The air in the forest seemed to freeze.
Iruka's heart pounded wildly in his chest. He could hear the roar of his blood rushing against his eardrums.
"Naruto! Stop!"
He shouted hoarsely, his voice distorted by fear.
"He used to be our comrade! You can't kill him! Those are the village's rules!"
Naruto did not turn around. He did not even spare Iruka behind him a glance.
In his world, only the "target" remained—collapsed on the ground, trembling violently in terror.
"Those who betray the village are heretics."
Naruto's voice was calm, as though he were stating a formula.
"Heretics must be purified."
The instant the words fell, he moved.
There were no hand seals, no violent surge of chakra.
He merely stepped forward, formed his fingers into a blade with his right hand, and thrust it precisely into Mizuki's chest at a speed so simple yet so fast it was impossible to react to.
"Pfft."
A faint, teeth-grating sound of flesh tearing.
The terror on Mizuki's face froze forever. The light in his eyes rapidly faded, and his body crumpled completely like a heap of mud.
He was dead.
There was no scream, no struggle.
It was clean, decisive, and horrifyingly efficient.
Naruto slowly withdrew his hand and flicked the blood from it.
Throughout the entire process, his expression did not change in the slightest, as if he had merely crushed an annoying insect.
A deathly silence fell over the forest.
Iruka stood rooted to the spot, his entire body ice-cold.
He looked at Naruto's indifferent profile, then at Mizuki's corpse, still warm. A chill from the depths of his soul made him tremble uncontrollably.
He could not understand.
He could not accept it.
That child who would grin foolishly for half a day after receiving a single compliment from him, that idiot who used pranks to draw everyone's attention—how could he... how could he take someone's life so coldly, without the slightest hesitation?
"Why..." Iruka's voice trembled with tears, full of confusion and pain. "Why did you do something like this...?"
Naruto finally turned around and faced him directly.
Those blue eyes were like two polar glaciers that would never melt.
"Iruka-sensei, I was carrying out my duty."
There was no emotion in his tone. He was simply stating a fact.
"Eliminating internal threats and ensuring collective security are the highest priorities."
Duty? Elimination?
Those cold words struck like heavy hammers, shattering everything Iruka thought he understood.
Just then, several dark figures flashed out from the shadows between the trees and landed soundlessly on the surrounding trunks.
They wore animal masks, and the scent of death and blood clung to them.
ANBU.
Immediately afterward, an elderly figure leaning on a cane slowly emerged through the path the ANBU had opened.
The Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi.
His gaze swept over Mizuki's body on the ground before finally settling on Naruto. His usually kindly face was now dark with storm clouds.
The pressure in the air suddenly intensified, and even the wind seemed to stop moving.
"Naruto."
The Third Hokage's voice was low and hoarse, carrying unquestionable authority.
"Did you kill him?"
Naruto calmly met the Hokage's scrutiny. He stood ramrod straight, like a spear.
"Yes, Lord Hokage."
"Do you know what you have done? You killed a Konoha Chunin!" The Third Hokage raised his voice slightly, his pipe creaking in his grip.
"I eliminated a traitor," Naruto corrected.
"He betrayed the village, stole classified information, and incited the Jinchūriki. Any one of those crimes was enough to warrant the highest level of execution. There was nothing improper about my handling of him."
The Third Hokage was choked speechless by those words.
He found that he could not immediately refute them.
Because logically speaking, every word Naruto had said was true.
But he could not accept it.
"Konoha is not a cold machine of law! We have the Will of Fire!" The Third Hokage took a step forward, trying to use his presence to suppress the boy before him.
"We believe in our comrades and cherish our bonds! Even if someone has made a mistake, the village should judge him—not you carrying out a private execution!"
Naruto's mind calmly analyzed the other man's words.
[Will of Fire: A collectivist ideology based on emotional bonds and idealism. Loosely structured, lacking coercive force, easily influenced by personal emotions, and poorly stable.] [Comrade bonds: Emotional ties within small groups. Their reliability is questionable when faced with greater interests or threats of death.]
Conclusion: an inefficient tool of governance.
"Lord Hokage, emotions are noise in decision-making. Comrades are potential variables."
Naruto's response stunned everyone present.
"Mizuki's betrayal exposed multiple flaws in the village's ideological oversight, internal review, and classified information security."
"Every second he remained alive could have placed Konoha at enormous risk. A possible intelligence leak could lead to war and the deaths of thousands upon thousands of 'comrades.'"
"Under such circumstances, the most rational choice was to completely eliminate the source of risk as quickly as possible and at the lowest cost."
Naruto paused, his icy blue eyes staring directly at Hiruzen Sarutobi.
"My actions were carried out according to the highest principle of 'protecting Konoha.' Does that not align with the ultimate purpose of the Will of Fire?"
Hiruzen Sarutobi opened his mouth, but the pipe slipped from his trembling hand and fell to the ground.
He realized he had been led in circles.
This child's logic had formed a perfect closed loop.
He had interpreted and carried out the concept of "protecting the village" in an extreme, utilitarian, and cold-blooded way, treating human sentiment, morality, and procedure as costs that could all be discarded.
This Naruto... he did not care about the definition of "comrades" at all. He only cared about the survival of the "collective."
"You... you..." Iruka pointed at Naruto, trembling even harder. "The way you are now... it's terrifying..."
His former student had become a monster who filled him with fear.
At the sound of Iruka's voice, Naruto's face, as cold as eternal ice, finally showed the slightest change.
He turned toward Iruka. His tone was one ten-thousandth softer than before, though no emotion could still be heard within it.
"Iruka-sensei, the threat has been eliminated. You, and everything you cherish, are safe for now."
"My actions were meant to protect you."
That clumsy, utterly warmthless "comfort" rendered Iruka speechless in an instant.
Deep within those cold eyes, he seemed to see a familiar shadow.
It was a kind of... lonely protection that no one understood.
Naruto no longer paid attention to the others. He bent down, picked up the massive Scroll of Seals, walked over to an ANBU member, and handed him the scroll.
The ANBU member instinctively reached out to take it, his body slightly stiff.
Having done all that, Naruto seemed as though he had merely completed an insignificant task.
He turned around and began walking with steps as precise as if measured by a ruler, passing directly by the Third Hokage and Iruka as he headed toward the village.
He did not ask for instructions, nor did he wait for orders.
To him, once the mission was complete, he could return to his unit.
He left behind stunned ANBU, a trembling Iruka, and the Third Hokage lost in deep thought.
Watching Naruto's back vanish into the darkness, Hiruzen Sarutobi felt for the first time that things had completely slipped beyond his control.
The Nine-Tails Jinchūriki whom he had always believed he could manipulate at will had become an... existence he could neither understand nor predict.
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