teeth!
At the bottom of a crater a hundred meters away.
Itachi knelt on one knee, his left hand braced on the sword hilt, the tip of the blade stabbed into the mud, barely keeping his body balanced.
His gaze pierced through the drifting smoke and dust.
He stared fixedly at the fruit in Kuroshiki's hand, his eyes complicated.
Infighting within the Otsutsuki Clan.
It was within his expectations.
He had already seen the essence of the Otsutsuki race very clearly during their exchanges.