"Lord Hokage, this is what we should be doing."
The three spoke in unison, without any needless courtesies. Every voice carried complete acceptance of their own responsibilities.
The Third nodded.
He picked up a document from the desk and went over the specific arrangements and precautions for the Chunin Ninja Exams with the three of them from beginning to end. They discussed everything from the exam procedures and emergency plans to the coded signals for communication between test sites, as well as how to handle potential provocations from ninja of other villages and sudden diplomatic disputes.
When the discussion ended, the three bowed slightly once more before leaving the Hokage Office one after another.
The footsteps in the corridor gradually faded away, and the office returned to its quiet stillness, filled only with smoke and the scent of old wooden furniture.
Hiruzen Sarutobi sat alone for a while, then habitually glanced once more at Naruto's peaceful sleeping face in the crystal ball.
Then he reached out and picked up the scroll ANBU had delivered earlier.
But his hand paused over the scroll's wax seal. He did not open it, because another document lay spread out at the corner of the desk. The few lines written on it drew his thoughts toward something more deserving of his attention.
These were partial records of communications between Sunagakure and Otogakure over the past few months, and one piece of intelligence concerned him greatly.
The Fourth Kazekage seemed to be making contact with someone, whether deliberately or not.
When Hiruzen Sarutobi saw that name, the hand holding his pipe paused slightly.
Outside the window, the sky was high and the clouds were pale.
The Chunin Ninja Exams were both a selection process and a game of power, and the undercurrents in this year's contest seemed far more turbulent than in previous years.
Hiruzen Sarutobi set down the intelligence report, relit his pipe, and sank into thought amid the rising smoke.
Inside the waterfall cave, Naruto had no idea that the proctor meeting for the Chunin Ninja Exams in the Hokage Office had ended.
He only knew it was about time to go back.
His mind locked onto the Flying Raijin Kunai in his apartment.
Whoosh!
The next second, Naruto appeared in his apartment bathroom.
The Shadow Clone Technique sensed his presence and drowsily walked into the bathroom.
After exchanging identities, Naruto returned the kunai hidden in the bathroom to his ninja tool pouch and lay down on the bed.
The moment his head touched the pillow, he fell asleep.
Over the next few days, Naruto went about his usual activities in the village during the day, occasionally chatting with Uncle Ichiraku about new ramen offerings.
At night, he used Flying Thunder God to travel to the waterfall cave and train alongside forty shadow clones.
Five days might not have been enough for an ordinary ninja to even become proficient at drawing the Flying Thunder God formula diagram.
But Naruto had forty shadow clones comprehending it simultaneously, equivalent to one person spending a full two hundred days tackling the same technique.
The intensive training of forty people made his memory integration before bed feel like a flood of information every day. After five days, Naruto had finally conquered all the most important breakthroughs.
First, he had mastered continuous teleportation with Flying Raijin Second Stage, switching coordinates multiple times in midair and changing his attack direction.
This improvement was crucial.
If Flying Thunder God First Stage gave him a teleportation tool, then Flying Raijin Second Stage gave him the fundamentals of dynamic spatial combat.
Now, relying solely on the combination of his taijutsu speed and Flying Thunder God, he could create devastating positional confusion for an opponent in direct combat without using Golden Body Mode.
As for formula inscription speed, after five days of tens of thousands of rapid touch-and-inscribe training sessions each day, Naruto could now carve a complete five-pointed star mark onto an opponent's body in the instant their taijutsu clashed.
Although his precision and concealment had yet to reach the level of his father, Minato Namikaze, whose marks were permanent the instant they were inscribed and impossible to detect unless activated.
His marking speed had already improved enormously. He was heading in the right direction now; all that remained was patient practice, and sooner or later, he would catch up.
As for Golden Body Mode, over those five days, he had raised the coordination and stability of his speed, strength, perception, and Chakra arms by a major step.
The Chakra arms showed the clearest improvement. He could now summon arms from eight to ten different directions at once for combined attacks.
During that time, the Nine-Tails woke up twice. Once, it complained that the pose he used to summon the arms was not imposing enough. The other time, it yawned and said, "Hmph, you're using Golden Body Mode passably enough. You haven't disgraced my Chakra!"
On the final night, Naruto did not continue training.
He stood in the cave for a moment, looking around at the small pile of practice kunai at his feet and the Flying Thunder God marks fixed into the rock wall. Then his hand brushed across the sixteen kunai engraved with five-pointed star marks in his ninja tool pouch before he withdrew his gaze.
As he left the waterfall area, he looked up at the gray-white dawn already spreading across the horizon and let out a soft breath.
Since transmigrating here, he had finally transformed himself from a transmigrator relying on the plot and instinct to survive into someone who truly held a few trump cards on the land of Konoha.
Morning
Naruto stood in the spotless bathroom of his apartment, studying his new appearance in the mirror.
His hair had grown a little longer. It was no longer cropped close in a short buzz cut, but had reached a length where a few strands could naturally fall along either side of his cheeks.
He brushed the golden bangs on his forehead upward so they no longer covered it, revealing his full eyebrows and forehead protector.
He had tied the dark blue cloth band of his forehead protector neatly, making it look completely different from the crooked way he used to wear it.
He had also completely changed his clothes.
Gone was the orange tracksuit jacket. In its place was a sleek black high-collared bodysuit, tailored to fit without feeling tight, perfectly accentuating the lines of his joints and muscles.
Over it, he wore a short white trench coat without the buttons fastened. Its hem drifted lightly behind him, creating a sharp visual contrast with the pure black clothes beneath.
He had also changed into a pair of black ninja shoes, their soles more durable than his previous pair and better suited for high-speed movement.
Naruto smiled at his reflection.
If not for the three distinctive whisker-like marks still on his face, the blond-haired, blue-eyed figure in the mirror, dressed in black with a white coat, would have been the spitting image of a younger Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze.
No.
Compared to Minato Namikaze's steady, understated gentleness, Naruto's features and eyes held an extra edge of youthful boldness.
Naruto had not originally intended to be so conspicuous, but strength gave him confidence.
With the combat teleportation ability of Flying Raijin Second Stage combined with Golden Body Mode, revealing a few changes and letting the outside world speculate would instead make it easier for him to seize the initiative.
Besides, he was going to become Hokage someday. If he kept cowering and hiding himself, he would never be able to carry the Hokage haori on his back.
True control had never meant avoiding discovery. It meant changing himself, standing before everyone, and leaving them with no choice but to accept it.
After adjusting his forehead protector, Naruto opened the apartment door with an unhurried stride.
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