System in Assassin's Creed

Chapter 368: Chapter 367: The Serpent’s Coil and the Crumbling Stone

Somewhere Hidden - The Elemental Nations

The dense, untouched wilderness offered no warning before the very fabric of reality began to spiral.

In the center of a silent, sun-dappled clearing, the air twisted violently inward, folding upon itself with a low, unnatural hum that sent the surrounding wildlife fleeing into the brush. From the dark, shifting eye of the spatial vortex, a single booted foot stepped onto the grass, closely followed by the imposing, cloaked figure of Uchiha Obito.

The spatial tear sealed shut behind him with a quiet pop, leaving the masked man standing in the profound stillness of the forest.

He did not immediately move. Instead, his single visible eye swept over the tranquil surroundings, cold and calculating, checking the perimeter for any lingering chakra signatures that might have tracked his dimensional exit. Finding nothing but the mundane pulse of nature, Obito adjusted the collar of his Akatsuki cloak and began a steady, purposeful march through the thick undergrowth.

He navigated the twisting, overgrown paths with the ease of a man who had memorized the continent’s blind spots. Eventually, the dense foliage gave way to a massive, jagged rock formation, at the base of which gaped the entrance to an expansive, subterranean cavern. Unlike the suffocating, claustrophobic darkness of typical hideouts, this cave possessed a breathtaking verticality; a massive portion of its natural ceiling had collapsed centuries ago, allowing a brilliant, unhindered shaft of midday sunlight to pour directly into its heart, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the damp air.

As Obito’s boots clicked against the stone floor, echoing into the bright expanse of the cavern, he found the space occupied by only two figures.

”Ahh... Tobi,” a voice hissed, smooth and dripping with an unsettling, venomous amusement.

Standing near the center of the sunlit chamber, bathed in the natural light that highlighted the grotesque, pale modifications to his anatomy, was Kabuto Yakushi. He turned away from a stone table littered with medical scrolls and sealing formulas, adjusting his cracked, round glasses with a pale, clawed finger. Slithering lazily across the stone floor behind him, thick and heavily scaled, was a massive, pale snake tail that had become an inseparable extension of his spine.

”You’re back so soon,” Kabuto greeted, a sickeningly confident smirk twisting his serpentine features. ”I had assumed you would be occupied orchestrating the funeral arrangements for your fallen god.”

Obito did not rise to the bait, nor did he react to the blatant disrespect. He continued his steady, measured walk, his posture radiating a cold, abyssal authority that commanded the very oxygen in the room. He stopped a calculated distance away, his Sharingan glowing ominously from the depths of his orange mask.

”I take it you have the means to do it now? Kabuto?” Obito demanded, his baritone voice stripping away all pretense, cutting straight to the logistical reality of their unholy alliance.

Kabuto’s smirk widened, exposing slightly elongated canines as his tail swished with a quiet, scraping hiss against the rock.

”Naturally,” Kabuto replied, spreading his arms in a theatrical gesture of triumph. ”I have finally completed my numerous, rigorous tests. The genetic plasticity of the White Zetsu clones is truly remarkable. They are phenomenally compatible with the Edo Tensei. The sacrifices are no longer a bottleneck; we have an infinite supply of highly durable, chakra-rich vessels capable of anchoring the souls of the dead.”

From the shadowed periphery of the cave, seamlessly emerging from the dense roots clinging to the cavern wall, the dual-toned figure of Zetsu materialized.

”He speaks the truth,” White Zetsu chimed in, his voice light and airy as he nodded his leafy head. ”Thousands of my clones are currently gestating and on standby deep within the roots of the Demonic Statue. I’m just waiting for the signal to deploy them.”

Obito absorbed the confirmation with a slow, deliberate nod. The catastrophic loss of Nagato, Sasori, Kakuzu, and Deidara had critically wounded their military strength, but Kabuto’s mastery over the Reanimation Jutsu offered a monstrous, inexhaustible replacement.

”Good,” Obito stated coldly, his gaze locking onto the reptilian medic. ”Start readying things up immediately, Kabuto. It won’t take long from now before we initiate the proper, final hunt for the remaining Tailed Beasts. We move from the shadows into open warfare.”

Black Zetsu hummed, a deep, resonant sound that vibrated with ancient calculation. ”Hmm... Let us review our current assets. We successfully secured half of the One-Tails before the extraction was violently interrupted by the anomaly.”

”We also have the Two-Tails, the Three-Tails, the Four-Tails, the Five-Tails, and the Six-Tails safely sealed within the Gedo Mazo,” White Zetsu listed off cheerfully, counting on his pale fingers. ”Which means we only need the Seven, the Eight, and the Nine-Tails to complete the set!”

Obito remained perfectly silent on the outside, a statue of dark intent, but his mind was an aggressive, churning tempest of tactical revisions. His Sharingan flared slightly, the crimson light reflecting off Kabuto’s glasses as he stared at the serpentine man. He remained deeply skeptical of Kabuto’s true loyalties, fully aware that a snake only served its own hunger, but the man’s utility was currently indispensable. He had no choice but to hasten their apocalyptic timetable.

’The Nine-Tails...’ Obito thought, a bitter, frustrating knot tightening in his chest. ’With Alaric permanently stationed in Konoha, launching a direct assault to capture the Kyuubi Jinchuriki will be nearly impossible. That man is a walking natural disaster; engaging him in his own territory is tactical suicide.’

His mind swiftly pivoted, searching for the esoteric loopholes in the lore of the shinobi world.

’I’ll have to make do with a substitute,’ Obito decided, his strategic path reforming. ’The Gold and Silver brothers of Kumogakure... Kinkaku and Ginkaku. They devoured the flesh of the Nine-Tails and possess a massive, saturated reservoir of its chakra. Reanimating them and feeding them to the statue will have to suffice to awaken the Juubi. As for the Hachibi Jinchuriki... I’ll need to orchestrate a specialized strike team to handle Killer Bee before the Raikage locks him away.’

”Make sure that when the time comes,” Obito commanded, his voice echoing with absolute finality as the space around his right eye began to violently spiral, pulling the fabric of the cavern inward. ”Everything is ready.”

”...”

Kabuto and Zetsu watched in silence as the masked mastermind was slowly, seamlessly engulfed by the vortex, vanishing entirely into his private dimension.

Once the air settled and the spatial ripple faded, Kabuto allowed a low, chilling chuckle to vibrate in his throat. His golden, slit-like pupils gleamed with a toxic, boundless ambition.

’Heh... interesting,’ Kabuto mused, his snake tail coiling slowly around his legs. ’He believes he is the one manipulating the board. He has no idea that he is merely paving the way for my own ascension.’

Two Days Later - Iwagakure no Sato

The Tsuchikage’s Office

”Tsuchikage-sama, the latest reports have arrived.”

The Village Hidden in the Stones was an architectural fortress of defiance, its buildings carved directly from the unforgiving, jagged mountains that defined the Land of Earth. Yet, within the heavy, circular confines of the Kage’s office, the atmosphere was one of profound, suffocating vulnerability.

Ōnoki of Both Scales, the Third Tsuchikage, sat rigidly behind his massive stone desk. For a man who had proudly carried the moniker of the ’Fence-Sitter,’ navigating decades of brutal shinobi politics with ruthless pragmatism, the events of the past week had exacted a terrible, visible toll. He looked older than he ever had before. The deep, weathered lines mapping his face seemed to have carved themselves into the very bone, his usually sharp, defiant eyes clouded with the crushing, inescapable stress of a failing war.

He let out a long, ragged sigh, the sound carrying the exhaustion of a sovereign watching his empire bleed.

The reason his trusted, jovial assistant Akatsuchi wasn’t present to buffer the grim news was simple: Ōnoki had been forced to dispatch the massive shinobi to the front lines just to halt a complete structural collapse, desperately unwilling to send his own granddaughter into the meat grinder.

He looked up at the young kunoichi standing before his desk. Kurotsuchi clutched a thick stack of tightly bound scrolls against her chest, her dark eyes reflecting a mixture of deep sorrow and rising apprehension.

”Yes, go on,” Ōnoki instructed, waving a wrinkled, age-spotted hand. His voice was heavy, lacking its usual booming resonance. ”Read everything. Do not spare me the details.”

Kurotsuchi gulped audibly, the sound loud in the quiet office. She unspooled the first, blood-sealed scroll, her jaw tightening as her eyes skimmed the disastrous casualty reports penned by their frontline commanders.

”This... this report is from the primary battle camps situated in the Land of Grass,” Kurotsuchi began, her voice trembling slightly before she forced it steady. ”The twelve thousand forces we deployed across the Grass borders are being systematically, forcefully pushed back.”

She looked up at her grandfather, the sheer tactical impossibility of the situation evident in her tone.

”Konoha seemed to have deployed far more advanced logistical networks than our intelligence anticipated, Tsuchikage-sama,” Kurotsuchi explained, reading the frantic addendums. ”Their supply lines are utterly unbroken, heavily protected by high-speed spatial markers. But the real devastation is coming from their vanguard. A highly coordinated strike force, rumored to be led by anomalies moving faster than our sensory division can track, has repeatedly decimated our heavy infantry lines before we can even form earth walls. They aren’t just fighting us; they are dissecting our formations. The frontline commander is officially requesting an immediate, massive reinforcement of elite guard units to prevent a total rout.”

Ōnoki closed his eyes, a pained grimace crossing his features. Twelve thousand men, the pride of Iwagakure, bleeding out in the mud of a neutral country.

She hastily rolled up the first scroll, tossing it onto the desk, and broke the seal on the second. As she unfurled it, her dark eyes widened, rapidly scanning the text. The color drained entirely from her face.

”And... this one is from the northern flank,” Kurotsuchi whispered, horror creeping into her voice as she read the unthinkable statistics. ”The one thousand five hundred elite shinobi we deployed into the Land of Waterfalls to establish a chokehold... have been reduced to six hundred and seventy-six active personnel as of the time this scroll was written.”

Ōnoki’s eyes snapped open, blazing with sudden, confused fury. ”Over eight hundred casualties in a couple of days?! How!? Did Konoha divert an entire ANBU battalion to the northern flank while simultaneously crushing our center?!”

”No,” Kurotsuchi breathed, her hands shaking so badly the parchment rattled. She looked at her grandfather, her eyes wide with sheer, unadulterated terror. ”According to the survivors... Konoha only sent one person.”

The silence in the office became absolute, ringing in Ōnoki’s ears.

”One person?” the Tsuchikage repeated, the concept utterly failing to compute in his seasoned, strategic mind.

”Yes,” Kurotsuchi swallowed hard, reading the frantic, blood-stained scrawl of the report. ”A single operative. They call him the ’Ice Demon’... Yuki Haku. He moves without friction, striking from the mist with localized blizzards and hyper-compressed senbon. It’s said in the report that he doesn’t fight; he systematically hunts them down. He has single-handedly eliminated nearly a thousand of our finest men. The northern commander is begging for immediate extraction or Kage-level backup.”

Ōnoki was paralyzed by the shock, his aged mind reeling from the impossible arithmetic of the slaughter. A single teenager had dismantled an entire army wing.

He gritted his teeth so hard a faint, cracking sound echoed in the room. His hands curled into tight, trembling fists on the surface of his desk.

”Curse them,” Ōnoki hissed, a bitter, profound resentment boiling over. ”Curse Konoha to the deepest pits of hell!”

He slammed a fist weakly against the stone, the unfairness of the universe gnawing at his pride. ”During the Third Great War, we were butchered by Namikaze Minato... the Yellow Flash wiped out a thousand of our men in the blink of an eye. And now? Now they produce this ’Ice Demon’ to do the exact same thing! How is it that the Leaf continuously, endlessly births these impossible monsters!? It is a mockery of balance! It is profoundly, obscenely unfair!”

He paused, his chest heaving as he sought a tactical lifeline amidst the despair. His eyes narrowed, a sudden realization striking him.

”Wait,” Ōnoki demanded, leaning forward over his desk. ”What of the reanimated assets? Akatsuki assured me that Han and Rōshi were deployed specifically to the Land of Waterfalls to secure that perimeter! Two immortal Jinchūriki wielding Boil and Lava release! A single Ice-user, no matter how prodigious, should absolutely not be able to run loose like a plague with those two stationed there!”

Kurotsuchi flinched, the desperation in her grandfather’s voice breaking her heart. With trembling, hesitant fingers, she reached for the third and final scroll. It was smaller, lacking the heavy wax seal of the military commanders, bearing only the faint insignia of their covert intelligence division.

”Tsuchikage-sama...” Kurotsuchi began, her voice dropping to a reluctant, agonizing whisper. ”This scroll... it details the movements of our forces stationed along the border to the Land of Rain.”

She unrolled it, delivering the final, fatal blow to their war effort.

”Our forces have received absolutely no news, no communications, and no support from the Akatsuki in Amegakure,” Kurotsuchi reported, unable to meet his gaze. ”The organization has gone completely dark. Furthermore, our sensory squads in the Land of Waterfalls have entirely lost the chakra signatures of both Han and Rōshi. They are... they are unaccounted for, Grandfather. They are gone.”

The implication was clear. The Ice Demon hadn’t just slaughtered eight hundred men; he had encountered two immortal Jinchūriki, and he had permanently erased them from the board.

For a moment, Ōnoki of Both Scales simply stared at his granddaughter.

Then, the dam broke.

”HOW DARE THEY!?”

The roar was not the frail shout of an old man; it was the volcanic, earth-shattering bellow of the Tsuchikage.

Ōnoki slammed both of his hands down onto his massive, solid stone desk.

He didn’t just strike it; his fury instinctively channeled the catastrophic, molecular-dismantling power of his kekkei tōta. A blinding cube of white light expanded outward from his palms, and in a fraction of a millisecond, the massive stone desk was violently, aggressively reduced to absolute, microscopic dust.

The sheer, concussive release of Kage-level chakra flared outward like a physical shockwave. The air pressure in the circular office spiked exponentially, growing so incredibly dense and heavy that Kurotsuchi was forced to take a staggering step backward, violently gasping for air as the pressure crushed against her lungs.

Ōnoki stood amidst the drifting dust of his desk, his face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage, his small frame hovering inches off the ground as his chakra roared.

In the position he was in, as the absolute leader of a Great Nation, it seemed like nothing had gone to plan.

No... it didn’t seem like it. Nothing truly had gone to plan. Every single calculated maneuver, every shadow alliance, every troop deployment had been perfectly, humiliatingly countered and crushed by Konoha.

”They took our money!” Ōnoki ranted, his voice vibrating with a toxic, consuming wrath, pacing furiously through the dust. ”The Akatsuki accepted the exorbitant funds we funneled them through Amakura Genbei to cripple the Fire Country, they promised to act as our vanguard, and the moment the Leaf bares its fangs, they abandon their posts and vanish into the shadows! They broke the deal! Traitors! Mercenary scum!”

He continued to rage for several minutes, hurling curses at Konoha, at the Akatsuki, and at the bitter cruelty of fate, until the sheer physical exhaustion of his outburst finally forced his chakra to dim. The suffocating pressure in the room slowly receded, allowing Kurotsuchi to finally draw a deep, unhindered breath.

Ōnoki slowly lowered himself back to the floor, his chest heaving, his face red and slick with sweat. His anger had not dissipated; it had merely compressed, hardening into a cold, desperate, and suicidal resolve.

He turned his fierce, unyielding gaze back to his granddaughter.

”Kurotsuchi,” Ōnoki commanded, his voice returning to a low, lethal grind. ”Send orders to the reserve barracks. You are to deploy five hundred more of our absolute finest, elite shinobi. Put them under my direct, personal command.”

Kurotsuchi’s eyes widened in profound alarm. ”Grandfather, no!”

”I will go to the Land of Grass myself!” Ōnoki declared, entirely ignoring her protest, his pride refusing to accept the reality of defeat. ”I will personally turn the tides on that bloody battlefield! I will grind their vanguard into dust, and once the center is secured, I will spread our forces out to the Land of Waterfalls to bury that Ice Demon under a mountain!”

Kurotsuchi stood paralyzed. She wasn’t stupid. She had inherited his tactical mind, if not his stubbornness. She knew exactly what this meant. Her grandfather was old, his back failing, his stamina waning. Sending the Tsuchikage directly into a meat grinder where twelve thousand men were already failing was an act of profound, desperate arrogance. His unyielding, archaic pride was going to lead to his death, and without him, Iwagakure would undoubtedly fall into ruin.

She opened her mouth, desperately wanting to scream at him to see reason, to sue for peace, to surrender before the village was completely erased by Konoha’s impossible monsters.

But she looked at the burning, absolute conviction in his eyes, and the words died in her throat. He was the Tsuchikage. His word was law, and to defy him now, in his moment of ultimate crisis, was treason. She had absolutely no choice.

Swallowing the bitter, agonizing taste of impending doom, Kurotsuchi bowed her head deeply, her dark hair falling forward to hide her despair.

”Hai, Tsuchikage-sama.”

.

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