Naruto: The Strongest Clan System, Madara's Just the Beginning — Chapter 462

Chapter 462: Awakening! Sasuke’s Mangekyo Sharingan

A hysterical, torn roar ripped from Sasuke’s throat, the sound scraping his vocal cords raw until only a dry, guttural rasp remained.

Facing his younger brother’s agonizing breakdown, Itachi did not flinch. With a sharp, practiced flick of his wrist, he snapped his katana downward. Crimson droplets splattered against the ruined earth, leaving the steel gleaming and cold.

He looked down at Sasuke from above, his dark eyes entirely hollow.

“Foolish.”

The word dropped from Itachi’s lips with chilling indifference.

“To measure my vessel’s capacity, this was merely a necessary sacrifice.” He slowly sheathed his blade, the metallic click echoing like a death knell across the quieted battlefield. “This is the reality of the ninja world. This is… the destiny of the Uchiha.”

“Are you kidding me…”

Sasuke’s entire body convulsed. Hot tears mixed with the blood splattered across his cheeks, dripping off his chin to stain his collar.

“Just for that kind of reason…” His voice cracked, rising into a frenzied scream. “Just for that… ridiculous reason!!”

Weighed down by a fatal wound, Fugaku lay motionless in his youngest son’s embrace. With agonizing slowness, he forced his heavy, blood-soaked hand upward. His trembling fingers brushed against Sasuke’s cheek, leaving a smear of dark red across the boy’s pale skin.

“Sa… suke…”

Fugaku’s voice was a fragile whisper, weak to the absolute extreme.

Sasuke frantically lowered his head, his hands desperately gripping his father’s cold fingers, trying to press them tighter against his own face.

“I’m here! Father, I’m here!”

Fugaku looked up at his son. Beneath the veil of impending death, his eyes carried a deep depth of reluctance and a heavy, unspoken expectation.

“Live… on…” he breathed out, his chest barely rising. “Be… strong…”

Before the final syllable could fully leave his lips, Fugaku’s hand suddenly slumped, slipping from Sasuke’s grasp to hang lifelessly at his side. Those once majestic, commanding eyes slowly slid shut.

Although this was a flawless deception orchestrated by Uchiha Fugaku, in Sasuke’s eyes, at this exact second, it was absolute, irreversible death.

“Father?”

Sasuke gently shook the heavy, unresponsive body.

“Father… wake up…”

Silence answered him.

His father was dead.

Killed by that man. Slaughtered by his own older brother.

Sasuke opened his mouth wide, but no scream came out. Only a dry, broken wheeze rattled in his throat as immense, suffocating grief instantly obliterated his remaining sanity.

Immediately after the sorrow came the rage. A venomous, all-consuming hatred for Itachi surged through his veins, closely followed by a sickening hatred for his own pathetic incompetence. It frantically flooded his heart, drowning out every other emotion.

‘If I were just a bit stronger. If I weren’t such a useless piece of trash… Father wouldn’t have died!’

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!”

Sasuke threw his head back and unleashed a long, bloodcurdling shriek toward the heavens.

An unmatched, violent power erupted from his core. Inside his crimson eyes, the original three tomoe began to spin.

The rotation accelerated, spinning faster and faster until the black shapes blurred into a solid ring.

Finally, the spinning abruptly halted. The three tomoe merged, snapping into a completely new configuration. A sharp, complex, black hexagram pattern locked into place.

Mangekyo Sharingan.

Awakened.

Thick, oppressive purple chakra materialized out of thin air, gushing violently from Sasuke’s body like a geyser. A suffocating pressure expanded outward with him at the epicenter, crushing the very air around them.

“That is…”

Naruto’s eyes widened in sheer shock, the wind from the chakra burst whipping his blonde hair back.

“Sasuke?”

In the center of the purple storm, Sasuke slowly, reverently laid Fugaku’s corpse onto the ground.

He stood up.

His newly born Mangekyo Sharingan emitted a heart-palpitating, freezing light. Two thick lines of bloody tears slid down from the corners of his eyes, tracking over his pale cheeks.

“Uchiha… Itachi…”

Sasuke’s voice was no longer hysterical. It had dropped into an exceptionally cold, dead monotone.

“I will…”

The purple chakra soared higher, piercing the sky.

“Tear you into ten thousand pieces!!!”

Behind Sasuke, the massive, spectral ribs of a skeletal frame rapidly materialized from the dense chakra.

The physical manifestation of his hatred. The ultimate defense and offense.

Susanoo.

Watching the towering purple ribs form, a microscopic, almost undetectable trace of relief flashed deep within Itachi’s consistently expressionless eyes.

‘Finally… Have you awakened?’

Itachi tightened his grip on the hilt of his blade. The crimson, fiery aura of his own Susanoo flared to life, engulfing his body once more.

“Then come, Sasuke,” Itachi provoked, his tone dripping with dark anticipation. “Let me see exactly what kind of hatred has bred in those eyes!”

“Amaterasu!”

Sasuke wasted no time on words. His right eye suddenly focused, the hexagram pattern constricting.

Wherever his gaze landed, jet-black flames ignited out of thin air. The inferno instantly latched onto the shell of Itachi’s Susanoo, spreading with terrifying speed.

It was the black fire known to never extinguish until its target was reduced to ash.

‘Is this… my power?’

Sasuke covered his bleeding right eye. Feeling that overwhelming Visual Prowess, a power that felt as though it could burn through the very fabric of the world, a dark, distorted pleasure surged in his chest.

But this was not enough.

“Kagutsuchi!”

His left eye spun.

The rampaging black flames, previously wild and uncontrollable, suddenly bent to Sasuke’s absolute will. The inferno rapidly compressed and shifted, solidifying into sharp, jagged spears of black fire that floated effortlessly in the hands of his purple Susanoo.

Sasuke threw his hand forward.

The black flame spears shot toward Itachi in a devastating, high-speed rainstorm.

Reacting instantly, Itachi commanded his crimson Susanoo to raise the ethereal Yata Mirror, angling the divine shield to intercept the barrage.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The black flames exploded violently against the surface of the Yata Mirror, sending shockwaves of heat and force rippling across the wasteland.

‘This level of Visual Prowess…’Itachi thought, bracing against the impact.’Can he already manipulate it to this extent right after awakening? As expected of Sasuke.’

Since that was the case…

“I cannot afford to go too easy on him either.”

Itachi’s gaze narrowed dangerously.

In the palm of his crimson Susanoo, three massive, glowing red tomoe condensed, linking together into a deadly spinning disc. He hurled the Yasaka Magatama directly at his younger brother.

The two destructive forces collided in mid-air.

The resulting detonation shook the earth, tearing massive fissures through the bedrock. The entire battlefield trembled under the sheer weight of their clashing chakra.

In the distance, the observing Konoha ninjas watched the apocalyptic exchange in dumbfounded horror.

“That… that’s Sasuke?”

“He actually opened those eyes too?”

“Too terrifying… is this the true power of the Uchiha Clan?”

While Sasuke and Itachi fought with enough ferocity to split the heavens and shatter the earth, Fugaku’s corpse, lying forgotten in the dirt, twitched infinitesimally.

His consciousness had remained perfectly clear the entire time.

Listening to the deafening explosions ringing in his ears, feeling the shockwaves of that familiar yet strangely massive Visual Prowess washing over him, Fugaku’s heart twisted with a complex knot of emotions.

‘Mangekyo? Sasuke…”This power… it was exchanged for with your pain.’

He endured the severe, throbbing ache in his chest, forcefully slowing his heart rate to maintain the state of feigned death.

Now was not the time to wake up. This brutal play had to be acted out to its absolute conclusion.

Sasuke needed to completely vent the boiling hatred in his heart. He needed to be pushed to his absolute limit so he could fully master this new, dangerous power.

Only by walking through this hell could his son truly grow into a powerhouse capable of standing on his own in this unforgiving world.

‘Forgive me, Sasuke,’ Fugaku said silently in the depths of his mind.

On the far edge of the battlefield, Naruto stared at Sasuke, who was now entirely wrapped in the sinister purple glow of his Susanoo. The blonde ninja’s brows furrowed tightly, his fists trembling at his sides.

“That guy Sasuke…”

Deep within Naruto’s mindscape, the ancient, rumbling voice of the Nine-Tails echoed.

“That is the unique power of the Uchiha Clan. The Curse of Hatred.” Kurama scoffed darkly. “The deeper the love they hold, the deeper the abyss of hate they fall into when it is severed. And from that hate, their power is born. That brat has now been completely swallowed by it.”

Naruto clenched his fists so hard his knuckles turned white.

“I won’t let him be swallowed.” Naruto’s blue eyes burned with stubborn resolve. “No matter what he becomes, he is my partner!”

Back at the epicenter of the destruction, Sasuke’s Susanoo had completely taken shape.

Although it was only in its skeletal state, layered with pulsing chakra meridians and raw muscle tissue without its final armor, the violent, suffocating aura it emitted was already not the slightest bit inferior to Itachi’s.

“Uchiha Itachi!!”

Sasuke commanded his massive purple avatar, driving it forward to throw a devastating punch straight at his brother.

“I’m going to kill you!! Kill you!!”

Itachi did not dodge. He anchored his stance, controlling his crimson Susanoo to meet the incoming strike with a colossal punch of its own.

The two gigantic fists collided dead center in the air.

A massive shockwave erupted from the point of impact, completely overturning the surrounding ground, ripping up boulders, and shredding the earth for hundreds of meters in every direction.

Through the translucent, glowing visages of their towering avatars, the two brothers’ gazes collided fiercely, locking together in a storm of blood, fire, and unbreakable hatred.