Ōtsutsuki Shinsiki let out a booming laugh.

The moment he had been waiting for had finally come.

Today, he would gather the Jōgan, and like the Ōtsutsuki God himself, ascend and transcend this universe.

As for the Ōtsutsuki clan? They no longer mattered. To him, they were nothing more than pieces on a board, tools to help him collect the scattered powers of the stars.

If they were destroyed, he could always create more.

Perhaps… he wouldn't even need them anymore.

Ōtsutsuki Shinsiki shot toward Uchiha Kirin at breakneck speed.

The shockwaves trailing behind him instantly reduced the remaining Ōtsutsuki clansmen to ash—their very souls erased in the process.

Uchiha Kirin braced himself.

In a flash, he opened all Eight Gates, while simultaneously stacking his Six Paths Limbo clones onto his body.

With full force, he clashed with the overwhelming charge of Ōtsutsuki Shinsiki.

Crack!

The collision produced no massive explosion, no dazzling spectacle—only a single, crisp sound.

But that one strike tore open a gaping fissure in the cosmos itself, spilling strange radiance from beyond the universe into the void.

Yet even with just this probing exchange, Uchiha Kirin immediately realized the truth—though his path was not far from that of Ōtsutsuki Shinsiki, his foundation was still lacking.

Unless he seized the chance to absorb that pill forged from billions of Ōtsutsuki lives, he could never hope to face Shinsiki in true combat.

Shinsiki also saw Kirin's weakness.

His onslaught surged forward in wave after wave, forcing Kirin to cling to survival by cloaking his body with the power of his newborn world.

But his world's power was not abundant enough. If things continued this way, his nascent world would be irreparably damaged, and in the decisive battle against Shinsiki, he would fall into a hopeless disadvantage.

Thankfully, Kirin's mind remained sharp even under pressure.

He hurled Boruto outward and struck with his palm, forcing him into the layered fold between reality and spacetime—dragging along with him two stars on the verge of exploding.

Shinsiki had waited too long for the Jōgan.

He could not risk losing them now.

Abandoning his chance to kill Kirin, he twisted the black hole in his hand, tearing through spacetime's barriers to snatch Boruto into his grasp.

That was the opening Kirin had been waiting for.

He swallowed the pill in one gulp.

In an instant, he absorbed the distilled essence of the entire Ōtsutsuki clan.

Countless mysteries flooded his mind, but he did not let himself drown in them.

Instead, he shattered that torrent of energy and knowledge, then rebuilt it in a way that belonged solely to him—taking another step further on his road toward transcendence.

But a new danger arose.

Shinsiki suddenly tore apart the half of his body without the Jōgan, ripping his soul free to reincarnate inside Boruto.

Under Shinsiki's forced reincarnation, Boruto too tore away half of his body—the side without the Jōgan—leaving only half intact.

Then, the two halves fused together.

Boruto's underdeveloped Jōgan began to twist and shift under the fusion, dragging half of his body toward Shinsiki's form until they aligned.

Though Kirin had not yet finished digesting the pill, he knew this was the moment.

Shinsiki was at his weakest—half his body caught in a fragile reincarnation state, his cycle of power unbalanced.

Kirin pressed forward, forcing his body to endure the explosive chaos raging inside him, and attacked Shinsiki in the most direct way possible.

Fist against fist.

Foot against foot.

The two collided in raw hand-to-hand combat.

All the rules, techniques, and forces they commanded compressed around their bodies, reduced to primal savagery.

They fought like beasts, yet every strike contained the power to annihilate galaxies and rend space itself.

The battle raged into the void, erasing everything within reach.

Even the barrier between the universe and the outer realms grew fragile—as if the slightest extra push could shatter it completely.

Now, all matter and energy of the cosmos were being drawn into their bodies.

Only the first to break through could take the next step.

Boom! Boom!

Shinsiki was the first to sense it.

The half of his body reincarnated in Boruto shattered and reformed again and again, evolving through the power of the Jōgan until it matched his original body.

What had seemed like suppression was gone—Shinsiki had returned to his full strength.

And now, he had truly gathered a complete pair of Jōgan.

A torrent of overwhelming power surged in from beyond the universe.

The backlash alone sent Kirin flying.

Shinsiki howled in exultation, ecstatic at what he had attained.

In his vision, he stood side by side with the Ōtsutsuki God, merging with him completely.

But then—something went wrong.

Instead of evolving further, Shinsiki's body and soul began to rot away.

That rot spread, transforming him into a corpse wielding enough power to tear apart entire worlds.

A corpse?

Was this the final evolutionary state of the Ōtsutsuki?

Kirin froze in horror.

He wanted to act, but the gap in strength was too great. He couldn't even get close, let alone interrupt the transformation.

『Of course not. That is merely the remnant corpse of the Ōtsutsuki God.』

At that moment, the system came online and explained to Kirin.

"So… the Ōtsutsuki God is actually dead? The Jōgan are just the medium for his reincarnation?"

Kirin patted his chest, relieved he had already chosen his own path.

Otherwise, if he had relied on the Jōgan for advancement, wouldn't he have ended up just like Shinsiki?

But now that the Ōtsutsuki God was resurrecting… how could he possibly face it?

〖Ding! Simulation time for the holder has been exhausted. Initiating automatic return state!〗

A vortex of spacetime opened.

Kirin was instantly sucked inside.

But the reborn Ōtsutsuki God noticed as well and immediately followed in pursuit.

Bang!

The world spun. Time and space shattered like glass.

Between the roar of the Ōtsutsuki God's remnant corpse and the relentless dinging of system prompts, Kirin lost consciousness.

...

When he awoke again, he found himself lying on a sun-warmed meadow in the Land of Water.

Scratching his head, he muttered, "Back to the shinobi world again…?"

He reached out to open his system panel—but there was no response.

No matter how many times Kirin called, the system remained silent.

In the end, he found only a final message it had left behind.

The system had used the last of its own power to completely seal the Ōtsutsuki God's remnant in the spacetime tunnel.

But because the God's strength had far exceeded the system's calculations, the seal would only last five years at most.

That was all the time Uchiha Kirin had to prepare...