Konoha was not the only village holding a meeting. The other great ninja villages were meeting too. "What do you all think of that battle in the Land of Fire? Feel free to speak your minds."
For a while, most of them simply looked at one another, exchanged bewildered glances, and finally fell silent.
"What do we think?!"
"Watch it sitting down, from far away."
"Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll piss myself."
"Who the hell could have imagined that those legends young people dismissed as drunken ramblings from their elders, those bedtime stories told to lull children to sleep, would come crashing into reality in the most brutal way possible?"
The ninja who had witnessed that battle kept waking at night from the same nightmare: a colossal demon god hundreds of meters tall, its burgundy body blotting out the sky. Every step made the earth shudder, and its scarlet eyes seethed with the desire to destroy everything.
And that five-headed, thousand-armed divine Buddha had stood hundreds—nearly a thousand—meters tall. Its attacks unleashed the Five Releases of wind, lightning, water, fire, and earth in torrents. Its outstretched arms blotted out the sky like storm clouds, and its countless fists bombarded the land like the end of the world.
Such sights had already shattered everything people thought they knew about "power." Before beings like those, even so-called Kage-level combat strength seemed as insignificant as an ant. One slap would probably kill them.
Those two.
What would they do if those two really attacked?!
Panic?! Despair?!
All that remained was a chill crawling up their spines, making anyone who remembered those scenes shudder. Just thinking about it left them drenched in cold sweat.
"How do we win?! We can't!" Many had already given in to despair, especially in second-rate ninja villages like Kusagakure and