Sovereign over the Hidden Leaf: All Attributes Maxed
As the morning light peeked through the gaps in the inn's curtains, the mechanical voice in Naruto's head finally rang.
Not just half a sentence, not an incomplete prompt, but a full, metallic-sounding system announcement.
[Ding. Detected that the host has completely shattered the psychological defenses of Konoha High Command and destroyed the old order. The first stage, "Sovereign over the Hidden Leaf," has been achieved, establishing hidden authority.]
Naruto didn't move. He leaned against the window, his azure eyes fixed on the gray-white line of light on the horizon, his hands in his pockets, his expression unchanged. He was used to this level of broadcasting. What truly made the corners of his mouth curl up slightly was the second one that popped up immediately afterward.
[Rewards awarded: Max level for all Chakra Nature Transformation – Wind, Lightning, Water, Fire, Earth, Yin, Yang.]
[Note: The host is exempt from the Hand Seals refining process. Combined with the Perfect Rasengan, any S-rank composite Ninjutsu can be instantly cast.]
He pulled his right hand out of his pocket, his five fingers slightly spread.
Five different colors of highly pure Chakra simultaneously lit up between his fingers—cyan wind, purple lightning, deep blue water, crimson fire, and earthen yellow rock—like five intertwined, materialized serpents of light, appearing and disappearing in his palm, illuminating the dimly lit morning room with dazzling, dappled light. A sense of oppression permeated the air, not murderous intent, not Chakra fluctuations, but a more primal weight, a weight emanating from life itself. The wooden planks in the corner emitted a faint cracking sound, and dust on the windowsill was shaken into suspended particles.
Naruto clenched his fist, and all five lights vanished simultaneously.
"Perfect." His voice was soft, tinged with a mocking laugh. "Those old foxes of Hidden Leaf, their backbone is thinner than paper. This ability—" He paused, pulling his other hand out of his pocket and cracking his knuckles, "Will come in handy in the upcoming situation."
In the next room, Jiraiya's snoring abruptly stopped at that moment.
It wasn't because of the system announcement—he couldn't hear it. It was because Jiraiya finally turned over, his half-open eyes glancing towards the corridor, and then he sprang up from the bed as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water on him.
Something's not right.
The moment he pushed open the door and rushed into the corridor, his foot stepped on a charred fragment. Looking down, he saw a fist-sized hole pierced through the middle of a wall at the end of the corridor by some force. The edges of the hole were blackened by high-temperature carbonization, and a faint, unique, sweet and pungent smell of Samehada lingered in the air.
Jiraiya walked along the corridor to the backyard of the post station.
The ground was littered with the remains of Hidden Sound. The walls bore the marks of intense Chakra clashes. A crater, over two meters in diameter, stretched from the ground to the outside of the wall, its walls sintered into a glassy state. Further away, on the ground lay a strange, dried blood-like mark—not blood, but remnants of some kind of spiritual backlash.
Itachi's traces. The remnants of Tsukuyomi after it was forcibly deflected.
Jiraiya suddenly turned his head and looked at Naruto was leaning against the door frame.
The blond boy stood with his hands in his pockets, his eyes languidly disdainful, as calm as if he had just woken up. But Jiraiya's pupils shrank to pinpoints—he recognized the intensity level of those Chakra remnants. This was not something Genin could leave behind. This wasn't even Jonin level.
"Last night—" Jiraiya's voice was a little hoarse, "the Akatsuki and Orochimaru's remnants came here?"
Naruto didn't even bother to lift his eyelids.
"Um."
"You solved it all by yourself?"
"Too noisy," Naruto said in a tone almost as if he were commenting on the Tenten, "Two waves of trash, I just wiped them all out."
Jiraiya's mouth opened slightly, but no sound came out. He crouched down and touched the sintered layer at the edge of the pit with his fingertip. The temperature had cooled, but the residual Chakra density gave his fingertip a slight tingling sensation. He then looked at the Hidden Sound corpses—not killed by Ninjutsu, but crushed by pure violence. And there were the marks left by Itachi—the backlash from the mental level. The fact that it could injure Itachi's Tsukuyomi meant...
He stood up and looked at the boy in front of him with an expression of complete unfamiliarity for the first time.
He wasn't looking at a student, a junior, or even a Genin. He was looking at someone who had completely broken free of their cage, someone whose existence he couldn't measure with experience.
Naruto ignored Jiraiya's absent-mindedness. He straightened up from the door frame with his hands in his pockets and turned around, his azure eyes devoid of any extra emotion.
"Find Tsunade within half a day."
This is not a discussion, not a request; it is a notification.
In that Jiraiya felt an absurd sense of suffocation—his body, his Chakra, his intuition, everything was telling him the same thing at the same time: the tall, blond boy in front of him was now issuing orders to him, one of the legendary Legendary Sannin, in a condescending manner.
He swallowed instinctively.
Then he nodded.
Almost simultaneously, in Hidden Leaf.
As the morning sun shone into the hundred-meter-deep sinkhole at the Root Base site, pierced by the "Morning Peacock Concentrated Detonation," Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura stood on the edge of the sinkhole, leaning on their canes, their hands trembling violently at the same frequency.
The rock walls were all in a state of high-temperature carbonization. Heat was still rising from the bottomless ruins. The remains of the ten-layer high-density Chakra defense barrier were embedded in the pit wall like charred paper scraps, and the traces of it being vaporized before it could even last a second were clearly visible.
Mitokado Homura's cold sweat dripped down his chin into the pit.
"Is this the destructive power Genin could unleash?!" His voice trembled. "Even when the Nine-Tails went berserk, it wasn't this terrifying!"
Utatane Koharu, didn't speak. She was calmer than Mitokado Homura, but the price of her calmness was a face as white as paper. She supported herself with her cane, closed her eyes briefly, and then spoke in a tone that left no room for negotiation:
"Immediately destroy all 'contingency plans to control Naruto Uzumaki.' From today onwards, no one is allowed to approach within half a block of the Uzumaki New Residence."
Mitokado Homura opened his mouth as if to say something, but in the end, he said nothing and simply nodded heavily.
The two exchanged a glance, their eyes conveying a tacit understanding that needed no words— Naruto's existence must not be allowed to threaten the Hidden Leaf, but neither should they provoke him with force. It wasn't that they didn't want to, but that they dared not.
Deep within the ruins, in a makeshift underground medical room, Shimura Danzō, his upper body wrapped in bandages, sat leaning against a stretcher.
Beneath the bandages on his right arm, Hashirama Cells were proliferating uncontrollably. Those Wood Release Cells, which should have been suppressed by Sealing Jutsu, seemed to be activated by some kind of fear, expanding wildly along the blood vessels, attempting to devour the host's body. Danzo's one eye was wide open, the veins on his forehead bulging, his right hand pressing tightly against his left shoulder, gritting his teeth as he used Sealing Jutsu layer by layer to suppress the ever-emerging Wood Release buds.
The physiological predicament was not caused by an external enemy, but by the aftershocks of Naruto's attack—the intense Yang flames ignited the Wood Release Source in his right arm, causing Hashirama Cells to go berserk due to some kind of stress response.
He forcefully nailed the last seal shut, and the bud finally stopped growing, but his right arm, from his fingers to his shoulder, was trembling and twitching uncontrollably.
Just recalling that destructive pillar of light that descended from the sky—that overwhelming, suffocatingly pure Yang Release Chakra —his right arm began to tremble as if it had its own memory.