Chapter 520: The Man Who Refused the Rules (Patreon)

Unknown Sealed Dimension

Space folded inward.

The incomplete Ten-Tails vanished from the cavern beneath the Land of Frost, dragging shattered roots, broken seals, and a violent storm of chakra through the summoning passage. Madara remained at the center of the distortion, his single hand seal unbroken as the world around him stretched into bands of darkness and red light.

For a moment, there was no ground beneath him.

Then stone returned.

The Gedo Mazō struck first.

Its immense body crashed upon a plain of black rock, driving cracks across the surface for several kilometers. Pale limbs dug into the fractured earth as the unfinished Ten-Tails twisted beneath its own unstable mass. Tailed-beast chakra rolled from its body in thick waves, staining the air crimson.

Madara landed several hundred feet away.

Wind passed through his reanimated armor and dragged his hair behind him.

The place he had chosen contained no sun.

A dim silver sphere hung above the horizon, illuminating a landscape without vegetation, water, or life. The sky appeared enclosed by countless fūinjutsu lines, each one stretched across the darkness like a thread of pale lightning. They converged upon distant pillars driven into the earth, forming a barrier around the entire dimension.

Madara had discovered the place decades before his first death.

It had once been a discarded storage realm connected to the Gedo Mazō, a sealed pocket used to contain pieces of the statue's discarded shell and failed growths. Nothing living remained within it. No natural passage connected the dimension to the Elemental Nations.

Only the Rinnegan and the Gedo Mazō could open the way… or so Madara had once believed.

The cavern roots twisted.

Black Zetsu emerged from beneath the Ten-Tails' left arm, but he did not surface completely.

Half of his body remained merged with the roots as his yellow eye moved across the sealed horizon. He recognized the dimension only after several breaths, and that realization brought another ripple through his liquid form.

Madara had never told Obito about this place.

He had never told Black Zetsu either.

The ancient shadow withdrew several tendrils from the roots.

"You prepared another sanctuary."

Madara did not look toward him. "I prepared many things."

The Ten-Tails convulsed.

Its shoulders expanded before collapsing inward again. A horn attempted to grow above its eye, emerging several feet before the flesh split and swallowed it. Chakra erupted from its open mouth without sound, distorting the barren landscape.

Madara watched the beast.

His reanimated body showed no movement except for the slow tightening of his jaw.

Black Zetsu studied him from the roots.

"You brought the Gedo Mazō here to prevent Obito from reclaiming it."

"I brought it here because I required silence."

"Alaric cannot be allowed to dictate our actions."

"…"

"…"

Madara's gaze remained upon the Ten-Tails.

"…Our actions?"

Black Zetsu went still when he heard this.

Madara finally looked toward him, his Rinnegan held no uncertainty now.

Suspicion had existed inside the cavern, sharpened by Alaric's words and Black Zetsu's involuntary reactions. During the summoning passage, that suspicion had changed.

Madara had replayed every moment of his life.

Every war, revelation, and conclusion he had once considered his own.

He remembered Hashirama standing across from him beside the river when they were children. He remembered the first time they spoke of a village where their brothers would no longer die. He remembered Izuna bleeding in his arms. He remembered the Uchiha turning away from him. He remembered the Valley of the End and Hashirama's blade entering his body from behind.

He remembered awakening the Rinnegan in the final years of his natural life.

He remembered reading the deepest layer of the Stone Tablet.

He remembered believing that every failure before that moment had guided him toward truth.

Now another possibility existed.

Perhaps his suffering had not guided him anywhere.

Perhaps someone had simply waited beside the road and altered every sign.

Madara's teeth pressed together, the grinding sound was quiet… but Black Zetsu heard it.

Chakra began gathering around Madara's reanimated body. It did not explode outward. It compressed beneath his skin, drawing the fragments of his Edo Tensei form tighter against the soul inhabiting it.

Black Zetsu eased farther into the roots.

"Madara."

"You altered the Stone Tablet."

The statement carried no question.

Black Zetsu's gaze did not shift. "Alaric made an accusation."

"He explained a contradiction."

"Hagoromo may have changed his intentions before his death."

Madara's mouth twisted.

"You expect me to believe the Sage divided the Ten-Tails, created nine lives from its chakra, and then ordered his descendants to force them together again?"

"…The Infinite Tsukuyomi ends conflict."

"Whose words are those?"

Black Zetsu remained silent, so Madara stepped toward him.

The black earth cracked beneath his sandal.

"Mine?"

The Ten-Tails shuddered behind them.

"Yours?"

Madara moved another step closer.

"Or hers?"

Black Zetsu withdrew from the roots at last.

His body rose beside the Ten-Tails, wrapped around the pale half of a White Zetsu shell. The expression upon his black face remained controlled, though several tendrils extended into the ground behind him.

"You have allowed one enemy to poison your judgment."

Madara stopped and looked directly on Zetsu's eyes. "Enemy…"

His lips moved around the word as though testing its shape.

"Alaric defeated you."

"He defeated an immortal body."

"He humiliated you before the Five Kage."

Madara's Rinnegan narrowed.

Black Zetsu continued carefully.

"He wants rage to replace reason. He wants you to turn against the plan before the Ten-Tails reaches completion. Every moment you question me gives him time to gather the Allied Shinobi Forces."

Madara stared at him.

Black Zetsu had used that tone before.

He had heard it through White Zetsu while preparing Obito. Calm guidance, always shaped to make the desired choice resemble the only reasonable one. Madara had once mistaken that consistency for perfect loyalty.

Now he heard the pressure beneath it.

He saw where each sentence attempted to lead.

Alaric had not needed to prove every accusation.

He had only needed to teach Madara where to look.

"Tell me about Kaguya," Madara said.

"…" Black Zetsu's tendrils stopped moving. "She was the mother of the Sage of Six Paths."

"I know what the tablet claimed."

"Then you know enough."

Madara's chakra pressed outward.

The ground around Black Zetsu sank several inches.

"I will decide when I know enough."

Black Zetsu's body compressed against the pressure. "Kaguya consumed the fruit of the Divine Tree. She ended the wars of her era, then lost herself to power. Hagoromo and Hamura opposed her and sealed the Ten-Tails."

Madara's expression remained cold.

"You repeat history as though you merely observed it."

"Those events occurred thousands of years before either of us existed."

Madara's Sharingan saw the faint contraction beside Black Zetsu's eye.

"Either of us?"

Black Zetsu did not answer.

Madara raised one hand as a black receiver emerged from his palm.

He drove it into the ground before the dimensional barrier above them flared.

Lines of Rinnegan chakra spread across the horizon, sealing the roots beneath Black Zetsu's body and forcing him entirely above the surface. The ancient shadow jerked as the Mayfly connection vanished.

Madara had cut him away from the earth.

Black Zetsu looked down.

"You intend to imprison me?"

"I intend to hear the truth."

"You have no method of forcing it from me."

Madara's lips pulled back slightly.

"That depends upon how much of you remains after I begin."

For the first time, Black Zetsu felt the full direction of Madara's hatred.

It did not resemble the resentment he had carried toward the Senju.

It surpassed the bitterness born from Izuna's death and the Uchiha clan's rejection. It ran deeper than the fury Madara had felt when Hashirama chose the village over him at the Valley of the End.

Those wounds had all come from enemies, rivals, and people whose loyalties Madara understood.

Manipulation was different.

Madara had built his identity upon the belief that no one controlled him. He had abandoned his clan rather than submit to their fear. He had fought Hashirama rather than accept a world shaped by someone else's compromise. He had spent decades extending his life through the Gedo Mazō because death itself had attempted to impose an ending he had not chosen.

To learn that his greatest revelation belonged to another will was intolerable.

His fingers curled.

Cracks formed through the black receiver beside him.

Black Zetsu watched the fury compress behind Madara's calm.

"From what my mind can calculate… you likely manipulated Indra."

Black Zetsu did not respond.

"You encouraged the conflict between his descendants and Asura's."

Silence.

"You altered the tablet…"

Black Zetsu's yellow eye remained fixed upon him.

"You guided my awakening of the Rinnegan…"

"That achievement was yours."

Madara's expression changed.

The words had been chosen carefully… too carefully.

Black Zetsu had not denied the accusation.

"You guided me toward Hashirama's flesh."

"You discovered the requirements yourself."

"After reading a tablet you altered."

Madara stepped forward.

Black Zetsu's tendrils pressed against the dimensional restraints, searching for weakness.

"You waited until I was old," Madara said. "You allowed me to believe I had produced you from my will. You remained with Obito after my death because you required him to complete the plan."

"I preserved your purpose."

"You preserved your own."

The silver light above the horizon dimmed as Madara's chakra rose.

"Madara," Black Zetsu's voice remained measured. "You wanted peace."

"I wanted a world that could no longer take anything from me."

"The Infinite Tsukuyomi gives you that world."

Madara laughed once.

A dry sound escaped his throat.

"No. It gives your mother a world prepared for her return."

Black Zetsu's body rippled. "You have no proof of that…"

Madara saw it. "I don't need proof when the situation's already unfolded."

The words came softly.

Black Zetsu's gaze then shifted toward the Ten-Tails.

The incomplete creature pulled against the roots surrounding its body. Its chakra remained unstable, though the convergence of the tailed beasts had progressed enough for a jinchūriki transformation.

Madara followed his gaze.

Black Zetsu considered his remaining options.

The plan had not yet collapsed.

Madara was still an Edo Tensei.

A reanimated corpse could control the Gedo Mazō and the Ten-Tails, but it could not become the proper vessel required for the final stage. The Ten-Tails demanded a living body. More importantly, the Rinne Tensei required the life of its caster.

Obito remained the intended sacrifice.

If Madara killed Black Zetsu now, the ancient shadow could retreat through fragments hidden elsewhere. White Zetsu bodies remained throughout the continent, and Black Zetsu had survived losses before.

He needed time.

Madara's anger could still be redirected toward Alaric or Obito if the contradiction became unavoidable.

Black Zetsu allowed his posture to loosen.

"What do you intend to do with the Ten-Tails?"

Madara looked toward him calmly.

"You are still a reanimated man," Black Zetsu continued. "The Gedo Mazō cannot make a true jinchūriki from a corpse. Even you cannot bypass that law."

A faint smile then appeared upon Madara's face… and it held no humor.

"You believe I don't know how the Rinnegan works?"

Hearing this, Black Zetsu's yellow eye narrowed.

Madara turned toward the Ten-Tails.

His Rinnegan began to shine.

The violet rings brightened until the air around his face warped. Chakra poured from the Gedo Mazō in response, streaming from its restrained body toward Madara in vast black currents.

ROOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!

The Ten-Tails roared and the sealed dimension shook.

Black Zetsu pulled against the barrier around him. "What are you doing!?"

Madara smirked and spread his arms.

The chakra entering him did not remain within his Edo Tensei shell. It passed through the reanimated flesh and connected directly to the soul bound inside it.

Black Zetsu's eyes widened as he recognized the structure.

"…The Outer Path."

Madara's grin broadened before a shadow appeared beside him.

Then another.

Ten invisible presences stepped away from his body.

The black rock beneath them cracked beneath feet no ordinary eye could see. Each figure carried Madara's chakra, his Rinnegan authority, and enough substance to bend the dimensional barrier around its outline.

Limbo.

Ten shadows from the adjacent world spread around Madara and the Ten-Tails.

Two stood beside him.

Four surrounded Black Zetsu.

The remaining four moved toward the boundaries of the sealed dimension, establishing a defensive perimeter against intrusion.

Black Zetsu could not see them directly. However, he felt the ground sink. He felt something standing close enough for pressure to fold the surface of his body inward.

His voice changed for the first time. "You could not create this many before."

"The Gedo Mazō contains power I had no reason to borrow while testing Alaric."

"You are using the Ten-Tails before becoming its jinchūriki."

"I am using what already belongs to me."

Madara brought his hands together before the Gedo Mazō's roots tore from the ground.

Black Zetsu twisted toward the beast. "Stop!"

A vortex formed over Madara's abdomen.

The incomplete Ten-Tails convulsed as its chakra compressed. Flesh, roots, and tailed-beast energy began folding toward the seal spreading across Madara's armor.

The first layers of Edo Tensei paper peeled from his body. They should have broken apart. Instead, the fragments remained suspended within the vortex, held against his soul by the Outer Path.

'This can't be…' Black Zetsu watched the technique develop. …that shouldn't work.'

A reanimated vessel lacked the living network required to contain the Ten-Tails. The beast's chakra should have destroyed the artificial body before the seal reached completion.

Madara had accounted for that.

The Gedo Mazō's energy flowed into his soul first, using the spiritual binding of Edo Tensei as an internal framework. Rather than forcing the Ten-Tails into a corpse, Madara was sealing it into the immortal soul anchored within that corpse.

The dead body became scaffolding, then the soul became the vessel.

Madara's grin widened as pale chakra erupted around him.

"Madara, stop!" Black Zetsu struck the barrier with several tendrils. "You will destroy yourself!"

"Perhaps."

"You need a living body."

"I am aware," Madara formed another seal as the Rinnegan blazed.

The Outer Path connection then reversed, and Black Zetsu could do nothing but stare.

A vast image appeared behind Madara: a spectral outline of the King of Hell rising from beneath the black earth. Its mouth opened, revealing darkness dense enough to pull upon every soul in the dimension.

The familiar structure of Rinne Tensei spread around Madara.

Black Zetsu's disbelief became visible. "That… that's impossible."

Madara's reanimated skin began cracking and Black Zetsu gritted his teeth.

"You cannot perform the Samsara of Heavenly Life upon yourself."

Madara's eyes remained fixed upon him.

"A Rinnegan wielder must be alive," Black Zetsu said. "The technique sacrifices the caster's life to restore another. You possess no life to exchange."

Madara's smile became manic.

"You mistake the common use of a technique for its law."

The King of Hell opened its jaws wider.

Chains emerged from the darkness and pierced Madara's reanimated body.

They did not pull his soul away but held it in place.

The Rinne Tensei attempted to search for a living caster, a dead target, and a life to exchange. Madara provided none of them in their expected form.

Instead, he forced the technique to recognize three separate states within himself.

The reanimated body served as the caster.

His dead soul served as the target.

The Ten-Tails' immeasurable life force served as the sacrifice.

Bow, Black Zetsu understood.

Madara was not creating life from nothing, but was stealing enough vitality from the Gedo Mazō to pay the price of restoring himself.

RRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRRR.

The incomplete Ten-Tails screamed as its chakra poured into him.

The sound tore fractures through the sealed sky.

Madara's Edo Tensei body began changing.

Ash-gray skin darkened as blood formed beneath it.

A heartbeat struck inside his chest.

DUB.

The first pulse was weak.

LUB-DUB.

The second shook the ground.

The third sent a ring of force across the entire dimension.

Madara inhaled… and air filled his living lungs.

Blood moved through veins that had been dead for decades.

His body rebuilt itself from the inside while the Ten-Tails continued collapsing into the seal. The reanimated markings across his face receded, replaced by living skin.

The cracks disappeared.

Madara clenched one fist and felt as warm blood ran beneath his nails where they cut into his palm.

He looked down at it, and a shudder passed through him.

It wasn't weakness. No… it was Pleasure. It meant that life had returned.

Black Zetsu stared at the blood. "No…"

"Hahahahaha…"

Madara laughed.

The sound grew as the final layers of the Ten-Tails entered his body.

White chakra swallowed his armor.

His hair lifted inside the storm. Horn-like protrusions began forming above his brow as black markings spread over his chest and shoulders. Truth-Seeking Orbs emerged one after another behind him, trembling as his unstable transformation attempted to settle.

One.

Two.

Four.

Six.

Nine.

The incomplete nature of the Ten-Tails distorted the final form, but Madara's Rinnegan forced the chakra into balance. The Gedo Mazō's shell merged with the tailed-beast energies, and the power that had once remained separate now compressed around his restored living body.

The sealing vortex closed.

Silence struck the dimension.

Madara floated above the fractured earth.

His armor had vanished.

Pale robes formed from Ten-Tails chakra around his body. Black magatama markings lined his chest. One horn curved from his forehead while another remained partially developed, its shape interrupted by the creature's incomplete transformation.

His Rinnegan shone brighter than before.

The Ten Limbo shadows remained around him.

Black Zetsu could feel each of them.

The ancient shadow stopped pulling against the barrier.

He had spent thousands of years guiding reincarnations of Indra toward this moment.

None had reached it.

Madara had.

Then he had altered it.

A living Ten-Tails jinchūriki now stood before him, but the sequence Black Zetsu required had been broken. Obito had not revived Madara. Black Zetsu had not controlled the timing. The Ten-Tails had not completed its transformation. Madara knew Kaguya's name and understood that the final stage threatened to replace him.

Worse, ten Limbo clones guarded his body.

Black Zetsu could not approach.

He needed physical contact to merge with Madara, seize control, and use the Ten-Tails' completed vessel to revive Kaguya. One strike through Madara's back would have been enough under ordinary circumstances.

Nothing about the circumstances remained ordinary.

A Limbo shadow moved.

The ground beside Black Zetsu exploded.

He twisted away as the dimensional restraint around him shattered. The opening offered freedom, yet the impact also warned him that Madara's invisible guards could destroy him before he crossed the distance between them.

Madara looked toward him.

"You asked what I intended to do with the Ten-Tails."

Black Zetsu pressed several tendrils into the damaged earth.

Madara's grin showed his teeth. "This."

The ancient shadow gritted his teeth before he disappeared. Mayfly swallowed him into the ground before the Limbo clone completed its next strike.

Madara did not pursue immediately.

His body remained suspended above the earth while the newly acquired power moved through organs, chakra pathways, and a soul still adjusting to life. The transformation had succeeded, though the incomplete Ten-Tails resisted inside him.

He closed his eyes.

The ten Limbo clones spread farther through the dimension.

Black Zetsu raced beneath the surface.

The roots of the pocket realm had been severed from the Elemental Nations, but Mayfly did not require an ordinary pathway. His consciousness flowed through minerals and organic remnants buried beneath the stone, searching for the weakest point in the dimensional boundary.

He found it near one of the distant pillars.

A fracture had appeared when Madara completed Rinne Tensei.

Black Zetsu entered it.

The sealed dimension disappeared behind him.

.

Underground — Northern Land of Frost

Black Zetsu emerged into the earth several kilometers from the hidden cavern.

He did not slow.

Mayfly carried him through frozen soil, dead roots, buried stone, and narrow pockets of groundwater. His body spread across the terrain as a thin current of chakra, nearly impossible to distinguish from the natural darkness beneath the mountain.

Madara had become unpredictable.

Obito had lost the Gedo Mazō.

Kabuto would pursue whichever outcome offered the greatest knowledge.

Alaric remained the central threat.

Black Zetsu needed distance.

He needed another White Zetsu body, access to the remaining roots, and enough time to determine whether Madara's transformation could still be turned toward Kaguya's resurrection.

Perhaps the incomplete Ten-Tails would destabilize him.

Perhaps Obito could be used to weaken him.

Perhaps Alaric's arrogance could be made to provoke a battle between them.

Thousands of years had taught Black Zetsu patience.

One exposed plan did not end everything.

He moved farther north.

The chakra signatures behind him faded.

Ten kilometers.

Twenty.

Thirty.

No Limbo shadow followed.

No Rinnegan technique disturbed the earth.

Black Zetsu allowed the first measure of relief to enter his thoughts.

Madara required time to control the Ten-Tails. Alaric remained in the cavern with Obito and Kabuto. Neither could detect Mayfly across such a distance without knowing which layer of the earth he had entered.

He passed beneath a frozen river.

Then he stopped.

"!!!"

There had been no decision to stop as his body simply ceased moving.

Black Zetsu pushed chakra into the soil, but nothing responded.

The minerals surrounding him had hardened into a geometric lattice. Thin lines of fūinjutsu spread through the earth, invisible until his chakra touched them. Each formula connected to another several feet away, forming a sphere around the precise space he occupied.

He attempted to withdraw but the seal tightened.

Black Zetsu compressed his body and tried to seep between the lines.

The lattice changed with him.

Mayfly allowed him to merge with the earth.

The seal had been designed to treat anything merging with the earth as part of the earth itself.

He could not move without carrying the entire sealed section of ground with him.

Black Zetsu extended his senses upward.

"…"

He remained only a few feet beneath the surface as snow pressed upon the frozen soil above him.

Then… footsteps approached.

It was slow and unhurried.

Each one compressed the snow with a quiet crunch.

Black Zetsu's yellow eye opened within the earth, though no light reached it.

A familiar chakra settled above the trap.

Then Alaric's voice reached him through the frozen ground.

"Zetsu, Zetsu, Zetsu…"

Black Zetsu became still.

A trace of amusement entered Alaric's voice.

"Your Mayfly ability is really annoying."

Cigar smoke filtered faintly through the soil.

"Thank goodness I placed a trap while we were talking."