"A new mission?"
Minato nodded. "Every time the mission scroll releases a new assignment, I can sense a special fluctuation of chakra."
Naruto quickly pulled the mission scroll out of his ninja pouch.
[Mission Rank: B-rank]
[Mission Objective: Stall until Kakashi Hatake arrives.]
From the surface of the lake came the rapid, heavy thuds of impact. The sounds of two boys fighting in close quarters.
Everyone in Team Kakashi and Team Minato understood that this new mission had appeared specifically because of the battle unfolding before them.
"The reward for a B-rank mission is intelligence."
Minato Namikaze analyzed the mission calmly.
"If we don't interfere, this fight probably won't last until Kakashi from this world arrives."
Naruto said, "Which means that between me and Sasuke, one of us will definitely lose first."
He paused, then added,
"And the one more likely to win… is Sasuke."
Young Kakashi clicked his tongue. "Every time you talk about Sasuke, your brain suddenly starts working overtime."
"Just like when Obito talks about you," Sasuke shot back without hesitation.
Obito took a direct hit for no reason. "Hey, my brain works fine most of the time."
After he said that, everyone looked at him with the same expression.
An expression that said far too much.
"Alright, enough," adult Kakashi said, stepping in to save the younger Obito from further embarrassment. "Let's keep watching for now. We'll step in when we need to."
Sakura couldn't help feeling uneasy. Right now, Naruto was using the power of the tailed beast, and Sasuke was almost being completely overwhelmed.
She glanced at the Sasuke beside her, secretly watching his expression.
Sasuke's face didn't change, but Sakura still couldn't shake her worry…
Boom—
Sasuke Uchiha was slammed hard into the stone wall of the Valley of the End. Naruto Uzumaki grabbed his collar and roared,
"That's enough already! Wake up! Or I'll beat you until you can't move and drag you back myself!! Sasuke!!"
"Shut up…"
Sasuke's voice was so faint that it barely reached the ears of those watching from hiding.
But then, the next words exploded out of him as he shouted at Naruto, who was still gripping his collar—
"You, who never had parents or siblings! How could you possibly understand how I feel?!"
"You were alone from the very beginning! What could you possibly understand about me?!"
"It's because I once had them that it hurts this much! The pain of losing what you once had… how could you ever understand that?!"
Those words stunned everyone in Team Minato and Team Kakashi.
Naruto Uzumaki froze.
Faced with such a sharp, painful question, he didn't know how to answer right away. Sasuke seized the opening, shoving Naruto with all his strength, and the two of them tumbled together into the lake below the Valley of the End.
"I…"
Naruto surfaced and spoke again.
"It's true. I've never really experienced a real father-son bond, and I don't have a biological brother either."
He paused, then suddenly changed direction.
"But when I was with Iruka-sensei, that probably felt like having a dad. And when I'm with you…"
He hesitated.
"I end up thinking… if I had a brother…"
"This is probably what it would feel like."
The Sasuke and Naruto watching from the sidelines stared straight ahead at the Sasuke and Naruto of this timeline.
They didn't know when it had started, but somehow, the bond between the two had already become this deep.
"Why?" Sasuke demanded from the surface of the lake. "Why do you have to chase after me this far?!"
"Because you're the bond I worked so hard to build."
The moment Naruto finished saying that, Naruto, Sasuke, Obito, and the others all saw it—
The Sharingan in Sasuke's eyes, which had only two tomoe before, completed itself.
Three tomoe.
Sasuke felt a quiet shock in his heart.
His own three-tomoe Sharingan had awakened three months ago, when he saw Danzo Shimura's arm covered in Sharingan and was driven into a rage.
But this version of himself…
Did his eyes awaken because he was about to separate from Naruto?
"If that's how it is," Sasuke said coldly, "then I'll sever this bond with my own hands."
The moment his words fell, Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto Uzumaki clashed again atop the lake.
Perhaps because he was only an observer, Sasuke found himself seeing something familiar in their battle.
It reminded him of himself and Itachi when they were younger.
Back then, he had chased after Itachi with everything he had, yet Itachi had never once taken him seriously.
Obito said, "After awakening the three tomoe, that Sasuke Uchiha's strength has gone up a lot."
Taijutsu.
Ninjutsu.
Using the terrain to their advantage.
The two twelve-year-old boys were fighting with strength that rivaled jōnin.
Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!
Fire Release: Dragon Fire Technique!
Sakura said softly, "Even the surface of the lake looks like it's burning."
"Mm. Even though both of them are being driven by grief and rage, it's still an outstanding fight."
Minato Namikaze gave his assessment.
"Putting aside who's right or wrong, or who has more justification, if we look at this purely as a duel, it has clearly surpassed their usual level."
Adult Kakashi added, "Only opponents who are perfectly evenly matched, and who understand each other extremely well, can produce a fight like this."
"Just like…"
Their gazes drifted to the statues standing on opposite sides of the waterfall not far away.
"Just like Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha."
"I wonder if the First Hokage-sama and Madara Uchiha were like this back then," young Kakashi said, his words carrying deeper meaning.
In truth, everyone watching could see it clearly. Sasuke Uchiha truly intended to kill Naruto Uzumaki, while Naruto, from beginning to end, only wanted to pull Sasuke out of the vortex of darkness and make him see the truth.
Sasuke watched the battle with his Sharingan active.
"I wonder how much of this is being influenced by Orochimaru's cursed seal. On the surface, that Sasuke looks blinded by hatred, but the fact that 'preventing Orochimaru from placing the cursed seal on Sasuke Uchiha' was classified as an S-rank issue tells us the impact definitely isn't small."
"Has it already been decided?" Sakura looked at Naruto Uzumaki, who was floating on the lake, unsure whether he was still conscious. Kakashi-sensei from this world still hadn't arrived. She wondered if she should go over and heal them, and have Sasuke-kun and Naruto drag the fight out until Kakashi-sensei arrived.
["Something's not right, Naruto."]
Kurama suddenly spoke from within Naruto's body.
["The me in this world should be guiding him in using the tailed beast's power."]
"How do you know?"
["I'm a being made entirely of chakra. My perception of chakra is far more refined than yours."]
Naruto relayed Kurama's words to the others nearby.
Sakura, Minato, Kakashi, and the rest, who had been about to move, all held back…
Moments later, just as the Nine-Tails had said—
Naruto Uzumaki, who had been floating unconscious on the lake, was suddenly wrapped in crimson chakra. His body snapped upright in an extremely unnatural way.
It was as if the one moving was no longer Naruto himself, but the chakra controlling his body.
"That chakra feels wrong," Rin said. "I've never seen chakra that bubbles nonstop like boiling water."
["Tailed beast chakra is special, especially the Nine-Tails',"] Isobu explained.
["Unless the will of the tailed beast and the Jinchūriki are completely unified, using this chakra causes the skin and muscles to be corroded like by a toxin, continuously destroying the body's tissues. At the same time, because the Nine-Tails' chakra has regenerative properties, the process becomes like slow dismemberment followed by instant repair, over and over again."]
Rin bit her lip as she listened, choosing not to pass those words on…
But in her heart, she felt even more pain for the orphan left behind by Minato-sensei and Kushina.
"Hey! You look like you're in a lot of pain," Sasuke said to Naruto.
On the surface of the lake, Naruto Uzumaki clutched his stomach and roared. Chakra had already wrapped around his entire body. In the end, his posture even shifted into something beastlike, crouched on all fours atop the water.
Naruto said, "I don't know! It feels like he's losing consciousness!"
"Nine-Tails Cloak Mode," Minato Namikaze said gravely. "Before, Naruto was only using the Nine-Tails' chakra. This state means he's fully drawing on the Nine-Tails' power, taking in its hatred toward humans along with its strength. This mode is extremely dangerous."
"Extremely dangerous?"
Minato continued, "With only one tail, a Jinchūriki can still forcibly suppress the tailed beast's will with their own at a critical moment."
They watched Naruto Uzumaki on the lake. His chakra was already forming shapes like beastly ears and tails. Just a single roar sent massive waves surging across the water toward Sasuke Uchiha.
"But if the number of tails exceeds four…" Minato Namikaze's expression turned grim. "Naruto's will will have a hard time continuing to suppress the Nine-Tails' will."
Naruto hesitated. "But…" he wanted to say that his relationship with Kurama is pretty good.
Adult Kakashi reminded him, "Don't forget, only the Nine-Tails inside you learned ahead of time that you were the one they were waiting for."
Minato nodded. "After being captured by Madara Uchiha and brought back to Konoha, the Nine-Tails' will was sealed inside successive Jinchūriki for decades. The hatred it accumulated over that time shouldn't be underestimated."
Sasuke said, "Then isn't this basically the same as the cursed seal on my other self?"
"That's right," Minato replied with a nod.
Sasuke Uchiha had the cursed seal. Naruto Uzumaki had the Nine-Tails.
Setting aside which power was stronger or weaker, the root of both seemed to be the same. They were eroding their hosts' will and trying to consume their bodies.
At that moment, a strange thought surfaced in Minato Namikaze's mind.
Ever since arriving in Naruto's era, he had been constantly studying space-time ninjutsu and the concept of parallel worlds.
By now, they had already reached and altered the futures of many worlds.
Through their earlier encounters with the Naruto of the Fourth Shinobi World War and the Sage of the Six Paths, Minato had formed a hypothetical theory—
If Naruto's and Sasuke's entire lives were imagined as a book,
Then that book must have a powerful main storyline.
Time and again, they traveled to certain points along that main storyline, intervening from there to create a shortcut leading to a perfect ending.
Just like the parallel world theory, every altered point in time would give rise to a completely new future.
But there was one problem that had never been solved.
That main storyline, which could also be called the original world, could not be changed.
And there was something else.
So far, they had always been traveling to specific points within the original world's timeline. But what about the future?
Would they, like last time, end up traveling one after another to the same world, like the one shared by Nawaki and Dan Katō?
Or perhaps…
Would they someday travel into a world that had been altered by other factors entirely?
For example, that little toad called the "Toad Traveler"—
Was it really something that belonged to the original world?