Root's Renewed Surveillance

Inside the emergency room set up within the central tower at the heart of the Forest of Death training grounds.

The medical ninja in a white uniform withdrew the hand he had been using to perform the Mystical Palm Technique on Naruto's abdominal wound.

The Mystical Palm Technique was a medical ninjutsu with an A-rank learning difficulty, and it was remarkably effective at healing both internal and external injuries.

Yet faint scars could still be seen where Naruto's wounds had been healed by the Mystical Palm Technique.

"Every time the Chunin Ninja Exams come around, I see so many Genin like you, recklessly pushing yourselves past your limits, that I can barely count them all!"

The medical ninja had noticed Naruto's scars as well. "Do you know your wound was only a hair's breadth away from damaging your internal organs? If your injury had truly reached that point, the Mystical Palm Technique alone wouldn't have been enough to treat it!"

Though the ninja treating Naruto had a bad temper, he was ultimately doing his duty and tending to Naruto's injuries.

Naruto really could not bring himself to argue, so he could only keep smiling in a way that said, "It won't happen again."

"Your name is Naruto Uzumaki, right? According to the rules, I'll report the details of your injuries to your supervising Jōnin later. If there's nothing else, leave quickly. Before long, the other examinees still taking the test will be coming in for treatment too!"

The medical ninja waved Naruto away, signaling for him not to continue occupying medical resources now that his condition was under control.

From the moment he entered the emergency room to the moment he left it,

the medical ninja's unfriendly attitude had left Naruto unable to get a word in from beginning to end.

As for the medical ninja saying he would report Naruto's injuries, Naruto was more than happy for him to do so.

His wound had nearly damaged his internal organs—what a wonderful sentence. It added another ironclad piece of evidence for Naruto being "forced" to withdraw from the Chunin Ninja Exams.

"Naruto... Is your injury okay?"

Outside the emergency room, Sakura, who had been sitting on a bench against the corridor wall, hurried over upon seeing Naruto and asked about his treatment.

"There's only a small scar left on my stomach now... The Mystical Palm Technique is really amazing!"

As Naruto spoke, he even patted his stomach to show that his injury had truly healed.

Only then did Sakura let out a sigh of relief.

Naruto watched Sakura's expression shift from nervousness to relief.

"What is it?"

Sakura looked at Naruto curiously, not knowing why he was suddenly staring at her so intently.

"Sakura, shouldn't you go back and watch the matches? The information you get from observing other people's preliminaries might give you an advantage in the third round!"

Naruto's words made sense. Sakura had only followed him to the emergency room because she was too worried about his injury, and because she had received a direct pass into the third round due to getting a bye and did not need to take part in the preliminaries.

Yet after following him over, she had not been able to help with anything.

The medical ninja in the emergency room had made Sakura wait outside on the grounds that "unrelated people who aren't patients shouldn't come in and get in the way."

"If it weren't for his physical condition, Sasuke probably wouldn't want to miss the chance to watch the matches either."

The relief on Sakura's face turned into hesitation. Seeing the wavering in her heart, Naruto continued, "So I think you should go back and watch the matches even more. The information you get from the preliminaries can help not only you, but also Sasuke, who'll be taking the third round too."

"I understand. I'll go back right away."

Sakura nodded heavily.

She turned to return to the central tower hall, where the matches were still underway, but then suddenly noticed Naruto had not moved with her. "Naruto, aren't you coming back with me?"

Naruto shook his head and reached up to touch his ears, which had reddened with embarrassment.

He explained awkwardly, "I surrendered without even having a match, so I just... don't know how to face everyone else's strange looks... Even though I've always said I want to become Hokage and all that..."

Hearing Naruto's words, Sakura stared at him blankly for a moment, then hurriedly defended him. "I-I won't look at Naruto strangely! And the reason you got hurt was because you protected me..."

"Because we're teammates! Isn't protecting Sakura only natural? Besides, Sakura wanted to protect me first back then."

Naruto smiled at Sakura as he spoke. He continued persuading her, "And I'm worried about Sasuke too. I want to find out where Kakashi-sensei took him. All right, Sakura. Go watch the matches first. After the preliminaries are over, tell me the results too."

"...Okay."

Sakura answered softly.

After successfully sending Sakura away, Naruto left the Forest of Death under the guidance of one of the Chunin examiners.

Naturally, the reason he gave the examiner for leaving was the same one he had used on Sakura.

As for whether Naruto would truly go looking for Sasuke, whom Kakashi had taken away, the answer was obviously no.

Still, Naruto headed toward Konoha Hospital.

When an injured companion from the Chunin Ninja Exams was not in the emergency room at the exam site's central tower, the next destination anyone would naturally assume when searching for that companion was the hospital.

Whether Sasuke was at Konoha Hospital did not matter to Naruto at all.

What he needed was merely a direction of travel that matched his previous words and actions—or rather, a route whose destination was Konoha Hospital but which passed by the Hokage Office.

Let him briefly review his plan to defect from Konoha...

As Naruto walked down the road, his thoughts had already sunk into contemplation.

In this world's original timeline, Naruto had died under Danzo's control through Shisui Uchiha's Kotoamatsukami.

That had allowed him, a transmigrator, to borrow Naruto's body and return from the dead more than two years ago, arriving in a world of Naruto that differed slightly from the original but was largely the same.

Danzo had already begun making moves against Naruto, the Nine-Tails Jinchūriki. Given his personality, even if Third had currently suppressed his actions, he would never truly stop there.

Naruto knew very well that Danzo was merely lying low and waiting for another opportunity to act.

As long as Danzo remained one of Konoha's upper ranks, Naruto could never live peacefully in Konoha.

Combined with the villagers' fear and hatred toward Naruto because of his "Nine-Tails" identity over all these years, neither Konoha's upper echelons nor its people had ever truly provided Naruto with a place to survive.

Defecting from Konoha was the only choice.

Though the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, had saved Naruto after his transmigration, his indecisiveness had already been exposed before Naruto. He could not be trusted completely.

Still, it was thanks to Third's indecisiveness that he had not followed Danzo's suggestion to go all the way and simply continue controlling the Nine-Tails.

That gave Naruto precious time to catch his breath.

To build up the strength needed for his defection, Naruto had spent the two years at the Ninja Academy not only constantly improving his own power, but also judging whether this world's general plot progression still matched the memories from his previous life.

Even without Umino Iruka, Mizuki, unwilling to remain merely a Chunin, had still chosen to use Naruto to steal the Scroll of Seals.

It was Mizuki's actions that finally made Naruto formally activate his defection plan based on the original story's progression.

That was, to maximize the benefits of his defection and formally defect shortly after the Chunin Ninja Exams, when Sasuke was taken away by the Sound Four!

During the Chunin Ninja Exams, because of Orochimaru and Sunagakure's invasion of Konoha—the Third Hokage's death, the casualties among Konoha's ninja, and the need to erase the impression among those with ulterior motives that "Konoha was no longer strong"—a large number of Jōnin would be sent out of the village on missions.

With the village's defenses weakened by this chain of events, it would be the best possible time for Naruto to defect.

And Orochimaru, having infiltrated Konoha, would eventually draw Jiraiya back from his travels outside the village. Jiraiya had always wanted to bring his close friend back to the village.

Naruto would approach Jiraiya to guard against Danzo's schemes after Third's death.

And through Jiraiya, he would make contact with Tsunade, who would succeed as the Fifth Hokage.

He would leave Tsunade with the impression that he was an inheritor of the Will of Fire.

Given Tsunade's personality, when Sasuke defected, she would withstand the pressure from Konoha's advisors.

She would allow Naruto, Sasuke's fellow Team 7 member, to leave the village and retrieve Sasuke when Konoha lacked sufficient ninja forces!

This was the most reliable and easiest-to-execute primary plan among Naruto's several contingency plans for defection.

Naruto would supposedly be retrieving the defected Sasuke, yet he himself would vanish without a trace—the enormous information gap could buy him more than ten hours, perhaps even several days, to escape. Before Konoha reacted, no one would pursue Naruto.

But after Naruto weighed the pros and cons and chose to kill Yakushi Kabuto, Orochimaru's behavior during the Chunin Ninja Exams began to diverge from the original story.

Naruto could no longer guarantee that the later stages of his plan involving Tsunade would proceed smoothly.

Since the plan of using Sasuke's defection to facilitate his own had become full of uncontrollable variables—

—perhaps leaving Konoha now would not be a bad choice either.

Third, who usually remained in the Hokage Office, was currently in the Forest of Death watching the Chunin Ninja Exams.

There were no longer any Kage Level ninja in the Hokage Office to stand in his way.

Naruto only needed to activate the Flying Thunder God Mark he had left on the Scroll of Seals and take the scroll away, then use the Flying Thunder God Mark he had placed outside the village during his trip to the Land of Waves to leave the village...

Whatever schemes Orochimaru intended to unleash upon Konoha next would have nothing to do with Naruto.

Nor would Naruto need to worry anymore about Orochimaru, whose movements were currently unknown after Naruto killed Yakushi Kabuto.

By the time his thoughts reached this point, Naruto had arrived near the Hokage Office.

He raised his head as though gazing at Hokage Rock, secretly observing the Hokage Office beneath it.

Originally, because he had been wary of Konoha's heightened security during the Chunin Ninja Exams,

and feared that Konoha's ninja might counter-detect his sensory ninjutsu, Naruto had not used the Wind Caress Dawn Technique anywhere except the Forest of Death. Now, he activated it once more.

He probed the current situation inside the Hokage Office...

But before he could sense the Hokage Office, Naruto suddenly discovered that a large number of chakra signatures had surrounded him from multiple directions.

These chakra signatures were not unfamiliar to Naruto. They belonged to the Root members Danzo had always assigned to watch him—the number of people monitoring Naruto had surged to an unprecedented level.