Kushina's breaking voice was cut off almost at once, censored by the strange power governing the space. Even so, everyone had already heard enough. A mother's sobs, raw and ragged, still seemed to hang over the arena long after the sound itself had vanished.
Naruto stood there in a daze, blue eyes darting around. Everyone was looking at him. If it had been any other day, he would have been thrilled to be the center of attention. But right now, for some reason, he couldn't feel happy at all.
Then, all of a sudden, that familiar mysterious force descended on him again. In the blink of an eye, Naruto scratched the back of his head and flashed his usual silly grin. "So I really do have a mom... and she loves me a whole lot~"
It was too abrupt. Hyuga Neji, standing nearest to him, sensed the shift more clearly than anyone. His brow furrowed at once. Something was wrong. Just moments ago, Naruto had only looked stunned and confused. Now he was acting like a complete fool again, as if all that confusion had been wiped clean out of him.
Neji almost rolled his eyes on reflex. He wanted to use his Byakugan to see whether this so-called landlord Naruto had fallen under some kind of genjutsu. But the instant that thought crossed his mind, he fell silent. Under the system's restrictions, he couldn't circulate chakra at all. The Byakugan remained stubbornly dormant.
So he could only watch Naruto in silence, his gaze sharpening further. The information being revealed on the gold-framed screen was too important. A veteran like Onoki naturally had no intention of letting such a chance slip by.
In the chat, the old Tsuchikage sneered. "Heh, so that's how it is. Naruto Uzumaki is Konoha's Nine-Tails jinchuriki, isn't he? Third Hokage, you're really something. The son of a hero, and you still treated him like this. Tsk, tsk. Then again, I can't say I'm surprised you'd do something like that."
He continued mercilessly, each word like a blade thrown straight at Konoha. "If I'm not mistaken, even your ANBU are the same. When the upper beam is crooked, the lower beam won't be straight either."
Many of Konoha's ANBU lowered their heads. None of them could refute that. The Fourth Raikage, who usually had no patience for Iwagakure, immediately chimed in. "That old fossil from Stone is annoying as hell, but this time he's right. Under the Third Hokage's rule, something like this happening in Konoha doesn't surprise me at all."
Mei Terumi followed after them, her tone much calmer. "Hmm... I have a question. It's normal enough for an Uzumaki to become a jinchuriki. Based on what we've seen, Kushina Uzumaki clearly knew Naruto was the Nine-Tails' jinchuriki. But as far as I know, Kushina herself was the previous Nine-Tails jinchuriki. There's very little public information about the Nine-Tails' attack, but one thing is well known—when a tailed beast is extracted from its jinchuriki, that jinchuriki dies soon after."
She paused, clearly thinking through the implications. Kushina did not seem like the kind of mother who would willingly let her own child become a jinchuriki. Mei wanted to continue, but her words had already touched the worst possible nerve.
Gaara's expression twisted. "These people... all deserve to die!!!"
That single line—about a mother jinchuriki making her child into a jinchuriki—was enough to stab straight into the softest, most rotten part of his memories. What made him even angrier was the reflection he saw in Naruto. A distorted mirror of his former self.
Even so, Gaara thought he was still better off than Naruto. At least the sand had protected him. "Gaara..." Temari and Kankuro looked at him with complicated expressions. Because the system forbade all aggression, even they felt as though they'd been granted a brief respite. No need to live in constant fear, if only for a moment.
In the chat room, Hashirama Senju awkwardly sent a string of meaningless sounds. "Hmm... Hmm... Hahaha..."
Madara Uchiha snorted at once. "Pathetic."
Tobirama was even more direct. "Brother, stop talking." Then he changed targets immediately. "Naruto Uzumaki, listen carefully to what I'm saying. First, tell me whether the things shown in this video are real."
He made no comment on Hiruzen Sarutobi's decisions. As a politician of the highest caliber, Tobirama had already seen through his disciple's motives after hearing only a fragment of the truth. He did not yet have enough information to judge everything, but one thing was obvious—someone would soon appear in the video to save Naruto at the critical moment.
Originally, Tobirama had no intention of meddling too much. He was dead. The affairs of the living no longer belonged to him. But neither Mito nor his once-beloved granddaughter had spoken up to stop him, and that gave him a very bad feeling.
More importantly, the conclusions forming in his mind had already solidified. Naruto Uzumaki was a child born from the combined bloodlines of the Senju and the Uzumaki. If the Senju clan had never dissolved itself into Konoha, then the Fourth Hokage should never have been called Minato Namikaze in the first place. He should have been Minato Senju.
That, to Tobirama, was beyond dispute. Aside from the Thousand Hands, there were very few bloodlines capable of balancing—or even suppressing—the overwhelming vitality of the Uzumaki. Which meant that even as a dead man, he could not simply ignore this matter.
Naruto blinked at the screen, then pointed at himself in confusion. "Huh? The Second Hokage old man is talking to me?" He scratched his cheek and laughed sheepishly. "Uh... sorry. I didn't mean to splash paint on your Hokage Rock. I promise I won't do it again!"
Tobirama's reply came almost instantly. "That's not what I'm asking! Do you remember the things shown on the screen?"
Naruto thought hard, then grinned again. "A little... I guess? But I forgot most of it already. Hehe~"
The moment those words appeared, Hiruzen Sarutobi's pupils contracted sharply. A fine sheen of cold sweat rose on his forehead. Tobirama-sensei had personally asked the question. That alone was enough to turn the situation far more dangerous.
For some unknown reason, Kushina had fallen silent. But Hiruzen did not dare forget her earlier words. If she were somehow resurrected right here and now, he had no doubt she would rush straight at him and try to kill him on the spot.
And that was what terrified him most. The comparison system had already said it once before—the quiz rewards included ninjutsu, taijutsu, forbidden techniques, and even resurrection. Add Minato's guilty silence on top of that, and Hiruzen felt a chill spread down his spine.
When he noticed the eyes of his subordinates on him, he did not dare meet a single one. Beside him, Orochimaru slowly licked his dry lips with his long tongue, excitement glittering in his eyes. "Sarutobi-sensei..." he drawled. "Now that things have come this far, I suddenly think it might be much more interesting to let them keep going."
"Orochimaru, shut up!" Hiruzen barked back. He tried to sound stern, but the force behind it was already gone.
That only delighted Orochimaru more. A soft, delighted chuckle slipped from him. "Sarutobi-sensei, I've decided. I'll withdraw with my people. Let this old, rotten windmill called Konoha keep turning on its own for now. Sooner or later, someone will tear it down with their own hands and build something new in its place."
His narrowed eyes dropped to Naruto below. In an instant, his interest in the boy rose again, climbing higher and higher until it nearly reached the same feverish intensity as his obsession with the Uchiha. "I want to watch all of it happen with my own eyes."
Meanwhile, under Tobirama's relentless questioning, Naruto slowly began to talk about what little he remembered—and about the feelings that had never truly left him. "I... I don't really know how to explain it. I just remember that everyone seemed to hate me. Nobody wanted to play with me, and nobody wanted to sell me anything. Every time I walked down the street, I could feel everyone staring at me... like they hated me."
In the stands, Hinata Hyuga's small hands clenched tightly together until her palms turned slick with sweat. She remembered the night she had first met Naruto, remembered that bright, clumsy courage of his. So this was the kind of life he had been living back then.
"Big Sister..." Hanabi noticed the change in her expression at once and quickly reached over to hold her hand. Not wanting to make her younger sister worry, Hinata forced a smile, though the ache in her chest only deepened.
The members of the so-called Bronze Saints also fell silent after hearing Naruto's words. The mood around them turned heavy. In the waiting room, Sasuke slowly pushed himself upright, his dark eyes fixed on the screen as thoughts churned behind them.
No wonder that idiot acted the way he did, Sasuke thought. Well, with his personality—and that strange numbness he carried around—maybe it made sense. It wasn't that Naruto had no empathy. It was that his empathy had grown twisted.
Just like Sasuke would later say, Naruto could never truly understand his pain. In Naruto's eyes, if he himself could endure that kind of loneliness and suffering, then other people ought to be able to endure theirs too. To put it bluntly: You're hurting? I hurt too. I got through it, so you have to get through it too.
He had no concept of individual difference. No instinctive understanding that one person's limit could be utterly different from another's. That was why, when Pain descended from the sky and shattered everything, Naruto finally began to grasp even the tiniest fragment of that logic.
And perhaps that was the cruelest part of all. A boy who had spent his whole life screaming for acknowledgment had learned to survive by swallowing pain until he no longer knew how deep it ran. Now, beneath the golden glow of the comparison screen, with the dead watching and the living unable to speak, that truth was being dragged into the light for everyone to see.