Knight

Kawaki jolts awake from a nightmare of Code taunting him over being Isshiki's chosen vessel in their youth. Amado corrects his assumption that the label no longer applies: with Isshiki's soul gone, possession is impossible, yet Kawaki's Otsutsuki body means he will forever remain the vessel, a truth he must accept. When Kawaki threatens him, the unbothered Amado picks apart the scheme to brand Code with Boruto's Kama, granting that it is sound in theory but doubting it in practice, since no one knows whether Code can even take a second Kama, and the slow conversion would give Code time to strike first in revenge for Isshiki. What Kawaki truly needs, Amado concludes, is greater strength. Kawaki asks whether Naruto could put Code down the way he handled Delta, though privately he suspects that, robbed of Kurama, Naruto would lose a one-on-one bout.

Reading Kawaki's hunger for power since losing his own seal, Amado offers to forge him a Kama that serves purely as a weapon, an idea Kawaki finds outrageous given how he loathes the mark. Amado argues that using any tool to reach a goal is simply rational, then leaves the choice in his hands. At Boro's cult, Ada gauges Kawaki's anguish and asks Code to spare Naruto, but Code refuses, insisting Isshiki's killers face punishment; Kawaki alone is his exception, made for her sake, which is why he will not relent on the Hokage. Ada asks that her role stay hidden from Kawaki so he will not come to hate her. Rather than rush out, she prefers to wait, confident that once an opening appears among the heavily guarded targets, her Senrigan will catch it. Code muses that removing his limiters would let him overcome both Naruto and Sasuke.

Ada admits her own combat is limited to basic taijutsu because she hates pain, and a charmed Code calls her delicate while Bug frets that she is softening him; she names him her knight and promises to introduce a second one. Elsewhere, a snapping Kawaki is steadied by Shikadai, who urges him to hold his head high in the village Naruto made his home. Ada then has Bug wake Daemon, her cyborg younger brother and the only non-Otsutsuki who could kill her, whose power turns every attacking guard's own blow back on them. Sumire probes Amado's real motives, sensing his interest in Kawaki runs deeper than concern, and he privately dismisses her as either very clever or, more likely, foolish. A note on the title observes that the kanji would ordinarily be read as kishi.