Chapitre 77: Naruto the beast.

In the middle of Konoha, in a small apartment, Naruto rested his back against the wall while sitting on the comfy bed, holding an old-looking book.

His eyes were red and slightly sleepy, but the book captivated him. It had taught him many things—from loving someone to losing someone, from what it takes to protect someone to how to value and repay such a person.

His indifference toward the village was the same as ever.

He traced his finger along a written sentence, "How can I blame the wind for the mess it made if it was me who opened the window?"

A smile appeared on his face as he grasped the meaning behind it.

He read, page flipped, a new emotion stirred, his heart beat, a new line, a new meaning, "People say when death comes to find you, may it find you alive."

The book ended, leaving him staring at the last page.

"Are you alive?" a voice asked him.

He tilted his head, looking at the empty bed, and hummed, "Yes, I am."

He wasn't angry at the villagers; neither was he sad nor did their opinions matter to him. He was just happy—happy with what he had.

One of the things he had was the person who sat beside him, a manifestation of his true desire, an illusion that was real to him, and only to him.

"Should we train?" she asked, her voice filled with warmth.

"Yup," he replied. He closed the book, stood up, and grabbed a scroll. Placing it on the ground, with a puff of smoke, everything in the room was sealed inside it.

The 12 by 10-foot room was now completely empty.

He rolled down the curtain.

His hand moved, forming a hand sign. "Shadow Clone Jutsu," he muttered, and four identical clones appeared.

They nodded to each other, each taking a position in a corner of the room. Their hands moved in different patterns as they each muttered, "Four Violet Flames Formation."

Purple flames spread around the room, and in an instant, the room was sealed. The flames solidified, creating a barrier that couldn't be breached from the outside.

He had learned this jutsu, along with two other barrier ninjutsu from Hinata a long time ago. This was how he practiced his taijutsu and destructive ninjutsu.

He tapped his foot on the purple ground. "Solid as always."

As his hands moved, a fox-like grin appeared on his face. "Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu."

The room filled with smoke, and murmurs erupted from within it.

Forty clones of Naruto appeared, with the real one mixed among them. Some hung on the walls, while others looked down from the ceiling.

There were Naruto and Naruto everywhere.

"Take this, you little..." One clone threw a punch at another, but before it could land, a kunai was already speeding toward his head.

In the next moment, the kunai was deflected by another wind-coated kunai.

Puff!

A clone vanished on the ceiling, and everyone received his memories.

Suddenly, sharpness filled the room.

Chaos erupted as the clones went wild; it was a game of survival in the densely packed crowd, each one trying to eliminate the others.

Fireballs, wind tornadoes, kunai, kicks, punches, and trash talk were hurled in every direction, the struggle to survive was real.

In the middle of a wall, a clone was enveloped in a red bubble of dense chakra.

Everyone's predatory gazes locked onto him, and they lunged. The Kurama chakra-coated clone was overwhelmed by the onslaught; someone even attempted to kick him in the nuts.

Soon enough, his throat was sliced open, and everyone felt the sensation of dying.

The battle only intensified. A Naruto clone touched another, and that clone was instantly cut into thousands of pieces, each precisely cuboid, before puffing out.

He had spent years slicing metal coins into thousands of pieces—this was merely the tip of his mastery over wind style.

On the ceiling, the battle raged upside down. A clone pierced another's stomach with his hand, which was coated in fire—fire hot enough to melt metal instantly.

Every other clone experienced the "donut" treatment and being sliced into a thousand pieces.

Over the years, he had perfected his prized jutsu; there was no one better than him at using shadow clones.

And the shadow clones had only grown tougher over time. They didn't dispel after a few hits—they were like cockroaches, hard, and refused to die.

His instincts were razor-sharp, he was like a beast. Each clone counted as a kill, and he had killed millions—literally millions.

And this wasn't an exaggeration. He could easily create 1,000 clones a day, 365 days a year, for over six years. The count easily exceeded 2 million.

Some of his punches caused ripples in the solid barrier.

The heated battle continued, with more and more Kurama-coated clones appearing—some with one tail, others with two or three.

"Heh..." the original Naruto slammed a clone onto the ground, his hand clamped over the clone's mouth.

He blocked a kick to his head, and a kunai was aimed at his guts. He shifted his body to avoid the incoming kunai, and the clone he was holding was gone.

"Why are you people so hard to kill?" he muttered, smashing his foot into a nearby clone.

As the old clones puffed out of existence, new ones immediately took their place. They were born on the battlefield and died on the battlefield.

"Enough of this!" a three-tails-coated Naruto yelled as a gust of wind blades erupted from his body, wiping out half of the clones.

His eye twitched, and his frustration grew as the room once again filled with smoke.

"Argh..." He leaped from the ceiling to the walls to the ground, his hands coated with molten fire and Kurama's chakra, going on a killing spree.

"What?" He stared in disbelief at the hand protruding from his chest. Tilting his head, he saw a grinning clone behind him.

"You brat!" someone roared from a corner. Its body was covered in thick black and red chakra, with white hollow eyes. Four tails swayed behind it, and a fifth was in the process of manifesting.

The room filled with a malicious killing intent. Some clones looked at it, some didn't.

The hatred in its eyes was so deep that it seemed ready to shred Naruto into pieces.

Blue and dark bubbles began to hover over its head, coming together in a specific ratio to form a Bijūdama.

The clone gulped down the bomb, its body expanding. It turned in a specific direction, its mouth beginning to open.

The Bijūdama, capable of leveling kilometers in its current state, was about to be unleashed.

Just as it started to escape, a green fist tore through the Bijūdama and struck the fox in the jaw.

"Is that all you've got, you damn fox?" Naruto's punch lifted the fox off the ground. Before it could be launched like a cannon, another punch was firmly planted in its gut, sending it crashing into the solid barrier.

The fox's head shook, teetering on the brink of unconsciousness, but it wasn't called the Nine-Tails for nothing.

Its hand grew, slamming down on nearby clones and killing them in the process.

Naruto felt a surge of excitement in his heart—this was fun. His hands moved. "Fire Style: Majestic Destroyer Flame!"

A great fire, capable of incinerating anything in its path, erupted from Naruto. As it progressed, it wiped out every clone in its way before hitting the fox head-on, incinerating it in an instant.

"You think you can kill me?" a voice echoed from another clone behind Naruto. The fox was now in another clone, its five tails swaying menacingly.

"Come," Naruto said, one hand behind his back and the other extended outward, signaling the fox to come and fight.

The fox was truly enraged, realizing it was being used as a training dummy. Yet there was no fear on Naruto's face—only a calm, yet provocative, smile.

"You're worse than that despicable Madara and Hashirama!" Kurama roared in anger. He had never had good interactions with humans—Madara had enslaved him and used him as a weapon, while Hashirama had treated him like a war trophy and sealed him away.

For two generations, he had been chained down, and now the brat in front of him had the audacity to look down on him and use him as he pleased.

"Outrageous brat..." Kurama's hatred for Naruto intensified as he recognized the jutsu being used. How could he not remember it?

A thought flashed through Kurama's mind as he watched Naruto perform a hand sign. Was he going to use that cursed Wood Release?

But instead, a powerful wind blade cut him into pieces. His surroundings darkened, and he found himself back in his cage.

For the last few years, Kurama hadn't slept in peace. Although the seal had been weakening over time, he couldn't control his host—only the clones were accessible to him.

Another hour passed, but Kurama didn't possess any of the clones.

Naruto finally stopped, his body and mind both exhausted. He slumped onto the floor, tired but with a pleased smile on his face.

His battle experience had grown once again. 'If I continue like this, will I be able to reach her?' he pondered.

A properly trained Naruto, with eight years of honing his wind and fire chakra and progressing his taijutsu by thousands of folds through the use of shadow clones, was already like a god.

And that was without even counting the power of the fox. He had achieved abilities that a normal shinobi couldn't attain in a lifetime.

"But the gap keeps widening and widening," he thought, a little excited, a little spirited.

Naruto tilted his head, his brows squinting, and then came a knock on his door.

Knock! Knock!

He pulled out a scroll from his pocket, placed it on the floor, and with a puff of smoke, the furniture reappeared, neatly arranged in its rightful place.

"Naruto, are you in there?" a grandfatherly voice echoed through the room.

Naruto's expression soured. He stood up, walked to the door, twisted the knob, and slightly opened it.

"Lord Third, what brings you to my humble door?" Naruto's polite gesture was calm.

A smile formed on Hiruzen's face as he looked at Naruto, whose height now exceeded his own by a centimeter. His slightly sleep-deprived eyes, the dark line beneath them, and his slightly messy hair all added to his aura. Simply put, he looked majestic.

With the door still half-open, Naruto hadn't yet allowed the Hokage to enter.

"I was just passing by, so I thought I might check on you. May I come in?" Hiruzen asked with a chuckle.

"Of course, it's my pleasure," Naruto replied, bowing slightly and stepping aside to let him in.

Hiruzen glanced around the apartment—the neatly made bed in the bedroom, the clean kitchen area. He couldn't help but notice the expensive clothes Naruto was wearing. '5,000 ryo couldn't buy such clothes even if you saved for a year,' he thought.

Naruto received 5,000 ryo per month, to be honest pitiful amount. It couldn't even cover a week's necessities for a growing child.

"Are you sleeping properly?" Hiruzen asked, leaning against the wall.

Naruto rested his hands on the table, his eyes following Hiruzen as the older man glanced around the apartment. "The academy's graduation exam is near. I don't want to fail, so there's nothing to worry about if I sleep less," he replied.

"That's good to hear," Hiruzen nodded, genuinely pleased by Naruto's behavior and maturity.

"Haha, it's nothing," Naruto laughed, sliding a hand through his messy hair. His black t-shirt lifted slightly, revealing his hard oblique muscles and toned lower abs.

'He's properly nourished, and his body is well-trained,' Hiruzen's experienced eyes didn't miss a thing. 'Someone is helping him, but who?'

Hiruzen pulled out a folded paper and handed it to Naruto. "This is this month's allowance. Use it wisely."

"Yes, Lord Third," Naruto responded humbly, accepting the money.

"Your clothes look expensive. You must have saved up quite a bit," Hiruzen said with a laugh, probing in a roundabout way.

"You're mistaken, Lord Third," Naruto shook his head. "I found these clothes on my doorstep. Someone gives them to me regularly, but I don't know who it is."

Hiruzen's eyebrows raised. "Is that so?"

"Hmmm," Naruto nodded. "Our village has some really kind people."

He is being sarcastic or sincere, but Hiruzen failed to grasp it.

The lingering question was who exactly was helping Naruto. Despite the constant presence of Hiruzen's ANBU, who were always stationed around Naruto's house, they had never detected anyone.

No matter how much they tightened security, the mystery remained unsolved.

"Haha, you're right, our village is the best," Hiruzen laughed.

Another thing Hiruzen had noticed was that Naruto had stopped asking about his parents a few years ago. It was as if he had lost interest in them. T

his development left Hiruzen with mixed emotions—relief that he no longer had to lie about Naruto's parents, but also guilt for breaking the promise he made to the Fourth Hokage.

He glanced at the paper in Naruto's hand. "Once you start doing missions, you won't have to worry about money. So study well and pass the graduation exam," he sincerely advised.

"I'll do as Lord Third says," Naruto replied, accepting the advice with a polite nod.

They chatted for a while, discussing mundane topics like the Will of Fire and the importance of serving the village.

Hiruzen spoke passionately about these ideals, and Naruto listened attentively, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

Once Hiruzen had left, Naruto closed the door, his expression returning to its neutral state. "I have to say, the man is really patient," he muttered, tossing the money onto his bed.

"Did you see his facial expressions when you mentioned your clothes? They were hilarious!" a voice giggled in his ear.

"Tch, that old man is funny," Naruto chuckled. He found Hiruzen amusing, especially his attempts to make Naruto loyal to the village.

Thinking about it made him laugh. He didn't hate the old man—why should he? Naruto didn't have the energy to waste on people who were insignificant to him.

Hiruzen Sarutobi was just another villager to him, albeit a highly positioned one, but a villager nonetheless.

Shaking his head, Naruto picked up a scroll from beneath his bed and began to read. It contained advanced applications of wind and fire techniques, along with insights on how to create his own jutsu. Immersed in the material, he read until, without realizing it, he fell asleep.