Ryū would not have described himself as particularly magnanimous. If anything, he was petty in his own way. Being probed through a staged surveillance operation had been irritating, and irritation required an outlet.
He had found the outlet.
That had been his actual maximum — everything his body could produce, minus the Devil Fruit ability. Six Powers at their ceiling, Haki at its ceiling, physical constitution at its ceiling, channelled into a single downward strike.
When the fist hit the earth, the air itself had distorted under the impact. The vacuum shockwave that discharged outward was comparable to a Tempest Kick slash at full extension — minus the cutting edge, but the raw force was equivalent. Jiraiya and the others had been standing within a few tres. At that range there was no defence to mount in ti. Even Minato, whose reflexes were at the upper limit of human possibility, had registered the incoming force without his body being able to respond.
A group of Konoha's senior figures, launched like broken kites.
Given how fragile shinobi bodies were relative to what they could dish out, so injuries were unavoidable.
"That feels better. Though I probably hit Konoha from here."
A few thousand tres between the impact point and the village. Given the destruction radius he routinely produced in Arena sessions, the village had almost certainly felt it.
He looked at the landscape.
Every direction: fissures. Upturned rock. Craters layered on craters.
No guilt about the environnt. Yamato would exist eventually. There was a saying in the fandom — Hashirama's Wood Release built the shinobi world, Yamato's Wood Release cleans up after it. Once Yamato was operational, a bit of reforestation would sort this out.
As for hitting the Konoha leadership directly — his fist had not actually landed on any of them. The shockwave had done the work. One direct punch would have been a fundantally different level of outco.
He'd aid at the ground.
Thoughtful restraint, he decided. He was, on reflection, a decent person.
He left the four figures where they'd landed and stepped off the broken ground. The fissures were too wide and too dense to walk through.
He used Moonwalk, stepping onto invisible footholds in mid-air, climbing upward without effort. A hundred tres. Two hundred. He levelled off and looked out over the affected area.
Sothing in his expression shifted slightly.
"That's a larger radius than I expected. Diater of ten to fifteen kilotres at minimum. If that had landed in the centre of Konoha, there would be no Konoha."
He'd known he was strong. The Arena gave regular calibration points. But the actual number on paper was still slightly startling.
The most severe damage covered three to four kilotres from the impact point — ground-zero. Beyond that, the shockwave degraded, diminishing with distance. At ten kilotres it would be barely perceptible. Which ant Konoha, a few kilotres out, was probably in the moderate range — structural stress, so building damage, but not complete collapse.
Probably.
His house was in that area.
His house, which was the only physical possession in this life that connected him to the parents he'd inherited from this world's Ryū.
Ryū's expression did sothing complicated for a mont.
The severe damage zone is three to four kilotres. Konoha is a few thousand tres out, which is in the transition band. Shaking, so collapses — but not everything. Houses don't all fall down from structural stress at moderate vibration.
He told himself this.
The desire to go and check was imdiate.
The montum of outward travel dissipated. He turned around.
A sonic boom as he left — body displacing air faster than sound could track — and he was a kilotre away before the sound of his departure reached the spot he'd just occupied.
Less than thirty seconds later, at the site of impact outside Konoha's walls:
"Ptoo. Ptoo. Ptoo."
Jiraiya dragged himself out of a crack in the earth and spat dirt until his mouth was reasonably clear. He pressed a hand to his lower back, winced, and looked around.
His face, currently wearing a thick coating of debris, had an expression of profound disbelief spreading across it.
Wherever he looked — nothing was intact. Not one patch of ground that hadn't been broken open. It looked like the aftermath of a full-scale shinobi war, like every village's Kage-rank fighters had gathered here for a concentrated battle lasting hours.
The fissures wound across the landscape like great serpents, disappearing into the distance. The scale of it activated sothing visceral — the human mind's resistance to believing human-made destruction could look like this.
This is what a Tailed Beast Ball does after sustained bombardnt. That's what this looks like. An hour of Nine-Tails attacking sothing.
"That's his maximum strength?"
He said it quietly, mostly to himself.
"Several tis stronger than anything I imagined. If that punch had landed on directly, I would be dead. I know I would. And I didn't even process the motion — I registered the incoming force intellectually and my body did not respond in ti."
Jiraiya had seen genuine powerhouses. He was one himself. Even so.
He exhaled slowly. The cold sweat on his back had already soaked through his clothing.
Not below the First Hokage's tier. This is that level. And he's seventeen. Not even eighteen — according to village records, he's not eighteen for another two months.
Jiraiya was approaching forty.
"How large is the radius? Several kilotres in every direction?"
He swallowed.
"Where did the Third and the others land? They were caught in the shockwave too — with their skill levels they shouldn't have taken critical injuries, but…"
He ignored the minor scrapes on himself and scanned the broken terrain.
"And Ryū-kun himself — where did he go?"
Nothing in any direction.
"…Am I the only one here?"
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