Chainsword

At Konoha's Training Ground Seven, the atmosphere rivaled that of any execution ground.

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

"Your backward step was unnecessary. It wasted half a second—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 launched was countered by one of them using the exact same move, only cleaner and deadlier. It made him question whether he was truly that weak.

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

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

The next second, the other two clones moved at once. One evaded the kick by a hair, while another hand had already formed a knife-hand strike, precisely chopping the outside of Sasuke's supporting knee; the third clone closed in directly and used a textbook shoulder throw to slam the unbalanced Sasuke from midair hard into the ground.

Bang!

Dust billowed into the air.

"Emotional loss of control disrupted your chakra flow and reduced your judgment by thirty percent. A textbook case of failure." The three Shadow Clones looked down at him and delivered their concluding report in identical tones.

Sasuke lay facedown on the ground, feeling as though every bit of air had been squeezed from his lungs. Staring up at the sky, he sank into powerless confusion.

How can 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 worthless as an empty can casually tossed by the roadside.

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

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

It felt as though Sasuke had been struck in the chest by a muffled hammer. The moment he pictured Itachi Uchiha holding a butcher's blade, his gaze immediately turned vicious. Clenching his teeth, he let out a low growl from his throat.

"Again!"

On the other side, Sakura was not doing much better.

"Huff... 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 standard. Your physical reserves are severely insufficient. Rest for three minutes, then go climb that cliff."

Sakura followed the direction of his finger, and her face went pale. At the edge of the training ground stood a nearly ninety-degree smooth stone wall. There was not even moss on it, much less anything to grab onto.

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

"I know," Naruto replied calmly. "That is exactly why you need to 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 inadequacy. Or would you rather spar with me?"

The instant Sakura heard the words "spar with me," she jolted and sprang up from the ground. She scrambled and ran toward the cliff. 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 from time to time.

"Is that kid a demon? Yes, that kid is a demon," he muttered under his breath. "This isn't training teammates. 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 points. Any more, and they would be ruined; any less, and it would fail to achieve the effect of "ultimate optimization." Such precise control over "human resources" made even him, a Jonin accustomed to life and death, feel an inexplicable chill.

The beautiful script he had originally envisioned—"Team 7 should be united and friendly, running beneath the sunset and shedding the sweat of youth"—had been shredded to pieces by Naruto, tossed into a paper shredder, then burned to ash.

"Forget it, forget it. It's good that young people have their own ideas." Kakashi comforted 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.

In Naruto's apartment, a single lonely lamp glowed like a bean.

He had not turned on the lights. By moonlight alone, he examined the intelligence scroll Zero had sent through secret channels. On it were detailed profiles of the Genin from every village participating in this Chunin Ninja Exams.

His gaze soon settled on a file from Sunagakure.

[Name: Gaara]

[Identity: Fourth Kazekage's son, One-Tail Jinchūriki]

[Record: One hundred percent mission completion rate. Uninjured in every mission. According to observations, his body is constantly covered by a layer of automatically defensive Sand Armor. No attack can reach his actual body.]

[Psychological assessment: His mental state is extremely unstable. He has severe violent tendencies and a desire to kill. He rarely communicates with Temari and Kankuro, his teammates. Suspected dissociative identity disorder.]

Naruto's fingers lightly tapped against the table.

"An automatically defensive shield... uncontrollable murderous impulses... an unstable psychic field..." he muttered. What surfaced in his mind was not a Tailed Beast, but a term far more familiar—and far more terrifying.

"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 within a human shell. And Gaara was the pitiful host driven mad by a 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 reject it at once. Ordinary ninjutsu could not penetrate the sand's defenses.

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

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

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

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

A chainsword.

The Imperial Truth's most loyal preacher, the most efficient instrument of judgment for Purification of 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 would have to be made from high-density metal capable of conducting electricity, producing high-frequency vibrations and electric arcs as they spun at high speed. Through the purest physical means, it would tear every "heretic's" flesh—and the filthy existence behind it—into pieces.

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

"It seems the Chunin Ninja Exams need a little 'faith education.'"