Disappearing Lives

The prisoners wait for Oga to reveal the next trial, some of them growing desperate with thirst, with Fugo failing to trade a costly watch for another captive's water. A Grass ninja sides with Boruto's push for teamwork, while the mercenary Batta cares only about her pay and Yatsume sees worth in both attitudes. Rokuro forces a confession by hurling a parasite onto the Grass ninja, accusing him of serving Oga after he triggered the first trap and dodged the crumbling platform edges early. The man grabs another captive, begs Oga for help, and dies. Rokuro then draws a scroll that leads the group into a dark chamber where candles light on their own.

Oga explains that each flame is a life: the players must reach a goal through a maze of hazards without letting their candle go out, and lanterns are provided to carry them. When an old captive sneezes his candle dark and dies, the rules sharpen, whoever holds a candle owns it, and if a flame passed to another hand goes out, the person no longer holding it perishes.

Elsewhere, Sarada and Mitsuki hunt for the Thunder Train that carried Boruto away, questioning rail staff and learning the Department of Prisons already asked around and that the employee on duty that day abruptly quit. A nervous worker who spies on them flees, dropping money, and later dreads what he has become tangled in. Inside the labyrinth the captives wade through water and reach a gate needing two free hands to lift, forcing choices about who holds whose flame. Boruto entrusts his lantern to Yatsume and only raises the gate with help from Kiseru and Namua. A burning-waste desert follows, where fans whip up a dust storm and the shinobi shield the civilians with their bodies, an old woman later offering Boruto her water in thanks.

The trial narrows to two slow elevators whose climb threatens to outlast the candles. Kiseru works out that hoarding stolen flames extends the survivors' time at the cost of others' lives, and the ruthless begin acting on it: Rokuro snuffs a girl's candle to claim it, and only three of the first elevator's riders emerge alive, Batta shaken with blood on her hand. Boruto instead recalls that a candle belongs to whoever holds it and has his group fuse their flames into one long candle they all grasp together, so everyone from the second elevator survives, amusing Oga, who returns them to the waiting room. Chasing the rail employee, Sarada and Mitsuki learn the passengers were made into experiment fodder before the man flees into a tunnel and sets off explosive tags that bring it down on himself, leaving the two horrified.

Episode 277 of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations belongs to the Labyrinth Game Arc. It aired in Japan on November 27, 2022, and in English on August 13, 2024. The opening theme is Kirarirari and the ending theme is Ladder.