With the aftermath of the earlier world-shattering collision sweeping through, and the fighting growing ever more intense, the battlefield had been completely cleared.
The "pieces" on both sides that had once covered the earth like a tide-past Kage, powerful ninja, and enormous summoned beasts alike-had long since vanished.
They had either fallen in the earlier clashes and left the field, or been swept straight off the board by the fallout of Naruto and the Sage of Six Paths' godlike duel.
Now, within the vast area governed by Life-and-Death Shogi's rules, only a handful of figures remained at the edges, struggling to hold on without being expelled, apart from the Eight-Armed Asura and Blue Creator Susanoo, which clashed like primordial gods and demons, and their controllers inside them, Naruto Uzumaki and Hagoromo Otsutsuki, the Sage of Six Paths.
Every one of those figures was an exceptional fighter, possessing either overwhelming strength or special means of surviving an energy storm of this magnitude:
Kaguya Otsutsuki and Otohime Otsutsuki: as members of the Ōtsutsuki Main Family, they were naturally endowed with immense chakra, immortality, and extremely high resistance to all kinds of energy attacks.
The two stood with Uchiha Hikari, and the three of them easily blocked the battle's fallout together.
Hashirama Senju, the God of Shinobi, relied on his peerless Wood Release and oceanic reserves of senjutsu chakra to build layers of wooden barriers around himself, constantly growing and repairing them.
An enormous Wood Dragon coiled around him protectively, while a natural energy shield formed from senjutsu chakra flickered.
He stood like an ancient tree rooted in the earth, swaying in the storm but never falling.
Nagato pushed his Rinnegan to its limits, continuously using Sealing Technique: Absorption Seal to absorb, convert, and neutralize most of the incoming energy blasts.
Konan huddled