Timing

As night deepened, the clamor of the day finally faded. Konoha fell quiet once more, and most of its villagers had already drifted off to sleep.

Fugaku slowly opened his eyes and pried up a floorboard. A tunnel lay beneath it.

The tunnel branched in every direction, reaching the compounds of several major Konoha clans, ANBU, Root, and the Basic Training Ground on the village outskirts.

These passages could be used to gather intelligence or, when the moment came, to carry out assassinations and infiltrations.

It was all thanks to the Summoning Beast Pangolin. Fugaku bit his finger and formed a series of hand signs.

"Summoning Technique!"

A puff of white smoke cleared, revealing Pangolin's glossy black scales. He had grown considerably since Fugaku had last seen him.

Creatures in the Naruto World seemed to break past their genetic limits easily—or perhaps their genes had already mutated.

Pangolin, now over two meters long and thickset, appeared in the bedroom.

Confusion flickered in his little black eyes. He had just found an ant nest and been enjoying a meal. How had he suddenly ended up here?

He shook his head, then spotted Fugaku standing nearby. He stretched out his neck to nuzzle him, his long tongue repeatedly licking Fugaku's arm.

Fugaku stroked Pangolin's head and chuckled. "Time to get back to work. Follow this tunnel and keep digging downward.

"Dig out a laboratory deep underground."

Pangolin could not understand human speech, but through their Summoning Contract, he grasped what Fugaku meant.

He slipped into the existing tunnel. Each sweep of his powerful foreclaws sent dirt flying, and in the blink of an eye, his entire body disappeared.

Fugaku sat cross-legged on the tatami beside the opening, closed his eyes, and rested.

Though the underground passages branched in every direction, they were