Naruto frowned at her words.
He hadn't expected Sakura to describe him like that.
She really had changed. The immaturity she once carried had been replaced by an almost ruthless clarity—an unyielding sense of "reality."
Whatever she had experienced, that reality bore a suffocating weight.
Sakura paid no attention to the way Naruto's expression darkened at her final remark. She continued, her voice calm yet absolute.
"You want to change the world, Naruto? Unfortunately… you can't change anything."
"You once said you would become Hokage. You said over and over that you'd keep your word. You talked about mutual understanding between people."
"And now you want to destroy the world."
Her gaze was steady.
"And you naïvely believe that by destroying the current shinobi system, you can break the Sage of Six Paths' design—free the world from chakra's 'contamination'?"
She shook her head faintly. A trace of pity flickered in her eyes.
"But you don't understand. The chakra system… cannot be completely destroyed."
"Why?!" Naruto growled. He refused to accept such an absolute denial.
"Because," Sakura said slowly, dropping a far more terrifying truth, "this world itself has been artificially altered."
"How do you think you can revert it? With nothing but empty words?"
"What do you mean?!" Naruto, Sasuke, and Neji spoke at once, their expressions changing drastically.
Altered?
That sounded even more absurd than invasion.
"Who altered this world?" Naruto demanded.
For the first time, Sakura's expression turned slightly strange.
She didn't answer directly. Instead, she lifted her gaze subtly, as though looking beyond the sky of the shinobi world—toward something distant and untouchable.
"A woman," she said casually, though her words carried immense weight. "A woman… whom you might one day have the chance to meet."
The vagueness was more chilling than a name would have been.
What kind of woman could alter an entire world?
Seeing she wouldn't elaborate further, Neji steadied himself and shifted to something more concrete.
"Then… how was the world altered?"
This time, Sakura did not withhold the explanation.
"If you've already accepted that chakra was an 'invasion,' then that means this world originally had no such energy. No lifeforms dependent upon it."
The three nodded grimly.
"That woman appeared," Sakura continued. "She was afraid. She wanted power to protect herself."
"So she chose 'conversion.' She transformed other lifeforms into forms capable of adapting to and wielding the power she possessed."
Then her tone shifted, almost lightly.
"But something went wrong. The process was interrupted."
"Those caught mid-conversion—the 'test subjects'—were permanently and grotesquely altered."
"They weren't successfully transformed into her ideal form. Instead, they were accidentally 'stabilized' into a lifeform capable of utilizing chakra."
Her gaze moved across Naruto and Sasuke before settling briefly on Neji—through them, as if seeing countless shinobi ancestors.
"They—and their descendants—became what you now call 'chakra-compatible.'"
"Chakra shifted from being an external system to something embedded in their blood."
She paused.
"Later, the Sage of Six Paths appeared."
"There is no denying that he existed."
"He further divided and refined his own immense chakra, scattering it like seeds."
"His intention may have been enlightenment. Or teaching. Or something else entirely."
"But the result was this—every person who inherited that altered chakra-compatible physiology carried, to some degree, a trace of chakra originating from him."
She let the implication sink in.
"Every shinobi who uses chakra is, in essence, nourishing and responding to the 'seed' within them."
"And when they die… where does their soul go?"
"Who influences it? Who might even control it?"
The answer hung unspoken.
Naruto, Sasuke, and Neji turned pale.
A bone-deep chill spread through them.
This wasn't noble inheritance.
Not a glorious gift of civilization.
It was the warped residue of a failed world-altering experiment—followed by deliberate "seeding."
The entire shinobi world.
Every shinobi.
Woven into an invisible, colossal net.
Their power. Their lives. Their deaths.
Even their afterlife.
Perhaps never truly their own.
What Naruto sought to sever through destruction was merely the outermost layer of that net.
As long as chakra-compatible physiology remained in human blood…
As long as the Sage's "seed" continued its unseen cycle…
The net was unbreakable.
Sakura observed the storm of shock, horror, realization, and despair crossing their faces.
Then she spoke again, clearly and mercilessly.
"So, Naruto—returning to the beginning."
"With the shinobi world in this state… how exactly do you intend to change it?"
Her eyes were sharp, as if dissecting the idealism built upon unstable ground.
"Forget the civilians and nobles. Even you shinobi who stand at the pinnacle of power…"
"From the root of your existence, you may be nothing more than pieces within a greater design."
She offered what sounded less like hope and more like condemnation.
"Unless someone undergoes a second transformation—like I did—reshaped at the level of body and soul by an entirely different and stronger power system…"
"Otherwise—"
She exhaled softly.
"You'd be better off doing nothing at all."
Silence.
Inside and outside the heavenly curtain.
Heavier than ever before.
Because what Sakura had revealed was not merely an external threat.
Not merely historical deception.
But the possibility that existence itself… was not free.
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