A Test

An utterly bizarre, immense "malice," as though it had arisen from the depths of the entire world, instantly locked onto Yue Uchiha high in the air!

This was not anyone's killing intent, but an invisible "pressure of rules."

It was like a script's operating program had detected a virus and was trying to activate its antivirus mechanism to completely destroy Yue.

One of the Nine-Tails' tails twisted at an utterly illogical angle, as though it had crossed space itself, and lashed fiercely at Yue in midair with impossible speed!

Impossible to evade, impossible to withstand—it meant certain death.

Probability of survival: impossible event.

The passive ability of Yue's left-eye dōjutsu told him that if he continued, he would die immediately.

"So this is... the backlash of the World Correction Force?!"

Without hesitation, he swiftly crushed one of the scrolls in his hand with his thoughts. The Nine-Tails' chakra rapidly poured out, then returned to the Nine-Tails' main body.

The malice diminished, but it was still utterly terrifying, not...

Probability of survival: 5%.

Yue's heart pounded wildly.

There was a chance, but he should not waste his ocular power here.

The ocular power required to raise it to 100% was far too great.

Now that this hypothesis had been proven, he needed to verify something else. He could not spend all his ocular power here.

Yue destroyed another scroll in his hand, and the Nine-Tails' chakra returned once more.

The malice had dropped to nearly nothing.

Probability of survival: 99%.

"Yagokoro Omoikane! Raise the survival rate to 100%."

"Bang!"

Accompanied by a massive summoning explosion.

A gigantic toad, no smaller than the Nine-Tails, descended from the sky with a pipe in its mouth and a short sword in hand. Like Mount Tai crashing down, it sat on the Nine-Tails with an incredibly "fortunate" plop.

It also forced that unreasonable tail back.

Gamabunta!

And atop Bunta's head, the blond man draped in the Fourth Hokage's Hokage Cloak finally descended onto the battlefield, covered in smoke and carrying an air of grim resolve.

Minato Namikaze had repelled Obito and arrived!

"Nice work, Minato! Your timing was perfect!"

Yue let out a long breath in midair. Riding the shockwave generated by Gamabunta suppressing the Nine-Tails, he performed an elegant flip and landed steadily in the shadow of a distant giant tree.

Hikari followed like a shadow, instantly returning to his side.

"Cough, cough..."

Yue clutched his chest and coughed violently.

Even after landing safely, his heart continued to pound madly in his chest like a war drum.

Only those who had faced that power directly could understand how utterly despairing it was.

That Nine-Tails' tail from before had completely ignored the laws of physics and chakra fluid dynamics.

It was like an absolute line of death forcibly drawn within a three-dimensional world, ignoring spatial distance and reaction time alike, with only one purpose: to kill him.

"Yue! Are you hurt?!"

Uchiha Hikari nervously supported his arm. Rare anxiety showed in those normally calm eyes.

Even she, standing off to the side, had felt her soul tremble at the sudden eruption of World Malice.

"I'm fine..."

Yue drew in a breath of icy night air and forcibly calmed his erratic heartbeat. He looked at the Nine-Tails, which Gamabunta was firmly pinning down as it struggled wildly, then glanced at the lone remaining scroll in his hand and laughed.

"In tonight's script, the Nine-Tails' chakra is the absolute 'core prop' driving the plot forward. Taking just a little might have been fine, but if I touched an amount enough to affect the later plot, the World Correction Force's antivirus software would directly activate its highest-level eradication program."

"This proves my hypothesis."

Yue turned to Hikari. "When I gave up the chakra and returned the 'prop,' that malice vanished. That means the Corrective Force has no self-awareness. It won't hold a grudge because I 'offended' it. It's merely a rigid program that only looks at results, not the process!"

Hikari looked at him with partial understanding. "Then what do we do next? Are we still continuing?"

"With this, we have other events we can continue researching."

Although Yue's left eye faintly ached from forcibly activating Yagokoro Omoikane, his gaze was astonishingly bright.

"I want to see how the Corrective Force treats 'discarded files awaiting deletion.'"

White Fang's death was because White Fang would continue affecting the "plot," but what if Minato and Kushina did not affect the later plot?

Would some inexplicable rule still erase them?

Yue raised his head and looked toward the powerful spatial fluctuation that had suddenly erupted within the distant forest.

Minato Namikaze was using the Flying Thunder God to transfer the massive Nine-Tails out of the village!

"Let's go! To the final sealing site! The main event is about to begin!"

Outside Konoha lay a desolate clearing.

"Rumble—!!"

The enormous Nine-Tails appeared out of thin air, crushing vast stretches of forest.

Before it, Minato Namikaze stood side by side with the newly born Naruto in his arms and Kushina Uzumaki, who had weakened to the brink of collapse.

"Adamantine Sealing Chains!"

Kushina exhausted her last shred of strength. Several dazzling golden chakra chains shot from her back, firmly pinning the Nine-Tails' enormous body to the ground.

Several hundred meters away, atop the canopy, Yue Uchiha and Hikari lay quietly in wait like two ghosts.

"What... kind of barrier is that?" Hikari frowned slightly as she watched Minato erect the barrier around them.

"It is a cage meant to stop anyone from interfering with his death."

Yue's gaze pierced through the night as he stared fixedly at Minato's hands, which had begun forming seals.

Snake—Boar—Ram—Rabbit—Dog—Rat—Rooster—Horse—Snake!

The drain of maintaining the childbirth seal, the life-or-death battle with the Masked Man, and the final fight against the Nine-Tails had long squeezed this young Hokage's chakra and stamina to their absolute limits.

Yet at this moment, the hands forming his seals did not tremble in the slightest.

The instant the final seal locked into place, Minato lowered his eyes.

His gaze, filled with longing, gently swept over Kushina, weak and near death, and Naruto, who was crying loudly at the center of the sealing formation.

This was the best future he could fight for, for the village and for his son.

Besides.

If Kushina's smile no longer existed in the years ahead, how agonizing would the long remainder of his life be?

Since fate had decreed it, he would bear this heavy price himself.

"Dead Demon Consuming Seal!"

With Minato's low cry, an intensely cold, hair-raising presence suddenly descended.

Within the vision of Yue's Mangekyō Sharingan, he clearly saw a phantom of the Death God slowly emerge behind Minato, clad in white robes, a short blade clenched in its mouth, its face hideous and ferocious.

"What... kind of monster is that?"

Though Hikari had not activated her Mangekyō Sharingan, her instincts as a powerful warrior still sensed that shuddering presence from the underworld.

"The Death God. One of the manifested products of this world's rules."

Yue held his breath, his Mangekyō observing this creation without holding anything back.

Was it a rule-based entity formed from countless sealing formulas layered atop hundreds of souls?

The Uzumaki clan really was remarkable.

Still, with his mastery of Yin Release, he had a chance of cutting it apart.

Yue sighed, then revealed a confident expression.

His left-eye Yagokoro Omoikane told him that he had a 20% chance of severing it.

"Minato will use his own soul as the price to make the Death God split the Nine-Tails' yin and yang chakra. The moment he completes the seal will be the 'death point' decreed by the script!"

At the center of the battlefield, the situation changed in an instant.

The Death God's hand pierced through Minato's chest, seized the Nine-Tails' Yin chakra, forcibly tore it out, and sealed it within Minato's body.

Immediately afterward, Minato summoned the sealing altar, preparing to use the Eight Trigrams Sealing Style to seal the remaining Yang Nine-Tails into the infant Naruto.

The Nine-Tails sensed Minato's intentions. It was humiliation it could never tolerate!

"Roar!!!"

A savage gleam flashed in the Nine-Tails' eyes. Its massive fox claw shot up, its sharp nails like spears as they stabbed toward little Naruto on the sealing altar with overwhelming force!

"Splat!"

Blood sprayed.

Without the slightest hesitation, Minato and Kushina both used their flesh-and-blood bodies to shield Naruto from that fatal claw.

The enormous fox claw pierced through the chests of the young parents, crimson blood dripping from its nails onto Naruto's face.