- Kuoh Town
In Kuoh Town, where humans, devils, and fallen angels coexisted in peace as always, an anomaly suddenly erupted. A mysterious figure had appeared at Kuoh Academy, the school where students from the Human World studied abroad.
“Keh! There are plenty of them! This should be enough to have some fun!”
“I’d like a heart with a Sacred Gear.”
Wearing a coat marked with red clouds on a black background, the two stood there.
“Hidan, leave the devils’ hearts intact. I want them as materials.”
“Kukuku, then I won’t get to enjoy myself~, I’m taking the strongest one, so don’t get in my way.”
It was Akatsuki’s immortal duo, Kakuzu and Hidan. They had appeared at the front gate of Kuoh Academy exactly as they had been in the Five Great Shinobi Countries. And since the ordinary students had already gone home, the place felt desolate, with only the wind blowing through it. But soon after—
“What business do terrorists have here?”
Kuoh Academy’s student council president, Shitori Souna, and her servants surrounded Kakuzu and Hidan, taking a guarded stance. Compared to the composed Souna, however, her servants were trembling. Akatsuki was a group formed solely to help Uchiha Madara conquer the world, and every member was strong. But among them were a few who drew especially intense attention. The original members who operated in the traditional Akatsuki pairs had appeared before their eyes, and for low-ranking devils like these servants, they were already shrinking back before the fight even began.
“Isn’t this a little dangerous?”
“I think we should run...”
“But if we don’t protect them, who will?”
“We can’t leave the president alone!”
“You’re all weaklings, huh~ Kakuzu.”
“But one of them looks usable. The rest can die for all I care, Hidan.”
Kakuzu and Hidan each chose their prey.
“!! President!”
Tendrils shot out from Kakuzu and lunged at Souna all at once. Her servants rushed in to help her, but—
“Kihah! Sorry, but you lot are my prey!”
“!! Ngh!”
Hidan’s huge scythe blocked them, and Souna, under assault from Kakuzu’s tendrils coming from every direction—
“Tch!”
—deployed water magic to form a barrier and protect herself, but it was pierced with ease and wrapped around her entire body. Then—
“This woman’s heart should be pretty useful.”
“!! P-Please, s-spare me...!”
Frozen in terror after being seized in an instant, she could not resist at all as Kakuzu’s tendrils were about to pierce straight through her chest—
“Sword Bast!”
“Lightning!”
“Take this!”
Rias’s servants, Kiba Yuuto, Himejima Akeno, and Koneko Toujou, sensing the disturbance, appeared in Rias’s absence and cut the tendrils down. But—
“Oh? Another one with some use has shown up.”
“Thank you... Rias’s Queen.”
“For the president to struggle this much, this opponent looks pretty dangerous.”
Rather, Hidan licked his lips and smacked them at the sight of Akeno.
“I’ll take your heart first, you bitch!”
The tendrils shot toward her even faster than they had toward Souna, and even Akeno, a high-ranking devil, had no way to block an attack that Souna herself could not react to.
“! Lightning!”
“Water!”
The two resisted, but all they managed was to cut down a few of the tendrils in front. The rest wrapped around their bodies. Then—
““Senpai!””
Kiba and Koneko rushed in to sever the tendrils, but—
“You’re in the way.”
With a single strike from each tendril, Kiba and Koneko were sent flying and crushed beneath the rubble of a collapsed building. Kiba and Koneko were knocked out in one blow.
“Kuhuhu, then I’ll be taking that heart!”
The moment Kakuzu’s tendrils were about to reach Akeno’s heart—
“Wind Release: Rasenshuriken!”
The chakra that had once torn him to pieces in the Five Great Shinobi Countries came flying toward him, and Kakuzu reflexively used all his tendrils to leap away from the spot. Then—
Whoooosh
The Rasenshuriken swept past where Kakuzu had been and detonated with enough force to—
KOOOONG!—blow away the entire school building.
Frowning, Kakuzu looked toward the direction the Rasenshuriken had come from. There, standing with murderous intent already in his [Rinnegan] state, was Issei.
“You lot... what the hell are you?”
Souna and Akeno, whose despair had turned to hope at the hero’s arrival, were already too late to save them...
“P-Pres... s-spare...”
Souna’s servants had already become Hidan’s prey. They lay collapsed in a miserable state, bleeding out. Souna sat down with the expression of someone who had lost everything in that instant, and Hidan, having finished them off, appeared beside Kakuzu, putting them into a standoff.
‘Where the hell did these bastards come from...’
Issei had been spending a leisurely time at the Ninja Castle when chakra, not magical power, suddenly appeared, forcing him to come out personally. Seeing Kakuzu and Hidan standing there in the flesh rather than as his own clones, his confusion was obvious.
“Ohhh... so this is the guy Madara was talking about.”
“What...? Why are you mentioning Madara... don’t tell me...”
Kakuzu, Hidan, and Madara. Once the pieces connected, only one conclusion remained.
‘Edo Tensei and Rinne Rebirth Technique?! That bastard, what the hell is he doing!’
Issei was hit by panic and fury at the same time, because Madara had gone and started this without even informing him. Then—
“You know this already, Hidan. The opponent has a [Rinnegan]. Don’t rush in carelessly...”
“Kihah! The finest prey is right in front of me! How could I pass that up!!”
Kakuzu, who knew Issei’s full strength and had tried to act as cautiously as possible, was ignored when Hidan charged in recklessly. Issei—
“Too slow.”
—simply slipped past Hidan’s attack and drove an elbow into his neck.
“Ghk!”
Hidan coughed up blood and lost consciousness. He was immortal, yes, but losing consciousness and losing his life were two different things, so Issei knocked him out first.
“...Idiot.”
The easygoing attitude Kakuzu had shown while treating Souna and Akeno like toys vanished. Now fully on guard, he unleashed—
‘Five-nature simultaneous attack!’
—four black masses from his body, firing attacks of fire, lightning, wind, water, and earth all at once.
[Preta Path]
Issei held out his hand, and the attacks were absorbed in an instant.
“Damn it! He uses jutsu!”
This was something Madara had warned him about recently, but Kakuzu had been too focused on guarding himself to think of it. Then—
[Almighty Push]
His main body and clones were all dragged in at once, and then—
“Ghk!”
—they were pierced by [Truth-Seeking Orbs] transformed into spears and bound in place. With [Truth-Seeking Orbs] embedded throughout his body, Kakuzu could not move a muscle. Issei approached him and said,
“Don’t think you’ll be extracting information from me. Your identity is...”
“Sorry, but that isn’t your choice.”
Kakuzu acted as though his body might be under control, but the instant his eyes met the [Rinnegan], his own will vanished. Then—
“So this is how it ends...”
Issei, having directly extracted his memories with the [Rinnegan], burned Kakuzu—now reduced to nothing but a lump of flesh after his soul had been ripped out—with Amaterasu.
‘It really is him... Madara, that bastard... so this is what he was up to.’
Using the [Rinnegan], Issei confirmed that Kakuzu was indeed himself, and that Madara had summoned them. And once he realized Kakuzu and Hidan were not the only ones revived, Issei’s expression hardened.
“Senpai is in danger...”
Rias, who had gone to the Demon World, was one of the targets. That worried him.
“But Heaven too...”
Gabriel in Heaven was also one of the targets. A simultaneous assault on the Three Factions—if it had been just some small-time villains from Chaos Brigade, he would not have worried much, but the ones deployed were all members of Akatsuki. And for some reason, every one of them was following Madara. Kisame and Deidara, Sasori, Hidan, and Kakuzu made sense, but he could not understand why Nagato, whom Naruto had convinced, or even Itachi, who had his own secrets, were following him. Unable to figure out the reason, Issei—
“Damn it, I don’t have time to think.”
“Issei-kun!”
“Akeno-senpai?”
—was about to split off his clones and head out when Akeno stopped him.
“What happened?”
Akeno had rushed over because she was worried after the sudden Akatsuki attack and Issei’s pallor even after the enemy had been defeated. Her clothes had been torn in the battle, leaving her in a rather distracting state.
“Uh... well, it’s not a big deal, but...”
He did not have time to explain, but for some reason, his feet would not move. Once Akeno’s elegant figure came into view, he stared blankly for a while, then—
“Issei-kun?”
“N-No, it’s not that...”
‘Heh heh, Akeno-senpai’s chest is amazing too, bu— no, wait! What the hell am I thinking at a time like this!’
“I’m sorry, senpai! I don’t have time to explain right now!”
And with that, Issei vanished with Flying Thunder God Technique. Akeno was left behind, unable to even thank him, staring at the place where he had stood with a somewhat troubled expression.
.
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- The Underworld
“Ghk! What in the...”
“Help me...”
“Someone...”
The Underworld looked like hell itself, with Grigori reduced to ashes in an instant and the ground covered in the blood and corpses of fallen angels crushed beneath the wreckage. The surviving fallen angel executives and Governor Azazel rose into the air with their wings spread.
“...You bastards... you really did it...”
Azazel, truly enraged, ground his teeth as he looked at Deidara, the blond man riding a giant white bird, and Sasori, the red-haired man.
“Mm! As expected, executive-class opponents aren’t easy to deal with! Mm!”
“From here on out, it’s the real work. Don’t let your guard down. The opponent is above Kage-class.”
The executives were around Kage-class, but Governor Azazel was above that. Unless it was Madara or Issei, he was not someone who would be easily defeated by some ordinary Akatsuki member. Rather, he was among the stronger ones.
“You’re prepared, right? Don’t think you’ll get away after making a mess like this.”
As Azazel spoke with murderous intent, a golden object had somehow appeared in his hand.
“Balance Breaker.”
Azazel activated the artificial Sacred Gear, the Down Fall Dragon Spear, and with a flash of light, a golden coat of armor wrapped around his entire body, much like Issei’s Balance Breaker.
“As expected. Annoying...”
Sasori, who had never seen a Sacred Gear’s Balance Breaker in the Five Great Shinobi Countries, did not show it on his face, but he truly thought he had met a troublesome enemy. Azazel felt the same, because—
“You’re a monster too...”
—a hundred upgraded puppets and black iron sand covering the area were surrounding him.
And behind Azazel, the executives who had been preparing to fight Akatsuki—
“C4 Karura!”
—had unleashed their full power from the start and created a giant clone, but it exploded not long after.
“What the hell... it just blew up?”
“A dud?”
“Watch it. The opponent is Akatsuki. They’re probably up to something.”
Some of the executives, expecting a huge explosion proportional to its size, began to sneer when nothing happened. But this was still Akatsuki. The remaining executives, thinking there had to be some trick, stayed on high alert. Then—
“Idiots...”
“!!?”
“W-What is this!?”
With Deidara’s sneer, the surrounding executives began to vanish like smoke, as if someone had snapped their fingers after gathering six stones from somewhere. It was Deidara’s C4 Karura, created to counter Itachi. A technique that used microscopic nano-sized bombs to infiltrate the opponent’s body and destroy everything from within. The executives knew they were facing Akatsuki and stayed as cautious as possible, but there was nothing they could do against something they could not even see. In one blow, the nano-bombs inside every executive’s body detonated, and they all turned into lumps of flesh.
At that—
“Hey, hey, you lot are no joke.”
Fortunately, Azazel had protected his body with Balance Breaker, and though the situation was laughable, all that came out was a dry laugh. Who could have guessed they would scatter explosive particles through the air and blow people up from the inside...?
“You seem pretty distracted.”
Even with Sasori’s iron sand technique before him, Azazel had looked away for a moment, and iron sand transformed into spikes shot at him from all directions. But—
“You’re the one underestimating me.”
As the governor of the fallen angels, he was the representative of the entire race and, fittingly, the strongest existence among fallen angels. Light poured from the shining golden spear and spread in all directions, erasing the iron sand. But—
“!!”
—a hundred puppets charged in from every direction. All of them were cursed objects that, in normal circumstances, would inflict fatal wounds. With attacks coming from all sides and his retreat cut off, Azazel finally said,
“This... can’t be helped...”
and was about to unleash his ultimate technique when—
“!!”
“You let your guard down, boss.”
Deidara, or rather a clay clone, suddenly appeared behind him without a trace of presence and hugged him from behind.
“C0!! Art is an explosion!”
The puppets had been a diversion. Deidara’s real objective was to detonate the clone packed with all his chakra. The instant he formed the hand sign to do so—
“You bastards!!”
[Flying Thunder God Technique! Preta Path]
Issei, with the [Rinnegan] awakened, appeared at the same time with Flying Thunder God Technique and absorbed Deidara’s clay in an instant. Azazel, Deidara, and Sasori were all shocked.
“Tch! Those idiots couldn’t even buy us time!”
Deidara clicked his tongue at the immortal duo for failing to complete their role, and Sasori immediately shifted his target from Azazel to Issei, sending all hundred puppets at him. But—
“Something like this!”
[Shinra Tensei]
Issei repelled all hundred puppets with [Shinra Tensei], reducing them to nothing but wooden scraps.
“Are you all right, Azazel?”
“Ah, thanks to you, I’m alive.”
Azazel let out a sigh of relief after narrowly escaping death. Deidara and Sasori, meanwhile—
“Looks like it’s time to use that, mm.”
“For this alone, I should thank Madara.”
—began to change. Tattoos spread across their faces, the area around their eyes shifted, and even the color of their pupils changed.
“Th-This is...”
Issei’s clone could only stare in shock as Sasori and Deidara, having accepted the power of nature, transformed.
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- Heaven
“Ghk!”
“A monster!?”
“Help me!”
“Protect Lady Gabriel!”
Heaven, attacked by Pain, Nagato, and Konan, had turned into hell. Gabriel’s castle, the beautiful paradise on earth, had been blown away without a trace by Nagato’s original [Shinra Tensei], and most of the angels had been sent to Valhalla along with it. The surviving angels were being torn apart, bitten, chewed, and devoured by the summoned beasts, dying in miserable agony. Their leader, the Archangel Gabriel—
“Ugh...”
—was engaged in aerial combat with Konan, wearing a magnificent angelic robe of white and gold and wielding a splendid silver-white staff.
Konan, having accepted the power of nature, and Archangel Gabriel were nearly evenly matched. But—
“Why are you doing this...?”
Even cornered, Gabriel did not lose her dignity and tried to talk. But—
“That’s none of your business.”
Konan cut her off in a single stroke.
“And you’ll only be a sacrifice for the world that is about to be born.”
After that, she unleashed a one-sided barrage of paper strengthened by senjutsu from every direction, and Gabriel, whose abilities were not specialized for combat, could only struggle to defend herself. The battle ended after that one-sided assault.
“Ngh...”
Her once-luxurious clothes were torn apart, and Gabriel, now almost naked, was bound by Konan while half-conscious. Then—
“With this, the mission is complete. Let’s withdraw, Konan.”
“Yes.”
Pain and Konan were about to open a gate and disappear when—
“You bastards!”
Suddenly, Issei appeared directly behind Gabriel and hurled black lightning at Konan and Nagato. Caught off guard by the sudden attack, Nagato and Konan immediately put distance between themselves and him.
“Flying Thunder God... you marked her, didn’t you...”
Nagato calmly analyzed the situation, realizing that Issei had marked Gabriel while she was asleep in preparation for something like this, and had now snatched her away.
Issei looked at Gabriel’s ruined state and—
“Gabriel-san...”
“Issei-sama...?”
—felt something boiling up inside him. Gabriel, in her fading consciousness, touched her own face, then lost consciousness completely.
“I’m going to kill you.”
Issei’s murderous intent surged to a level it had never reached before, and before anyone realized it, his eyes had become the same as Nagato’s.
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