We ran forward, veering slightly to the side to cut off the enemy's escape routes. But strangely enough, the Akatsuki had no intention of running and patiently awaited our arrival.
As we ran, my clones were able to detect that all the other members of the organization were near Pain, possibly setting up an ambush. Or perhaps he had assigned them the role of guarding his true body. But most likely, they were there as cannon fodder. The fodder included Deidara, Uchiha Itachi, Kakuzu, Konan, Sasori, and Hidan. Zetsu was nowhere to be seen, but I was sure he was lurking somewhere nearby.
About an hour later, we reached the battleground, and my companions could see the area littered with mutilated shinobi corpses. Honestly, the degree of 'dismemberment' here was no less than after my own work. Nice job. I respect that!
"You three go ahead" - I sent my comrades straight into the lion's den. - "I'll take care of the support group and Nagato himself."
With the Sharingan, I could see that Kisame and Obito were indeed game figures. And Nagato's inclusion in this trio was undeniable since, in the canon, he wasn't powerful enough to simultaneously take down two jinchuriki and the Raikage.
Uchiha were natural snipers, so with the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, I could 'hit a squirrel in the eye' from a kilometer away. While my partners distracted attention, I flanked through the forest and then simply sent a horde of clones to scour the area. As soon as one of them spotted an enemy, I started firing volleys at them. This world didn't know what a rapid-fire machine gun was, so the Akatsuki members had nothing to counter me with.
The only one who caused some trouble was Kakuzu. Until I shot all five of his hearts, the parasite refused to devour his soul. But I simply riddled the immortal ninja so thoroughly that he ended up looking like a pincushion. Hidan, however, disappointed me. After the first hit, his soul was devoured by Azathoth with an unusual degree of cynicism, even for him.
Naturally, such an attack couldn't escape Nagato's notice, and he sent all six of Pain's bodies after my soul. And here, I encountered problems. First, these bodies were already dead, so they had no souls inside them, and the parasite refused to attack them. Second, Nagato could almost instantly create barriers that held up pretty well against my weapon's shots. Under the cover of these barriers, the six bodies gathered to surround me, using their abilities for the attack.
Chikushodo tried to summon his creatures, but they had souls, and the parasite eagerly devoured them. Overall, Nagato and I reached a stalemate in offensive weaponry. He couldn't come out from behind the barriers to attack me, and I couldn't break through these barriers, constantly dodging close combat. After his recent use of Tendo's power, Nagato couldn't repeat the stone trick. He tried to pound areas with increased gravity, but it had little effect on me since I simply moved out of its range using chakra chains. Through simple manipulations with reality, I created chains without mass, unaffected by gravity.
While I played tag with Pain, Sakura, Sasuke, and Kakashi managed to corner Kisame and Obito. The fish-man with the monstrous sword clashed with Sakura, and it cost him dearly. With a single blow, the former orc tore the Samehada sword in half. This didn't kill him, but he could no longer use this 'fish' in battle. Kisame resorted to using Water-style ninjutsu, but Sakura simply dispersed all these attacks with her aura.
Eventually, she caught up with the opponent again and hit him with all her might, turning him into flying chunks of meat. Fortunately, the game figure's head remained intact, and in that brief moment of triumph, my clone approached the still-living Kisame and stuck one of the crystals from my gun into him. I had specially prepared such 'saviors' for this occasion. The crystals couldn't exist long after creation, but within special seals, they could be stored for about half an hour. As a result, Kisame's soul became the parasite's prey, and I got my well-deserved fragment.
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*** Score 6/10 ***
Obito was more challenging. With his 'intangibility,' he was a difficult opponent. However, Sasuke and Kakashi had normal Sharingan, capable of countering Obito's Sharingan. They saw all the enemy's movements and didn't allow him to attack them, executing counterattacks at the right moment, leaving 'almost Madara' no chance to materialize himself.
When it came to genjutsu, Obito was far more experienced than Sasuke, so he didn't let himself get 'hypnotized,' immediately breaking off any attempt to implant chakra into his brain. At the start of the fight, Obito tried to act like the goofy Tobi, but after Kisame's death, he decided to attack seriously. As it turned out, he possessed the Amaterasu technique, which he used to set his former partner ablaze. He primarily saw Kakashi as his opponent, even though Sasuke was technically a game piece.
Black flames engulfed Hatake's entire body, but he didn't flinch. He had already proven in practice that even complete destruction of his body couldn't harm him. So... he simply charged into close combat. Though Kakashi wasn't a pure-blooded Uchiha, he had extensive experience using the Sharingan. As a result, even in such a situation, he managed to use another ability of these eyes—Tsukuyomi. Using all his strength, he controlled Obito's mind, forcing him to 'materialize' and... embraced him.
The Amaterasu flames engulfed the game figure. Obito tried to break free, but the genjutsu he was under wouldn't let him. A moment later, I diverted my attention from the fight with Nagato, jumped up, and shot directly at his heart. The parasite didn't hesitate and immediately devoured the offering. Kakashi burned to ashes and began to resurrect from scratch, which took about a minute.
*** Score 7/10 ***
Meanwhile, in our battle with Nagato, the Rinnegan wielder made a mistake by getting distracted by his comrade's death. He let me get too close to one of Pain's bodies without any support to prevent my attack. As a result, I unexpectedly extended my chakra chains, wrapped them around Gakido, and pulled him towards me. Although this Pain form could supposedly absorb chakra, it had a significant drawback—the speed of absorption was limited. Most importantly, this speed was several times slower than my ability to receive natural chakra from clones. Consequently, I completely ignored the chakra absorption, pulled him to me, and then simply tore him to pieces with the same chains.
At that moment, my spoils included several black metal rods. These were similar to my chakra chains, which Nagato used to control his puppets. As soon as I touched them, I immediately got a 'ping' on the last opponent's location. My clones with these 'radars' scattered to determine Nagato's exact position using triangulation.
Besides, I used the spoils for another purpose. Nagato controlled his puppets by transmitting signals through chakra vibrations at a specific frequency. Thus, he imparted the properties of radio waves to chakra. Sensing this frequency and studying the emitter and receiver's structure, I created a 'jammer' within seconds, which simply began interfering with the signal transmission. The signal was encrypted, but I countered this control method by reproducing the signal sequence I had obtained just a few seconds earlier.
As a result, the puppets' movements became jerky, constantly stumbling and repeating the same actions. With this behavior, even my clones had no trouble reaching them and dismantling them into pieces, turning the five strongest puppets into a pile of bloody debris.
I rushed towards Nagato, whose location my clones had already tracked. He was farther than I had anticipated. To my surprise, Nagato wasn't confined to a wheelchair. On the contrary, he was in excellent physical shape. He tried to flee, but my clones didn't let him. They died by the thousands but slowed his movement. Some 'kamikazes' even managed to inflict a couple of deep cuts on Nagato when he thought he could simply ignore the chakra chain attacks. After about five minutes, it became clear that he couldn't escape, and Nagato turned to face me.
However, I had no intention of staging a showy fight. I started shooting continuous bursts from my machine gun, which Nagato blocked with another barrier. When he focused entirely on me, one of my clones shot a crystal at him from behind. The glowing spear pierced Nagato's chest, destabilizing the chakra flows in his body. The barrier he was maintaining burst, and he was literally riddled with machine gun rounds. A second later, the parasite devoured his soul, fiercely tearing it to pieces first.
*** Score 8/10 ***
Catching my breath, I looked at Sasuke and Sakura catching up with me, followed by Kakashi. This battle was over, and the result was exactly what I had hoped for: three more frags. This meant I only needed to kill two more game figures to be confident that I could move on to the next world. I wouldn't even have to wait for the game to end.