NARUTO: THE STRONGEST UZUMAKI

The journey was both long and short; since they were flying so fast, it didn't actually take much time, but at the same time, it covered more than 200 kilometers.

When they arrived, Tanaka saw the Divine Tree.

It was an incredible sight. At the same time, this divine tree had nothing sacred about it. It looked more like a demonic tree than a divine one. Although one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, the appearance of this tree seemed quite diabolical.

══════

Rank S Lv20[++] Shinju

MP: [1,000,000,000/100,000,000,000]

══════

Of course, what really made him think it was something evil was the title given by the system.

Even without that, he already had a poor opinion of this tree. From what he observed, Tanaka knew that, although the cause of the wars wasn't necessarily because of this, it was undeniable that it influenced the chaos.

The fact that wars happened not far from this tree was a good example of that.

'Those two plus signs in brackets, what are they supposed to mean? A simple +, I believe, is 10, so in brackets, it should mean a larger or smaller value?'

In any case, he had never seen something with such an absurdly high life force.

'1 billion MP... what kind of concept is that?'

Now he understood why Kaguya showed skepticism about wanting to destroy this tree.

Performing hand seals, Tanaka created four shadow clones.

Each took a different position, 500 meters from the Shinju.

In moments, each connected to the Shinju and immediately used the Four Red Sun Formation.

As soon as this was done, Kaguya finally showed some change in her calm expression.

'A barrier?' she thought, standing outside the barrier. 'Why would this human want to create something like that?'

Her questions were soon answered. The moment the seal was raised, Tanaka created 10 more shadow clones, which connected to the divine tree by threads. Then he began to restore chakra, followed by the creation of Rasengan by the clones to attack the divine tree.

It wasn't much different from using his own force against the tree.

Within moments, more than 20 consecutive attacks were launched at the divine tree.

The sounds of the attacks echoed loudly as the Rasengan exploded against the divine tree.

The damage seemed minimal, almost null, but Tanaka didn't stop attacking for a second.

'Why does he keep going? Doesn't he see it's pointless?' Kaguya thought to herself. 'How much power reserve can he have to keep attacking? Furthermore, the Divine Tree has an incredible regeneration rate; even if it takes some damage, it will soon be restored.'

She began to think she was following a fool.

No matter how she looked at it, it was basically impossible to destroy the Divine Tree. And, although the fruit wasn't fully seeded, it was very close; so, even if he ran out of energy—which she considered unlikely—the energy accumulated in the fruit would be enough to regenerate the tree if it were damaged.

What he's doing in the long run is nothing more than condemning this planet; after all, the Divine Tree will constantly consume the planet's energy to heal itself.

Unaware of Kaguya's thoughts, Tanaka stopped his attacks and dispelled the clones, making Kaguya mistakenly believe he had given up after realizing it was "impossible."

"Mm, this is going to be difficult…" he murmured, touching his chin with his hand. Then, after making hand seals, 100 shadow clones appeared.

Kaguya, seeing this, frowned: 'Wasn't he going to give up? What a stubborn man...'

But then, she saw it. Each of the clones began creating the same attack as before, but that wasn't all; right after, each of them made their attacks engulfed in flames.

"Flaming Rasen-hariken!"

In unison, she heard Tanaka's voice multiple times, attacking from all directions with a single target: the Divine Tree.

And, as they were distant, they initially appeared small; but as they neared the Shinju, the attack grew until it reached half the size of the Divine Tree, showing no signs of stopping its growth.

The violent gust, along with the sound of something burning, echoed constantly.

Within seconds, the Shinju, which was powerful and brimming with energy, was cornered, surrounded by flaming, cutting hurricanes.

When each of the 51 attacks struck the giant tree, a phenomenon occurred!

"WHOOSH!!!"

"ZZZzzZZZzzzZZzz!!!!"

The attacks began to merge as the Divine Tree stood at the center of all the chaos.

Tanaka, seeing the Divine Tree's MP being drained at an incredibly high speed, visible to the naked eye, smiled slightly.

This was exactly what he wanted and expected. The initial attacks served as a test to assess the Divine Tree's regeneration. When he realized that, even on a large scale, standard attacks couldn't drain it, as the tree would continue drawing energy from the world, he planned something different: an attack powerful enough to cause significant, constant damage.

And that wasn't all. Even with the merged attacks, its MP continued to be drained. To compensate, each clone—as well as himself—was absorbing energy from the Divine Tree through MP threads.

When he saw he had already drained 10% of the Divine Tree's energy, he smiled: 'It's working!'

However, he began to hear whispers, like an ethereal, genderless voice. It was hard to describe, but all he could say was that it was beautiful and seemed to want to seduce him.

But then, the system notification appeared in his vision, informing him that the player's mind had resisted the Divine Tree's mind control effect.

Even so, he felt concerned. But when he looked for Kaguya and saw her floating outside the barrier, he felt more at ease.

Even when he saw her eyes turning bloodthirsty and saw her attacking the barrier, he didn't mind. After all, each of the four clones that created this barrier was connected to the Divine Tree through MP threads. As long as the Divine Tree doesn't fall, the barrier won't fall either.

And then, booming sounds came from afar.

People from all four directions were coming to the location, each with dead fish-like eyes; they were clearly being controlled by the Divine Tree.

That wasn't all. It wasn't only people who were drawn; small and large animals also began to appear.

'This is madness... What is the range of the Divine Tree's control?' Tanaka wondered, surprised.

However, this was like shooting itself in the foot. Even though it was doing this to save itself, the Divine Tree had no idea that this was only hastening its own end.

"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom...!"

The sounds of people and animals clashing against the barrier began to echo constantly, but, although the barrier rippled, they couldn't destroy it.

Perhaps, even with low intelligence, the Divine Tree sensed that something was wrong and tried to break the MP Threads link, but Tanaka had anticipated this miles away, making golden chains appear, passing through the flaming hurricane, coiling around the Divine Tree, and draining it once again.

"Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiih!!!"

For the first time, he heard a sort of scream. However, it was so strange that nothing that came to mind could resemble this sound.

When he drained a little over 500 million MP from the Divine Tree, he could hear the tree's scream growing more intense, along with the attacks from people and animals increasing as more and more arrived.

At this moment, Kaguya, who had her will controlled by the Shinju, managed to regain control of her body.

'But what was I doing?' Seeing that her hand was wrapped in ice and attacking the barrier, Kaguya took a moment to understand what had happened to her.

While Kaguya, who was powerful, managed to break free from the Shinju's control as it became weaker, the controlled humans and animals weren't as lucky. Some collapsed after exhausting all their energy, while others attacked the barrier like zombies.

The strange screams, mixed with the Shinju's seduction effect, grew even more chaotic. The entire world began to tremble under its lament.

However, even if they tried to stop Tanaka, he wouldn't stop.

Kaguya, now with regained awareness and seeing this from outside the barrier, was shocked, placing a hand over her mouth.

"Heavens, is he really going to destroy the Divine Tree?" She didn't even know how to express herself. Perhaps something like this had never been seen before.

Throughout her clan's history, ever since her ancestor began planting seeds in different worlds, she had never heard of anything like this. Until now, all worlds that had the Divine Tree's seed planted, without exception, collapsed to ruin after losing all of the planet's energy.

[You have gained 1 level in ! The skill is now at level 41!]

Upon leveling up, there was almost no change, but Tanaka knew that didn't mean it made no difference; rather, the difference was in the execution.

And, as his technique leveled up, the Divine Tree's 'MP' had already been drained to the point where only 30% remained.