Konohagakure, the Hokage Building.
The spacious conference room, normally used for important meetings and mobilization rallies, now seemed rather overcrowded.
After the Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju, left the Hokage's Office with Shikamaru and arrived in the large conference room, figures began appearing one after another, as though in a chain reaction, some bedraggled, others bewildered.
They were all Konoha ninja who had answered the Sixth Hokage Naruto Uzumaki's call and been recruited to participate in the Six Paths Life-and-Death Shogi in the Pure Land.
But they had not returned in triumph. Like the Second Hokage, they had been defeated by the shock waves from Naruto's battle with the Sage of Six Paths and forcibly sent back to the mortal world, to the place where they had last assembled before departing.
At first, a deathly silence hung over the conference room. Then came quiet gasps, coughs, and murmurs of disbelief.
"Cough... that was... terrifying..."
Kakashi Hatake leaned against a conference table, panting softly. His usual air of lazy indifference seemed to have been shattered completely, leaving his face pale with lingering fear.
He rubbed his nose instinctively, as though that might help him breathe more easily.
That apocalyptic scene still replayed in his mind.
The sky had been torn into gold and blue. Two colossal gods, seemingly drawn straight from myth, had merely approached each other and gathered their power, yet the pressure they radiated had already left him unable to breathe.
Then the shock wave of a collision like the birth of the universe swept over him. Before he could mount any effective defense or dodge, pure, radiant energy swallowed his vision. His consciousness blurred, and when he opened his eyes again, he was already back here.
"That was no longer a battle ninja at our level could take part