Every time Uzumaki Naruto appeared in one of Kaede Kitahara's diary videos, Uchiha Sasuke had to revise everything he thought he knew about him.
The current Uzumaki Naruto had certainly become much steadier than the loud, restless kid who had just graduated from the Ninja Academy, but he still could not compare to the Seventh Hokage in the video.
Rather than saying Uzumaki Naruto was simply born careless and loud, it was more accurate to say that, as an orphan, he had chosen pranks and wild behavior to draw the adults' attention.
As his strength gradually grew, his pride and confidence would grow with it. Naturally, he would no longer need to make so much noise.
But this version of Uzumaki Naruto was unfamiliar to Uchiha Sasuke. It was one he had never seen before.
"We're going in, Kurama. Don't let your figure get out of shape."
A Nine-Tails grin appeared on Uzumaki Naruto's face. He pressed his hands together, and the Chakra inside him began to boil.
"Hmph, as if. I'm ready anytime."
Kurama burst into laughter.
"Good!"
Uzumaki Naruto shouted, and the Chakra all over his body instantly exploded upward, shooting straight into the sky. The Chakra of the shadow clones around him gathered together, transforming in an instant into a terrifying Chakra Nine-Tails. Its nine tails spread like a blooming lotus and tightly wrapped around the Chakra sphere.
The sight was terrifying enough to make their scalps go numb.
For everyone watching, this was the first time they had ever seen such a terrifying attack, and such a powerful Uzumaki Naruto.
Super Kage Level.
This was a terrifying power even more shocking than what Nagato had displayed before.
To be precise, although both were Super Kage Level, Nagato was merely the gatekeeper of that level, while Uzumaki Naruto stood at its absolute peak.
Their performances were completely different as well. Nagato's own strength was not actually that overwhelming. More accurately, he relied on the special mechanics of the Rinnegan. Uzumaki Naruto, on the other hand, had absurd raw stats.
One was a Mechanics Monster. The other was a Stats Monster.
They were two completely different types. And what was being displayed before everyone now was clearly that Uzumaki Naruto was far more terrifying. The Nine-Tails' monstrous Chakra swallowed the Chakra sphere in an instant.
"What warm Chakra."
Namikaze Minato noticed that the Chakra released by the Nine-Tails was warmer than anything he had ever felt before.
The Nine-Tails was known throughout the Shinobi World as an aggregate of hatred. All of its Chakra carried a negative, violent, hateful aura.
It was not as though he had never seen the Nine-Tails' Chakra before. When Uzumaki Kushina trained, she would also try to seize Chakra from the Nine-Tails. But the Chakra she took was, without a doubt, extremely violent.
Yet the Chakra being released by Uzumaki Naruto now was so balanced and peaceful.
Together with the conversation between him and the Nine-Tails, it directly proved one thing. The Nine-Tails could be moved, and after being moved, it could unleash power far beyond its original strength.
The power Uzumaki Naruto could display together with the Nine-Tails far surpassed what the Nine-Tails could unleash on its own.
But before Minato could dwell on that warm Chakra for long, the Chakra sphere exploded. A terrifying blast blotted out the sky, and dazzling light swept across everything.
In the aftermath of the explosion, Uzumaki Boruto stared at it all in shock. He still seemed unable to truly accept the father he had never looked at properly before.
That father was the Seventh Hokage, the strongest person in the Shinobi World.
"Listen carefully. That guy is full of weaknesses. He's practically useless from head to toe. But he overcame them step by step through his own strength and ultimately became Hokage. What you need to understand isn't just Naruto as he is now. Isn't it the Naruto who has been fighting all this time?"
Uzumaki Boruto's mind echoed with what Uchiha Sasuke had told him before about Uzumaki Naruto.
"Dad!"
After losing his voice for a moment, Uzumaki Boruto finally shouted.
The terrifying explosion destroyed everything.
When the screen lit up again, it showed Uzumaki Boruto waking in the hospital.
Everyone's hearts tightened. Why was there no follow-up? What happened after that battle?
What happened to Naruto?
Many people were concerned about that question.
Through the conversation between Uzumaki Boruto and Mitsuki, everyone learned that many people had been sent to the hospital. It was Uzumaki Naruto, as the Seventh Hokage, who had protected them all.
Among them was Hyuga Hinata. She had also been seriously injured and was lying in a hospital bed.
Uzumaki Boruto did not understand. Hadn't she already escaped at that time?
Then he heard Sakura Haruno speak while treating her. "She rushed in too. She wanted to bring Naruto back."
"Dad."
Hearing that, Uzumaki Boruto murmured to himself.
At that moment, the scene shifted back to the original Chunin Exams arena. It had been completely reduced to ruins. No, it did not even look like the ruins left behind after a great battle. There were no broken walls or shattered structures. It was nothing but a deep crater, like the surface of the moon.
In other words, the destruction caused in that instant was even more terrifying than Nagato's Massive Shinra Tensei, and far more thorough.
Everyone's expressions grew solemn. Although it looked like only the land around the Chunin Exams arena had been destroyed, that was because Uzumaki Naruto had used his own Chakra to absorb all of it.
If that attack had been allowed to spread freely, the entire village being flattened would have been almost unavoidable.
"So this is... the Otsutsuki..."
Namikaze Minato's expression was more solemn than ever, his gaze unprecedentedly serious.
He was deeply worried about his son, but that was a matter of the future. What truly shocked him now was the Otsutsuki Clan. The power of this strike was no weaker than Massive Shinra Tensei.
No, it was far more terrifying than that. It could truly grind bones to dust and turn everything to ash.
And the most frightening part was that when Nagato wanted to unleash Shinra Tensei over such a wide area, he had to cut power to the other bodies of Pain first and gather all his strength in Deva Path Pain. It also shortened his life. In short, for Nagato, that was not an attack he could release easily.
That was why Minato had felt there was at least several minutes of buffer time in between, time to counterattack.
But if the opponent was Otsutsuki Momoshiki, there was no way at all. For Otsutsuki Momoshiki, an attack of this level should have been something he could throw out casually. He could likely release many attacks like it.
Throughout the entire process, he had worn that relaxed, smug, wealthy man's smile and had not taken Uzumaki Naruto seriously at all.
If even Naruto could not beat him, then what were they supposed to do?
In that brief span of time, the terrifying might of the Otsutsuki Clan had been displayed to the fullest.
Put that way, had Otsutsuki Kinshiki been holding back during his Taijutsu exchange with Uchiha Sasuke at the beginning?
The two sides had not yet reached the point of using Ninjutsu.
If they had used Ninjutsu back then, the battlefield would probably already have ended up like this.
"The Otsutsuki... so this is what Kaede Kitahara is afraid of..."
Hatake Kakashi once again felt the power of the Otsutsuki. The terror of the Otsutsuki Clan that Kaede Kitahara had mentioned in his diary could finally be seen now.
Even after reaching Kage Level, Kaede Kitahara had still been cautious, without any sense of becoming arrogant after gaining power.
A fifteen or sixteen-year-old Kage Level expert should have been full of high spirits and youthful triumph.
A young genius should have had the confidence to challenge the vast waves and believe life itself could stretch two hundred years.
But Kaede Kitahara showed none of that youthful arrogance. Now Kakashi could understand why. Anyone who saw such terrifying beings every day probably would not be able to get carried away either.
The strength these Kage Level experts were so proud of was, in truth, hardly worth mentioning.
"Just eating Pills can give them strength like this?"
Jiraiya murmured to himself. If his will had not been firm, Otsutsuki Momoshiki's words might really have broken him.
He knew better than anyone that he had not had much talent as a child. Forget his teacher, a heroic ninja who shook the Shinobi World. Even his teammates Orochimaru and Tsunade had talents far beyond his own.
He had relied on relentless training, chasing those two teammates step by step until he no longer fell behind them at all.
That was the thing Jiraiya took the most pride in.
So he had always believed that although talent decided many things, it did not decide everything. What truly decided everything was perseverance, the will to keep going no matter what.
And then, fine, he ran into an existence like Otsutsuki Momoshiki, who nearly left his Dao Heart Shattered.
So it turned out that in the eyes of certain powerful clans, bitter training and perseverance were less than worthless. Those people only needed to eat Pills, and their strength would skyrocket all the way up.
His Dao Heart had almost been broken right there.
"So when that brat Kaede Kitahara keeps muttering about not being human anymore, this is what he means."
Tsunade was equally shocked. She finally understood what Kaede Kitahara meant when he kept writing in his diary that later ninja stopped being human, started Chakra Training, and began Piloting Gundams on the battlefield.
She did not fully understand every term, but she could still grasp the general meaning.
"That kid, Uzumaki Naruto..."
Uchiha Sasuke opened his mouth but, for a moment, did not know what to say.
Whether it was Nagato's Six Paths of Pain invading Konoha earlier, or this Otsutsuki invasion of Konoha now, what he saw was Uzumaki Naruto standing in front of everyone again and again, protecting them all.
Was that why everyone loved him?
Was that why he could become the Seventh Hokage?
For the first time, Uchiha Sasuke truly looked at Uzumaki Naruto in a new light.
He remembered how his future self in the video had evaluated Uzumaki Naruto, especially the first half, where he said Naruto was full of weaknesses and practically useless from head to toe.
That really had been Sasuke's evaluation of Uzumaki Naruto when they had just graduated from the Ninja Academy.
But that guy had actually relied on himself, step by step, to reach a point where even Sasuke's future self could not help admiring him.
The Dead Last had made a comeback.