Confrontation Inheriting the Shadow's Will

After receiving battle reports from the three war zones, headquarters finally confirmed a fact that made everyone's scalps tingle: Yakushi Kabuto had begun deploying Kage-level fighters. Not one or two appearing occasionally, but four at once—the Second Tsuchikage, the Third Raikage, the Second Mizukage, and the Fourth Kazekage. Each had been the Kage of a village; each had possessed the power to alter the course of a battle alone in life; each was now an undying Impure World Reincarnation body.

When the Raikage heard that the Third Raikage had appeared on the eastern front, he remained silent for a full five seconds. His fist clenched with a crack, his nails digging into his palm as blood seeped through his fingers. That was his father. The father he had looked up to since childhood, the father no one had ever surpassed, was now slaughtering the troops under his command. He wanted to rush out and fight his father face-to-face, but he knew he could not. Not because he could not defeat him—but because his father was immortal, while he could die. If he died, the Allied Forces would lose their commander-in-chief.

"I'll go." Tsunade's voice came from the entrance to headquarters. She had already changed into combat gear, medical bandages wrapped around both hands, with the expression she only wore on the battlefield—the one that reassured everyone around her. "Leave the Second Mizukage to me. My medical ninjutsu can handle the high-temperature injuries caused by Steaming Danger Tyranny, and—" She paused. "I owe the Second Mizukage a life. Not to him personally, but to Kirigakure in his era. If the Second Mizukage hadn't held back Iwagakure's main forces during the Second Shinobi World War, Konoha might have been flattened long ago by that old man Ōnoki."

Mei Terumi rose from her