Your strength cannot match your ambition, Haku's place to belong (4,500-word installment, second update)

Naruto murmured to himself as he climbed the stairs with measured footsteps, soon arriving at the Treehouse door.

Seeing that it was locked, Naruto calmly extended a finger and pressed it against the keyhole.

Creating a key with Wood Release was a trivial task for him.

Click...

The door slowly opened, and Naruto strolled into the room.

Sure enough, even an assassination expert like Zabuza had failed to recognize from the footsteps that the visitor was not Haku, but someone else.

His arms were wrapped in white bandages, and he lay beneath the blankets on the bed, utterly drained.

"Back so soon?"

From his voice alone, Naruto could tell what condition Zabuza was in.

Yet Haku, who normally answered his questions immediately, did not respond this time, making Zabuza's eyes snap open.

But the instant he opened them, more than a dozen twisting branches burst wildly from the floor, then wound around the entire bed in layer upon layer with lightning speed.

"Impossible. Kirigakure can't have any hunter ANBU who wield Wood Release."

What shocked Zabuza was not that someone had approached him undetected, but the ability that person had used.

Naruto had perfectly mimicked Haku's footsteps when entering, so he had no fear whatsoever that the Zabuza on the bed was a Water Clone.

"Oh? Even someone like you knows about the wood release kekkei genkai?"

With everything under control, Naruto did not immediately bare his fangs. Instead, he strolled over to the sofa and sat down as though he were in his own home.

"Zabuza Momochi, a rising star of the Blood Mist program. You single-handedly slaughtered all your classmates during the graduation exam, earning the name Demon Zabuza from your village. You inherited the Kubikiribōchō and became one of Kirigakure's Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist. You