Faster! Faster! Run with everything you had! Speed up! Get back to Konoha as quickly as possible!
Ueno Kei raced forward with a savage expression, his entire body flickering rapidly within violet Thunderlight. To any ordinary person, he would have looked like a streak of purple lightning darting through the landscape.
Kei was frantic. After the Third Hokage's death, there were truly very few people left in this world whom he cared about. Naruto was one. The others were Jiraiya and Tsunade. It was not because they were fellow disciples.
Nor was it because Tsunade and Jiraiya had treated him especially well. It was a feeling of closeness. Jiraiya and Tsunade gave Kei the feeling of having a home, just as he had once given Naruto that same feeling.
Therefore, Kei would never allow anyone to harm his family. He did not want to experience that heart-piercing pain again. In this life, he had finally accepted the parents of his reincarnated self and finally wanted to begin living a normal life, only for cruel reality to mercilessly strip away that hope.
The Third Hokage's arrival had undoubtedly lit a guiding lamp along Kei's journey through life. Yet the old man had ultimately passed away. Ninja were supposedly meant to be rational, supposedly meant to restrain their emotions. No—in Kei's eyes, that was complete bullshit.
The existence of emotions was precisely what proved that a person was alive. Without thoughts, without feelings, could someone still be considered human? They would not even count as a living creature, because even animals possessed emotions—let alone humans, the most intelligent of all beings.
Once he had gained the power to protect those he wanted to protect—
Kei had sworn that he would never again allow anyone to hurt those close to him or those