This was the true effect of Shisui’s Mangekyo Sharingan’s Kotoamatsukami. Through this ability, Danzo had implanted a single, absolute belief into Sasuke’s mind: that Sasuke was now his Root subordinate, a weapon he himself had trained and shaped. And Sasuke was behaving exactly as such.

Still, Danzo did not fully lower his guard. After all, Sasuke was a Mangekyo Sharingan user himself. There was always the possibility of deception. Wanting to be certain this was not some elaborate trick, Danzo issued a cold, deliberate command, his voice steady and without hesitation.

"Kill the three standing behind you."

The moment the order was spoken, the members of Taka stiffened. Seeing Sasuke kneeling before Danzo—and Danzo openly commanding him—left them completely flustered. Karin’s breath caught in her throat, her eyes darting between Sasuke and Danzo, while Jugo stood frozen, his muscles tensing as if unsure whether to defend or attack.

Suigetsu turned toward Sasuke just as Sasuke rose to his feet. His movements were calm, mechanical. He slowly turned to face Taka, his gaze settling on them with an emptiness that felt far more terrifying than rage.

"H-Hey, Sasuke," Suigetsu called out uneasily. "Are you all right?"

Before the words had fully left his mouth, Sasuke vanished.

In the next instant, he was already in front of Suigetsu, his sword flashing through the air. The blade grazed Suigetsu’s body before he could even process what had happened. The speed was overwhelming—far beyond what Suigetsu could react to.

Thankfully, Suigetsu’s body liquefied on instinct. Thanks to the Hydrification Technique, the slash did not tear flesh but instead cut cleanly through his water-formed body. The severed portion splashed apart before flowing back together, restoring itself almost immediately.

From the side, Karin screamed, her voice cracking with desperation.

"Sasuke, wake up! Please wake up, Sasuke!" she shouted. "You’re definitely in some kind of genjutsu! How can you—an Uchiha—fall into something like this?! Sasuke, wake up!"

Her words echoed across the battlefield.

This desperate call from Karin was more than enough for Sasuke—himself a wielder of the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan—to awaken. The instant his mind cleared, he understood exactly what had been done to him. While trapped within Danzo’s Kotoamatsukami, he had already felt something was wrong, a subtle dissonance gnawing at the edges of his thoughts. If he had been given a few more minutes, he would have broken free on his own. But Karin’s timely cries had hastened that awakening, snapping the illusion apart before it could fully settle.

The realization hit him hard.

Sasuke felt a sharp wave of embarrassment wash over him—followed immediately by burning anger. He, Sasuke Uchiha, had knelt before Danzo. Before the man he considered his enemy. Before the man who stood at the centre of the Uchiha clan’s annihilation. The thought alone made his jaw tighten. He turned toward Danzo without speaking a single word, but his eyes told everything—pure, unfiltered hatred seething behind them.

Lightning erupted around him.

Sasuke activated Chidori, and in an instant his entire body was engulfed in crackling arcs of blue-white electricity. The lightning flowed seamlessly into his unsheathed sword, coating the blade in violent sparks that hissed through the air. The ground beneath his feet cracked as he launched himself forward, his form blurring as he closed the distance toward Danzo.

Even as he attacked, Sasuke did not abandon caution. He knew Danzo had used a Mangekyo Sharingan ability—one powerful enough to momentarily bind even him. I won’t be careless again.

What Sasuke did not yet know was whose Mangekyo Sharingan had been used against him. But as his eyes briefly flicked to Danzo’s right arm—where multiple Sharingan were grotesquely embedded into the flesh—the truth became unmistakably clear.

It belonged to one of the Uchiha—another stolen eye, another desecrated legacy—now being wielded by the very man Sasuke intended to kill.

As Sasuke closed in, Danzo retreated a step backward. A kunai flashed into his right hand, and without hesitation he activated Wind Release: Vacuum Blade. Danzo exhaled sharply, channeling wind-infused chakra along the kunai’s edge. Instantly, the chakra extended outward, forming a curved, scimitar-like blade of compressed wind. The air around it screamed, and the wind chakra shimmered with a faint green hue.

Sasuke’s lightning-infused sword collided head-on with Danzo’s vacuum blade. Chidori crackled violently as steel and wind met, sparks and distorted air exploding outward with each impact. The two clashed again and again in rapid succession, their weapons striking multiple times in blinding flashes of motion.

As their blades locked for a brief moment, Sasuke spoke, his voice sharp and cold.

"You’re hiding a Mangekyo Sharingan behind that bandaged eye of yours, aren’t you?" His eyes narrowed as he pressed forward. "And since you didn’t use that ability on me again... that means it has a cooldown."

It was an easy conclusion for Sasuke to reach. If Danzo had been capable of controlling him once more, he would have done so without hesitation—right then, mid-charge. The fact that he hadn’t told Sasuke everything he needed to know.

With each exchange, the pressure mounted. Danzo could feel it clearly now. Sasuke’s speed was overwhelming, relentless, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with his attacks. Every clash forced Danzo further on the defensive, his footing growing less stable with each strike.

Then Sasuke abruptly forced Danzo back with a powerful swing.

In the next instant, Sasuke vanished from Danzo’s sight.

Danzo’s eyes widened as he sensed the shift in killing intent behind him. He knew immediately—there was no time to evade. Sasuke was already there.

Without wasting a heartbeat, Danzo began forming hand seals and activated Izanagi. One of the Sharingan embedded in his right arm snapped wide open, its pupil spinning focused before slowly beginning to close.

For the next sixty seconds, as that eye continued to shut, Danzo became something far worse than durable.

He became untouchable—quite literally invincible.

Even if Sasuke killed him again and again, Danzo would survive each time, suffering no real harm, and return to the state he was in when Izanagi was activated. Just as Danzo finished forming the final hand seals for Izanagi, Sasuke’s sword pierced straight through his back.

Danzo collapsed to the ground, motionless.

For a brief moment, Sasuke stared at the fallen body. It felt almost unreal. That was too easy. Still, the sight filled him with a quiet confidence—proof that his strength had grown even further than he had anticipated.

Sasuke exhaled and muttered coldly, "Now that I’ve dealt with you... only Konoha remains."

With that, he sheathed his sword and began walking forward towards the Taka.

Then—

An overwhelming sense of danger surged up his spine.

Sasuke reacted on pure instinct, throwing himself into a forward roll. The moment he regained his footing and turned around, his eyes widened.

Danzo was standing there—completely unharmed.

The corpse that Sasuke had stabbed through the back was gone, vanished without a trace. No blood. No body. Nothing.

Sasuke stared at Danzo in disbelief, his mind racing as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

At that moment, Suigetsu shouted from behind him, his voice tense.

"Oi, Sasuke! Your strike did land—but his body turned into some kind of black mist! It disappeared, reappeared behind you, and then reformed completely unharmed!"

Sasuke’s gaze hardened as the realization began to sink in. So that’s what happened...

Although the sight was deeply perplexing, Sasuke did not let it slow him down. He did not hesitate for even a second. Lightning flared around his body once more as he reactivated Chidori and lunged straight at Danzo.

This time, his strike was precise and merciless.

With a single, clean motion, Sasuke drove his attack into Danzo’s left side, tearing through his abdomen—an unquestionably fatal wound. Danzo’s body staggered, then instantly dissolved into a swirling black mist, dispersing before it could even hit the ground. A heartbeat later, the mist gathered again behind Sasuke and reformed into Danzo’s body, completely unharmed, as if the wound had never existed.

Sasuke slowed and turned, his eyes narrowing.

That was when his gaze locked onto Danzo’s right arm—specifically, one of the Sharingan embedded there. The eye was in the process of closing, its lid slowly descending, time visibly running out.

Understanding dawned.

"So that’s how it is," Sasuke muttered under his breath.

He turned fully toward Danzo, his expression cold and composed now that the pieces had fallen into place.

"If I’m not wrong," Sasuke said evenly, "you’re using the forbidden technique of the Uchiha clan—Izanagi. Am I correct?"

---- 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

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