Madara Uchiha watched the Five Elders and God's Knights below being drained dry, the patterns in his Six-Tomoe Rinne Sharingan never ceasing to spin.
His gaze returned to the rock sphere caught in that repeated tug-of-war, his tone so flat it bordered on indifference.
"Draining their lives to replenish your own."
He spoke softly.
"Eight hundred years, and this is all you amount to."
Uchiha Shadian looked at Saint Shepherd Somaz and Thatcherz Maffey Palace, who lay collapsed in the shallow water.
Both men were soaked through, dark red blood frothing at the corners of their mouths. Most of the armor over their chests had shattered, exposing flesh that had been scorched, then soaked pale by seawater.
Thatcherz Maffey Palace's two horns had lost their luster, resembling a pair of charred, dead branches.
Saint Shepherd Somaz's fingers still twitched faintly, his fingertips digging into the mud beneath the shallow water and gouging several shallow furrows.
Shadian glanced again at the distant Five Elders whom CP0 had hauled out of the sea.
They were supported and dragged aboard speedboats. One man's graying hair had turned almost entirely white within a few dozen breaths, his wrinkles as deep as chisel marks.
He felt not the slightest stir of emotion, not even satisfaction.
It felt more like sweeping a pile of useless junk into a corner while cleaning a room. The next step was to burn that corner away as well.
"Though I don't know exactly how the deep-sea contract brings them back."
He slowly raised both hands.
Within his scarlet Mangekyō Sharingan, three jet-black tomoe were evenly spaced around the outer rim of each pupil. A curved line extended inward from the tail of each tomoe, the three arcs converging at the center of the pupil to form a distorted triangle. Each