The massive water dragon, formed from high-density chakra and an immense torrent of water, roared with enough force to tear steel apart as it charged Naruto in an instant!
The salty stench of water hit him head-on, while the gale whipped his clothes around him.
The terrifying pressure contained within those bloodthirsty jaws was enough to make any Genin wet himself on the spot!
Yet Naruto Uzumaki simply stood there calmly. Facing this world-ending attack, he did not even blink.
Instead, an exceedingly mocking sneer curled across his lips.
"Is that it?"
"Kakashi-sensei, looks like you didn't turn off your faucet properly."
That casual tone, as though he were discussing the weather, nearly made Kakashi, who had just finished forming his hand seals and was gasping heavily in the distance, cough up blood!
The next second, just as the water dragon was about to swallow him, Naruto slowly raised his head.
A sudden change occurred!
The blue faded from his sky-colored eyes in an instant, replaced by two strange pupils as pure white as jade, without a single trace of impurity!
Veins bulged at the corners of his eyes like coiling dragons, fierce and terrifying!
"That is—"
In the forest, Sasuke, who was forcing his Sharingan to its limit, had his pupils suddenly contract into the most dangerous pinpoints!
Pure Byakugan, activate!
Bzzzt—!
In Naruto's vision, the entire world instantly changed!
All colors faded away, and heaven and earth became a sharply divided world of black and white.
The roaring, savage water dragon before him was instantly deconstructed, its entire imposing presence vanishing without a trace!
It was no longer some terrifying A-rank ninjutsu. It had become a shoddy mess riddled with holes, made up of countless thick and thin blue chakra lines...
"All flash, no substance."
Naruto curled his lip, not even bothering to dodge.
Under the Byakugan's insight, he clearly saw that at the winding "neck" of the water dragon lay a point where the chakra flow was most sluggish and the structure was weakest.
There!
His body, wreathed in emerald flames, sank slightly. Rather than retreating, Naruto charged forward, clenching his right fist. That fist, combining the Monster Strength of the Perfect Sage Body with the triple explosive power of the Eight Gates, shot out like a tiny sun!
There were no flashy moves, no unnecessary motions.
Only the purest, most extreme, most unreasonable violence!
One punch struck dead center!
"BOOM—!!!"
It was like a knife slicing open the hose of a high-pressure water cannon!
The enormous water dragon, which had been roaring so majestically just a second ago, did not even have time to cry out before exploding the instant it touched Naruto's fist!
Its massive body disintegrated on the spot!
Tons of water, freed from chakra's restraints, turned into a torrential downpour that crashed from the sky, drenching the entire training ground with a bone-chilling splash!
And Kakashi Hatake, too... got soaked to the bone.
However, Kakashi Hatake was still a battle-hardened elite Jonin!
The combat instincts forged on the edge of death overwhelmed all his shock and horror in that instant!
Almost at the very moment the water dragon burst apart, his body, slightly weakened from casting an A-rank ninjutsu, forcibly tensed. His hands formed seals before his chest at lightning speed!
"Earth Release: Earth Style Wall!"
Rumble!
A thick earthen wall carved with a dog-head relief rose from the ground, precisely blocking the space between him and Naruto. Mud and shattered stones mixed with the pouring rain, trying to delay Naruto for even one second.
This was the combat discipline of the Copy Ninja: use every available condition to buy himself time to catch his breath and form seals!
But the opponent he faced was a completely unreasonable monster!
"Too slow."
Naruto's cold voice seemed to pierce through the thick earthen wall.
He did not even slow down. His fist, burning with emerald flames, shot out once more!
"BOOM—!!!"
The supposedly indestructible Earth Style Wall was as fragile as a dried cracker before this punch.
The force of the punch alone covered the wall in spiderweb cracks. The instant Naruto's fist itself made contact, the entire wall exploded into pieces!
Rocks flew everywhere. In the instant his vision was obscured, Kakashi's figure went poof and turned into a rain-soaked log—the Substitution Technique!
The real Kakashi had already appeared on a tree trunk more than ten meters away. He panted heavily, but his hands moved with extreme speed.
He knew full well that he had no chance in close combat. He had to widen the distance!
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"
A massive fireball, trailing a scorching tail of flame, tore through the curtain of rain and howled toward Naruto!
At the same time, both of Kakashi's hands moved, firing dozens of shuriken in a triangular formation!
"Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique!"
In the blink of an eye, the dozens of shuriken multiplied into hundreds, even thousands, in midair. Wrapped around the Great Fireball, they formed an all-encompassing, inescapable net of death combining flame and blades, completely sealing off every route Naruto could use to evade!
This was the battle wisdom of Hidden Leaf's foremost technician: the combined application of ninjutsu!
Yet beneath Naruto's flawless white, godlike perspective, this seemingly airtight attack was full of laughable openings.
Maintaining his Byakugan, he faced the storm of fire and steel raining down upon him. Not only did he refuse to evade, he stepped forward instead.
His body moved through the impenetrable barrage with a strange footwork that defied all physical common sense.
The path of every shuriken, the blast radius of the Great Fireball, the direction of its heat waves... the Byakugan predicted, analyzed, and perceived everything in advance!
He was like a ghost strolling leisurely through the rain. Flames soared and metal screamed all around him, yet not a single spark or shard of iron touched even the corner of his clothes!
Not a scratch!
When Naruto passed through the aftermath of the explosion and raised his head again, Kakashi, standing atop the tree trunk, finally felt an emotion called despair.
Taijutsu, ninjutsu, long-range suppression... every method he took pride in had become a joke before this twelve-year-old boy!
No... he still had one final card!
Kakashi's breathing became incomparably heavy, and a flicker of crazed resolve crossed his eyes.
He suddenly reached up and, using all his strength, lifted the ninja forehead protector that partially covered his eye!
"Bzzzt!"
Within the scarlet eye, three tomoe slowly spun. A strange ocular power instantly locked onto Naruto's eyes!
This was his trump card, the Sharingan genjutsu that struck fear into countless powerful opponents!
"Demonic Illusion: Shackling Stakes Technique!"
If he could interfere with him for one second... no!
Even one-tenth of a second would be enough!
Yet just as that genjutsu chakra was about to invade Naruto's brain, a barely noticeable ripple passed through Naruto's pure white pupils, like a small stone dropped into a tranquil lake, before they immediately returned to complete stillness.
"Genjutsu? Kakashi-sensei, isn't your chakra control a little too crude?"
Naruto's faintly mocking voice became the final straw that broke the camel's back.
The Byakugan saw through every illusion!
Not only could it see through chakra flow, it could instantly identify and reject this foreign power attempting to disrupt its user's chakra!
Visual genjutsu was nothing but a joke before the Pure Byakugan!
Taijutsu, ninjutsu, genjutsu...
A complete, inescapable... crushing defeat.
"Monster..."
Kakashi muttered. The light in the Sharingan he had always taken pride in quickly dimmed, replaced by utter silence.
His final psychological defense crumbled completely in that instant.
He stood there blankly, letting the cold rain soak his mud-streaked silver hair and stream down from his chin.
His entire body resembled a statue that had been struck stupid by lightning.
His mind contained nothing but endless what the hell? and what the fuck is this? flashing wildly across it!
Seeing Kakashi's utterly broken expression, the green flames around Naruto slowly receded, though his Pure Byakugan remained active.
A mischievous grin of successful prankery curved across his lips.
Oh? You're already broken?
We've barely even started.
Maintaining his Byakugan, he turned his gaze back toward Kakashi with great interest.
Under his X-ray vision, Kakashi's chakra flow, muscle and skeletal structure, even the speed of his heartbeat, were all laid bare.
However, Naruto's gaze did not linger on any of that combat data.
His eyes slowly lowered, finally... settling on the bulging ninja tool pouch at Kakashi's waist.
The Byakugan's terrifying penetrating vision instantly passed through canvas and layers upon layers of kunai, shuriken, Explosive Tags...
Finally, it landed on two small books at the very bottom of the pouch, carefully wrapped in several layers of oil paper and protected by a waterproof barrier.
Those colorful covers, those outrageously suggestive letters, those illustrations that made one's blood surge at a glance...
Naruto's eyes suddenly lit up.
Oh ho!
A blind spot right under the lamp!
The most dangerous place was the safest place?
Kakashi-sensei, you really were an unassuming little genius at hiding books!
Wasn't this the legendary... priceless treasure... Icha Icha Paradise?!
And judging by the exquisite gilded craftsmanship on the cover, that one-of-a-kind illustration style...
Holy shit!
They were author-signed, limited-edition hardcover copies?!
Two of them?!
Naruto grinned, smiling like a three-hundred-pound child.
He felt like he had discovered a toy ten thousand times more interesting than stealing the bells!
Just as Kakashi was still questioning his entire life, while Sasuke and Sakura were still too shocked to breathe.
Naruto moved.
"Whoosh!"
His figure left behind a faint afterimage before vanishing instantly!
"Not good!"
Kakashi's hair stood on end almost instinctively, thinking Naruto was launching another attack!
He reflexively tried to leap backward and evade, but the agony racking his body slowed him by half a beat!
Yet the world-ending attack he expected never came.
He only felt a breeze brush past behind him.
Then, his waist suddenly felt lighter.
Kakashi: "???"
Stiffly, jerk by jerk, he lowered his head.
The ninja tool pouch that had accompanied him for more than a decade, containing all his worldly possessions, his life-saving tools, and his spiritual nourishment...
No!
It was!
Gone!
Kakashi suddenly turned around.
Naruto Uzumaki stood more than ten meters behind him at a safe distance, casually weighing that familiar, damned ninja tool pouch in his hand!
A brilliant, devilish smile that made Kakashi's heart pound with dread hung on Naruto's face.
He had not used Thousand Years of Death. That was too low-level.
True emotional devastation came from completely destroying a man's faith on a spiritual level!
"Kakashi-sensei."
Naruto shook the ninja tool pouch in his hand and slowly spoke in a tone that was lighthearted to the point of cruelty.
"You left your bag with me."
Before you continue