Konoha, Year 58
Naruto — POV
I woke up with a sharp pain drilling through my skull.
For a moment, I couldn't breathe properly. My vision blurred, my stomach twisted, and the room spun like I'd been thrown into a storm. It wasn't sickness… it was something worse.
Memories.
They crashed into me in waves—too heavy, too fast—like someone had ripped open a sealed vault inside my mind.
And then everything went black.
---
When I came to, I was lying in my bed, drenched in sweat. My chest rose and fell in uneven breaths as I forced myself to stay calm. The headache hadn't vanished, but it had dulled enough for me to think without feeling like my brain would split in half.
I sat up slowly.
The room was small. Plain. A cheap apartment that smelled faintly of old wood and dust, with sunlight slipping in through the curtains like a quiet witness.
I swallowed, steadying myself, then got up and made my way to the washroom.
The mirror greeted me with a familiar face—blond hair, messy from sleep, whisker-like marks on my cheeks, blue eyes that looked a little too old for a ten-year-old.
I stared at my own reflection for a long time.
"So… I really am Naruto Uzumaki."
My voice came out low, almost wary, as if saying it too loudly would change the world.
I gripped the sink until my knuckles turned pale.
The name carried weight—more than any child should have to bear.
---
When I returned to my room, I lay back down and closed my eyes.
Now that the memories had surfaced, everything in my life finally made sense.
I hadn't remembered my previous life from birth—not completely. It felt as though something had sealed it away, waiting until my body and mind were strong enough to endure the shock. If those memories had come too early, they would've broken me.
But now I could hold them.
Now I could understand them.
I had been living in this world for ten years.
Ten years in Konoha.
Ten years as the village's unwanted child.
And four years in the Ninja Academy, watching other children outperform me while teachers looked at me like I was something rotten.
I wasn't stupid.
I was never the loud, reckless idiot everyone expected Naruto Uzumaki to be.
I didn't dream of becoming Hokage. I didn't crave attention. I didn't want the villagers to suddenly smile at me and pretend they'd never thrown their hatred in my face.
I was quiet.
Careful.
The kind of child who learned early that speaking too much only gave people another reason to hurt you.
Yet… despite all that, I had still tolerated far more than I should have.
It didn't feel natural.
I could still remember the way I'd swallowed insults without fighting back, the way I'd kept going even when it would've been easier to hate them all.
Something had been tugging at my emotions for years—dulling anger, smothering the instinct to retaliate, pushing me toward endurance instead of violence.
Now I knew why.
Ashura's influence.
His chakra was inside me, mixed into my blood like an invisible hand pressing down on the worst parts of me.
Maybe it wasn't deliberate.
Maybe it was instinct embedded into reincarnation.
Either way, it had shaped me without permission.
And I hated that.
---
My life in Konoha had never been kind.
At four years old, I had been thrown out of the orphanage.
They didn't even pretend it was for my benefit. The caretakers couldn't stand looking at me anymore. The other children avoided me as if I carried a disease.
I still remembered the cold eyes of the adults, the way the door shut behind me, the way the silence of the street felt louder than any screaming.
Konoha wasn't my home.
It was a cage that just happened to be built from warm sunlight and smiling faces meant for everyone else.
I ended up in the forest, sleeping between roots and rocks, curling up beneath trees when the nights grew cold. Hunger became constant—like an ache stitched into my ribs.
At first, I begged.
Not with words. Not openly.
I just looked at people, hoping someone would soften.
No one did.
Eventually, hunger became stronger than pride.
I started hunting.
A river ran not far from where I hid, and after days of failure I finally managed to catch a fish with my bare hands. I ate it raw, tearing into it like a starving animal. It tasted awful, but it kept me alive.
A day later, the sickness hit.
After that, I learned to make fire.
Burning wood. Smoke. Heat on my palms. The sound of crackling branches.
For weeks I survived like that—eating roasted fish and whatever I could find, sleeping with one eye half-open, listening to the forest for anything that moved too close.
I was four years old.
No child should've learned survival like that.
But I did.
---
Months later, Hiruzen Sarutobi finally appeared.
The Third Hokage didn't look at me with disgust. He looked tired… and guilty.
He gave me an apartment. Small, but clean. Food. A stipend.
He told me I should attend the Academy.
That I needed to grow up like the other children.
Like I belonged.
But belonging wasn't something you could hand someone like a key.
Not when the village had already decided what you were.
---
The Academy had been no better.
The other children avoided me. Some did it with fear, some with contempt, but the result was the same.
Isolation.
And the teachers…
Most of them didn't even try to hide it.
Their smiles were stiff, their patience thin.
One of them looked at me with hatred so raw I could feel it in the air, like poison.
Hiruzen kept telling me to make friends, as if repeating it enough times would change reality.
One day I finally told him the truth.
"No one wants to be my friend."
He'd gone quiet after that.
For once, he had no answer.
I had asked him other questions too—questions no child should have to ask.
Why do they hate me?
Why do they call me the Nine-Tails?
Why do they look at me like I murdered someone?
Hiruzen always avoided the answers.
And I understood now.
Of course he avoided them.
Because the truth would've destroyed whatever fragile childhood I had left.
---
Now the truth sat in my chest like a stone.
I wasn't hated because I was Naruto.
Naruto was hated because of what was inside him.
The Nine-Tails.
The monster the village feared.
The demon they blamed.
And I wasn't weak because I lacked talent.
I was weak because something inside me interfered.
For years, I struggled with basic ninjutsu—simple clones, chakra shaping, fundamental control exercises—while clan children learned taijutsu from their parents and mastered techniques taught to them at home.
I had no one.
No teacher.
No guidance.
Just hatred and expectations.
And a beast inside my body that didn't want me to succeed.
---
I lay there staring at the ceiling, listening to the silence of my apartment.
Then… something changed.
A light appeared in front of me.
Not sunlight.
Not chakra glow.
It was sharper, unnatural—like a thin crack in reality splitting open.
I knew instantly what it was.
My cheat.
A system.
My lips almost twitched into a laugh, and for a second I felt genuine excitement—so unfamiliar it almost scared me. I forced myself to stay calm.
The ANBU were watching.
I couldn't see them, but I could feel them the way you feel eyes on your back in the dark.
So I didn't move much. I didn't speak out loud.
I only stared.
A translucent window hovered in the air, filled with symbols and clean text like something from a game.
[GACHA SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
[FIRST ROLL WILL DETERMINE TOTAL REWARDS]
[ONE TIME ONLY — AFTER COMPLETION, SYSTEM WILL DISAPPEAR]
One time only.
That part made me grin in my head.
Good.
I didn't want a system whispering into my life forever.
I didn't want to rely on it.
I already had enough unnatural things inside me.
---
I focused on the prompt.
The interface shifted, forming a circular wheel covered in numbers—0 to 100—scattered randomly across it. The arrow in the center spun faster and faster until it became a blur.
My heart pounded.
If it landed on zero…
No. Don't think about that.
The wheel slowed.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
And stopped.
9.
I exhaled.
Not amazing.
Not terrible.
But not zero.
Nine chances.
Nine rewards.
I could work with that.
The wheel spun again—nine times—each spin ending on a glowing box among hundreds.
When the last box locked into place, the system changed again.
[OPEN TO CLAIM REWARDS]
I hesitated.
For the first time in years, I felt something close to nervousness.
Not fear of people.
Not fear of pain.
Fear of disappointment.
I reached out mentally and opened the first box.
The light that burst out nearly blinded me.
Then the reward text appeared.
And my breath caught.
Perfect Energy Control
My body went still.
My mind went blank for half a second.
Perfect control wasn't just useful—it was broken. In a world where chakra control decided whether you became strong or stayed mediocre, this was the kind of talent that turned people into legends.
It wasn't just an advantage.
It was freedom.
One by one, I opened the rest of the boxes.
And each one felt like fate laughing in my favor for the first time.
Gluttony — an ability that could devour energy and convert it, endlessly hungry, endlessly adaptable.
Personal Pocket Dimension — a private space I could enter at will, store anything inside, even accelerate time by feeding it energy.
Teleportation — instant movement, no distance limit stated.
Full Body Control — total command of muscle, bone, nerves, reflex.
Hyper Intuition — the kind of instinct that could smell danger before it arrived.
Sharp Mind — faster processing, clarity, resistance to confusion.
Weapon Mastery — unnatural understanding of tools meant for killing.
Mind Reading — a dangerous gift, both for survival and betrayal.
By the time I opened the last box, I was almost afraid.
Like the universe might correct itself by taking it all away.
But it didn't.
Instead, nine streams of light shot out from the interface and sank into my body.
For a moment, my skin prickled like it was filled with static.
Then the system vanished—quiet, clean, leaving no trace.
Just like it promised.
---
I sat in silence.
Then I breathed in slowly.
And smiled.
Not the bright, foolish grin people expected from Naruto Uzumaki.
Something colder.
Something real.
I stood up and tested myself carefully.
My senses were sharper. I could feel the world around me with unsettling clarity—tiny movements in the air, faint footsteps far away, the shift of someone's presence watching from beyond my walls.
ANBU.
Confirmed.
My thoughts came faster, cleaner, like my mind had been scrubbed of fog.
Then I focused on chakra.
And it was different.
It wasn't a messy flood anymore.
It was a thread.
A river I could shape however I wanted.
I didn't even need to try. The flow responded like it belonged to me for the first time.
And then I noticed something else.
A second presence.
Another chakra inside my own—thick, heavy, hostile.
It pressed against my control like a clawed hand, interfering at the edges.
The Nine-Tails.
So it was real.
All those failures.
All those years thinking I was untalented.
It wasn't me.
It was him.
---
I didn't test teleportation. Not yet.
Not with eyes watching.
I didn't test Gluttony.
I didn't open the pocket dimension.
And I definitely didn't touch mind reading.
Not while Konoha was listening.
But I didn't need to test everything to understand the truth.
I was no longer helpless.
I was no longer trapped in a village that treated me like a curse and called it justice.
And for the first time since coming to this world…
I didn't feel small.
---
I sat back down on the edge of my bed, staring at my hands.
The hatred of the villagers suddenly felt distant. Not because it didn't matter…
But because it no longer held any power over me.
I had endured long enough.
I had survived long enough.
And I was done.
I was going to leave Konoha.
No dramatic goodbye.
No speeches.
No tears.
There was no one here I cared about.
I hadn't eaten at Ichiraku.
I hadn't saved Hinata from bullies.
I hadn't skipped class with Shikamaru or Choji.
I hadn't chased Sasuke for attention.
I hadn't fallen for Sakura.
This village wasn't my family.
It wasn't my dream.
It was just… a place I happened to be born into.
And I refused to die for it.
Let someone else carry their "Will of Fire."
I would carry myself.
---
But leaving wasn't as simple as walking out the gate.
I needed preparation.
Money.
Clothes.
Supplies.
Jutsu scrolls—anything useful I could get my hands on.
And most importantly…
Time.
If my pocket dimension could accelerate it, then I could train for months while only days passed outside.
I could master chakra control.
Taijutsu.
Weapons.
Survival.
I could become untouchable before the world even realized I was gone.
A slow breath left my lips.
My eyes hardened.
"First," I murmured, almost silently, "I prepare."
Outside the window, Konoha continued to shine like a peaceful paradise.
But inside that small apartment, a decision had already been made.
And the moment I stepped out…
everything would change.