Chapter 117 (Patreon)

“Guh!”

“Aaaaaagh!”

A streak of silver light descended from above, cutting straight down.

Fū Yamanaka had been certain he had succeeded. He had already taken control of Nerona Mihawk with the Mind Body Switch Technique—or so he believed.

Then a scream of utter agony tore from his throat.

He clutched his head with both hands. His features first twisted as though his mind were collapsing, but the terror on his face soon began to fade. At a speed visible to the naked eye, his expression gradually turned vacant.

Several seconds later, his entire body crumpled to the ground.

He had not fainted from the pain.

He was dead.

His spirit had been killed by Mihawk.

Ordinarily, something as intangible as a spirit should have been beyond Mihawk’s ability to kill. However, the shinobi world was a place where spiritual energy possessed form and could be wielded as power.

By changing his understanding of what lay before him, Mihawk had found a way to perceive—and kill—even that concept.

To everyone watching, Mihawk had merely swung the small cross-shaped sword through empty air in Fū’s direction.

Then Fū had screamed and died.

Torune Aburame had initially been overjoyed. He had been ready to coordinate with Fū’s Mind Body Switch Technique and use his rinkaichū—nano-sized venomous insects—to kill Mihawk while his body was immobilized.

Now, however, Torune stood frozen, unable to take even a single step.

His heart filled with doubt and fear.

What had just happened?

How had the Yamanaka clan’s secret technique not only failed, but also caused Fū to die such an inexplicable death?

What in the world had Mihawk done to him?

“Rumble—!”

Before Torune could recover, a deafening roar erupted as the earth was torn apart.

A dazzling crimson light surged toward him like a vast curtain sweeping across the battlefield.

Faced with the rapidly expanding Ranged Slash, Torune did not hesitate. He immediately leaped aside.

Aside from Kimimaro, whose strongest bone spear had once withstood one of Mihawk’s Ranged Slashes, everyone who had ever faced the attack had chosen to evade it.

That was the power of an S-rank Ranged Slash.

Yet beneath its terrifying destructive power lay one obvious weakness—it was relatively easy to dodge.

In the shinobi world, there were countless ways to avoid an attack that traveled in a straight line.

That was precisely why Mihawk rarely used Ranged Slashes, except when countering wide-area ninjutsu or using one as bait to draw his opponent’s attention.

“Pshk—!”

The Ranged Slash had forced Torune aside, but that had been Mihawk’s intention from the beginning.

Mihawk vanished.

The next instant, the small cross-shaped sword became a streak of white light and pierced straight through the body of a Root operative.

Then came the familiar sound of flesh being torn apart.

Every Root operative present was highly skilled in taijutsu, and each possessed ninjutsu befitting their strength. However, once Mihawk denied them the opportunity to perform those techniques, they were no different from ordinary people incapable of resisting him.

Combining Soru with the power of the Mystic Eyes Of Death Perception, Mihawk reaped the lives of the remaining Root operatives one after another.

Within moments, only four people remained amid the snow.

On one side stood Mihawk and Tsunade.

On the other were Shimura Danzō and Torune Aburame.

Even then, Danzō had yet to finish removing the gold-colored metal brace from his right arm.

Torune landed after narrowly avoiding the Ranged Slash and looked toward Mihawk.

Severed limbs and mangled bodies lay scattered behind him.

For the first time, a trace of fear emerged in Torune’s heart.

When his gaze met Mihawk’s ice-blue, demonic eyes, Torune felt as though some invisible force had drained all warmth and strength from his body.

He finally understood.

He was afraid.

He had already resolved to sacrifice his life for Lord Danzō. Yet in the face of the murderous specter standing before him, fear continued to surge through his heart beyond his control.

“Secret Technique: Poisonous Dust!”

The fear had not shattered Torune’s courage.

As though shouting the technique’s name would strengthen his resolve, he gathered countless rinkaichū around his hands before blowing a cloud of purple dust toward Mihawk.

The purple mist was formed from innumerable nano-sized venomous insects. As it swept through the falling snow, even the pure-white, feather-like flakes were contaminated.

“If you could control every one of those insects freely as an individual, I might still have some reason to be wary.”

Mihawk calmly walked forward with the small cross-shaped sword in hand, facing the approaching poisonous cloud without the slightest change in expression.

“But once you gather them together and turn them into a single technique, it makes no difference whether there are ten thousand, a hundred thousand, or even a million.”

“In my eyes, they are all one.”

Mihawk raised the small cross-shaped sword.

“Their death is far too obvious.”

“Whoosh!”

The moment those words fell, Mihawk charged directly into the poisonous cloud.

Anyone who inhaled even a trace of it would die, yet he entered without hesitation.

A silver-white flash swept through the purple mist.

A streak of white light tore open a path through the poisonous cloud, but the area cut by Mihawk’s small cross-shaped blade did not even amount to one-tenth of the cloud’s total size.

Despite that, the dense purple color throughout the cloud rapidly began to fade.

At a speed visible to the naked eye, the entire poisonous mist became thinner and clearer.

Within only three or four seconds, it had completely disappeared.

Torune stared at the empty air as though his consciousness had been ripped from his body.

He stood utterly motionless.

Even Danzō’s eyes widened in disbelief.

Others might not have understood what had happened, but Torune and Danzō knew the truth better than anyone.

That had not been a poisonous mist.

It had been an attack formed from countless nano-sized venomous insects.

No matter how extraordinary Mihawk’s swordsmanship was, it should have been impossible for him to kill every one of those insects with a single slash.

More importantly, Mihawk had charged directly into the cloud. The moment he inhaled even one of those insects, death should have been inevitable.

“Those eyes…”

Danzō’s expression darkened.

“Are they truly a dōjutsu?”

This was not the first time such an inexplicable phenomenon had occurred.

When Danzō considered the earlier Fire Style: Dragon Flame Jutsu, the sudden disappearance of Torune’s poisonous cloud, and Fū’s bizarre death, a terrifying possibility emerged in his mind.

If he was not mistaken, the ability of those eyes was—

To kill ninjutsu itself.

“Pshk!”

At that moment, the sound of a sharp blade entering flesh reached everyone’s ears.

Torune stared at Mihawk, who had appeared directly in front of him as though emerging from thin air.

He slowly lowered his gaze and looked at the small cross-shaped sword buried deep in his lower body.

His lips trembled as though he wanted to say something.

“Yo—!”

Mihawk’s sword arm suddenly rose.

The small cross-shaped blade embedded in Torune’s body tore upward without encountering the slightest resistance. It cut through him as easily as a blade passing through a sheet of paper before emerging from the top of his head.

“Fwish!”

The next instant, Mihawk vanished.

A column of blood erupted from Torune’s body.

A massive wound extended from his groin to the top of his head, splitting his upper body down the middle. His mutilated corpse toppled heavily into the snow.

Bright-red blood spread across the ground, staining the pure-white snow crimson.

The entire snowbound world fell silent.

Neither Tsunade nor Shimura Danzō could utter a single word.

From the moment Mihawk unleashed that astonishing Ranged Slash and began the battle until only Danzō remained of Root’s forces, exactly one minute and twelve seconds had passed.