Prologue

The sky above the Valley of the End was bleeding purple and black.

Naruto's Rasengan—infused with the divine, golden light of Six Paths Sage Mode and the volatile chakra of the Nine-Tails—slammed directly into Sasuke's Kagutsuchi-infused Chidori. The impact didn't just shatter the statues of Hashirama and Madara; it tore a physical fracture into the fabric of space-time itself.

"SASUKE!" Naruto screamed, his fingers straining against the blinding pressure to reach his friend.

But the reality between them violently warped. A vacuum-like force ripped Naruto backward, tearing him away from the valley and throwing him headfirst into a pitch-black, roaring void.

When Naruto finally opened his eyes, the roar of the waterfall was gone. The sky wasn't purple anymore—it was a dull, overcast gray, framed by massive, impossibly tall towers of concrete and glass. He wasn't laying on ancient stone; he was face-down on a damp pile of plastic trash bags.

"Ugh... what the hell?" Naruto coughed, rubbing his head as he sat up. The air smelled wrong. It smelled like exhaust fumes, old food, and stagnant rain. "Where... where did Sasuke go? What is this place?"

As he stood up, his Six Paths passive sensory grid instinctively flared, trying to map out his new surroundings.

Instantly, his mind was slammed by a tidal wave of information.

Because senjutsu energy is the world's natural chi, it was absolutely everywhere—but in this massive city, that pure energy was tangled up in a chaotic web of millions of human minds, rushing cars, electrical grids, and the thrumming, artificial heartbeat of a modern metropolis. Trying to filter a single breath of pure nature energy in the middle of a Tokyo alleyway was like trying to hear a whisper in the middle of a rock concert.

Naruto stumbled, clutching his temples as his vision swam from the sheer, overwhelming noise of the city's ambient life force.

"Naruto! Pull it back!" Kurama's voice echoed in his mindscape, booming but steady. "Calm down and focus. Your sensory range is trying to map out a world that's entirely too crowded. Snap out of it!"

Naruto took a deep, physical breath, consciously pulling his chakra back inward, tightening his sensory aura until it only covered a few blocks around him. The dizzying rush of millions of background signals receded, leaving him breathing heavily but completely unharmed.

"Whoa..." Naruto panted, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Kurama, did you feel that? The Nature Chakra here... it's huge, but it's totally different. It's like the whole world is packed into one giant, noisy room."

"Yeah, and it means you need to watch your step," Kurama growled, leaning his massive chin on his paws inside the mindscape. "Your power is fine, brat. But you're used to fighting in wide-open fields and empty forests. Look around you. If you throw around a standard Rasengan or tap into my chakra out here, the shockwave alone will level these glass towers and kill thousands of ordinary people who have absolutely no idea what chakra even is."

Naruto looked out from the mouth of the narrow, dark alleyway. His eyes widened as a massive, double-decker metal bus roared past the street, filled with people wearing strange, modern clothes, completely oblivious to the ninja god standing just a few feet away.

"Right..." Naruto muttered, a determined smirk slowly replacing his confusion as he cracked his knuckles. "No giant explosions. Got it. Guess I'm doing things the old-fashioned way for a while."

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***