Chapter 120 (Patreon)

“Madara… and Sasuke Uchiha?”

Danzō’s eyes narrowed.

The arrival of Uchiha Obito and Sasuke brought the battle, which had been on the verge of reaching its final point, to an abrupt halt.

Without drawing attention to himself, Danzō quietly formed a hand seal and deactivated Izanagi, preserving the time remaining in his final two Sharingan.

Sasuke’s gaze settled upon Danzō’s restored right arm. Numerous Sharingan were embedded throughout the pale limb, though most had already closed permanently.

His eyes filled with murderous intent.

“That arm of yours… Just how much Uchiha blood stains it?”

Danzō remained expressionless.

“Every one of those eyes came from Uchiha who died at Itachi’s hands.”

Sasuke drew a deep breath and did everything he could to suppress the anger surging through him.

He stared coldly at Danzō.

“Answer me. Was the destruction of the Uchiha clan carried out on the orders of Konoha’s leadership—including you?”

Danzō’s expression did not change.

“So Itachi told you?”

His calm voice held neither guilt nor remorse.

“I believed he would carry that secret to his grave. It seems you truly were the most special person in his heart.”

That indirect admission finally convinced Sasuke that everything Obito had told him was true.

His brother was still the same brother who had always loved him.

That had never changed.

Konoha had forced Itachi to shoulder the disgrace of slaughtering his own clan. It had forced him to endure Sasuke’s hatred for years, and even at the moment of his death, Itachi had refused to reveal the truth.

If Obito had not told him, Sasuke would have remained ignorant forever.

He would have continued believing that Itachi was responsible for destroying their clan—and might even have felt relief after finally killing the supposed enemy he had spent his entire life pursuing.

Hatred swelled within Sasuke’s heart.

It became heavier and more intense with every passing second.

Just as Sasuke prepared to attack Danzō, Mihawk’s Advanced Observation Haki carried his awareness several seconds into the future.

He saw the dark-red Ranged Slash he was about to unleash roar toward Sasuke and Obito.

At that same moment, Danzō would seize upon the attack as a distraction, turn his back on the battlefield, and flee like the coward he was.

The vision ended.

“Rumble—!”

A dazzling dark-red Ranged Slash suddenly roared toward Sasuke and Obito.

Sasuke’s expression changed.

His three-tomoe Sharingan instantly transformed, revealing the six-pointed pattern of his Mangekyō Sharingan.

Purple chakra erupted around him.

A skeletal Susanoo formed in an instant, enclosing Sasuke within its rib cage.

The enormous dark-red Ranged Slash swallowed both him and Obito.

The next moment, Sasuke and his Susanoo were hurled backward together.

“Crack—!”

The power contained within the attack far surpassed anything Sasuke had expected.

The Ranged Slash carried Advanced Armament Haki. Its force tore through the distorted airflow surrounding the Susanoo and penetrated its exterior before erupting within the skeletal frame.

A crack appeared across one of the ribs.

It rapidly spread through half of the Susanoo’s skeleton before the entire damaged section shattered from the inside out.

Mihawk had destroyed it with a single attack.

The difference between Sasuke and Itachi was obvious from that exchange alone.

When Itachi had faced Mihawk’s Ranged Slash, he had used the Substitution Jutsu to evade it instead of attempting to withstand it directly.

Sasuke, however, had chosen to rely on Susanoo and meet the attack head-on.

The difference in their composure and battle judgment was far from small.

When the dark-red light finally dissipated, Obito remained completely unharmed, having allowed the attack to pass through his intangible body.

Beside him stood Sasuke, breathing heavily with shock written across his face.

Only then did Sasuke’s gaze finally settle upon the person who had attacked him.

“Nerona… Mihawk…”

Sasuke gritted his teeth as he spoke the name of the former classmate he had always envied.

Three years had passed, and both of them had grown older.

However, Mihawk’s clothing, silver hair, and the tiny cross-shaped sword in his hand had hardly changed.

Sasuke recognized him immediately.

“Sasuke Uchiha. It has been a long time.”

Mihawk greeted him in a calm voice before charging forward with the tiny sword in hand.

“But since you’ve appeared here as a rogue shinobi and a member of Akatsuki, I can’t simply ignore you.”

“Don’t underestimate me!”

Sasuke glared at him.

“I’m not the same person I was back then!”

Mihawk’s dismissive attitude immediately infuriated Sasuke.

The shadow left behind by his previous defeat, combined with the lingering refusal in his heart to accept Mihawk’s superiority, made him temporarily forget about Danzō.

At that moment, Sasuke wanted nothing more than to settle the score with Mihawk.

However, what happened next left him stunned.

Mihawk, who had been running directly toward him, suddenly disappeared.

That movement was entirely different from the Body Flicker Technique.

Sasuke’s Mangekyō Sharingan could follow it clearly, but—

His body could not react in time.

“Shing!”

A silver-white arc flashed like a streak of light.

Driven by anger, Sasuke hastily reconstructed the skeletal Susanoo that Mihawk had destroyed in a single attack.

The silver-white blade struck its ribs.

Susanoo, praised as an absolute defense, was once again torn apart as easily as a sheet of paper.

The blade slipped through the shattered defense.

Sasuke barely managed to throw himself sideways, but the tiny cross-shaped sword still carved across the right side of his waist.

A pillar of blood sprayed through the air.

A piece of flesh roughly three fingers wide fell onto the ground.

“Aaagh!”

A cry of pain escaped Sasuke’s mouth.

When he landed, the Susanoo surrounding his body immediately disappeared.

Sasuke clutched the right side of his waist with one hand. The wound was so deep that he felt as though his insides were about to spill out.

This is bad!

Obito immediately vanished from where he had been standing.

He had never expected Sasuke, despite awakening the Mangekyō Sharingan, to be brought to the brink of death by Mihawk in a single exchange.

Had Obito known this would happen, he would have warned Sasuke about Mihawk’s abilities beforehand.

The space behind Sasuke began to twist into a spiral.

A black point appeared at its center, releasing a powerful suction force that pulled Sasuke into Kamui’s separate dimension.

Mihawk made no attempt to stop him.

The damage caused by that slash was far more severe than it appeared.

A human body was different from the supernatural techniques Mihawk had killed earlier.

His sword had cut away a piece of flesh from the right side of Sasuke’s waist, and the power of the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception remained within the wound.

The injury could not be repaired normally.

Ordinary medical ninjutsu would be completely ineffective. Only some other extraordinary method could possibly treat it.

If Sasuke did not receive such treatment soon, he would bleed to death.

After drawing Sasuke into the Kamui dimension, Obito gave Mihawk a long, searching look.

Unexpectedly, he said nothing.

His figure twisted into a spiral and disappeared.

By the time Obito disappeared, the future Mihawk had witnessed had already unfolded exactly as he had seen it.

Danzō had used the chaos created by the attack to escape. He was already racing into the distance with his back turned to the battlefield, without sparing Sasuke or Obito another glance.

‘Mihawk… this isn’t over. Once I—’

His thought ended there.

Mihawk swung the tiny cross-shaped sword toward his retreating figure.

A terrifying dark-red Ranged Slash crossed the distance in an instant.

Danzō had only enough time to sense death approaching from behind before the slash passed through his torso, cutting him cleanly in half.

The two halves of his body crashed to the ground.

Black sealing marks immediately spread across Danzō’s body. The Reverse Four Symbols Sealing erupted, swallowing the surrounding ground within a vast black sphere. However, Danzō had fled far enough that no one else was caught within it.

Yet Danzō did not reappear.

Because he had deactivated Izanagi before attempting to flee, his death could not be rewritten. The slash had struck before he could reactivate the technique, leaving his final two Sharingan unused.

This time, Shimura Danzō truly died.

“Hokage-sama, Madara escaped with Sasuke.”

Mihawk slid the tiny blade back into the cross-shaped pendant hanging around his neck, then calmly walked over to Tsunade as though the fierce battle had never occurred.

Even so, Mihawk did not truly believe the wound he had inflicted would be enough to kill Sasuke.

Perhaps, when Sasuke stood on the brink of death, the Sage of Six Paths—whose consciousness had always lingered within the shinobi world—would appear to save him and grant him a sudden surge in power.