The Price of Three Minutes

Karin's exclamation still echoed in the rift valley. Above the midday wasteland, the spatial rift that had just closed opened again, like a tattered cloth violently torn apart.

A chilling, howling wind poured out from the void.

Obito returned. He hovered in mid-air, his newly formed Wood Release right arm gripping a jet-black Yin–Yang Release Black Rod tightly, his remaining Sharingan gleaming with the madness of someone who had achieved some kind of goal.

"Quick reaction, but too late." Obito looked down at the crowd on the ground, a condescending smirk playing on his lips. "The Ten-Tails 'Chakra has already been channeled into Madara's body. Now, your only task is to obediently die here with him!"

Before he could finish speaking, the void around him suddenly distorted.

Whoosh whoosh!

Hundreds of enormous black iron nails roared out from the alternate dimension, pouring down like a torrential rain, completely blocking all of Naruto and the others' escape routes.

"Sasuke!"

"Know!"

Sasuke drew his Kusanagi Sword, and the purple ribs of his Susanoo rose from the ground, deflecting all the Black Rod that were about to smash into his head. Kakashi brought two fingers together, and the piercing bird cry of the Chidori exploded, turning into a silver afterimage and precisely severing the fish that had slipped through the net and attacked from the side.

But Obito had no intention of fighting head-on; his body began to flicker continuously in mid-air.

This unpredictable and continuous transfer of Kamui turned the entire rift valley into his one-sided hunting ground.

One second he was throwing Explosive Tag on the left, the next he was flashing behind Kakashi, his Black Rod aimed straight for Kakashi's back. Sasuke's Chidori Sharp Spear swept across, piercing Obito's chest, but it was like cutting through air, without even a drop of blood. Obito countered with a Monster Strength, the violent repulsive force Sasuke flying back more than ten meters.

"It's useless." Obito's voice came from all directions, seemingly omnipresent. "You can't touch me, and you can't save those ants who are about to be slaughtered in the east."

Naruto clenched his fists.

The leaden-gray death aura to the east is expanding rapidly. Once that monster named Madara Uchiha completely controls the Ten-Tails 'Chakra, the Allied Shinobi Forces' eastern supply base will be instantly vaporized.

We can't afford to waste any more time.

Naruto took a deep breath, and the violent golden aura around him suddenly subsided, compressing it all back into his body.

He forcibly brought up that high-risk option in his mind.

"System, activate Six Paths Observation State!"

[Ding! Higher-dimensional forces have been forcibly connected.]

[WARNING: The host's current mental load has reached a critical value. Observational state limit duration: 3 minutes! Exceeding this time will cause the mental meridians to collapse, resulting in irreversible damage!]

The moment the mechanical voice sounded, Naruto's azure pupils contracted violently, and rings of purple-gold Rinnegan markings forcibly appeared.

The world stood still at that moment.

Obito, who was originally so fast that he was just a blur, became a slow-motion puppet made of Chakra Threads in Naruto's eyes. Even the extremely subtle spatial ripples in the air turned into clearly visible bands of refracted light.

Obito prepared to activate his next Hollowfication, a slight collapse began to occur in the space thirty centimeters to his side.

That's his next landing spot.

"Time is running out, let's take them all in one go." Naruto bit his thumb, his hands moving so fast they were just afterimages, instantly throwing out more than a dozen Flying Thunder God Kunai.

These Kunai did not strike Obito's current phantom image, but instead pierced with unparalleled precision into the air around Obito, into the collapsing spatial nodes.

"Seal the formation!"

The Flying Thunder God Mark erupted with dazzling golden light, like an invisible net that tightly jammed the gears of spatial flow.

In mid-air, Obito was about to transfer his physical form there when he suddenly felt as if he had stepped into a solidified swamp.

The spatial passage is blocked.

His expression changed drastically, and his lone Sharingan suddenly turned to the boy on the ground whose eyes were glowing with a purple-gold light.

"You..." Obito was about to forcefully reverse Kamui and escape in a different direction.

"Kakashi-sensei! Cut his net!" Naruto roared, his body transforming into a bolt of golden lightning that shot up from the ground.

Below, Kakashi, who had been staring intently at the air, had his left eye already bleeding profusely. He didn't need Naruto to explain; the moment those dozen or so Kunai sealed off the space, his Mangekyō Sharingan had already been activated to its fullest potential.

His gaze was fixed firmly on the center of the only remaining spatial Uzumaki surrounding Obito.

"Kamui!"

Two spatial eye powers, originating from the same source, collided violently in the same dimension and at the same Coordinates!

There was no explosion, no loud noise.

There was only an extremely eerie sense of spatial stagnation.

It was like two keys being inserted into a lock at the same time. Obito's originally flawless Hollowfication process was suddenly and fatally interrupted.

0.5 seconds.

For an ordinary person, this wouldn't even be enough time to blink. But for Naruto, who had activated Six Paths Observation State, this 0.5 seconds was long enough for him to decide the outcome of the battle.

Bang!

Naruto traversed the void and appeared directly in front of Obito. Pure Yang Chakra spun and compressed wildly in his palm, transforming into a Sage Art: Big Ball Rasengan emitted a terrifying blue-green aura.

There's no escaping it.

Kakashi's Kamui completely blocked Obito's Kamui, and Naruto's Flying Thunder God sealed off all the spatial nodes. Obito could only instinctively raise his newly grown right arm to shield himself.

"Boom--!"

The violent Senjutsu Chakra exploded completely in mid-air, like a dazzling blue sun rising.

Obito's right arm was shredded into countless fragments the moment it came into contact with the Rasengan, and the violent spinning force, undiminished, slammed into his right shoulder.

The sound of bones cracking could be clearly heard in the howling wind.

Obito's flesh on one side of his body suddenly ripped apart, and dark red blood gushed out. Under the intense pain, he finally unleashed his survival instinct, Ten-Tails 'Chakra recklessly broke through Kakashi's Kamui interference, forcibly tearing a dark rift in his back.

His broken body fell into the crevice like a tattered sack and disappeared in a sorry state.

"You're lucky you got away quickly." Naruto sneered, preparing to land.

The countdown in the upper right corner of my view has just reached [00:00].

The purple-gold pupil pattern instantly dissipated.

It felt as if a hundred Explosive Tag had been stuffed into his mind and detonated simultaneously. The intense tearing sensation made Naruto's vision go black, and his Chakra instantly went berserk and out of control.

He fell straight down from mid-air like a bird with broken wings.

"Naruto!"

The wind howled, and a purple Susanoo arm suddenly stretched out, steadily catching his falling body.

Sasuke stood on the stone wall, his face grim as he looked at Naruto was panting heavily. "What were you doing, showing off? Backfired?"

"I won't die..." Naruto shook his head violently, forcibly suppressing the dizziness churning in his brain, and forced a weak smile. "At least... I smashed that coward's shell."

Kakashi, clutching his bleeding left eye, strode down to their side, his expression extremely complex.

The spatial resonance just now completely confirmed the guess he least wanted to admit: Obito was really still alive, and he was standing on the opposite side of them.

But he no longer had time to be sad.

Click.

A faint sound, yet it seemed to shatter deep within everyone's soul, came from the eastern horizon.

All three turned their heads at the same time.

A dozen kilometers away, the leaden-gray death aura that had been shrouding the eastern front suddenly stopped churning. Then, as if swallowed whole, the death aura instantly shrank away completely.

Instead, a terrifying pillar of dark red Chakra shot straight into the sky.

Within the pillar of light, a man clad in layered, Warring States-era red armor slowly ascended into the air. His eyes were slightly closed, his arms crossed over his chest, while ten illusory and ferocious Tailed Beast phantoms swayed behind him.

"The world of the living... the air is always so polluted."

The man's voice wasn't loud, but it traveled over ten kilometers, striking everyone's eardrums like a physical object, making the air buzz.

The Sasuke on Sasuke's hand, gripping the Kusanagi Sword, bulged. Kakashi lowered his hand from his left eye, cold sweat dripping down his chin.

Madara Uchiha, having absorbed the Ten-Tails 'Chakra, opened his eyes.