Chương 49: Nindō 0049: Divine Authority

Naruto appeared in his mindscape, in a completely separate layer of his mind from the one where Kurama and the other tailed beasts were hanging out. Unlike the appearance of the main layer of his mindscape, this one was completely different. The entire place was tinted with a red light as four crimson walls surrounded Naruto. On the floor, was the Mark of Dominion, the signature red swirl of the Uzumaki clan's crest.

"Come out," Naruto said and the black outline of the swirl started glowing, turning completely white as the dot in the center released a cylindrical beam of light that brightened the surroundings. Slowly, the light died down and a humanoid figure appeared, floating in the center of the room. "Momoshiki Ōtsutsuki." Naruto spoke as he looked at the alien who had a bluish-white skin tone with black marks all over its face and torso that seemed like someone was drawing blocks on it. The two horns that extended out of his huge mane of hair seemed especially flashy as he glared at Naruto.

"Let me go, cretin," The alien spoke with a struggling note, the two yellow Rinnegan on his palms both constantly glowed as if attempting to do something, but it was all unsuccessful. His Byakugan also activated, attempting to find a way to get out of his suppression, but it was all useless.

"No, I don't have any plans to do such a thing," Naruto shook his head. "Instead, I have appeared here to take something from you. Something integral to your existence as an Ōtsutsuki. Because what is an Ōtsutsuki without their divine existence." He laughed lightly.

"What?" There was a hint of smugness in the alien's voice. "Planning to kill me? Go ahead. Do you think I'm scared of death?"

"No, you would obviously not be scared of death," Naruto said. "What with the Kāma and all working overtime to keep you alive and well. What I want from you is something else, something that defines your existence as an Ōtsutsuki. A certain authority that only certain races like yours possess. After all, you go all around the galaxy devouring entire planets. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

"You think you can just take my authority over my divine abilities?" The alien snorted, understanding what Naruto was talking about. "It's not that simple mortal. Your existence is limited by an absolute ceiling to an entry-level manipulation of Yin-Yang and nothing more. Without the awakened bloodline of an Ōtsutsuki, you can never even dream of utilizing even a trace of my abilities."

"Well, that's why you're here, Momoshiki," Naruto said. "You will not only voluntarily provide me with your divine authority, you will make sure to remove any traces and marks of yourself from them. The Kāma so to speak. Unlike my son, I will not be making myself a vessel for one of you Ōtsutsuki solely for a power-up."

"Impossible," The alien shook his head. "Giving you the benefit of the doubt, the others will get to you before you will even be able to come up with a method to extract my imprint from my divine abilities. If you truly wish to resist the dangers that inhabit your world, then your only option is to accept my imprint and receive the abilities that naturally come with them."

"If you're done monologuing," Naruto said. "All I need is your authority to utilize Shinjutsu, not the actual techniques themselves."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Even Momoshiki, with all his knowledge of the cosmos and the Ōtsutsuki power system, couldn't understand what Naruto meant. "In the hypothetical situation where you completely devour me and get rid of my Kāma, you will receive the Shinjutsu abilities that are native to me. Like my Byakugan and Rinnegan along with my space-time affinity and that's all. What do you mean by divine authority?"

"If I wanted the dōjutsu that you guys have, why would I have bothered to capture you? All I needed to do was to extract your eyes from your dead body," Naruto shook his head. "This is going to take longer than I expected."

"What is it that you want, Kyuubi?" Momoshiki felt that something was amiss in the current situation.

"You Ōtsutsuki, for all your talk of being gods and all that, are impure life forms. That's the biggest problem," Naruto said, a hint of disdain in his tone. "You can only receive certain abilities from the Chakra fruits that you eat, forcefully stealing the almost nonexistent traces of divine authority that are generated by the planet's existence over millions of years. That restricts your use of it into a singular ability, and sometimes, not even a new ability, you merely receive enhancements to your existing abilities."

"How can an inferior mortal such as yourself dare to besmirch the name the Ōtsutsuki," Momoshiki was enraged. "We are gods to you mere weaklings who will become dust and we will still thrive for countless eons after you."

"Did I bruise your ego by calling you impure?" Naruto laughed. "It's the truth. That's the reason you all have different innate abilities that you enhance or awaken by eating the Chakra fruit. You are all going about it in such a roundabout manner that it's laughable."

"What can a mortal such as yourself know about the divine abilities of the Ōtsutsuki?" Momoshiki scoffed.

"More than you know," Naruto shook his head. "Anyway, since you don't truly have any way of transferring your authority to me voluntarily, I will just have to take it. Even though it's going to take much longer than I would like." Naruto invoked Yin-Yang Release and placed his palm on Momoshiki's chest.

"Your hopes of utilizing such a mediocre technique to extract my trace are laughable, mortal. Just give up if that's all you —" The so-called 'god' choked on his words as he felt a primal authority being extracted from himself. The only thing he could think that the feeling would compare to was whatever the opposite of eating a chakra fruit would be.

"Yeah, this is exactly what I felt back when Old Man Six-Paths bestowed his chakra onto me," Naruto said. Behind him, a pitch-black ball was created by the utilization of the trace of authority that Naruto extracted from Momoshiki. Naruto dispelled the orb before creating it once again. He repeated the process a few times while focusing on extracting even more of Momoshiki's divine authority. As for the alien, he was slightly horrified at the formation of a Truth-Seeker Ball by the mortal.

"H-how?" Momoshiki asked, unable to believe the sight in front of himself. It wasn't that the ability to create Truth-Seeker Balls was a big deal, it was one of the weakest abilities that the Ōtsutsuki clan had in their arsenal. What invoked fear in him was the precedent that it set. It meant that this mortal wasn't taking his abilities — he couldn't create Truth-Seeker Balls. He was taking something more fundamental. Something which was apparently the source of his divine abilities if the mortal's words were to be believed.

"This is just the first step," Naruto said feeling like some exposition was in order. "While I can use Yin-Yang Release without any greater authority, to enhance it further into a Kekkei Mōra, I must merge it with the five basic nature chakra. For that, I need a trace of divine authority. Which I now have due to the bridge that I created with Yin-Yang Release. It doesn't matter if you have the ability to create these orbs or not. What I'm targeting isn't your Shinjutsu, but your authority over reality that allows you to utilize these divine abilities. Soon, I will take away all of your authority. At that point, your best purpose would be to serve as a teacher to someone like my son. Because all of your abilities will be meaningless after I take your authority."

"You won't kill me even after all that?" Momoshiki asked.

"Of course not," Naruto laughed. "You have thousands of years of battle experience. I can't let all that effort go to waste."

"I won't let you," Momoshiki said with a deep voice. "I won't LET YOU!" He screamed as a deep aura escaped his visage, shaking the room that they were in. Naruto's absorption ability was interrupted as Momoshiki mobilized every ounce of his being to explode himself.

"Stop," Naruto said and Momoshiki lost control over his energy, his body, and even his voice. The alien looked on in horror at Naruto who didn't even seem fazed by what had just happened. "I guess I forgot to tell you not to resist …" He frowned and shook his head. "That divinity got pulled back as well … I need to find a way to take control of it and truly make it mine. I wonder if the Dominion Mark would help with that … It is, after all, an authority on a higher level than this divine shit that these Ōtsutsuki have …" Naruto mumbled to himself as he jabbed his five fingers into Momoshiki's abdomen, jolting the alien with pain as the bridge was established once again.

"Now, don't do anything anymore, and obediently let me take away all of your divine authority," With the Mark of Dominion that was entrenched deep within Momoshiki's existence, there was no chance of resistance.

As a few seconds passed, Naruto formed a Truth-Seeker Ball and frowned, "At this rate, I am going to need months, maybe even years to completely absorb all of his authority. Maybe if I can somehow figure out a way to make that authority completely mine, I might be able to enhance the bridge and increase the absorption rate …" Naruto spoke to himself, dispelling the ball as he walked away and melded into the wall, completely disappearing from Momoshiki's view.

***

If you like the story, follow it and leave a review and whatever else, it motivates me a lot. I try not to leave any mistakes in the chapters, but if you find something glaring, let me know, and I'll try to fix it.

If you want to support me, check out my Patréon. I post advanced chapters there and do weekly polls to decide the stories that I will be posting for the week. No pressure though, I'm eventually going to post my content publicly regardless.

www.patrèon.com/addyctive

(Replace the è with e)