Shihōin Naraku slowly descended from high in the sky to the ground.
He walked toward the two of them, step by step, neither fast nor slow.
"I memorized the coordinates the moment you opened the Space-Time Portal."
"Besides, your presences are plain as day to my senses."
Momoshiki Otsutsuki raised his head to look at him, his deathly pale face freezing.
He had thought he could escape Shihōin Naraku's pursuit by relying on an Alternate Space, but he had never expected the man to find them anyway.
Not only had he memorized the spatial coordinates amid the fleeting shifts of battle.
He could also sense both his and Ōtsutsuki Isshiki's presences across space.
In that case, it was only natural that he could find his way here.
"...What a miscalculation."
His voice was even weaker than Isshiki's, every word seeming to take all his strength to squeeze out of his throat.
Although a final trace of eye power remained in his Rinnegan, his body could no longer support any meaningful counterattack. Momoshiki knew this better than anyone.
"You could have stopped us on that battlefield." Isshiki stared into Naraku's eyes. "Why didn't you?"
Naraku stopped walking.
He had now come within roughly thirty meters of them, a distance no different to him than being right before them.
He tilted his head slightly, as though considering whether the question was worth answering, before finally speaking.
"That place was too cramped."
Isshiki frowned.
"My subordinates were there, and Naruto and Sasuke were nearby too. If we'd kept fighting there, neither I nor you could have fought freely."
Naraku paused, his gaze shifting from Isshiki to Momoshiki's deathly pale face before returning.
"Besides, that was the Land of Fire Border. If the land gets torn apart, it takes a long time to restore."