Inside the main control room of Konoha's Sky Fortress, the Mystic Crystal Bastion, Neji stood with his hands behind his back before an enormous Crystal Release sand table.
Lights and shadows flowed across the sand table, clearly displaying the remnants of Cloud Village's forces fleeing like a tide beyond the Land of Fire's border.
The cheers of Konoha's ninja faintly carried through the Spirit Board Communications network, brimming with the joy of surviving disaster and fanatical reverence for their commander.
Yet Neji's brow furrowed slightly.
The immense power within him, fused from the secrets of Shikkotsu Forest's space, Mount Myoboku's traces of time, and Ryūchi Cave's power of creation—Three-Phase Immortal Power—was churning violently in an unprecedented manner.
To instantly kill the Raikage, seal the Eight-Tails, freeze the Hidden Mist army, and imprison the God of Death... he had overexerted this power that defied the Ninja World's common sense.
A faint crack sounded from within his body. It was not the friction of bone, but something more akin to the strange sound of crystal forming.
Neji slowly raised his right hand. Beneath the skin of his fingertips, an unnatural, Mystic Crystal-like translucence faintly shone through, as though his flesh were slowly transforming into crystal.
An indescribable sense of sluggishness spread through him, and the chakra that had once moved as easily as his own limbs now flowed with difficulty.
He attempted to mobilize a thread of Senjutsu Chakra, forming a small, flickering sphere of tricolored radiance in his palm.
Silvery white, blazing orange, and dark green tangled and collided, wildly unstable and nothing like their former harmonious flow.
"Backlash... has it finally come?"
Neji murmured to himself. There was little panic in his voice, only absolute calm.
He had long expected that forcibly fusing the source powers of the Three Great