Naruto: Cthulhu: Ch. 269

The Black Pharaoh.

For some reason, this obscure and enigmatic name gave Sasuke a strange sense of solemnity. Although he had once seen that dark-skinned man before, the man never told Sasuke his name.

Perhaps he thought Sasuke was too weak, unworthy of knowing it.

Thinking of this, Sasuke clenched his fists tightly, imprinting that name in his heart.

"I fought against the man who called himself the Black Pharaoh for a while. His techniques were very strange."

"He had no chakra at all, and certainly wasn't using ninjutsu."

"By his side were two invisible servants. He didn't even move himself, and I was already in a bitter struggle."

Itachi's words reminded Sasuke of his own rash attempt three years ago, when he had impulsively attacked the Black Pharaoh.

At that time too, the Black Pharaoh himself had stood still, unmoving, yet Sasuke had been blown away by an invisible force, completely powerless to resist.

After three years of training, Sasuke believed his current strength would be more than enough to crush the man who had so easily defeated him back then.

But after hearing Itachi's account, Sasuke's once firm confidence began to waver.

If even his brother, the genius constantly praised by their father and held up as Sasuke's role model, could not defeat this man, could Sasuke really hope to do so easily?

"Only after awakening a Sharingan beyond the three-tomoe did I barely manage to dispose of his two servants. But just then, I suddenly heard your scream from the direction of our home, and rushed back immediately."

"The rest you already know. That samurai clad in blood-red armor and the Black Pharaoh were actually working together."

"They were the ones who orchestrated the Uchiha massacre."

The story ended there, for what followed was what both brothers had experienced together.

Although the blood-armored warrior who killed Fugaku and Mikoto was slain by Itachi, afterwards the Black Pharaoh had calmly retrieved the warrior's sword, intact, from the flames.

Because of that, Itachi suspected the blood-armored warrior had not truly died. Even now, the true identities of these figures remained a mystery that haunted him for years.

In all this time, Itachi had secretly kept watch for any trace of the Black Pharaoh, but had never found anything.

The Black Pharaoh was ghostlike, able to slip into Konoha's barrier, enter the Uchiha compound, all without anyone noticing. It was truly beyond comprehension.

Still, Itachi harbored another suspicion.

Perhaps the Black Pharaoh was not some outsider, but actually someone within Konoha in disguise. Maybe someone within the village, long resentful of the Uchiha clan, had decided to wipe them out.

But for Itachi, such an idea was difficult to accept. To imagine a Konoha ninja with the terrifying power to massacre the entire Uchiha clan without leaving a trace was chilling.

And that fragile theory had just been shattered by Sasuke's own testimony.

Sasuke had said that the Black Pharaoh appeared directly inside Orochimaru's hidden base, without anyone sensing his arrival.

Which meant this was likely one of the Black Pharaoh's inherent abilities.

Perhaps something similar to the masked man's space-warping powers, but possibly even stronger.

Invisible servants.

Space-transfer ability.

Subordinates with strange powers as well.

From all known information, Itachi simply could not grasp what kind of being the Black Pharaoh really was.

Yet, the fact that the Black Pharaoh deliberately revealed himself before Sasuke suggested that he had a particular interest in the Uchiha... or perhaps for some other reason.

As Itachi pondered this while lost in memory, Sasuke spoke in a faint voice.

"Nisan..."

"If the Black Pharaoh had never appeared, would you still have carried out the massacre?"

Sasuke's voice was quiet, betraying his inner turmoil, unsure whether he should ask such a question in this moment, or what answer he would receive.

But Itachi heard him clearly. After a moment of thought, he answered.

"Yes."

That simple word struck Sasuke's mind blank.

So the Black Pharaoh was only an episode along the way. With or without him, the Uchiha clan was destined to perish that night.

After a brief silence, Sasuke asked again:

"What about Father and Mother? Would you have killed them too?"

"Yes."

This time, Itachi's calm reply carried less hesitation, for he had already considered that possibility when answering the first question.

Sasuke's mind thundered with the memory of that night, his parents sitting composedly in the tea room, as if awaiting someone.

When Sasuke opened the door, Fugaku and Mikoto had been surprised at his return, even though it was their own home.

So that was why...

After a few seconds of heavy silence, Sasuke lowered his head deeper and asked one final question.

"What about me?"

"No."

Itachi's answer pierced through Sasuke's shadowed heart like a ray of light.

Startled, Sasuke looked up like a child suddenly sweetened by candy. "Why?"

"Because... You are my brother, whom I will always love."

With a gentle smile, Itachi reached out and tapped Sasuke's forehead with two fingers.

Staring into his brother's affectionate eyes, Sasuke felt an indescribable storm of emotions, bitterness, warmth, confusion, too complex for words, even for himself.

At that moment, Itachi suddenly felt a tightness in his chest, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

Sasuke instantly pushed aside his conflicted thoughts of another "what if" worldline, and hurried to his brother's side.

To him, in this world, Itachi was still not the true murderer of the clan.

"Nisan! What's wrong?!"

Itachi patted Sasuke's shoulder, signaling him to stay calm, and spoke softly, "The Uchiha's strongest Sharingan has side effects on the body."

"After using the Mangekyō Sharingan so many times over the years, my body is already near its limit."

"Right now our minds are within the illusory world created by my Tsukuyomi. Using it damages my body."

"Then stop using it!" Sasuke said anxiously.

But Itachi shook his head firmly.

"No. There's still something I haven't told you."

"These things are very important."

"They concern my partner, Kisame."

"Kisame? That man with the fish face?"

Sasuke's gaze had been fixed on Itachi the entire time, barely paying attention to his partner, so he simply summarized Kisame as the fish-faced man.

But that description was rather accurate.

"Yes, that's the man."

"Although he's currently a member of the Akatsuki, he secretly maintains contact with Kojiro of the Land of Waves."

"The Land of Waves?"

Having never experienced the "Zabuza timeline," Sasuke didn't even know where the Land of Waves was. Itachi explained, "It's an island nation located south of the Land of Water. Its original name was the Land of Waves, but now it's called the Land of Gods."

"The true ruler there is known as Dagon, though his real name is Kojiro, once a ninja of Kiri."

"He rules over the fish-men of those seas and controls the local civilians, all while scheming something in secret."

Since the events in the Land of Gods, Itachi had been secretly gathering intelligence about it.

From what he uncovered, over the years the Land of Gods had been steadily growing in power, seizing remote southern territories, isolated island nations, and even uninhabited islands.

Followers of the Dagon Cult had spread across regions bordering the seas, and even civilians in the Land of Water had begun to be influenced by them.

This was highly unusual!

In all of human history within the ninja world, no faith or sect had ever grown at such a terrifying pace.

Just ten years earlier, the Dagon Cult had no real foundation at all.

And having personally experienced the horrors inside the Land of Gods, Itachi understood all too well the danger of this cult.

Those who believed in Dagon would transform into hideous fish-men, diving into the ocean depths.

No one knew how many of these deep dwellers lurked in the abyssal seas.

Even so, cult followers still worshipped Dagon, worshipped the cult's sole evil god, Cthulhu.

The Dagon Cult wielded a strange, almost magical power, an enchantment so potent it surpassed even the illusions of ninjas.

And according to the information Orochimaru had shared with him, Cthulhu was real.

All of this convinced Itachi that the Dagon Cult was just as dangerous as Akatsuki, perhaps even more so.

But their paths were different.

Akatsuki sought quality over quantity, aiming to collect the tailed beasts.

The Dagon Cult, however, pursued the opposite path.

They recruited both civilians and ninjas, though the majority were ordinary people.

As for the cult's ultimate goal, Itachi didn't know.

But he suspected it was tied to their doctrine:

When the stars align, R'lyeh will rise from the sea, and Cthulhu will awaken from his slumber.

For the sake of Konoha, Itachi wanted to uncover the truth behind the Dagon Cult.

But his body was failing, and as a member of Akatsuki he had no strength left to pursue it.

So he could only entrust everything he knew to Sasuke, and have Sasuke deliver a warning to Konoha.

"Half a year ago, I used a crow to keep watch on Kisame and saw him conversing with a deep dweller beneath the water."

"At that moment I knew, Kisame was a spy from the Dagon Cult, planted inside Akatsuki."

"The cult has already infiltrated Akatsuki. Their ambition is immense, and their danger extreme!"

"That's why I need you to warn Konoha, tell them everything I've uncovered."

Itachi was Konoha's spy within Akatsuki, while Kisame was the Dagon Cult's spy within Akatsuki.

But sending messages was the problem, human couriers and carrier pigeons were far too easy to intercept, and discovery meant certain doom.

Using deep dwellers to carry messages, however, avoided this risk, their language was unintelligible to humans, and by entering through river mouths they could infiltrate nearly any part of the ninja world.

"Of the four Konoha elders who ordered me to carry out the Uchiha massacre, only two remain alive, the village advisors."

"If you tell them about the massacre mission, they'll believe the rest of what you say. You should even be forgiven for leaving the village."

"As for Orochimaru's curse mark on you, I could remove it, but not here in this genjutsu space. Once you return to the village, entrust it to the Sixth Hokage."

"As for me, don't worry, until I complete my final mission, I will not die."

Itachi's words came faster and faster, just as the Tsukuyomi world began to collapse.

"Nisan!"

"Nisan!"

Sasuke cried out, reaching desperately for Itachi's fading figure, but grasped only empty air.

Then, in an instant, the Tsukuyomi world shattered completely.

Sasuke blinked back into reality, looking down, he found the Kusanagi sword drawn in his hands, its blade stained with blood.

But not his own.

Looking up, he saw Itachi swaying weakly across from him, one hand covering his mouth as violent coughs sprayed blood.

Sasuke's eyes softened, wanting to rush forward, but Itachi stopped him with the slightest shake of his gaze.

Only then did Sasuke remember the watcher nearby.

From the trees, Zetsu stared in astonishment.

Moments earlier, when Sasuke and Itachi clashed midair, Itachi had blocked the short sword with a kunai, yet still coughed blood.

So his body truly was reaching its limit?

Zetsu never suspected genjutsu, assuming instead that Itachi's lingering injuries had been aggravated during the fight.

---

Meanwhile, beyond the dense forest, Kisame was locked in battle against Orochimaru's former subordinates.

Jūgo, provoked by Kisame's attacks, had entered his second state, his body monstrous, his strength nearly matching Kisame's, serving as the main attacker.

Other allies unleashed a storm of jutsu, Crystal Release, Water Bullets, and more, raining toward Kisame.

The open ground had been transformed by his Water Release into shallow ponds, from which sharks would leap up to ambush the fighters' feet.

But Karin, watching from the highest point, always sensed the sharks just before they struck, warning the team in time.

Rinji stood beside her as guard.

Yet even against all five working together, Kisame's face remained utterly calm.