Chapter 258: Ch-258 Space Cannot Be Defended Against.
Obito looked at Inoiki, who had reversed the path of all the failed Beast Bombs released by the God Tree and sent them hurtling back toward it instead of letting them hit their intended targets—the ninjas of the Allied Shinobi Forces. His plan to destroy the Allied Shinobi Forces had been completely thwarted by Inoiki’s move. Clearly, Inoiki was not called the strongest person currently in the world for nothing.
Inoiki looked toward Obito and said, "Now that all the ninjas of the Allied Shinobi Forces have retreated, now it is only a fight between you and me. And now I won’t have to worry about the safety of the ninjas of the Allied Shinobi Forces."
As Inoiki said this, his sword was already in his hand. There was not even the slightest hesitation in his movements. He swung it horizontally with tremendous force.
But this was not a normal horizontal slash.
He had used one of his strongest attacks—the Space Cut, the Space Severance technique.
The instant Inoiki used this move, a dark black line appeared along the trajectory of his sword. It was as if a black hole had been torn open in the air itself, an unnatural darkness that seemed to swallow even the surrounding light. The space in front of him visibly distorted for a brief moment before splitting apart.
Then the black line shot forward at an extremely fast speed toward Obito.
The ground beneath its path cracked apart soundlessly.
Obito, being the user of Kamui and highly adept in space-time ninjutsu, immediately understood what this black line was. Even before it reached him, he could feel the terrifying distortion in the surrounding space. This was not chakra taking shape into an ordinary attack.
This was a cut through space itself.
And it was moving so fast that dodging it was almost impossible.
But Obito was not worried in the slightest.
Behind him, several Truth-Seeking Orbs floated silently. Obito was completely confident in their defensive power. After all, the Truth-Seeking Orbs can erase countless ninjutsu and destroy nearly everything they touched.
No matter how powerful this attack is, it still won’t be able to break through them.
Obito believed without a doubt that the Truth-Seeking Orbs would easily handle the Space Cut and defend against it.
So, without hesitation, Obito controlled the Truth-Seeking Orbs floating behind him and made them morph into a shield in front of him, completely covering his body.
The dark black line of the Space Cut collided with the shield.
For a single moment, everything seemed to freeze.
Then, without resistance, the black line passed straight through the Truth-Seeking Orb shield as if it did not even exist.
The shield was severed completely in half.
And so was Obito.
His body split cleanly down the middle, the upper half separating from the lower half as blood scattered into the air.
Inoiki stood straight in the air and commented coldly, "Do you really think that a pure cut in space can be stopped by the defense of your Truth-Seeking Orbs? How laughable."
But while saying this, Inoiki was not just commenting on Obito’s foolishness and overconfidence.
He had already made his next move.
Gravity Centrifuge.
Inoiki instantly created two gravity fields. One appeared slightly above Obito’s upper half, while another formed on the ground beneath his lower body. The gravity force generated by both fields was immense, distorting the surrounding air and even cracking the ground below.
Inoiki knew very well that simply cutting Obito in half held little to no use. Obito could technically heal from nearly any injury immediately.
But Inoiki still wanted to try.
And he was doing exactly that.
The two halves of Obito’s body were violently pulled in opposite directions before they could rejoin.
His lower body—the legs and waist—was dragged downward with crushing force toward the ground, slamming into the earth hard enough to create a crater.
At the same time, his upper body was pulled upward toward the air, suspended above on a purple plane-like gravitational field that shimmered faintly in midair. The surrounding space distorted around it, clearly showing the terrifying gravity pull that Inoiki was generating from that point.
Obito’s upper and lower halves strained violently, flesh and tendrils trying to reconnect, but the immense gravity from opposite directions prevented them from joining together again.
Then, after separating both halves completely, Inoiki directly appeared beside the legs lying on the ground.
There was no hesitation in his movements.
With a wave of his hand, the lower half of Obito’s body was instantly covered in powerful burning flames.
The fire roared upward violently, swallowing the legs whole. The heat was intense enough to distort the air around it, and within moments, Obito’s lower body was completely burned away into ashes.
But that did not matter for Obito.
A moment later, Obito forcibly freed himself from the gravity force pulling him upward. The purple gravitational field around his upper body trembled violently before cracking apart under his sheer power.
Then, right before Inoiki’s eyes, Obito’s lower body began to regenerate at a drastic speed.
Muscles, bones, flesh, and skin rapidly formed beneath his waist as if his body was simply being recreated from nothing. The process was unnaturally fast, almost instantaneous. Even his clothes regenerated along with his body, reforming around him piece by piece.
Within seconds, Obito was completely restored.
Inoiki looked toward Obito, who had now fully recovered. Just moments ago, his lower body had been burned into ashes on the ground, yet now he stood there as if he had never even been injured in the first place.
There was not even the slightest sign of weakness on his face.
No instability in his chakra.
No sign that he had consumed a large amount of chakra for regeneration.
Nothing.
Obito was totally and absolutely fine.
Inoiki narrowed his eyes slightly and said, "As expected."
After doing all this, Inoiki had definitely wanted to see something.
Even though he already knew that Obito would most likely recover, he still wanted to confirm whether this kind of damage would reveal any flaw in him. Perhaps there would be a decrease in chakra, a slight delay in regeneration, or even some instability in his control.
But Inoiki did not have very high hopes.
After all, the Ten-Tails was inside Obito.
If even the Nine-Tails was considered to be an almost infinite source of chakra, then the Ten-Tails was on an entirely different level altogether.
Clearly, his experiment had failed.
Obito remained completely unharmed.
But Inoiki was definitely not going to give up.
The air around him began to tremble again as he raised his hand slightly.
Hundreds of knives instantly rose into the sky around him under the control of his psychokinesis. The blades floated silently in the air, their cold metal surfaces glinting faintly under the dim battlefield light.
Then, with another motion from Inoiki, all of them shot forward at extremely fast speed toward Obito once again, tearing through the air like a rain of deadly silver streaks.
Watching these knives target him once again, Obito said, "You are using this same move again. Your knives were not even able to harm me before; what makes you think that they will be able to harm me now?"
Even though Obito said this, he still did not underestimate Inoiki’s move.
Yes, he did not fear Inoiki as much now because, according to Obito, the Space Severance move that Inoiki had used before must have been his strongest attack. And even that attack had ultimately failed to cause any real damage to him.
If even that couldn’t kill me, then how can this attack do anything?
That was what Obito thought.
But even then, he remained cautious.
After all, someone as intelligent and powerful as Inoiki would not use the same move again for no reason, especially if he already knew that it would not work.
Without hesitation, Obito controlled the Truth-Seeking Orbs around him once again.
The black spheres began to morph and stretch rapidly, expanding outward until they formed a complete spherical shield around his entire body.
A black sphere.
Completely sealed.
Inside that dark shell created from the Truth-Seeking Orbs, Obito had totally disappeared from sight.
The countless knives that were about to hit the shield suddenly stopped at a short distance from it.
Rather than crashing directly into the spherical shield, they hovered slightly above it and began moving in strange patterns through the air, as if they were arranging themselves into a precise formation.
The knives rotated one after another, spreading out across the sky above Obito’s shield in a massive circular pattern.
Inoiki looked at the formation and found it absolutely perfect.
Immediately, the sky above began to darken.
The clouds started gathering rapidly, churning violently as thunder echoed across the battlefield. The wind grew stronger, and flashes of light began to flicker deep within the black clouds overhead.
Within moments, lightning started surging through the sky.
At the same time, every single knife floating above Obito’s shield became covered in lightning. Blue-white arcs of electricity crackled wildly around the blades, connecting one knife to another.
It was as if the lightning inside the clouds had resonated with the knives below.
Then suddenly, a massive bolt of lightning fell from the sky.
It struck one knife.
And from that knife, the lightning instantly spread to all the others.
The entire formation lit up like a giant web of electricity hanging in the air.
Then, almost simultaneously, another enormous bolt of lightning crashed down from the clouds and directly into the knife formation.
This time, instead of dispersing, the lightning was refined and concentrated through the network of knives.
And then it was redirected straight toward Obito’s Truth-Seeking Orb shield.
Boom!
The concentrated lightning struck the black sphere with terrifying force.
The entire battlefield shook.
Another bolt fell.
Then another.
Again and again, lightning descended from the clouds into the knife formation above, only to be concentrated further and redirected onto the shield below.
The Truth-Seeking Orb shield trembled violently under the continuous bombardment.
Cracks began appearing across its surface.
Then, finally—
The black spherical shield shattered completely.
The Truth-Seeking Orbs dispersed in all directions, and Obito was exposed wide open.
The very next instant, a massive amount of concentrated lightning fell directly onto his body.
Obito was engulfed completely.
When the lightning finally stopped, Obito’s body had already turned completely black, charred from head to toe like a piece of burnt wood.
