The boulder had been blasted into powder, and fine limestone dust still drifted through the air. Under the sunlight, the particles refracted mottled specks of light. The pungent stench of gunpowder smoke and ozone stubbornly forced its way into everyone's nostrils.
Jiraiya and Hinata looked like figures in a frozen painting, terror congealed on their faces.
Karsten, standing where he was, suddenly began to flicker like a poorly connected projection. His outline blurred and turned transparent.
He lowered his head to look at his fading hand. For the first time, confusion appeared on that weathered face. He abruptly turned to Naruto and urgently shouted in rough Imperial Gothic, "Commissar, my coordinates are drifting... I..."
Naruto's icy blue eyes did not waver in the slightest. In the same language, he replied in a firm tone meant to reassure a subordinate, "Do not worry. Hold your position, soldier."
"Yes!"
Karsten's gaze instantly regained a soldier's distinctive resolve, as though that order was the entire meaning of his existence. He straightened his chest and seemed about to say something else, but his entire body had already turned into a wisp of twisted black smoke and vanished in an instant.
All that remained was an empty patch of grass and the lingering scent of rust in the air.
Naruto closed his eyes.
In his perception, the soul chain connecting him to Karsten through the Summoning Jutsu contract had not broken. It had been stretched and distorted to an extreme by an incomprehensible force, extending toward a distant point beyond all understanding of space and time.
He understood immediately.
This world's "Summoning Jutsu" had been thoroughly "polluted" by the unique nature of his soul as an Imperium commissar from another world. It was no longer a simple summoning technique, but had become a Warp Beacon capable of two-way positioning.
This was a top-level strategic secret.
"Naruto!"
A furious shout exploded beside him.
Jiraiya's figure appeared before Naruto as though he had torn through the air itself. Every trace of his usual frivolity had vanished, replaced by unprecedented gravity and scrutiny.
"What the hell was that thing just now?!" His voice was low, but it carried an unquestionable force. "He isn't from this world! And what did he mean by 'Commissar'? Explain yourself!"
There was a trace of fear in his tone, one he had not even noticed himself. That weapon called a Bolter, its silent power turning a massive boulder into dust, had completely overturned his understanding of the term "ninja tool."
Facing Jiraiya's thunderous fury, Naruto opened his eyes. In those icy blue pupils, he simulated just the right mixture of confusion and analysis. He tilted his head slightly, pretending to ponder the matter gravely.
"I cannot answer that either."
Naruto spoke gently in an analytical tone.
"My chakra output followed the standard procedure you taught me. However, the contract itself seems to have suffered some kind of underlying logical error, randomly linking to... invalid data."
He defined this horrifying incident as a minor accident that could be understood.
"Nonsense!" Jiraiya did not believe him at all. "A technical malfunction? What about the things he said? The way he looked at you? That look of absolute obedience wasn't fake!"
"White-haired mister..."
A tiny, trembling voice came from beside them.
Though her little face had gone pale with fright, Hinata still clenched her fists and gathered all her courage to defend Naruto. "Naruto... he seemed surprised too..."
Naruto shot Hinata an imperceptible look of approval.
He then added, "According to the assessment, the threat has been eliminated, and that unit has disappeared. I recommend filing this event as an 'unknown summoning anomaly' and classifying it at the highest secrecy level pending further analysis."
His logical, watertight "official report" left Jiraiya unable to find any flaw he could use to refute it.
Jiraiya stared fixedly into Naruto's eyes, trying to find even the slightest crack beneath that icy blue surface.
But he failed.
Those eyes held only unfathomable calm and an absolute rationality that made even him feel a chill in his heart.
A storm raged within Jiraiya.
He realized there was an extremely serious problem. If this matter were reported to the Third Hokage exactly as it had happened, then with his teacher Sarutobi's cautious nature—cautious to the point of near-stubbornness—Naruto, Minato's only bloodline, would likely be immediately regarded as an exceptionally dangerous and unstable factor.
At best, he would be placed under house arrest in the village, monitored twenty-four hours a day, and stripped of all freedom.
At worst... Jiraiya did not dare imagine it.
And Danzo of Root had no shortage of even worse ideas.
No! Absolutely not!
This was the child Minato and Kushina had left behind!
At that moment, Jiraiya's sense of responsibility as a godfather, forgotten by himself for more than a decade, was fully awakened. He made a decision—a decision that was not an easy one.
He would bear this secret alone.
Jiraiya looked deeply at Naruto, forcibly suppressing all the shock and doubts in his heart. In a weighty tone he had never used before, he said, "Fine. I'll believe you for now."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over the tense Hinata nearby.
"But this matter is known by heaven, known by earth, known by you and me, and known by the little girl of the Hyuga Clan. A fourth person must never learn of it. Do you understand?!"
In that instant, his role shifted completely from a guide trying to "reform" Naruto into a fellow keeper of the secret—and... a watcher who had to keep Naruto under constant supervision.
The relationship between him and Naruto entered a new stage, one even more complicated and delicate.
"Understood." Naruto nodded in agreement.
To completely dispel Jiraiya's doubts, and to verify his own theory about the Warp Beacon, he proactively made a suggestion.
"To verify whether the previous event was an accidental malfunction, I need to establish a control group." He looked at Jiraiya and said calmly, "I will attempt the Summoning Jutsu once more."
The proposal caught Jiraiya off guard.
Looking at Naruto's expressionless face, he could not tell whether the boy was truly open and honest, or whether his schemes had become so deep that even Jiraiya could no longer see through him.
After hesitating for a long while, Jiraiya still agreed.
He needed a "normal" comparison as well, one that would let him completely define that horrifying scene as an accident. Otherwise, he would not get a wink of sleep tonight.
"Go on." Jiraiya took several steps back and assumed a guarded stance. "Let's see whether the toads of Mount Myoboku still recognize you as their contractor."
Naruto walked into the clearing again.
This time, he bit his finger. The instant he formed the hand seals, he deliberately used his powerful mental force to block the fluctuations of the "beacon" deep within his soul, the one linked to Imperium coordinates.
He connected his chakra purely, without the slightest impurity, to the contract on the scroll belonging to the toads of Mount Myoboku.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
His palm slammed down onto the ground once more.
"Poof!"
A crisp, ordinary sound rang out.
A small, harmless cloud of white smoke emerged from the center of the summoning array.
The smoke was thin, only rising to Naruto's knees. Compared to the world-shattering entrance from before, it was like a child's firework.
Jiraiya and Hinata both stared tensely at the cloud of white smoke.
As the smoke gradually dispersed, a tiny toad no bigger than a palm, with a blade of grass in his mouth, appeared before them.
The little toad looked around. When he spotted Jiraiya, he froze for a moment, then spoke in a childish voice that was trying very hard to sound mature:
"Yo, isn't that Jiraiya? What's with this? After all that effort, you only managed to summon the great Gamakichi?"
Before you continue