"Ultra Beast Force," Lost Lambs

The development of human society was not a zero-sum cycle of good and evil endlessly replaying itself, but a process of suppressing evil and promoting good...

Listening to Uzumaki Menma's explanation, Little Naruto scratched his head, seeming to understand but not quite.

Beside them, Nine-Tails lay sprawled in his cage, delighted to stir up trouble as he sneered, "Idiot, you can't even understand something this simple. I, the old man..."

But before he could finish—

"You're a big fox who's lived for thousands of years and calls himself an old man, yet you still can't recognize all the characters. How dare you laugh at someone else?"

Smack!

"Awoo!"

Nine-Tails clutched his rear and howled indignantly, "Brat, you hit me again?!"

Damn it! Even the Old Man never hit me!

Nine-Tails was just about to start shouting, but when he saw the Golden Chain twitching restlessly behind Menma, he wisely lowered his voice.

He muttered resentfully, "I... I just don't want to learn. It's not like I really can't learn it."

"Is that so?"

Menma asked with an amused smile, "Then tell me, what does 'Without learning propriety, one cannot stand' mean in the Ranting Analects?"

Nine-Tails failed to notice the emphasis in his words. Instead, delight instantly appeared on his face.

You actually dare look down on me? You brought this on yourself! Don't blame me!

"Too easy!"

He raised his fox head, nostrils pointed skyward, his tone brimming with confidence. "It means, if you don't learn propriety, how can you be a person?"

"Very good. Congratulations..."

At that, two streams of white vapor puffed from Nine-Tails' nostrils, vividly demonstrating what it meant to hold one's head high in triumph.

Then Menma abruptly changed his tone.

"Wrong!"

With another crisp smack, the expression on Nine-Tails' face froze completely.

"How is that possible?! I definitely remembered it right! You're cheating!!"

Watching the fox jump around in fury, Menma patted Little Naruto, who was itching to join in. "You tell him. What does that sentence mean?"

"It means that if you don't learn proper manners and respect me, I'll beat you until you can't stand!"

"What about, 'If one hears the Way in the morning, one may die in the evening'?"

"If I find out the road to your house in the morning, I can rush there that night and chop you to death!"

Without realizing it, Little Naruto wore the same delighted smile as Menma.

Especially when he saw the big fox's dumbfounded, bewildered expression, his smile became even more gleeful.

"All right, enough fooling around."

In the blink of an eye, Menma had changed back into his previous outfit. He patted Little Naruto's shoulder. "Naruto, you've finished today's homework. You can choose to watch three episodes of anime to relax, or you can go back."

"Of course I want to watch anime! I want to keep watching 'Ultra Beast Force'!"

Menma narrowed his eyes slightly and nodded. With a thought, he turned on the Television beside them.

On the screen appeared a man dressed in black armor and a cloak, accompanied by a mature, magnetic voice.

"...Love can create everything, and it can destroy everything. When you use love to protect the flock from the wolves, then to the wolves, that love is destruction, because they will starve to death as a result."

"That is how this world is. Either the weak wolves starve to death, or the weak sheep are bitten to death. Perhaps this world is too cruel, but that is also why it is beautiful..."

"Yeah!!"

Little Naruto cheered as he sat on a small stool, propping his cheeks in his hands as he watched the anime.

Like a sponge, he frantically absorbed all kinds of "knowledge," gradually shaping his understanding of the world, humanity, and himself.

Of course, Ultra Beast Force did not exist in this world, and there certainly could not truly be a Television inside the Sealing Space.

Menma had fabricated all of it using the Crimson Moon Book, combined with his own memories.

It would have been somewhat difficult to accomplish outside, but inside the Sealing Space, it was simple.

During the first month after meeting Menma, Little Naruto did not rush into the Sealing Space every day as he did now.

He only occasionally came to chat with Menma and Nine-Tails. Most of the time, he played the "you know, I know" game with the Third Hokage.

He still wanted to be treated equally by the villagers, and naively believed that Third Grandfather could help him achieve that.

Uzumaki Menma had never said much from beginning to end. Even when Nine-Tails lost patience and asked about it, Menma merely smiled meaningfully and replied:

"When I open the lambs' cage, they only stand there, their eyes full of confusion."

Until one month ago, when Little Naruto "discovered" the Third Hokage's identity and made that request of him.

The Third Hokage agreed, and he did indeed "explain" things to the villagers.

He clearly told them that Naruto was not the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox and that they did not need to fear or reject him so much.

"Since it's all been explained, I should be able to make friends now, right?"

After receiving the news, Little Naruto excitedly ran out of his room, only for reality to dump a bucket of cold water over his head.

The villagers did stop slandering Naruto behind his back, but they adopted an even colder attitude.

—Ignoring him.

Whenever Little Naruto approached, no matter how lively the atmosphere had been, it would instantly fall silent, and the crowd would slowly disperse.

In the end, he was left standing there alone in a daze.

A person experienced three deaths in their life. The first was death of the body, the second was death of meaning, and the third was death in society.

Yet some people bypassed the first two deaths while still young and went straight into the third: social death.

Little Naruto's treatment in the village had not improved in the slightest. It had even entered a more awkward and painful stage.

From the "incarnation of the demon fox" hated by everyone, he became "trouble" and "trash" that people avoided like the plague.

"Menma-nii, did I bring them trouble? Why did this happen?"

When Little Naruto entered the Sealing Space with a miserable face and asked Menma that question—

A smile appeared on Menma's face.

He understood that the Third Hokage had completely lost. There would be no coming back from this.

From then on, Menma took out a stack of books, conjured a Television, and began guiding Little Naruto to establish a proper worldview.

Little Naruto had only tried living like this for three days before he immediately became hopelessly addicted.

Here, no one looked at him with those hateful, venomous eyes. Only Menma-nii and the big fox accompanied him, chatting and playing with him.

He could learn countless interesting things and stories here, and after finishing his homework, he could watch anime even more interesting than books.

If Menma had not assigned Little Naruto after-school homework, then what the Third Hokage Old Man saw would not have been a shut-in.

It would have been a withdrawn child sitting by the window every day in a daze, looking as though he had mental problems.

"Menma brat."

Nine-Tails leaned his head close to Menma's side and said gravely, "Is this your plan? To stay here and keep playing nanny to the little brat?"