Seeing Tsunade's reaction, Jiraiya sighed softly. He knew this news would be a trendous shock to anyone who held the Konoha dear.
He leaned forward, his expression grave, his voice low and solemn. "Tsunade, co back to Konoha with . We can take the village back together. You will be the true Fifth Hokage."
He spoke slowly, trying to keep his tone calm, to mask the desperation he felt. "Kagami's ideas are too extre! He's a tyrant in the making. If he remains Hokage, Konoha will undoubtedly be destroyed by his own hands!"
In his mind, Kagami was a monster. A man so murderous he had slaughtered not just the leadership, but the entirety of the Anbu and Root. Jiraiya conveniently ignored that they were following the orders of the very teacher he mourned; to him, they were innocent ninja, and Kagami had killed them without cause. Such a person, he believed, was not worthy of the title of Hokage.
Hearing Jiraiya's plea, Tsunade fell silent. She picked up the wine glass on the table, her hand steady, and downed it in one go.
"I don't want to go back," she said, her voice dejected and hollow. "And I don't want to be Hokage." The ghosts of her past—her brother Nawaki, her lover Dan—rose up to haunt her. The thought of returning to that sad, cursed place was more than she could bear. Besides, from what Jiraiya had said, this was Hiruzen's fault. She had no reason to bla this Uchiha Kagami. If he wanted to be Hokage, let him.
Jiraiya looked at her, his own heart aching with a familiar pain, but he pressed on. "Tsunade, you are the only one who can save Konoha now! Do you really want to watch the village your grandfather founded be destroyed by the Uchiha clan?"
He saw a flicker of conflict in her eyes and struck while the iron was hot. "Tsunade, Uchiha Kagami is a cruel, greedy man. He has only been in office for a few days, yet he has already squeezed billions of ryo from the great clans! I suspect he is deliberately seeking to ruin them out of so petty revenge! If he stays in power any longer, Konoha will surely fall apart!" He painted a picture of Kagami as a petty extortionist, conveniently leaving out the part where Kagami had single-handedly repelled the combined armies of three great nations.
A painful struggle was written plainly on Tsunade's face. Jiraiya said no more, waiting quietly for her answer. After a long, heavy silence, Tsunade's eyes beca firm, a new resolve hardening her features.
"I will go back to Konoha with you." She still couldn't bear the thought of the village her grandfather, Hashirama Senju, had built being destroyed.
A relieved smile finally broke through the gloom on Jiraiya's face.
Three days passed in the blink of an eye.
In the Uchiha Palace in Konoha, Kagami sat in quiet contemplation. "I've finally mastered it," he murmured, a rare, genuine smile touching the corner of his mouth. "The Spirit Transformation Technique."
After digesting the mories transmitted by his shadow clone, he had successfully learned the S-rank forbidden jutsu. It was the only soul-related ninjutsu he had found in the Scroll of Seals, a technique that allowed the user's soul to leave their body and travel great distances to kill their enemies. It was an incredibly difficult jutsu, one that only Kato Dan had ever been recorded to have mastered. But for Kagami, blessed with the tenfold power of Sukuna's template and a soul of imnse strength, it was not so difficult.
With this technique, he finally had a weapon that could target the soul, a way to deal with the ethereal form of the Sage of Six Paths. He knew, however, that the soul was fragile once it left the body. The technique alone was not enough to defeat an ancient being like the Sage. But it was a start. By activating his own soul, he could now easily sense the existence of others. With the profound comprehension granted by Sukuna's power and his vast knowledge of ninjutsu, he was confident it wouldn't be long before he could develop his own soul-targeting slashes and jutsu. At that ti, he would no longer have to fear the Sage of Six Paths.
A wave of profound relief washed over him. Though he had possessed imnse combat power for so ti, the mysterious Sage had been a huge, oppressive weight on his heart. Now, that weight had been significantly lightened.
At that mont, a new mory surfaced in his mind, and the smile on his face widened. "Good things, it seems, co in pairs," he laughed. His clones had just finished their analysis. Not only had they learned Dust Release and Magnet Release, but they had also used that knowledge to deduce the principles of Ice Release. It wouldn't be long now before he could master a new Kekkei Genkai simply by manipulating the nature of his chakra. His strength had grown yet again. With his colossal chakra reserves and the power of Dust Release, even without using any of Sukuna's abilities, no one in the ninja world could stand as his equal.
"With my current strength," he mused, "I should have reached the 'surface' level, right?" He did a quick ntal inventory of his power.
Host: Uchiha Kagami
Strength: Surface Level
Constitution: Pure Yang Holy Body
Template: Tenfold Cursed King Ryon Sukuna
Abilities: Mugen , Shukuchi, Susanoo, Cleave, Dismantle,, Reverse Cursed Technique, Malevolent Shrine, Dust Release, Fire release,...
Items: 15 Billion Ryo
Wives: Uchiha Rinne (E), Kurenai Yuhi (D), Anko Mitarashi (D), Samui (D)
Descendants: Uchiha Sukuna
He nodded with satisfaction. To reach the next tier, 'planetary level,' he would need the power to destroy a planet. He still had a long way to go. But for now, this was enough.
While Kagami was busy improving his aptitude, in the Hidden Rain Village...
The night was as dark as ink. Rain fell in a dense, steady curtain, shrouding the ancient, silent village in a perpetual gloom. But in this rain, one figure stood out. He wore a shabby orange jacket, its color faded from years of wear, but his golden hair still glead in the dim light like a defiant sun. A long, wispy beard clung to his face, and his eyes, set in the face of a young boy, held a depth and wisdom that did not belong to his age.
This was the Sage of Six Paths, reincarnated in Naruto's body. He walked slowly down the street, each step seeming to contain a strange, otherworldly power. Though the rain fell heavily all around him, the drops seed to part before they could touch him, blocked by an invisible barrier. He just walked quietly, as if waiting for soone.
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