Haku very clearly had no intention of surrendering without a fight. In a ninja battle, giving up often led to a fate even worse than death.
That went double for a beautiful boy like him.
One of Haku's hands steadied Zabuza, while the other stayed hidden behind his back, secretly forming hand seals.
Most ninja needed both hands for seals.
He only needed one.
So he would keep one hand in plain sight to make the enemy let down their guard, while the other formed seals behind his back. It was one of his favorite tricks.
And it had always worked well.
This time was no exception.
First, Haku put on a hesitant expression and, in a manner even more feminine than Sakura's, asked timidly, "R-Really? If I surrender, will you really spare Lord Zabuza?"
Harry glanced at the hand moving behind his back and nodded calmly. "Of course. I keep my word."
"Okay..." Haku lowered his head even further. Just as Naruto thought he was about to surrender, Haku suddenly snapped his head up and shouted, "Water Release: Thousand Flying Water Needles of Death!"
In an instant, a chill swept through the air, and dozens of senbon formed midair before shooting at Harry at terrifying speed.
Even knowing Sakura was far stronger than before, Naruto still could not stop himself from rushing forward to protect her. "Sakura, watch out!"
But before he could get close, he suddenly felt the temperature around him plummet. Even his body stiffened in an instant.
The cold seeped into everything, slipping through skin and pores and drilling all the way down into his bones.
Naruto felt his thoughts slowing more and more until, at last, his mind nearly stopped altogether.
Then a sudden wave of burning heat surged from his stomach, shielding him from the invading cold and jolting him back to awareness.
Wrapped in that dark crimson chakra cloak, Naruto saw a scene that left him utterly stunned.
In the blink of an eye, the entire forest had been sealed in thick ice. Ancient trees had become lifelike crystal sculptures, gleaming in frozen stillness.
Even the senbon flying toward Sakura were frozen in midair. Leaves falling from the branches had been trapped the same way.
This was less like freezing and more like time itself had stopped.
Naruto was terrified.
Even the Nine-Tails inside him seemed shaken, and the rare resonance between their emotions made the chakra cloak around him grow thicker and brighter.
That cloak alone was what kept the cold at bay and allowed him to move.
He quickly looked around in shock and found that Sasuke, Tazuna, and even Kakashi-sensei had all been frozen in place.
Just like him moments ago, even their thoughts had been frozen solid.
It was as if, in this world, only he, that boy, and Sakura had been somehow forgotten and left free to move.
Panic written all over his face, Naruto turned to Sakura and asked, "Sakura, do you know what happened? Why are Kakashi-sensei and the others frozen?"
At the same moment Naruto discovered the frozen world, Haku had naturally noticed it too.
Unlike Naruto, who was being protected by the Nine-Tails' chakra, Haku was still barely able to move because his bloodline gave him a natural resistance to extreme cold.
Even so, what was happening before his eyes was far beyond anything he had ever imagined.
Had the world itself been frozen?
Could Ice Release really reach this kind of power?
And why could this seemingly delicate girl use Ice Release too? Could she be someone from his clan as well?
Filled with questions, Haku almost spoke at the same time as Naruto.
"Who are you? Why can you use Ice Release? Was all of this your doing?"
Harry answered Naruto first. Putting on a dark, sinister expression, he said in a creepy voice, "Heh-heh-heh, Naruto, I'm not Sakura at all. I'm her ancestor.
Three days ago, I never left her body. I stayed inside her the whole time, pretending to be her right up until now."
"Y-you tricked us! Tell me where the real Sakura is!"
"Heh-heh-heh!" Harry continued with that dramatic villain laugh. "I already devoured her soul. She died days ago!
And now I'm not just going to kill Sakura—I'm going to kill Sasuke and Kakashi too. All of you are going to become my food!"
"You... you... you're evil! I'll stop you! I'll kill you and avenge Sakura!"
Harry's words acted like a catalyst. Naruto flew into a rage, and with the Nine-Tails inside him just as restless, the two finally erupted together.
Terrifying chakra exploded from Naruto's body. He was instantly swallowed by dark red chakra, and then massive bones began forming across its surface.
Within moments, a gigantic fox stood before Harry.
It was clearly incomplete, with only eight tails and no skin or fur, but even so, the power it possessed far surpassed Thor's.
The instant the fox appeared, it threw open its jaws. Gray and black chakra began gathering in front of its mouth, condensing enormous power in a short span of time as it prepared to attack Harry.
"T-Tailed Beast Bomb!"
At that moment, Harry heard Haku's trembling voice beside him. The boy was staring at the fox in despair.
Harry, meanwhile, looked thoughtful. "A Tailed Beast, huh? A very powerful magical beast. Still, it's nothing I can't handle. Don't be afraid. Just watch."
Only then did Sakura, who had been stunned speechless by everything she had just seen, finally come back to herself. In Harry's mind, she started screaming.
"Damn you, Harry, what did you do?! You killed Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke, and now you're trying to kill Naruto too! I'll fight you myself!"
Harry ruthlessly muted Sakura again and said with a smile, "Relax. They're fine. This power only froze their bodies and thoughts. It didn't cause any real damage to their flesh. Once the ice is lifted, they'll go back to normal."
Then Harry turned back to the enormous fox. At that exact moment, it spat out the massive chakra sphere from its mouth. Tearing through the air, unaffected by the cold, it shot straight toward him at incredible speed.
Harry grinned and clapped his hands together, announcing his technique in the traditional style of this world.
"Ice Release: Absolute Zero!"
A low hum rippled through space.
An invisible wave of cold spread forward, and in a single instant, everything for several thousand feet ahead was sealed in ice.
The Tailed Beast Bomb had already come within just a few yards of Harry. If something that densely packed with energy exploded right in front of him while he was using Sakura's body, even Harry would have had some trouble.
But now that was no longer a concern.
The Tailed Beast Bomb had been effortlessly neutralized by the magic Harry had just learned.
Only after subduing the Nine-Tails did Harry begin carving observation runes into his eyes, studying its energy structure to see whether he could draw any inspiration from it.
At the same time, he finally answered Haku's earlier question.
"Me? The reason I can use Ice Release is because you just taught me."
"Me?" Haku looked confused. "When did I teach you?"
Harry casually flicked one of the giant fox's tails aside and glanced over at Kakashi's three-tomoe Sharingan before answering, "Just now. You used Ice Release once in front of me while forming one-handed seals."
"Wait!" Haku finally understood what Harry meant, and his face filled with disbelief. "You mean I used Water Release: Thousand Flying Water Needles of Death once in front of you, and you learned Ice Release from that alone? And then, in that little time, you even developed a jutsu on the level of Ice Release: Absolute Zero?"
"That's right," Harry said with a calm nod.
Seeing that Harry had actually confirmed his guess, Haku looked horrified, as if reality itself had stopped making sense.
"How is that possible? Ice Release is a kekkei genkai. How could anyone learn it through study alone?
And even if someone could learn Ice Release, they still shouldn't be able to create something like Absolute Zero—a jutsu beyond even an S-rank forbidden technique.
So... are you one of my people?"
Harry shook his head. "Every ninjutsu in your world is just spellcasting through different chakra pathways. Once you master those pathways, you don't need hand seals anymore. You can slap together whatever you want on the spot.
Ice Release works the same way. As long as you understand Water- and Wind-nature chakra and fuse them in the proper ratio, you can produce Ice Release chakra.
As for Absolute Zero, there isn't any real trick to it. I can already influence space-time a little, and your world's space-time is unusually fragile and easy to affect. So I linked Ice Release to space-time and created a jutsu capable of freezing time itself."
Everything Harry said was logical and internally consistent. Haku could not find a single way to refute him.
Then a thought struck him, and his face went stiff with disbelief.
"No ordinary ninja could do something like that. Not even the Five Kage.
So... could you be the Sage of Six Paths?!"
Harry only smiled and shook his head without denying it. Instead, he lowered his gaze to the ground, as if it were piercing through endless layers of soil and stone to meet the eyes of some powerful being hidden in a secret space deep underground.
Then he stepped in front of Haku and took a moment to examine his bloodline more closely before finally ending his observations.
He had already gathered all the bodily data he needed.
Once he returned to the multiverse, he would be able to use that data to research new magic.
After that, Harry said goodbye to Sakura inside the body. Before she could even react after being unmuted, he ended the dreamwalk and returned to the multiverse.
And back in the ninja world, Sakura was left trembling as she faced Kakashi and the others slowly recovering, with no idea how she was supposed to explain any of this.
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