Watching Danzo and the Fourth Raikage, along with the group of Kumogakure shinobi, hurriedly disappear into the distance, followed closely by the Root shinobi pursuing after them, Orochimaru emerged from the shadows of the forest.
At the same time, Kagami stepped out from behind a large tree.
The collapse of the volcano earlier had completely buried Kagami inside the cavern. Although he hadn’t suffered much injury thanks to the protection of his Susanoo, his black cloak with gold trim was covered in mud and grime, leaving him looking somewhat disheveled.
Withdrawing his gaze from the direction Danzo had fled, Orochimaru glanced at Kagami.
"Why aren’t you chasing him?"
While brushing the dust from his clothes, Kagami shot back, "Then why aren’t you chasing him?"
Master and disciple looked at each other for a moment before simultaneously averting their gazes, both wearing somewhat gloomy expressions.
After one battle after another, Danzo wasn’t the only one who had suffered heavy exhaustion.
Kagami’s Fire Release clone possessed neither an overwhelmingly powerful Sage Body nor transplanted First Hokage cells. In terms of chakra reserves alone, it wasn’t particularly outstanding.
Thus, even with the support of the Dragon Vein chakra, maintaining a Complete Body Susanoo was still an extremely taxing endeavor for him.
And that wasn’t even considering the fact that he had controlled his Susanoo in a prolonged battle against Danzo’s Susanoo, then endured the collapse of an entire mountain, while also unleashing several large-scale Blaze Release ninjutsu during the fighting.
Therefore, on the surface, Kagami appeared unstoppable.
Even Danzo, who had survived the ritual and could practically be called a ’perfect shinobi,’ had been forced to flee in panic when facing him.
But in reality, Kagami’s chakra reserves had already been nearly exhausted.
Even in a one-on-one fight against Danzo, he wasn’t completely confident of victory, much less if he also had to deal with the group of Kumogakure shinobi led by the Fourth Raikage.
Naturally, Orochimaru wasn’t in much better shape either.
Whether it was summoning the First and Second Hokage’s reanimated bodies or using the Eight Branches Technique—a forbidden technique capable of contending with a Tailed Beast—both required enormous amounts of chakra.
On top of that, when Orochimaru had previously feigned death inside the cavern, he had used the Orochimaru-Style Substitution Technique. Although this substitution technique was extremely sophisticated and could even restore injuries, its drawback was equally obvious: it consumed a tremendous amount of chakra.
A moment later, Kagami said solemnly, "Our cooperation ends here."
Orochimaru grinned. "Naturally."
After pondering for a moment, Kagami added coldly, "You’d better not spread word of the ritual. Otherwise, you know what the consequences will be. Our Kamigami is different from Akatsuki. You can’t afford the consequences of provoking us."
In truth, Kagami wasn’t worried that Orochimaru would spread the improved Chimera Technique or the details of the Bloodline Fusion Ritual.
That was because Orochimaru’s possessiveness toward certain core technologies was stronger than anyone else’s.
Even Yakushi Kabuto, who had served as Orochimaru’s research assistant, only inherited Orochimaru’s various techniques in the original timeline after Orochimaru’s death, when he gained access to the various confidential documents Orochimaru had left behind.
"Hmph!"
Orochimaru snorted softly. Then, with a flicker of his figure, he disappeared from the spot.
From beginning to end, this master-and-disciple pair, each harboring their own schemes, never once mentioned Danzo’s strange behavior just now.
It was as though neither of them had noticed anything unusual whatsoever.
After Orochimaru left, Kagami took one final look in the direction Danzo had departed. He stood there thoughtfully for a moment before leaving the forest as well.
Not long afterward, Kagami returned, travel-worn and dusty, to the aerial fortress over the sea.
Upon returning to his laboratory, he quickly calmed his mind and began recording everything that had occurred during this Bloodline Fusion Ritual.
Every single step.
Every single detail.
He overlooked nothing, meticulously recording it all.
Although all sorts of unexpected accidents had occurred during this ritual, purely in terms of its effectiveness as a trial run, the results were far better than Kagami had anticipated.
It could be said that after this trial run, using the Bloodline Fusion Ritual to make an attempt at reaching the supreme realm of Kekkei Mora was no longer merely a theoretical concept.
It had become a plan that could actually be put into practice.
Judging from Danzo’s performance during the ritual, if all the necessary conditions were met, the fusion of chakra natures within his body would continue without stopping. After completing the fusion of Yin and Yang chakra and evolving the Rinnegan, he would then enter the ultimate stage—the fusion of all seven chakra natures of Yin, Yang, and the Five Elements—to make the final push toward the supreme Kekkei Mora!
"The new Chimera Bud performed extremely well. Although there’s a risk of it going berserk, low temperatures can solve that problem..."
After finishing his record of the ritual’s entire process, Kagami quickly began writing his conclusions.
The new Chimera Bud’s performance during the ritual could practically be called perfect.
Although it had gone berserk once, the rampage had immediately been suppressed under extremely low temperatures. Furthermore, because the new Chimera Bud’s activity decreased at low temperatures, once the flesh-and-blood fusion process had been completed and the Chimera Bud had become more harmful than beneficial, the extreme cold directly killed it off.
In other words, during this ritual, Danzo had easily eliminated the hidden danger posed by the Chimera Bud within his body, completely avoiding the disastrous fate of being devoured by his own Chimera Bud like Hiruko had been.
"There were no problems with the ritual’s setup either, but the altar needs to be made sturdier..."
Kagami had also taken note of how easily Danzo had destroyed the altar after losing his rationality.
The altar was crucial to maintaining the ritual, and Kagami couldn’t guarantee that he himself would remain conscious throughout the entire process.
Therefore, constructing a sturdier altar was necessary to ensure that absolutely nothing went wrong.
"Everything above is merely a matter of details that need attention. There’s only one problem that’s truly troublesome...
"Chakra!"
As he continued writing, Kagami’s expression gradually turned grave.
He was already in the process of solving the other problems, or had at least found ways to address them.
The only issue that truly gave him a headache was the chakra supply.
Danzo’s preparations this time could hardly be called inadequate.
Yet even if Danzo’s ritual had suffered absolutely no outside interference, Kagami estimated that the best possible outcome would have been barely evolving a pair of Rinnegan.
And that was assuming all fifteen hundred Konoha shinobi connected to the chakra transmission array were completely sacrificed.
As for making an attempt at reaching the supreme Kekkei Mora?
That wasn’t even worth thinking about.
The reason was simple: chakra fusion at different levels required completely different quantities of chakra.
And the higher the level of fusion, the greater the chakra requirement became—increasing severalfold, or even by tenfold or a hundredfold.
Using Danzo’s ritual as a basis for estimation, Kagami suspected that he would need a chakra transmission array consisting of at least fifty thousand capable shinobi just to barely meet the conditions necessary to make an attempt at reaching the supreme Kekkei Mora...