The electromagnetic railgun fired by Kai was far more destructive than he'd expected.
The iron orb—only the size of a fingertip—had not only pierced clean through the Iwagakure ninja but continued to crash into a rock wall hundreds of meters away, blasting open a crater several meters wide.
"Not bad," Kai muttered, eyes gleaming with satisfaction. "This... this is on par with a Rasengan in its base form."
That was no exaggeration.
The Rasengan, a high-tier A-rank ninjutsu developed by the Fourth Hokage, was hailed as a masterpiece. Yet Kai had achieved comparable force using only a sliver of chakra—and from just a sliver of iron.
If this was what his electromagnetic ability—now dubbed Magnetic Dominion—could do with minimal power, what would it look like when he poured real chakra into it?
Could he shatter mountains?
Could he punch through a tailed beast?
"Could I... shoot the moon?"
The idea was absurd. And yet, the spark had been lit.
That railgun shot was just one application of his Rinnegan's electromagnetic power.
There were still dozens more he hadn't even begun to test.
He felt like a child with a box of forbidden toys. And the thrill of it left him breathless.
"…This eye. This power. It's ridiculously broken," Kai whispered, practically buzzing. "Way more fun than Amaterasu—that thing never kills anyone anyway."
He turned his gaze back toward the battlefield below, leaving the two dead Iwagakure shinobi behind.
"Let's see how Madara's doing…"
And down below, the dance of death had never stopped.
Madara moved like a whirlwind of crimson flame.
Even with thousands of enemy shinobi on the field, not a single one could land a strike. He didn't dodge their blows—he made it impossible for them to hit him.
They were drowning in fear, disoriented by the Sharingan, bleeding from invisible cuts they hadn't seen coming.
But the more Iwagakure ninjas died, the more panicked the survivors became. They couldn't use wide-scale jutsu—not with their own people still in the line of fire. But they couldn't hold back, either.
Stalling him?
Draining his chakra?
A fantasy.
Madara hadn't even broken a sweat.
At this rate, they'd all die before he even reached for a proper jutsu.
"Stop him," someone shouted.
"We can't! He's… he's too fast!"
At last, the floating figure of Tsuchikage Ishikawa made a decision.
His eyes narrowed, calculating. Then he barked an order:
"Activate the barrier!"
From the perimeter of the battlefield, several elite Iwagakure shinobi weaved hand signs and slammed their palms to the ground.
"Sealing Art: Super-Heavy Rock Formation!"
A rippling pulse of chakra swept outward.
Circular sigils glowed in a wide radius. The air thickened. And then—
Gravity spiked.
Everything inside the formation was dragged downward by a force ten times stronger than normal.
Hundreds of genin were instantly flattened, collapsing to the ground and gasping for breath. Even seasoned jonin struggled to stay upright.
And Madara?
His movement slowed.
Not by much—but enough.
His high-speed taijutsu was now grounded, restrained.
"Now!"
Hidden outside the formation's range, Mu—the stealth expert and wielder of Dust Release—gathered chakra in his hands.
A shimmering cube of white light began to form between his palms.
"Dust Style: Detachment of the Primitive World Technique!"
His breath was steady, his aim locked.
Under normal circumstances, there was no way to hit someone like Madara with a jutsu that required charging.
But now, with Madara's mobility reduced, he had a window.
Just one.
Hit him here, and it would disintegrate him at the atomic level. A clean kill.
...If it landed.
Madara, however, was no ordinary enemy.
The moment the gravity barrier kicked in, he felt it. The shift in pressure. The tug of chakra from the perimeter.
And in that same instant, he understood the trap: slow him down, then hit him with a finisher.
But this wasn't his first battlefield.
In a flash, he wove hand seals and exhaled.
"Fire Style: Hiding in Ash and Dust!"
A massive plume of glowing ash spewed from his mouth, spreading across the barrier's interior.
The smog didn't just obscure vision—it blocked chakra detection.
Even the Sharingan couldn't pierce this smoke.
From Mu's perch outside the barrier, his target vanished.
His eyes widened. "Damn—!"
Still, he couldn't stop now.
He'd charged the Dust Release long enough.
"Fire!"
A cube-shaped beam of white light erupted forward, vaporizing everything in its path.
Hundreds of meters of rock. A dozen unlucky Iwagakure ninjas.
All gone.
Disassembled into nothing.
But Madara?
Nowhere to be found.
The blast echoed across the mountains. When the smoke cleared…
Nothing remained but scorched rock and smoking rubble.
"Did it hit him?"
"Was he caught in it?"
Silence.
Dozens of Iwagakure shinobi leaned forward, breathless, hopeful.
Then—
A shockwave.
Followed by an explosive boom that shattered the tension.
A radiant blue blade of chakra erupted from the smoke, cleaving the barrier formation in half.
Then a form began to rise.
Not a man.
But a Susanoo.
Madara's complete Susanoo, towering hundreds of meters tall, emerged from the ashes like a wrathful god.
Its chakra pulsed through the ground like thunder. Its armor glistened under the rising sun.
And inside the helmeted forehead stood Madara, arms folded, gazing down with contempt.
"You almost got me," he said calmly, voice amplified by chakra.
"For that… I'll reward you with a taste of my true strength."
He pointed a massive finger toward the village behind the battlefield.
"Iwagakure?"
"It no longer has the right to exist."
He unsheathed his colossal blade.
The chakra sword gleamed like a mountain-sized guillotine.
And then—
He swung.
The air howled. The very sky split open. A shockwave of chakra carved through the earth, shredding buildings, cliffs, and forests alike.
It struck the heart of Iwagakure in a single, brutal arc.
BOOM.
The entire Hidden Rock Village was split in two.
A canyon several kilometers long opened up where the village once stood. Homes were flattened. Watchtowers crumbled. The village was gone.
Not conquered.
Erased.
The ground itself had been rewritten by Madara's wrath.
Ishikawa fell to his knees, jaw slack, his beard still charred from the earlier fire technique.
His voice trembled.
"T-this… this is…"
The man who had once styled himself as a rival to Konoha could only gape in despair.
This wasn't war.
This was divine punishment.
Now he understood.
This was a setup. From the beginning.
Hashirama's invitation to discuss an alliance? A distraction.
Konoha had never intended peace.
They wanted to set an example.
Use Iwagakure as a public execution to warn the world: Submit or be destroyed.
Hashirama the diplomat. Madara the butcher.
Together, they played their parts perfectly.
"Konoha… you f*cking bastards." Ishikawa whispered bitterly.
"But it's… too late."
He coughed blood and fell.
High above it all, Kai saw the destruction and felt a ripple in his system.
[Unification Progress: Naruto World No. 1 — 35% → 44%]
Nine percent.
In a single battle.
"…As expected," Kai murmured. "Madara is terrifying."
"And this is only the beginning."