After spending a few days exploring the remained of Uzushiogakure Naruto said goodbye to his ancestor's village and island and left to go back to Konoha, the journey was boring and uneventful, he beat up a few bandits but they were too weak for Naruto to even act seriously, he was starting to understand the pain that Jonin go through when taking care of their Genin teams, it was extremely boring taking care of weak opponents, at least he had to try against someone like Yagura, who had Isobu, and over a decade of training and experience backing him, say what you wanted about Yagura but he was extremely powerful, easily the strongest Mizukage out of them all.
'Brat, you should hurry and talk to the old fart about that mask, I feel like you will gain something indispensable once you collect all the treasures, and my gut feelings are always accurate.' Kurama said to Naruto.
'Well, it's called an Origin scroll which I've never heard of no matter how hard I tried to search for it, I even asked Jiraiya about it but he didn't know anything so I feel like it is something extremely powerful, but we'll just have to see.' Naruto responded.
Naruto was currently running back towards Konoha, in fact, he could already see the giant walls in the distance, it was a week before the start of the Chunin exams so a few teams had already started their journey towards Konoha, Naruto had even seen a few from smaller villages from countries like the Land of River or the Land of Steam, all allies of Konoha would be invited to send a few teams, this time though, even Kumo and Mizu would send a few teams, quite surprising since Mizu just finished a civil war and Kumo had horrible relations with Konoha, they were always hostile to each other so it made no sense to Naruto that they were sending teams of their Genin to Konoha, technically enemy territory.
Not that it mattered, Konoha was far stronger than any other village, Naruto, Sasuke, Shino, Jiraiya, Hiruzen, Kakashi, Guy, and their large assortment of Jonin and Chunin were enough to take care of any village, Konoha also had many allies, their economical and military advantage were far too large for any single village to even compare to, Iwa had larger number of Shinobi and Kumo had a comparable economy but they hated each other just as much as they hated Konoha so they would never ally each other, and even if they did Konoha still had the backup of Suna and Mizu, meaning that Konoha was an unbeatable beast that would decimate any village, the only way other villages could show superiority was through the Chunin exams, that was the only way for them to show off a bit, perhaps show that they weren't falling behind, but Naruto doubted that any other village would be able to win this exam.
Naruto walked through the entrance of the village and immediately sensed a few foreign presences, none remarkable though, a few were comparable to someone like Kurenai but they were most likely from smaller villages that wanted to arrive as early as possible.
Nothing to worry about.
Naruto checked in with one of the Chunin guards and decided to immediately go to the Hokage, he didn't sense anyone inside other than the old man and his guards so he shunshined inside alerting the guards of who he was, he had received basic Anbu training from Kakashi and developed a special code to signal who he was, it was irritating to talk to Anbu, using chakra signals was much easier.
Naruto entered the room without any problems and greeted the Hokage.
"Sup, Jiji, I came to ask you some stuff," Naruto said.
Hiruzen sighed as he took a puff of his pipe, "Why do I have a feeling that I will be sighing a lot today?" he asked rhetorically.
Naruto grinned "Well, I wanted to ask you about the Shinigami mask that the Uzumaki clan gave to Konoha a few decades back, do you know anything about it?" Naruto asked.
Hiruzen sighed tiredly and simply handed Naruto a scroll, "That contains all the information that you need, now leave me alone, I already have a headache and you've been back for less than 5 minutes."
Naruto smiled sweetly and grabbed the scroll, he immediately turned around and shunshined out the room, not giving Hiruzen even a chance to change his mind.
Once Naruto was a safe distance away from the Hokage's office he opened the scroll and read its contents.
Basically, all it said was that the Uzumaki clan had gifted the first Hokage the mask as a marriage gift when he married the princess of the Uzumaki, Uzumaki Mito and that he had put it into a shrine with 26 identical masks, as for why Naruto did not know, he guessed it was to make it difficult to steal but Naruto saw no real difficulty in stealing the mask.
Naruto went to the place that the scroll described and found a rather large and rundown shrine that was soaked in a deadly energy, as if the god of death itself was present within the shrine, how Naruto had never sensed it he did not know, there were probably some presence and aura hiding seals around the shrine making the deathly energy unsensible from outside the seals.
Nonetheless, Naruto entered the Shrine without hesitation, there were in total 27 masks placed in the centre of the Shrine, it was easy for Naruto to find the correct mask he simply needed to find the correct one.
The normal ones had a rather simple description.
[Oni mask
Rarity: Common
Description: A mask designed to resemble an Oni, it is sold in various designs, this one is made to resemble the Shinigami that is said to once have been an Oni.]
Meanwhile, the real Shinigami mask had a rather different description.
[Shinigami Mask
Rarity: Legendary
Description: A mask created by Hagoromo Otsutsuki, it is capable of summoning and commanding the Shinigami without consequences, although the user has to be careful as the mask corrupts those with a weak mind, it was granted to the first Uzumaki Patriarch but it got gifted to Konoha later on.]
Naruto grabbed the mask and immediately felt all the deadly energy surrounding him try to corrupt his mind, the negative emotions that had accumulated in the surrounding area all rushed into Naruto trying to corrupt him, but with the simple activation of the Gamer's Mind all of it disappeared and Naruto's emotional state immediately returned to normal, but it wasn't even needed as Naruto would have resisted it by himself.
[Congratulations, the host has acquired all the treasures of the Uzumaki clan, the final requirement to unlock the Origin Scroll has been unlocked.]
[The final requirement requires you to pass the test of the scroll, good luck.]
~~~~
You can read 6 chaps ahead over on my patreon!!!