Land of Fire, Konoha. The sun rose as usual.
Inside an apparently unremarkable house, a father and son sat at a breakfast table, staring wide-eyed at each other.
Mitokado Satoru watched, expression unchanged, as his father's face once again shifted rapidly from normal to red, then toward livid blue.
Soft dark-brown hair stuck up carelessly, framing a round face and a pair of bright, lively eyes. He wore a dark-blue short-sleeved shirt—
The child looked obedient and adorable.
He quickly finished breakfast and glanced at the clock on the wall.
"Hmm, Dad's work time is almost here."
He expertly got up, dashed back to his room on the second floor, shut the door, and completed the whole sequence in one smooth motion.
Yawning, Satoru casually made a hand sign and uttered several strange syllables. Brilliant purple sparks flickered at his fingertips.
A large book with an unusual cover, glowing with a gorgeous pale-purple radiance, slowly materialized in the air before him.
Nodding in satisfaction, Satoru opened the book and placed it on the desk. He covered his ears with both hands and began reading intently.
"3, 2, 1..."
Right on cue, his father's furious roar came from downstairs:
"Satoru! You little brat! What the hell is going through that head of yours?!"
"Your question is complete nonsense! Is that how ninjutsu is supposed to be used?! Stop messing around!"
Downstairs, before the breakfast table, Konoha's senior advisor—
Mitokado Homura, whose status, strength, and wisdom were said to rival those of the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, angrily took off his glasses, breathed on them, then grabbed the tablecloth and scrubbed them viciously.
He had been too agitated just now. The fingers he used to adjust his glasses had trembled so badly that he poked the lens.
As the advisor with the highest standing in the history of the Mitokado clan, this was not the first time Homura had been angered to this state by his son recently.
Yet as he watched his glasses become increasingly smudged, the corners of his mouth rose slightly despite himself.
He was merely covering up his embarrassment.
Although he was Konoha's senior advisor, the Second Hokage's direct disciple, and the Third Hokage's close comrade, Homura possessed formidable strength and wisdom recognized by the jonin. Still, there was one thing that could not be changed—
He was a traditional ninja, and the heavy responsibility of being a senior advisor required him to prioritize stability in all matters.
Even when educating his son, he was no exception.
But his considerable wisdom told him that it was a good thing for young people to ask questions.
Wasn't the current, abundant system of ninjutsu created by countless ninja predecessors with wild and ingenious ideas?
Still... wasn't his son's thinking a little too unrestrained?
He was only a few years old, yet he was already coming up with such dangerous ideas!
"How to use the intense pain of Fire Release to stimulate the body, thereby unlocking potential and achieving speed beyond one's limits..."
Homura twitched as he put on his increasingly blurry glasses, grabbed the bread in front of him, and took a vicious bite.
"This is utter nonsense! Even I wouldn't dare cast Fire Release directly on myself. Earth Release would be more reasonable..."
"I thought that after his idea about 'the feasibility of casting the Transformation Technique on an enemy,' and the even more ridiculous one before that, he'd calm down a little."
Upstairs, Mitokado Satoru lowered the hands covering his ears.
"Tch, stubborn old man."
"This is a serious academic question... Fundamentally, ninjutsu isn't all that different from magic. By the Fourth Shinobi World War, weren't all those old men Archmages?"
"Did fans call them 'Naruto Mages' for nothing?"
Satoru let out a long breath. Being transported into Konoha's upper ranks had put quite a bit of pressure on him.
He had been a well-behaved child born in a peaceful era, someone who had never even gotten into a fight growing up. His greatest hobbies had been staying home to watch anime and play games...
The only time he had shown any backbone in his previous life was when his idiot boss tried to make him take the blame, so he quit on him.
Given his father Mitokado Homura's strength and status, Satoru had been identified early on as having outstanding ninja talent. Becoming a jonin in the future should not have been a problem.
But the problem was that this world was far too brutal.
Going to war before the age of ten and all that...
Satoru had watched some of the Naruto anime before, but only up to before Shippuden.
The huge amount of anime-original flashback content had seriously killed his motivation to keep up with it, so he switched to One Piece... Then Naruto ended before he ever remembered to catch up.
Still, the overwhelming amount of information from crossover novels, Bilibili, Zhihu, Tieba, and other places meant Mitokado Satoru knew roughly what happened in the main storyline, though he did not know the details.
Keywords: the handsome Akatsuki crew, a bag of rice carried up several floors, Lord Madara the dancing king, Lord Itachi the little-brother fanatic, Eight Gates Might Guy, Orochimaru the scientist, Danzo the King of Blame, the tsundere Kurama, Obito's "I won—ugh," Fourth Hokage 666, Kakashi the Five-Five Split, the Talk-no-Jutsu Savior, Black Zetsu with his love-X fetish, bloodlines are supreme, alien Otsutsuki...
And all those bizarrely overpowered eyeballs.
Was this really a world where a harmless socialist intellectual was supposed to live?
Satoru had agonized over this for a full five years as a child.
Until...
"Luckily..."
Mitokado Satoru turned another page of the large book before him. The mysterious symbols on it flickered with shifting light.
"The Book of Medivh, Azeroth's strongest spellbook... But this inscription..."
Inscription: "To the new Guardian, Khadgar, my trust who is no longer young—Echo of Medivh."
"So this is a remake?"
Ever since his fifth birthday, when he had entered his mental space by chance while sleeping and discovered this unusual spellbook, he understood—
For a weak, harmless intellectual, the means to survive in this dangerous world had arrived.
Azeroth was the world he knew best. That certain blue-clad class, known as the "developers' favorite," was also the class most beloved by law-abiding, righteous players like him.
No need to spend money on food or drink, convenient for carrying low-level characters and making money, decent attack power, NPC backing strong enough to look impressive...
Even among those devoted to other classes, how many had never played a mage?
Still...
"Ninjas, like mages, are high-damage, low-health classes. They snap like crackers."
"Therefore, the first priority for surviving in the Shinobi World—staying alive!"
With the help of The Book of Medivh, Mitokado Satoru had successfully obtained the foundation of a mage's existence these past few days—Arcane Power, one of Azeroth's six primal forces.
Arcane Power was the force wielded by the Titans of Order to create worlds, and it possessed all kinds of unimaginable applications.
From a mage's Fireball Technique to a Titan's world-creating power, all were manifestations of Arcane Power—
That was right. Fire, frost, lightning, earth, and even life magic could all be shaped with Arcane Power.
Simply put, according to The Book of Medivh, a mage cast spells by using Arcane Power under his control to "knead" the corresponding elements into whatever form he wanted.
Archmage Khadgar had loved kneading Lightning Bolts when he was young—
If they wanted to, they could even forcibly knead out a Holy Light spell... provided they had a Holy Light battery.
For mages, Arcane Power was the foundation. Everything else was merely a side path.
And magic did not have the elemental counters supposedly found in ninjutsu.
Satoru rested his chin on his hand, letting his thoughts wander. The Book of Medivh mainly recorded arcane magic, making it a thoroughly orthodox spellbook.
As a remake, this spellbook, whose commemorative significance was obviously greater, still followed an apprentice-protection mechanism where stronger users could see more content...
It had even added plenty of strange anecdotes and snarky commentary for entertainment.
But in the Shinobi World, overly conspicuous arcane magic could not be used openly from the start. Arcane Explosion, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Orb, and the like were too flashy. Less conspicuous spells, however, could work.
Likewise, revealing ice magic in the Mitokado clan, which possessed no special Kekkei Genkai, would bring enormous trouble.
Then, apart from conventional ninjutsu, the only viable initial choice was fire magic.
So the issue returned to the beginning.
"One of fire magic's powerful life-saving skills—"
"Scorching Swiftness!"
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Party's founding~ New book, please bookmark~
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