Chapter 521: A Heartbeat Worth Testing (Patreon)

Unknown Sealed Dimension

Madara heard his own heart.

The sound reached him before the unstable power of the Ten-Tails settled enough for the rest of the dimension to become clear.

LUB-DUB.

His chest tightened around the rhythm.

LUB-DUB.

Blood traveled through arteries that had remained empty for decades, carrying warmth into fingers that had forgotten what warmth felt like. His lungs expanded with another breath, drawing the dry air of the sealed dimension deeper than necessary. Dust entered with it, scraping faintly against living tissue.

Madara smiled, the discomfort felt exquisite.

His Edo Tensei body had reproduced the shape of sensation without restoring its meaning. Blows had struck him during the Kage Summit. Bones had broken beneath Alaric's fists, and entire sections of his reanimated flesh had been destroyed. He had understood the damage through chakra and memory, though none of it had carried the intimate warning that belonged to a living body.

Now every nerve spoke.

His palm still bore the shallow wounds left by his nails. Blood gathered within the crescents before rolling across his skin, warmer than the wind passing over it. Madara lifted his hand and studied the red lines as though they represented a technique he had never seen.

They proved that death no longer protected him.

They also proved that life belonged to him again.

The incomplete Ten-Tails stirred within his body.

Its chakra pressed against the seal around his abdomen, searching for the weaknesses left by his impossible resurrection. The creature had entered him before reaching its completed state. Several tailed-beast chakras remained unevenly fused, while the Gedo Mazō's shell attempted to force them into a single existence through raw authority.

Madara closed his fingers.

The wounds in his palm disappeared beneath pale chakra.

Within him, the Ten-Tails reacted to the movement as though the hand had closed around its throat.

A low vibration passed through Madara's body.

The barren ground beneath him sank.

His Truth-Seeking Orbs trembled behind his back, their surfaces rippling while the incomplete transformation adjusted to the restored rhythm of his heart. One orb briefly stretched into an uneven oval before Madara's chakra compressed it into a perfect sphere again.

His pale robes shifted around his body.

The incomplete horn above his forehead pulsed with tailed-beast chakra, growing another fraction before stopping. Black markings crawled across his chest and shoulders, each one rearranging itself according to a form that had never existed in the history of the world.

Madara lowered his hand.

The silver sphere hanging above the horizon flickered.

He could sense the sealed dimension in ways that had been impossible moments earlier. Space no longer surrounded him as empty distance. It possessed layers, pressure, and subtle fractures left by the Ten-Tails' arrival and Black Zetsu's escape. The barriers stretched across the artificial sky became visible through chakra alone, while the roots buried beneath the ground carried faint remnants of the Gedo Mazō's previous existence.

Farther away, his Limbo clones moved through the neighboring plane.

Their steps disturbed a world adjacent to the one his living body occupied. Ten separate perspectives returned to him without confusion, each shadow carrying his instincts while obeying the direction of his will.

Madara examined the connection.

Before drawing upon the Gedo Mazō, his Rinnegan could project fewer Limbo shadows. The Ten-Tails had expanded the boundary between his chakra and the invisible plane, allowing him to sustain ten bodies with enough density to tear through mountains.

Power filled him beyond anything he had possessed at the Valley of the End.

Beyond the body he had prepared through Hashirama's flesh.

Beyond the strength he had displayed before the Five Kage.

Yet the power remained unfinished.

The Ten-Tails resisted whenever Madara attempted to draw too deeply. Its incomplete mind bucked against his consciousness, carrying fragments of nine separate wills that had not been fully erased. Some of those fragments felt distant, as though the tailed beasts sensed the world through a dream. Others pressed against him with enough hatred to disturb the flow of his chakra.

Madara's lips curved.

Resistance made possession more satisfying.

He closed his eyes, and the landscape disappeared.

Inside his consciousness, darkness spread in every direction. Vast roots passed through the void, binding an enormous shape that shifted behind red mist. The Ten-Tails' eye opened above him, filling the inner world with a concentric pattern of malice.

Madara stood beneath it without moving.

The creature's roar came through him rather than toward him.

Its chakra struck the inside of the seal.

The impact forced his living heart into a faster rhythm.

LUB-DUB.

LUB-DUB.

LUB-DUB.

Madara felt the change and laughed softly.

"You dislike the sound?"

The eye narrowed.

A limb emerged through the red mist and descended upon him.

Madara raised one hand.

The roots wrapped around the limb, halting it before it could touch him. Black receivers grew along the bindings and pierced the Ten-Tails' flesh, forcing his Rinnegan chakra into the creature's unstable network.

The darkness shook.

"You entered my body," Madara said, his voice carrying through the internal world. "You will learn which of us became the vessel."

The beast pulled harder, snapping several roots.

Madara's Rinnegan brightened, and the shattered restraints rebuilt themselves from the fragments of the Gedo Mazō already fused with his soul. More roots emerged from the darkness, winding around the Ten-Tails' shoulders, throat, and malformed tails.

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAARRRRRR!!!

The creature's roar deepened as pain entered Madara's abdomen.

His eyes opened, and he noticed blood at the corner of his mouth. He touched it with one thumb, and the small smear across his skin only made his grin widen.

Pain carried information that Edo Tensei had dulled. The Ten-Tails had found a weakness between his restored organs and the seal imposed upon his soul. If he ignored it, the strain would eventually rupture the pathways responsible for balancing the tailed-beast chakras.

Madara pressed two fingers against his abdomen.

The black markings over his body shifted toward the seal.

He altered the internal structure while watching the reaction through his Rinnegan. The Ten-Tails pushed against one channel, so Madara divided it into six. When the creature redirected its pressure, he formed additional anchors through his spine and attached them to the remnants of the Gedo Mazō.

The pain lessened as his heartbeat slowed, and the Truth-Seeking Orbs stabilized.

Madara remained suspended above the broken plain as the final disturbances from the transformation faded into the distance. The silver light returned to its steady glow, revealing the devastation created by his resurrection.

Black rock had been torn into overlapping craters.

Several dimensional pillars had collapsed.

The barrier above the horizon contained fractures wide enough to expose streams of darkness between worlds.

Madara looked toward the crack Black Zetsu had used to escape.

Hatred tightened through him again.

The return of life had not diminished it.

Black Zetsu had touched every stage of his path while allowing Madara to believe the path belonged to him. The ancient shadow had watched Izuna's descendants inherit resentment cultivated across generations. He had altered the Stone Tablet, then waited for the Rinnegan to reveal a lie designed specifically for Madara's eyes.

Thousands of years of manipulation had nearly culminated in Kaguya using Madara's body as a doorway.

Madara's fingers curled.

One Truth-Seeking Orb behind him flattened into a staff before he forced it to return to its spherical shape.

Rage could wait.

Black Zetsu had escaped into the Elemental Nations, though Alaric had already proven capable of locating places hidden behind barriers Madara once considered secure. The trap Alaric had placed during their conversation suggested that Zetsu's escape might not have been as successful as the ancient shadow believed.

Madara considered the timing.

Alaric had arrived before the Ten-Tails completed its transformation.

He had possessed enough information to expose Black Zetsu immediately.

He could have attacked Madara while the Gedo Mazō remained restrained beneath Obito's control.

He could have interfered when Madara reclaimed the summoning contract.

He had done none of those things.

Instead, Alaric had stood inside the collapsing cavern with a cigar between his fingers and allowed Madara to leave with the Ten-Tails.

Madara's eyes narrowed.

The possibility had already occurred to him before sealing the beast into his body, though pride had made the thought irritating.

Alaric might have wanted this outcome.

During the Summit, Alaric had overwhelmed Madara's reanimated body without displaying the full extent of his power. He had treated their battle as an examination, measuring techniques while refusing to commit enough force to destroy the entire battlefield.

Inside the cavern, he had openly admitted that he had considered allowing Madara to become the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki.

That statement no longer sounded like arrogance spoken without purpose.

Madara lowered himself until his bare feet touched the fractured ground, his toes pressing against the stone.

The sensation arrested his attention for a moment.

Cold traveled through his skin.

The rough surface scraped against the sole of his foot. A small shard pressed hard enough to threaten a cut before his body adjusted unconsciously, reinforcing itself with chakra.

Madara looked down.

He had crossed battlefields barefoot before. He had stood in rivers stained with blood, walked across ash left by Fire Release, and felt soil tremble beneath Hashirama's Wood Golem.

Decades without life had turned the ordinary pressure of stone into something worth noticing.

He stepped forward, the pale robe moving around his legs.

His foot left a shallow impression behind, each step following in steady succession.

Madara walked across the ruined plain while his senses expanded through the dimension. He felt the circulation of his blood, the tension of living muscles, and the pulse of the Ten-Tails beneath his own chakra. Each sensation layered itself upon the others until the world possessed a density his reanimated body had been unable to provide.

He stopped beside a crater created during his resurrection.

His reflection appeared within a thin pool of black liquid gathered at the bottom.

Living skin covered his face.

The cracks of Edo Tensei had vanished.

His Rinnegan remained, though the eyes now rested within a body capable of bleeding, exhaustion, and death.

Madara touched his cheek, warmth meeting his fingertips.

A quiet laugh escaped him.

Death had made battle hollow.

An immortal body removed consequence from every exchange. Hashirama's techniques could tear him apart, and the pieces would return. The Five Kage could combine their strongest attacks, and the dust would rebuild itself around his soul. Even Alaric's blows during the Summit had only delayed him.

Now the next strike could matter.

The thought awakened something older than the Eye of the Moon Plan.

Older than the Stone Tablet.

Older than the despair that had shaped his final years.

Madara remembered Hashirama rushing toward him across the riverbank, water exploding around their feet as both boys grinned despite the bruises already forming across their faces. He remembered meeting stronger opponents during the clan wars and feeling his body sharpen before the first weapon reached him. He remembered the Valley of the End, where every collision between Susanoo and the Wood Golem had carried the possibility that one of them would not rise again.

His heartbeat accelerated as the Ten-Tails stirred in response, and Madara did not suppress it immediately.

The creature's violence blended with his own hunger until chakra began leaking from his body in pale waves. Cracks spread beneath his feet, widening across the crater as the dimensional barrier groaned above him.

He wanted to know what this body could endure.

He wanted to know how far the incomplete Ten-Tails could be forced before its instability became failure.

Most of all, he wanted to know whether Alaric had truly remained beyond him after this transformation.

Madara lifted his head.

Something had entered the dimension... subtle at first, like a pressure change in the air, but unmistakably deliberate.

The intrusion produced no tearing sound, no portal unfolded across the sky... space simply acquired another presence.

Madara's newly living senses found it immediately.

A heartbeat sounded tens of meters behind him.

Slow and calm.

A familiar chakra occupied the fractured plain without disturbing the dimensional barrier around it.

Madara turned.

Alaric stood upon a ridge of broken black stone.

The wind pulled at the hem of his Vanguard coat, though the fabric showed no sign of the underground battle or the journey that followed. His cigar remained between two fingers, its ember glowing faintly beneath the silver light.

He looked toward Madara's pale robes, incomplete horn, Truth-Seeking Orbs, and the black markings crossing his body.

For several seconds, Alaric said nothing.

His eyes moved over the restored flesh where Edo Tensei cracks had once covered Madara's face. They lingered briefly upon the blood circulation visible through chakra, then shifted toward the Ten-Tails' unstable seal.

Madara watched him examine the transformation.

Alaric released a slow breath of smoke.

"Damn…" His mouth curved. "That's one hell of a power-up."

Madara's grin appeared without restraint, sharpened by life itself. "It seems you've waited for the moment I sealed the Ten-Tails into myself."

Alaric looked at him.

The cigar moved away from his lips as he chuckled.

"Yeah, now…" His blue eyes brightened with anticipation. "Why don't we have a rematch? At least with this—"

Madara disappeared.

Alaric's eyes widened.

A heartbeat that had been tens of meters away sounded behind him.

Madara emerged within the space between one pulse and the next, his living body moving with a speed that made his Summit performance appear restrained by comparison. His right arm had already risen, fingers held together as his hand descended diagonally toward Alaric's head.

There was no elaborate technique, nor did any Truth-Seeking Orb accompany the strike.

Madara used one hand and the physical power of the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki body.

Alaric tilted his head.

Madara's fingers passed beside his temple.

The edge of the hand missed his skin by less than an inch, yet the force it carried continued forward, and the battlefield vanished.

KRAAAASH—BOOOOOM!!!

A diagonal line crossed the sealed dimension, beginning beside Alaric's face and extending beyond the horizon. Black stone split apart along that path before the ground erupted upward in a wall several kilometers high. The shockwave tore through collapsed dimensional pillars, pulverizing them before they could fall. Fractures raced across the artificial sky as the silver sphere above the horizon broke into distorted reflections.

The ridge beneath Alaric disappeared.

His coat snapped in the pressure, gold trim flashing through a storm of shattered rock.

Madara's hand completed its descent.

Alaric remained beside him.

A shallow line had appeared across his cheek, blood gathering within it as warmth reached his skin.

Madara saw the cut.

Alaric touched it with two fingers.

Red stained the tips of his glove.

For a moment, he stared at the blood.

Then his eyes lifted toward Madara.

The calm amusement that had followed him through the hidden cavern changed. Something fierce entered his face, pulling his smile wider as chakra began pressing into the ruined dimension from every direction.

Madara felt the shift as the Ten-Tails inside him recoiled, and several Truth-Seeking Orbs moved behind his shoulders.

Alaric's Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan formed, its pattern rotating as the pressure around him climbed beyond anything Madara had felt during the Kage Summit.

His smile became manic.

"Finally…"

The broken sky above them folded beneath the weight of his chakra.

"A fight where I'm tested to the limits…"