The Celestial Body Explosion!

Pain realized Doffy had fooled him with a "cicada shedding its shell" trick, and a flicker of anger crossed his face.

The outsider was surprisingly cunning. When had he switched himself with a puppet? Could it have been when he was out of sight just now?

Pain calmly assessed the situation. What was this man's purpose in coming to Amegakure? He had headed straight for the center of the village at first. Was he after something there? Deva Path Pain decided to go back and take a look.

Soon, Deva Path Pain returned to the devastated center of the village.

Konan immediately approached him, concerned. "Nagato, how did it go?"

"He left a puppet behind and escaped." Pain shook his head.

"Something doesn't seem right. Why hasn't his ability worn off, then?" Konan pointed to the ground, which was still made of white strings.

"Could he still be nearby?" A possibility occurred to Pain.

Meanwhile, Doflamingo was laboriously "diving" through the ground beneath Pain. He had used his Devil Fruit ability to create a puppet with Shadow Puppet String to draw Pain's attention, while he himself traveled through the ground, which had been transformed by his ability, and approached his mission target. That was his plan!

After seeing that the Six Paths of Pain could resurrect, Doflamingo had decided not to keep fighting head-on.

By this point, he couldn't tell what condition his opponent was in, since he was a puppet. But Doflamingo had repeatedly used various Devil Fruit Awakenings and tanked several waves of attacks. He had expended a great deal of stamina and Haki, yet he still hadn't even seen the real enemy—he had only been fighting the other side's puppet.

Doflamingo had no choice but to admit, through gritted teeth, that he might not be a match for Pain right now. But whatever the case, he had to complete this damn mission first! Transforming such a huge area of terrain with his Devil Fruit ability was no small burden!

As Doflamingo moved through the underground, made up of white strings, the strings around him parted on their own, allowing him to approach the mission target in almost a straight line.

At last, after traveling underground for an unknown amount of time, he broke through the final layer of terrain. His eyes lit up as the ground gave way beneath him, and he dropped into a vast underground cavern.

It was a vast, dim cavern, empty save for its immense space. Incredibly, the entire chamber was shaped like a perfect cube. An unknown light source overhead faintly illuminated the cavern.

A mysterious object, roughly seventy meters tall, stood silently at its very center.

How tall was seventy meters? Take the Giant of Light, Ultraman, for example. Tiga stood fifty-three meters tall, while the earliest Showa-era Ultramen—First Hokage, Seven, Jack, and Ace—were only forty meters tall. Of course, this didn't mean the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path could beat up Ultraman. It was merely a comparison of their sizes. Even at seventy meters tall, the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path would basically still get torn to pieces in a few blows by Ultraman.

The Demonic Statue of the Outer Path had the form of a giant humanoid dead tree. A mysterious, eyepatch-like structure covered its eyes, concealing nine closed eyes beneath it. Its body was the color and texture of dead wood, and ten pillar-like protrusions rose from its back. It stood silently in the underground chamber.

"So this is the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path? Fufufufu, not bad. It's got quite a presence!" Doflamingo strode arrogantly up to the giant statue. Comparing it to the image in his mind, he confirmed that it was indeed his mission target.

To avoid any more complications, Doflamingo immediately activated the String-String Fruit's power. Fine strings pulled him up, letting him land stylishly on the statue's head. Then a mass of white strings poured from beneath his feet, slowly wrapping the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path like a silkworm's cocoon.

[Mission target: Acquiring ownership of the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path. Reincarnators, maintain consciousness for one hour.]

"Looks like this will do it. I hope that guy doesn't figure it out too quickly."

Inside Amegakure's office, Konan and Pain were talking.

"I've sent the village's ninja out to search. There's no result so far," Konan reported.

Pain remained silent. He turned to look out the window and murmured to himself,

"The Ninja World has only just come through a war, and people are unsettled. All kinds of figures are beginning to step onto the stage. What does this man want in Amegakure? We in Akatsuki are only an ordinary bounty-hunting organization..."

Pain and Konan thought it over for a long time but still couldn't come up with anything. They could only wait quietly for the search parties to report back.

Soon, a Jonin came to report.

"Reporting, sir. We've searched both inside and outside the village, but found no sign of any strangers."

"Understood. You may go." Pain waved him away.

Pain propped his chin on his hand and looked out at the ground and buildings, which had already returned to normal. His eyes fixed on the place where Doflamingo had first appeared, unwavering, as though he were pondering something.

The intruder clearly knew nothing about Amegakure, but he wouldn't have invaded for no reason. He was enormous—three meters tall, practically a giant. How could they have failed to find him? Could he fly or burrow underground?

Burrow underground? Pain looked at the place where Doflamingo had first appeared. Wasn't it directly above the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path? Could the statue be his target?

Pain glanced around, left the office, and moved to a nearby open space. His hands rapidly formed several seals.

"Summoning Technique."

Pain pressed one hand to the ground, but nothing happened... He had no way of knowing that the moment a Reincarnator touched the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, someone in Main God Space had begun absorbing its fortune and copying the statue.

In this unusual state, Zhu Shen naturally wouldn't allow anyone to interrupt. He had blocked off the space around the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, preventing it from being summoned.

"Hehehehe. How foolish. And bold, too!" Pain's face darkened. It was obvious that the intruder's target was the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path.

At that moment, anger roared within him. The Demonic Statue of the Outer Path was a power of his Rinnegan, yet someone had somehow managed to block it off! In that instant, it felt as if the foundations of his Tailed Beast plan and the peace he pursued had been shaken to the core.

Burning with rage, he returned to the office, quickly activated a mechanism, and took a secret passage to the underground cavern.

Down in the cavern, Doflamingo watched the mission progress bar anxiously in his mind.

"Eighty-one, eighty-two..." The bar crept forward.

Pain pushed open a revolving stone door and emerged from the secret passage into the underground chamber. The moment he entered this hidden space, the sight before him stunned him.

The giant statue that had stood at the center of the chamber was gone. In its place was a huge white cocoon. Sitting cross-legged atop it was a blond man wearing heart-shaped sunglasses.

"Unforgivable! Unforgivable!"

The stone slabs around Pain began to crack, and the space seemed to twist... Chakra surged out violently, and the air seemed to catch fire...

Ignoring the countless white strings coiling toward him, Pain slowly aimed his right palm at Doflamingo.

"Shinra Tensei!"

An unstoppable wave of force shot straight up toward Doffy.

"Fufufufu, I've been waiting for you!"

Doflamingo let his aura settle. The white strings that had burst forth formed several enormous white shields in front of him, as if they had been prepared in advance! Not only that, countless white strings surged from the cocoon beneath his feet and bound him tightly in place.

Doflamingo knew that this mysterious repulsive attack was so fast it was practically impossible to dodge. But it had one fatal flaw: there was an interval of about five seconds between attacks.

So after this strike, the fight would be decided! At the thought, a confident, arrogant smile crept across Doflamingo's face.

The next moment, reality slapped him hard across the face!

The invisible repulsive force hit the thick white strings and swept through them like a storm, destroying everything in its path! Tearing it all to shreds!

"Boom!" A human-shaped figure shot straight upward like a rocket, blasting through hundreds of meters of bedrock in a massive explosion and flying into the sky above Amegakure...

"Pfft!" A mouthful of blood sprayed through the air.

"How is this possible? That repulsive force is so powerful!"

From the enormous crater, Deva Path Pain slowly rose, his face cold and expressionless. Before Doffy could react, he used Banshō Ten'in to pull him in front of himself.

"Summoning Technique."

In an instant, the two of them were transported to a valley not far outside Amegakure. Evidently, the other Paths had been waiting there in advance, and had summoned Deva Path and Doflamingo over together.

The instant they changed battlefields, Doflamingo suddenly sprang into action. His right hand, coated in densely concentrated Haki, slammed toward Deva Path Pain's head.

Deva Path glanced at Doflamingo with an utterly cold gaze. A spherical field of repulsive force enveloped him, and Doflamingo's powerful blow was deflected back. His whole body crashed into a nearby mountain.

Pain dispelled the field of repulsive force and slowly rose into the air. He glanced up at the sun, then down at Doflamingo, who seemed to be lying in wait inside the mountain. His voice was cold as he spoke.

"Mortals are always trying to understand the will of a god. You don't even understand the pain of others, so how could you understand a god? I, on the other hand, have grown beyond the ordinary through the pain I have endured without end. I have transformed from a mortal into a god!"

Deva Path Pain thought of his friend Yahiko and of the people of Amegakure caught in the flames of war. His voice grew more resolute as he slowly pressed his hands together, a solemn, indescribable divinity settling over his face.

"Without sharing the same experiences, you cannot truly understand one another. Feel pain. Understand pain."

"Chibaku Tensei!"

A black sphere of chakra energy flew from Pain's hands and rose into the air.

At that moment, the world seemed to fall apart:

The earth sank, the mountains collapsed, and rivers, trees, and absolutely everything else were drawn toward the black sphere overhead by an immense, irresistible gravity!

The sphere in the sky was like a black hole, pulling in all matter across the land. The sky darkened, as though even light couldn't escape its pull. Even the sun's radiance was blotted out!

"What is this?! Damn it!"

Doflamingo desperately used his Devil Fruit ability to entangle himself with the ground, trying to hold himself in place against the gravity. But even the mountains anchored by his white strings were gradually cracking apart. How could he escape this terrifying field of gravity? All his white strings snapped... Doflamingo struggled for a moment before countless rocks and clods of earth swept him toward the black sphere in the sky.

At last, after the entire valley had turned into a vast crater, the black sphere overhead had absorbed enough matter—or so it seemed—and become a massive meteor several kilometers in diameter!

"You can't understand true pain."

Pain looked at the enormous meteor in the sky and spoke calmly.

That should have sealed the man completely. Next, he could simply extract his memories!

Inside the meteor, countless boulders squeezed Doflamingo from every side, leaving him no room to move. His internal organs felt as though they had shifted out of place, and he had no idea how many ribs were broken. At that moment, neither his monstrous body nor his formidable Armament Haki could help him. They could only keep him from being crushed to powder on the spot...

Doflamingo was at his limit. His teeth clenched as he thought of Pain, the man responsible for all this, as if he might bite until he drew blood. "Damn it! Damn it!"

Since being captured by pirates as a child, he had never suffered such humiliation again! He had never lost a fight after reaching adulthood, yet now he had been defeated so badly! He was pinned beneath earth, stones, and trees, unable to move at all. Even turning his head was out of the question!

But he knew he couldn't give up. He absolutely couldn't lose consciousness. As long as he held on, there was still a chance!

At last, sustained by hatred and a stubborn refusal to accept defeat, Doflamingo, his face covered in blood, heard a voice as sweet as music:

[Main Mission: "Ten-Tails Body" completed. Would you like to return immediately?]

"Return!"