The Byakugan Appears! Seeing Through Every Illusion

The enormous water dragon, formed from high-density chakra and a massive torrent, roared with enough force to tear steel apart as it reached Naruto in almost an instant!

The salty, fishy mist hit him head-on, and the gale made his clothes flap wildly.

The terrifying pressure contained within that gaping maw was enough to make any genin wet their pants on the spot!

Yet Naruto merely stood there quietly. Faced with this world-destroying attack, he did not even blink.

Instead, an extremely mocking sneer curled across his lips.

"Is that all?"

"Kakashi-sensei, your faucet isn't shut tight enough."

That airy tone, as though he were discussing the weather, nearly made Kakashi, who had just finished his hand seals and was panting 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 in his sky-colored eyes vanished in an instant, replaced by two strange pupils as pure white as jade, without the slightest impurity!

Veins bulged at the corners of his eyes like coiling dragons, savage and terrifying!

"That is—"

In the forest, Sasuke, who was desperately maintaining his Sharingan, had his pupils suddenly shrink to dangerous pinpoints!

Pure Byakugan, activated!

Buzz—!

In Naruto's vision, the entire world instantly changed!

All color faded away, leaving heaven and earth in sharply divided black and white.

The savage, roaring water dragon before him was instantly deconstructed, its every bit of grandeur vanishing!

It was no longer some terrifying A-rank ninjutsu. It had become a shoddy construction project full of holes, composed of countless thick and thin blue chakra threads...

"Flashy, but useless."

Naruto curled his lip and could not even be bothered to dodge.

Under the Byakugan's insight, he clearly saw a point along the water dragon's winding "neck" where the chakra flow was most sluggish and its structure the weakest.

There!

His body, wreathed in emerald-green aura, sank slightly. Rather than retreating, Naruto advanced. He clenched his right fist, and the punch that combined the monstrous strength of a perfect Sage Body with the triple explosive power of the Eight Gates shot forth like a tiny sun!

No flashy technique, no unnecessary movement.

Only the purest, most extreme, most unreasonable violence!

One punch struck dead on target!

"Boom—!!!"

It was like a knife slicing open the hose of a high-pressure water cannon!

The enormous water dragon, which had been roaring majestically just a moment 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 upon tons of water, freed from chakra's restraint, became a torrential downpour that poured from the sky, drenching the entire training ground to the bone!

And Hatake Kakashi... to the bone as well.

However, Hatake Kakashi was, after all, a battle-hardened elite jonin!

The combat instincts honed on the edge of death overwhelmed all his shock and horror at that moment!

Almost at the same instant the water dragon exploded, 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 heavy earthen wall carved with a dog-head relief rose from the ground, positioning itself precisely between him and Naruto. Splattering mud and shattered rocks mixed with the rainstorm as it tried to delay Naruto for even one second.

This was the combat discipline of the "Copy Ninja": use every available condition to gain time to breathe and form seals!

But the one he faced was an utterly unreasonable monster!

"Too slow."

Naruto's icy voice seemed to pierce through the thick earthen wall.

He did not even stop moving. His fist, blazing with emerald-green aura, struck out again!

"Boom—!!!"

The supposedly impregnable Earth Style Wall was as fragile as a dried cracker before that punch.

The force of the punch alone filled the wall with spiderweb-like cracks. The instant the fist itself touched it, the entire wall exploded into fragments!

Rubble flew everywhere. In the instant his vision was obscured, Kakashi's figure turned into a rain-soaked wooden log with a bang—the Substitution Technique!

The real Kakashi had already appeared atop a tree trunk more than ten meters away. He panted heavily, but his hands moved at the absolute limit.

He knew that he had no chance in close combat. He had to widen the distance!

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"

A massive fireball, trailing a blazing tail, ripped through the curtain of rain and screamed toward Naruto!

At the same time, Kakashi thrust out both hands, 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. Wrapping around the Great Fireball, they formed an all-encompassing, gapless net of death that combined flame and blades, completely sealing off every route Naruto could use to evade!

This was the battle wisdom of Konoha's number one technician: the combined application of ninjutsu!

Yet beneath Naruto's flawless white "god's-eye view," this seemingly inescapable assault was full of laughable openings.

Maintaining his Byakugan, he faced the oncoming storm of fire and steel without dodging. Instead, he took a step forward.

His body moved through the airtight barrage with a strange footwork that defied all physical logic.

The trajectory of every shuriken, the blast radius of the Great Fireball, the direction of its heat wave... the Byakugan predicted, analyzed, and perceived everything in advance!

He was like a ghost strolling leisurely through the rain. Flames blazed and iron howled around him, yet not a single spark or fragment of metal could touch 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 had been proud of had become a joke before this twelve-year-old boy!

No... he still had one last card!

Kakashi's breathing became incomparably heavy, and a trace of crazed resolve flashed through his eyes.

He suddenly reached up and, using all his strength, lifted the half-covered ninja forehead protector!

"Buzz!"

Within his 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 was enough to make countless powerful opponents flee at the very mention of it!

"Demonic Illusion: Shackling Stakes Technique!"

As long as he could disrupt him for one second... no!

Point one 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 pebble thrown into a still lake, before they immediately returned to calmness.

"Genjutsu? Kakashi-sensei, isn't your chakra control a little too crude?"

Naruto's slightly 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 recognize and reject this foreign power trying to disrupt its own chakra!

Visual genjutsu was nothing but a joke before the pure Byakugan!

Taijutsu, ninjutsu, genjutsu...

A complete, gapless... crushing defeat.

"Monster..."

Kakashi muttered. The light in the Sharingan he had been so proud of rapidly dimmed, replaced by lifeless silence.

At that moment, his final psychological defense completely collapsed.

He stood there blankly, letting the cold rain soak his mud-streaked silver hair and stream down from his chin.

His whole body looked like a statue that had been struck stupid by lightning.

His mind was flooded with endless What the hell? and What the fuck is this?

Seeing Kakashi's utterly broken expression, the green aura around Naruto slowly receded, though his pure Byakugan remained active.

A mischievous grin, like that of someone whose prank had succeeded, spread across his lips.

Oh? You're already breaking down?

This is barely the beginning.

Maintaining the Byakugan, he turned his gaze back toward Kakashi with great interest.

Under his "X-ray" vision, Kakashi's chakra flow, muscle and bone 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 shifted downward, finally... settling on the bulging ninja tool pouch at Kakashi's waist.

The Byakugan's terrifying penetrating vision instantly passed through the canvas and layers upon layers of kunai, shuriken, explosive tags...

In the end, it landed on two small books tucked into the deepest part of the pouch, carefully wrapped in several layers of oil paper and protected by a waterproof barrier.

Those colorful covers, those outrageously suggestive fonts, those illustrations that made one's blood boil at a glance...

Naruto's eyes suddenly lit up.

Oh ho!

Hidden in plain sight!

The most dangerous place was the safest place?

Kakashi-sensei, you really were an unassuming genius at hiding books!

Wasn't this the legendary... priceless treasure... Icha Icha Paradise?!

And judging by the exquisite gold-stamped craftsmanship of those covers and that one-of-a-kind illustration style...

Holy shit!

They were signed, limited, deluxe editions?!

Two of them?!

Naruto grinned, laughing like a three-hundred-pound child.

He felt that he had discovered a toy ten thousand times more interesting than stealing the bells!

While Kakashi was still questioning his entire life, and Sasuke and Sakura were still too shocked to breathe.

Naruto moved.

"Whoosh!"

His figure left behind a faint afterimage before vanishing in an instant!

"Not good!"

Kakashi's hair stood on end almost instinctively. He thought Naruto was launching another attack!

He subconsciously tried to leap backward and evade, but the agonizing pain throughout his body slowed him by half a beat!

Yet the expected world-destroying attack never came.

He only felt a light breeze pass behind him.

Then his waist suddenly felt lighter.

Kakashi: "???"

He stiffly lowered his head, bit by bit.

The ninja tool pouch that had accompanied him for more than a decade, containing all his worldly possessions and spiritual sustenance...

No!

It!

Was!

Gone!

Kakashi spun around.

Naruto stood at a safe distance more than ten meters behind him, casually weighing that familiar, damned ninja tool pouch in his hand!

A radiant, devilish smile that made Kakashi's heart pound hung on Naruto's face.

He had not used some Thousand Years of Death. That was too low-level.

True devastation of the heart meant completely destroying a man's faith from the 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 forgot your bag with me."