At the edge of the forest lay a lake, its waters as still as death.
Karin crouched before the freshly piled grave, her voice hoarse from crying. Her whole body trembled, tears and snot smeared across her face.
Naruto had helped her cremate her mother and bury the ashes in this place filled with birdsong and flowers.
It was not as though he had never considered reviving her someday with Impure World Reincarnation and the Rinnegan.
But when he thought about the woman's life, some people had come into this world only to suffer. What was the point of dragging her back to go through it all again?
In this world of Naruto, death might instead have been a release.
"Kurama, I'm going to destroy this ninja world completely."
Naruto squatted on the riverbank, pinching a stone between his fingers before casually tossing it into the lake.
Ripples spread across the surface. He kept his voice low, as if whispering to the thing inside his body.
Over the past seven years, whenever the string in his heart was close to snapping, he would talk to the Nine-Tails.
After all, in his previous life, he had been a washed-up webnovel writer, the kind who made a living pounding away at a keyboard.
Seven years of isolation, exclusion, and bullying had long fattened the violence festering inside him.
The Nine-Tails lay inside its sealed cage, too lazy even to raise its eyelids. Its tone dripped with mockery. "Aren't you humans all like this?"
A layer of red Nine-Tails Chakra covered Naruto's face, while flesh and skin slowly regenerated. Only half his face had healed by now, leaving him looking like a zombie.
"It's different."
Naruto suddenly chuckled.
"People need something to believe in."
When he had first arrived in this world, he