Itachi caught the falling arrow with ease, the same one that had just moments ago come flying at him with deadly intent. His eyes lifted toward the horizon, narrowing as they locked onto a figure in the distance—a woman with long, snow-white hair, standing tall and poised like a statue carved from ice.
She held a massive bow at her side, its string still faintly humming with residual energy. Her gaze was sharp, cold, and utterly unkind—like she was looking at something beneath her, an insect she could crush without effort. But beneath that frosty exterior, her eyes trembled ever so slightly in disbelief.
Itachi was only at level 3 Body Tempering… yet he had just canceled out an attack from a Martial King with nothing but a punch and a sliver of chakra. Not a single crack marred his body—unlike the time he defeated her son's protector. This feat was beyond rare. It was impossible. And yet, here he was.
Her gaze sharpened further. She could tell he was wearing a disguise—she had eyes trained to see through such things. But even so, his masked appearance still looked too… perfect. Too flawless. His real appearance had to be even more striking
"So, you really are from a powerful background…" she said, her voice low, taunting. A cold sneer curled across her lips. "But do I look like I care?"
There was a sharp gleam in her eyes now—greed, unmistakable and unrestrained. She wasn't intimidated. No, she was intrigued. Whatever freakish strength Itachi displayed, she was convinced it came from treasures… treasures she could take. If she got her hands on them, she could vanish for a few centuries, emerge again in the outer world, and be untouchable.
Her gaze lingered on his robes—robes unlike anything she had ever seen. They radiated power, not just passively, but actively enhanced Itachi's strength without any visible drawbacks. His muscles weren't buckling under the strain. On the contrary, the robes themselves seemed to evolve with him, feeding off the pressure and growing stronger with each passing second.
"Did I look like I care that you don't care?" Itachi asked, his voice smooth with a mocking edge, a faint smirk tugging at the corners of his lips. He raised a hand and lazily gestured for her to come to him, as if inviting a child to play.
The gesture struck a nerve. Her expression twisted with rage. Without a word, she drew her bowstring back, conjuring an arrow made entirely of pure Qi. It materialized instantly—sharp, sleek, and deadly. In the blink of an eye, she loosed it.
The arrow tore through the air like a streak of light, faster and more refined than the first. It punched cleanly through Itachi's forehead… or so it seemed.
His body flickered and vanished. Just an afterimage.
Before the sharp echo of impact even faded, more arrows sliced through the air, aimed precisely at where Itachi was heading, not where he had been. She could see through his afterimages, she wasn't fooled by illusions. But Itachi, as capable as he was, wasn't faster than the arrows. He had simply reacted to her intention before she even fired, moving in anticipation of the shot itself.
'This boy…' she thought, her expression darkening as she loosed arrow after arrow, her fingers moving in a blur. Each shot was faster than the last, yet Itachi moved like he had already seen them coming. With the slightest tilts of his head, subtle shifts of his feet, he avoided every strike effortlessly.
Not once did his composure waver. Not once did his smirk fade. The ease with which he dodged, the almost lazy precision of his movements—it left her deeply uneasy.
With narrowed eyes, she finally stopped holding back. Power surged from her body as she unleashed the full might of someone just a half step away from the Martial Emperor realm. The sky trembled under her rising aura.
Itachi's expression didn't change. Instead, lightning burst across his body, forming a dense armor of crackling blue. But this wasn't mere lightning—it was solid, dense enough to rival forged steel, yet still carried the speed and edge of pure lightning itself.
Itachi drew in a deep breath, gathering Qi from the air and merging it with his chakra. The fusion gave birth to Senjutsu Chakra—an advanced energy that surged through his veins, pushing his body to the limit. His strength, perception, and speed all climbed, but even that wasn't enough.
A new arrow, forged entirely from pure energy, crackled through the sky toward him—faster, sharper, and deadlier than the last.
With a sudden burst of extreme speed, Itachi vanished from his position, narrowly dodging the arrow. In the same motion, he launched himself forward, closing the distance between them at full speed.
'He has to stack techniques just to move that fast… why doesn't his speed match his strength?' she thought, her eyes narrowing as she tracked Itachi's movements. 'He one-shot that guardian while being two whole realms behind… so why is he this slow?'
She was quick to see the truth. Itachi's speed came in sharp, explosive bursts—fast enough to rival a mid-level Martial King, but only for a blink. Once she realized this, timing her shots became easier. She loosed her arrows with deadly precision, waiting for the exact moment when his burst of speed ran out.
Itachi twisted his body in extreme, near-impossible angles just to avoid them, contorting mid-air to escape each deadly projectile. But soon, the margin for error vanished.
One arrow came too fast, too sudden to dodge. With no other option, Itachi clenched his fist and punched forward with everything he had.
Boom.
The impact triggered a massive shockwave, the force rippling outward like an atomic blast, tearing through the air. Fortunately, Itachi had already led the fight far enough from the 7 Lotus Sect—close enough to feel the tremor, but far enough to avoid any real damage.
"You've got ridiculous attack power," she said with a sharp grin, her gaze locked on the settling dust. "But it came at the cost of your arm."
She paused. Her grin slowly faded when the smoke cleared, revealing Itachi's figure, unharmed. His arm, which she'd clearly seen torn apart in the blast, was still there. Whole. The cracks that had formed on Itachi's body had also disappeared. She narrowed her eyes, her mind racing—until realization dawned in her eyes.
'His afterimage… it actually attacked the arrow?' Her heart skipped a beat as she watched Itachi draw closer. 'How the hell is he creating afterimages that feel no different from actual clones? That one even cracked from the power it used, and yet… it vanished without a trace. And just now—was that only part of his body acting as the afterimage?'
Unease crept up her spine as she instinctively floated backward, keeping her distance. She didn't like how close he was getting. She wanted to push him—force him to show more cards before she had to show hers.
"I'm clearly outclassed here," Itachi said calmly, raising a finger toward her. "Even while holding back, you're clearly stronger than me… maybe it's time I got serious."
Her eyes widened as rays of sunlight nearby twisted unnaturally, drawn into Itachi's fingertip like they were being devoured by a black hole. Without hesitation, she pulled her bow back tight.
The moment she released her arrow, Itachi fired a golden beam straight at her. It wasn't just fast—it was light-speed fast. Not ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine percent, but the full one hundred percent.
That should've been impossible. Anything with mass would require infinite energy to reach such speeds. So, how was Itachi's attack able to pull it off?
Simple. The beam wasn't made of matter—it was compressed light, refined to the extreme, and infused with senjutsu chakra. That unique fusion gave it both destructive power and zero mass, allowing it to move at the true speed of light… and making it nearly impossible to dodge.
Why was this so important? Simple.
The beam of light tore through the woman's arrow like it was nothing, and if she hadn't twisted her body at the last possible second, it would've taken her head clean off. Her heart pounded as she stared at the strands of hair now floating in the air, sliced away by the edge of the beam.
She slowly turned to look behind her… only to freeze in place. Everything in the path of that beam—trees, stones, even the air itself—had been torn apart, erased in a perfect, straight line that stretched far into the horizon.
"Fun fact about the speed of light," Itachi said casually, raising his hand as arcs of light began to charge at the tips of all ten fingers. "The closer you get to it, the more the outside world slows down. And if something with mass could reach the speed of light… it would gain infinite mass."
He smiled coldly. "And that much mass? It's enough to destroy a world, not a planet, but this whole realm."
"I find it impressive you can react to light-speed attacks," Itachi said with a faint grin, his voice calm and edged with amusement. "Outstanding reaction speed… Want to hear a fun fact about light speed?"
All 10 fingers began to glow brighter than ever with light, their light blinding.
"If someone could truly reach that level of speed, time would lose all meaning. Beginning, middle, and end… they'd all happen at once. You'd experience everything in a single instant. So to these beams—" he gestured to the glowing tips of his fingers, "—the moment they're fired is the same moment they die."
Across from him, the woman drew back her bow, her eyes narrowing with focus. "Rain of a thousand arrows!" she shouted.
She loosed a single arrow that exploded mid-air, fracturing into a thousand glowing projectiles, each one spinning with deadly force. In the next breath, Itachi fired all ten of his beams, each a streak of golden light.
The air cracked as they met—the countless arrows trying to overwhelm the beams in a dazzling clash of power and precision.
'Light can't travel forever in air,' she thought, eyes locked on the incoming beams. 'Unlike in outer space, the atmosphere slows it down. I just need to stall long enough—slow them down until I can react.'
With that, she darted to the side, narrowly avoiding the beams that pierced through her fragmented arrows like blades through paper.
Itachi surged forward in pursuit, fingers blazing with condensed light as he fired another volley toward her retreating figure. In response, she loosed another storm of arrows, each one spinning as it met his attack mid-air.
While she flew backward, maintaining distance, Itachi twisted mid-flight, weaving through the few arrows that broke past his light beams and tried to reach him.
Itachi raised his hand to fire another round of beams—only to suddenly pause.
One of the thousands of arrows struck earlier by his light beams hadn't vanished like the others. Instead, it exploded midair into a fine mist, instantly clouding his line of sight. His eyes narrowed.
He moved on instinct, just in time to narrowly dodge an arrow that came screaming out of the mist, slicing across his cheek and drawing a thin line of blood.
But before he could fully reposition, the arrow twisted mid-flight, reversing direction in a perfect U-turn and shooting straight back at him.
This time, Itachi wasn't fast enough to react. Unlike before, where he predicted her timing and moved before she fired, this arrow had already been loosed. Dodging it now would be like Batman trying to evade a bullet that was already inches from his skull.
In a sudden blur, Itachi vanished—his speed so sharp and sudden that the woman's eyes widened in disbelief. This wasn't the same speed he had shown under the sunlight. No, this was something else entirely.
She quickly caught on. 'He lowered his weight…' she thought, realizing how drastically that had increased his acceleration.
Itachi reappeared in the air behind the arrow, spun with precision, and fired a beam of light that shattered the incoming projectile. Without missing a beat, his attention snapped back to her.
"How many more tricks do you have?" she muttered, unease creeping into her voice.
Her bowstring tightened, and this time, ten arrows of condensed Qi formed at once. She released them, and each arrow exploded mid-air, splitting into tens of thousands of smaller arrows, creating a sky-wide barrage that poured down toward Itachi like a storm of needle-sharp rain.
Itachi shot backward in a sharp blur, then suddenly opened his mouth and drew in a deep breath. In the next instant, he exhaled—a roaring sea of flames erupted from his lips, sweeping forward in a massive wave to meet the rain of arrows head-on.
At first, she sneered, unimpressed. 'A fire breath? That's the best he has?' she scoffed inwardly.
But the sneer froze on her face the moment the heat struck her. This wasn't ordinary flame—it was dense, wild, and impossibly hot. The firestorm devoured the incoming arrows like dry leaves in a furnace.
Still, not all were burned away. A few slipped through the flames, piercing into Itachi's body, while the rest scattered off course and slammed into the ground around him.
"Impossible!" she gasped, stunned by the sheer destructive force of the flames.
Itachi met her shock with a wide grin, blood dripping from his wounds, but eyes burning brighter than ever.
"What's impossible?" Itachi asked with a smirk, his tone casual despite the smoke rising off his body. "That fire you saw wasn't just one fireball jutsu—it was more like a dozen fused together. Kind of like combining arrays into a formation. That way, I can breathe flames as hot as the surface of the sun."
He glanced down at the arrows still lodged in his body. One by one, they dissolved into strands of energy, vanishing as if they had never been real.
"I could make them as hot as the sun's core," he added, "but that would cause an atomic explosion… and with me this close, I'd go down with it."
"You think this is a joke…?" she screamed, her voice trembling with fury. "You're playing with me! A lowly, disgusting human dares to look down on me?!"
Her body shook with rage, and in her fury, the illusion masking her appearance faltered. Her pointed ears shimmered into view—just for a moment—but it was enough. Itachi raised an eyebrow, his expression shifting ever so slightly.
"An elf?" Itachi muttered, raising an eyebrow. Before he could dwell on the thought, his attention shifted—her aura was rising fast. She hadn't broken through a realm; instead, she had activated a technique that temporarily boosted her power.
Her bow, previously made of Qi, dissolved into glowing particles. With a casual wave of her hand, a brilliant emerald bow flashed into existence from her storage ring.
Itachi's gaze lingered on the weapon. "Nice bow," he said, eyeing the graceful curve of the weapon. It looked as if it had been carved from living wood and polished by nature itself—vibrant, ancient, and deadly.
But his compliment only seemed to push her further into rage. With power now surging to rival that of a level 1 Martial Emperor, she took aim and launched forward, her killing intent sharp enough to cut the wind.
The arrow came too fast. Itachi barely had time to twist his body aside—and even then, not fast enough. The arrow ripped through the air and cleanly took his arm. But Itachi only smiled.
He didn't even glance at the limb he'd lost. There was no panic, no hesitation. Just a quiet confidence as, in the very next moment, his arm regenerated—flesh, muscle, and bone stitching back together seamlessly.
"Let's dance," he said with a grin.
With a pulse of power, the Yata Mirror materialized in his right hand—shimmering with defensive brilliance—while the Void Sword formed in his left, its blade humming with barely-contained energy.
The weapons surged with power, boosting Itachi's strength further. Without missing a beat, he shot forward like a thunderbolt, slashing his sword to intercept another incoming arrow—one that had seemingly teleported to strike him dead-on.
Itachi poured more chakra into his body than it could safely handle, forcing power through every fiber of his arm. Cracks split along the skin of the limb holding the Void Sword, glowing faintly from the overwhelming energy surging within. At the exact moment of contact, all that chakra detonated.
The resulting explosion sent Itachi hurtling backward through the air, his body spinning from the force. But he had no time to recover—another wave of arrows was already racing toward him, each one aiming to finish what the first had started.
Just as the next arrow closed in, a shadow clone appeared in a flicker of motion. It delivered a powerful kick to Itachi's side, knocking him off course in the nick of time.
The clone didn't get a second chance—its body was torn apart by the incoming arrow, vanishing in a puff of smoke as Itachi flew clear of the attack.