Chainsword

Konoha's Training Ground Seven felt as grim as any execution ground.

"Your left arm was raised three centimeters too high, dispersing seven percent of your punching force. Ineffective attack."

"That backward step was unnecessary. You wasted 0.5 seconds, enough time for an enemy to slit your throat. Inefficient movement."

"Is the Uchiha clan's taijutsu nothing more than this kind of flashy, impractical dance?"

Three of Naruto's Shadow Clones surrounded Sasuke expressionlessly, like three tireless combat machines. Every attack Sasuke made was countered by one of the clones in exactly the same way, only cleaner and deadlier. It made him wonder whether he really was that weak.

Before meeting the drastically changed Naruto, he had always thought his taijutsu was decent.

"Shut up!" Sasuke roared, sweeping a powerful roundhouse kick at one clone's neck.

The next second, the other two clones moved at the same time. One evaded the kick by a hair's breadth, while another hand had already formed a blade and struck precisely against the outside of Sasuke's supporting knee; the third clone charged straight in and executed a textbook shoulder throw, violently slamming the off-balance Sasuke into the ground.

Bang!

Dust billowed into the air.

"Emotional loss of control disrupted chakra flow and reduced judgment by thirty percent. A typical case of failure." The three Shadow Clones looked down at him and delivered their report in the same tone.

Sasuke lay facedown on the ground, feeling as though the air had been squeezed from his lungs. He stared at the sky, lost in helpless confusion.

How could I win? The question echoed through Sasuke's mind again and again.

This was not sparring. It was a one-sided crushing defeat. He felt as useless as an empty can casually tossed by the roadside.

Naruto grabbed Sasuke by the collar with one hand and hauled him up.

"Every second you spend doubting yourself and standing still is one more second your enemy gets to breathe. I don't want to train a weak-willed coward."

It felt as though Sasuke had been struck in the chest with a heavy hammer. The moment he pictured Itachi Uchiha holding a butcher's blade, his gaze immediately turned fierce. He clenched his teeth and let out a low growl.

"Again!"

Elsewhere, Sakura was not doing much better.

"Whew... hah... five hundred... finished..." Sakura collapsed onto the ground, feeling as though her arms no longer belonged to her.

Naruto himself stood before her and glanced at his watch. "Forty-five minutes. Fifteen minutes slower than the benchmark. Your stamina reserves are severely insufficient. Rest for three minutes, then climb that cliff."

Sakura followed the direction of his finger, and her face went pale. At the edge of the training ground stood a smooth stone wall that was almost perfectly vertical. There was not even a patch of moss on it, much less anything to grip.

"N-Naruto... um... my chakra is already..."

"I know," Naruto answered calmly. "The point is to make you learn how to draw out the last bit of energy in your body when you are exhausted and out of chakra, and how to use mental strength to compensate for physical weakness. Or would you rather spar with me?"

The moment she heard the words "spar with me," Sakura jolted and sprang up from the ground. She scrambled toward the cliff on all fours. Spar with Naruto, who had beaten Sasuke into that state? She was afraid he would dismantle her into parts.

Up in a distant tree, Kakashi held his copy of Make-Out Paradise, but his eyelid kept twitching.

"Is this kid a demon? Yes, this kid is a demon," he muttered quietly. "This isn't training teammates at all. This is clearly performance testing and stress inspection for products on an assembly line. Push them any harder, and I feel like Sasuke's Mangekyo will be forced out."

He could see it clearly. Every time Naruto struck, every order he gave, landed precisely on the edge of Sasuke and Sakura's breaking point. Any more, and they would be ruined; any less, and it would fail to achieve the effect of "extreme optimization." His precise control over "human resources" sent an inexplicable chill through even a jonin accustomed to life and death.

The beautiful scenario Kakashi had imagined—Team 7 bonding together, running beneath the sunset, and shedding the sweat of youth—had been torn to shreds by Naruto, fed into a paper shredder, and finally burned to ashes.

"Whatever, whatever. It's good for young people to have their own ideas," Kakashi consoled himself, covering his face with his book. "What I, their teacher, should be thinking about is where to take them for a good meal afterward."

Night fell.

Inside Naruto's apartment, a lone lamp glowed like a bean.

He had not turned on the light. Instead, by moonlight alone, he examined the intelligence scroll Zero had sent through secret channels. It contained detailed files on the Genin from every village participating in this Chunin Ninja Exams.

His gaze quickly settled on a file from Sunagakure.

[Name: Gaara]

[Identity: Son of the Fourth Kazekage, One-Tail Jinchuriki]

[Record: One hundred percent mission completion rate. No injuries sustained in any mission. According to observation, his body was constantly covered by an automatically defensive layer of Sand Armor. No attack could reach his actual body.]

[Psychological evaluation: Extremely unstable mental state, with severe violent tendencies and a desire to kill. He communicated very little with his teammates, Temari and Kankuro. Suspected split personality.]

Naruto lightly tapped his fingers against the table.

"An automatically defensive shield... uncontrollable homicidal impulses... an unstable psychic field..." he murmured. What surfaced in his mind was not a tailed beast, but a far more familiar and far more terrifying term.

"A wild psyker corrupted by a Warp Daemon."

In his view, the so-called One-Tail Shukaku was merely a chaotic, evil Warp entity trapped inside a human shell. And Gaara was the pitiable host driven mad by the daemon's whispers. The threat level of such an existence was far beyond that of a purely physical assassin like Zabuza.

Fight it with ninjutsu?

A thought flashed through Naruto's mind, only for him to dismiss it at once. Ordinary ninjutsu could not penetrate the sand's defenses.

To deal with heretics, he needed a more direct, more efficient, and more "persuasive" method.

He pulled open a drawer and took out a blank sheet of drafting paper and a charcoal pencil.

Under the moonlight, the pencil raced over the paper. What it sketched was neither a ninja tool nor a rune, but a savage yet sacred silhouette brimming with violent aesthetics.

A heavy hilt fitted with an exhaust pipe connected to a broad blade lined with serrated fangs. The dimensions of every component and the meshing of every gear were rendered with near-obsessive precision.

A Chainsword.

The most loyal preacher of the Imperial Truth, the most efficient instrument of judgment for purging heretics.

Naruto stopped drawing and examined the killing machine on the blueprint. He had even begun considering the materials. The main body of the blade could be made from a special alloy infused with Wind-nature chakra to ensure cutting efficiency. The teeth had to be made from high-density metal capable of carrying electrical energy, generating high-frequency vibrations and electric arcs as they spun at high speed, using the purest physical means to tear all heretical flesh—and the filthy existence behind it—into pieces.

He gently brushed his fingers over the row of savage teeth on the blueprint, as though he could already hear their future roar.

"Looks like the Chunin Ninja Exams need a little faith education."