Three Years of a Three-Year-Old Jinchuriki's One-Kakashi Power

Three years passed in the blink of an eye.

Inside a rundown tenement, Naruto stood on a small stool to reach the stove, his height barely passing a meter.

Instant ramen was something he could cook with his eyes closed, having grown sick to death of it.

Eating it made him want to vomit the moment he smelled the flavor.

Ever since Naruto showed signs of forming memories, he was thrown into this apartment all by himself.

His mind had retained things since birth, and the first few years he at least lived in the house Minato and his wife traded their lives for.

During the first two years of his birth, Hiruzen Sarutobi sent a babysitter to take care of his food, drink, and daily needs.

At that time Naruto was no different from a normal kid, growing just like he should.

The babysitter occasionally carried him outside to bask in the sun, and the story on the tongues of people outside was that this kid lost his parents on the night the Nine-Tails rampaged, making him an orphan.

By the time Naruto grew to over two years old and began showing signs of memory, he was immediately chased out of Minato's house.

He was shoved directly into a tenement built for war orphans.

Heaven knows how a toddler just over two years old managed to survive in the original story.

Naruto only remembered that his body hadn't reached half a meter tall back then, gnawing on hard bread all day and eating instant ramen as meals.

It was also from that time that the fact he had the Nine-Tails locked inside his body spread through the village.

Naruto truly witnessed how foul human nature could be.

Isolating him, cursing him, pushing him out—the deepest malice in the Naruto World came crashing down on him headfirst.

He couldn't understand how a two-year-old kid who understood nothing could grow up into the saintly temperament seen in the original story while stuck in such a quagmire.

A normal person would have long since turned into a revenge-crazed lunatic whose brain was scorched by hatred, much like Sasuke or Gaara.

Having lived two lives, Li Luo still had to run into the seal every day to talk to Kurama, pouring out his pent-up emotions.

At this stage he was far too weak; the moment he showed anything amiss, Hiruzen Sarutobi wouldn't even blink an eye before listening to Danzo and stuffing Naruto into the Root to be brainwashed.

There were bad things, and there were good things too.

Even though no one cared for him anymore, he could finally touch the threshold of his own ninja way.

There were still ANBU keeping watch outside his door, but at last he had a patch of territory of his own.

Enduring the roiling nausea as he slurped down the last of his instant ramen, Naruto pushed his consciousness into the Nine-Tails' sealing space.

The tunnel was pitch-black, and the iron gate was terrifyingly huge.

The Nine-Tails was dozing behind the gate, its fierce aura impossible to contain.

Sensing Naruto approaching, it couldn't even be bothered to lift its eyelids, turning its head away with a look of utter disgust to continue sleeping.

Watching this haughty attitude, Li Luo felt the veins on his forehead jump, his stomach full of speechlessness:

"Kurama, think about it. It's been over three years now; no matter how big your anger was, it should have dissipated by now."

"The one who sealed you wasn't even me. Wouldn't it be much more comfortable if we got along nicely? Wherever you want to go in the future, how about we team up and go together?"

"Besides, look at this wretched state I'm living in now. Did I go out of my way to become a jinchuriki?"

The Nine-Tails snorted a thick breath from its nose, spun its body around, and pointed the tip of its tail at Naruto to continue sleeping, not even bothering to pay him any more mind.

This stunt completely chilled Naruto's drive to become a perfect jinchuriki, which he had been harboring for several years.

He had originally figured that knowing the Nine-Tails' true name and sharing a similar wretched experience, he could somehow drag the Nine-Tails over to his side and use it as a oversized, Nine-Tails-branded portable charger.

Who would have thought the Nine-Tails wouldn't buy into this spiel at all.

These past three years consisted entirely of Li Luo rambling unilaterally while the Nine-Tails didn't even reply with a fart.

In the beginning the Nine-Tails would bare its teeth and scare him with a few threats, but later on, seeing that Naruto wasn't the least bit scared, it simply treated him like air.

By last year, having witnessed the miserable life Naruto was living with its own eyes, the Nine-Tails began intentionally or unintentionally pulling back the Nine-Tails Chakra it had been leaking out.

Naruto couldn't tell whether this counted as it pitying him.

Anyway, ever since the chakra interference vanished, his control over chakra skyrocketed to a terrifying degree.

Stacked together with the Uzumaki Clan's naturally terrifying chakra reserves, Naruto estimated that he had managed to squirrel away at least one Kakashi's worth of power by now.

At the very least, pulling off a Water Dragon Bullet or a Great Waterfall wasn't much of a problem.

With the Nine-Tails loosening its attitude, Naruto felt like he'd been juiced up on adrenaline, grabbing the Nine-Tails and yakking away for three days and three nights straight.

His lips chapped until the Nine-Tails unleashed a massive chakra outburst that gave the ANBU outside the door a fierce jolt, which finally managed to pin down Li Luo, who still hadn't finished talking.

Ever since then, when the Nine-Tails saw Naruto it would turn its head away and ignore him, terrified that he would pull another stunt like that endless nagging from a year ago.

However, when Naruto poured out his grievances again, the Nine-Tails didn't roar at him to get lost like it did at the very beginning.

It could be considered a tacit permission for this guy to crowd close and grumble about the unfair treatment he suffered because of the demon fox.

Not knowing how long he rambled this time either, Naruto finally pulled his consciousness out of the Nine-Tails' space with a sense of unfulfilled craving.

The Nine-Tails turned its head, its expression somewhat complicated as it muttered to itself while staring in the direction where Naruto had disappeared:

"A perfect jinchuriki—there's no such thing as something so simple."

The Nine-Tails knew it like the back of its hand; the Eight Trigrams Seal inside Naruto was not something half of the Nine-Tails could just casually break open.

Naruto nodding by himself was completely useless; he needed to get the key to undo the Eight Trigrams Seal—the sealing scroll sent by Minato to Mount Myoboku inside the toad's claw—before he could open the Eight Trigrams Seal and become a Perfect Jinchuriki.

The Nine-Tails was naturally a little fox with a clean mind, originally living a life in the mountains and forests where it bothered no one.

It had the sheer misfortune of running into that cunning old Hashirama Senju, who said I think you are quite dangerous and delivered a head-pat kill straight to its head, taking it down right then and there.

Things got even more miserable later on when Madara Uchiha forcefully pressed it into a summoning contract and dragged it off to fight Hashirama Senju.

In the end, those two came out completely unscathed, while it got stuffed right into the belly of Mito Uzumaki.

To say it held no hatred in its heart would be false; before the seal was set, the Nine-Tails had genuinely made a move trying to slaughter Naruto to cut off the path of being sealed.

Yet there was one thing: Naruto inexplicably ran into the sealing space, coming over to chat idly with it without a single break for three solid years.

Those three years, he genuinely treated it like a friend while chatting.

The Nine-Tails could smell the malicious intent in a person's heart, and it was crystal clear about this matter.

Therefore, the Nine-Tails at this moment had long since lost its initial fierce hatred toward Naruto, and it thought of what the old Six Paths geezer had said about someone who could get along with the Tailed Beasts.

Yet it was also well aware that a thing like the Eight Trigrams Seal was not something Naruto could handle however he pleased; even if it had the heart to confide in Naruto, it simply could not be done.

All the Nine-Tails could do were two things: take back the Nine-Tails Chakra that leaked out through the gaps of the Eight Trigrams Seal.

And another was pretending not to see that cunning old Minato Namikaze use the Reverse Eight Trigrams Seal to refine its chakra so Naruto could cheat and train.

Just these two points alone had already allowed Naruto, who had just turned three, to accumulate the strength of one tail.

Although this level was at best a chakra-starved Jonin unit that had to rely on the Sharingan to hold the line, in any case, it still reached the frightening chakra volume of a Jonin.

Coupled with the Uzumaki Clan's foundation for precise chakra control, Naruto could learn any ninjutsu with twice the results for half the effort at this juncture.

Of course, Naruto himself had no idea about any of these matters.

He was currently putting on a thick padded winter coat, planning to go out for a stroll.

Today was the grand New Year, and there wasn't even a single companion by his side.

Even though he had long since prepared himself mentally, upon running directly into this greatest malice of the Naruto World, that surge of hostility in his belly still flared straight upward.

Hiruzen Sarutobi, you old bastard, just you wait; I won't let you die all that comfortably!

Cursing under his breath, he pulled out an inflated balloon and pushed open the door to walk outside.

That thing called the Rasengan was practically the only practical ninjutsu he could get his hands on and practice as a transmigrator.