The waves of pledges of loyalty still echoed through the conference room, carrying the release of years of repression and fervor for a new beginning.
Naruto found it entirely expected and paid it little mind.
Ignoring the crowd kneeling on the floor, he walked straight toward Kenta Kobayashi, the first person to pledge loyalty.
The surrounding voices automatically lowered, and everyone's gaze followed his steps.
Naruto crouched down. Without offering any words of encouragement, he simply took a scroll from his robes and handed it over.
Kenta Kobayashi accepted it in confusion and slowly unrolled it.
The next second, his breathing stopped.
What was drawn on it was not the structural diagram of any ninja tool or weapon he recognized.
It was a... monster.
A killing machine composed of hundreds of outrageously precise components, filled with an aesthetic of violence.
The ammunition feed system, firing mechanism, energy core, barrel cooling cycle... every part of its design overturned the forging knowledge he had built over thirty years.
This was not something a mortal could conceive.
It was more like a miracle casually sketched onto draft paper by a drunken god.
"This... this is..."
Kenta Kobayashi's hands began to tremble violently, not out of fear, but from the instinctive shudder and fervor of a craftsman gazing upon a divine miracle.
"A Bolter. Standard-issue weapon."
Naruto's voice was calm, as though he were introducing a stone by the roadside.
"Your first task. The Technical Department's first task."
"Analyze it, understand it, then reproduce it for me using this world's materials. Put it into mass production."
Kenta Kobayashi's mind went blank. He swallowed with difficulty, his lips trembling as he wanted to say, "That's impossible," wanted to say, "That's beyond my capabilities."
But Naruto gave him no chance to speak.
"Also."
Naruto stood up