But he quickly grew alert. Catching sight of Gekkō Raito beside him, he instinctively jumped up and took a defensive stance.
"What an overwhelming presence... but why isn't this power showing itself on you?"
Gekkō Raito lowered his head and looked at the dark red fluid flowing over his fingertips.
It was genuine Six-Tails chakra.
Seeing that familiar red energy, Utakata instinctively tried to call on the monster inside him, only for his heart to sink. He found nothing but emptiness within, without even an echo.
"Where's the Tailed Beast... where did the guy inside me go?!"
Looking at the former Jinchūriki's bewildered face and panicked eyes, Gekkō Raito's lips curved into an amused smile.
"Weren't you always going on about not wanting to be a monster? About not wanting to be a Jinchūriki? I did you a good deed, granted your wish, and helped you remove that thing."
"Congratulations. From this second onward, you're just an ordinary ninja."
Utakata's head buzzed. He couldn't tell whether this was reality or a dream. Had he been caught in genjutsu?
No, Jinchūriki had extremely high resistance to genjutsu.
Genjutsu worked by disrupting chakra flow. Jinchūriki had two energy systems inside them, and as long as the Tailed Beast helped stir things up, the genjutsu would break on its own.
So, in theory, Jinchūriki were almost immune to conventional genjutsu.
But the problem now was that he truly couldn't sense the Six-Tails.
"Where did you put the Six-Tails?!"
"Give him back to me!"
The demand made Gekkō Raito laugh in exasperation. "Give him back? Didn't you despise him?"
Utakata's face darkened like a storm cloud. "The Six-Tails and I stopped being merely beast and host long ago. He's my partner, and I'll never hand him over to people like you!"
"Tch. In the