Because of Makoto's involvement, the destruction and casualties Konoha suffered after the Nine-Tails broke through the seal were far smaller than in the original timeline.
Damage to buildings was nothing serious. With the ninja world's infrastructure capabilities and the efficiency with which shinobi worked, it would not take long to restore everything to its previous state.
As for the casualties among civilians and shinobi, they served as a reminder to Konoha's leadership that even with peace having arrived, they could not afford to rest easy. The ninja world still contained quite a few conspirators hiding in the shadows.
The last time the Nine-Tails had attacked Konoha was several decades ago, when Uchiha Madara did it. At that time, the First Hokage had stopped the danger outside Konoha.
Aside from a few elderly people who had seen the battle from afar back then, the vast majority of Konoha's current residents only knew that their village possessed the strongest tailed beast, but did not understand its terror.
Today they had witnessed it.
It was a monster completely beyond human resistance, something capable of destroying Konoha with ease.
The villagers who had lost relatives and friends needed somewhere to vent their anger, and where that anger would be directed depended on how the leadership explained this incident.
At the same time, a disturbance as large as the Nine-Tails' rampage could not possibly be concealed. Konoha also had to guard against possible movements from the other four great ninja villages.
...
The Higashino residence was not located in the center of Konoha, so it had not suffered much damage.
However, Megumi was currently still hiding in the shelter with the others and was not at home.
After returning home with his son, Jirō asked, "Makoto, are you sure you don't need to go to the hospital?"
"No need, Father. I just need to rest for a few days and I'll be fine. Don't worry—I'm a medical ninja, I know my body's condition very well."
"Is that so? Then I'm relieved."
After saying this, the worry in Jirō's eyes and brows had not eased much.
"If you're worried about Mom, go bring her back. I can take care of myself, and the danger has already passed."
Jirō hesitated for a moment, but in the end decided, "Alright, I'll go bring your mother back. If you get sleepy, go to bed early."
After his father left, Makoto began carefully sensing the drowsiness coming from his body.
In this strange world, any abnormal situation was something worth being vigilant about.
Then he discovered that it was merely a normal signal of sleepiness. It could be controlled—if he did not want to sleep, he could simply ignore it, and in any case it would not suddenly make him fall into uncontrollable sleep.
After washing up, Makoto lay on the bed and decided to study what exactly was going on.
Maybe the old man of the Six Paths had something to chat with him about.
Makoto had always fallen asleep very quickly. Once he closed his eyes and completely relaxed his body, his consciousness soon broke free from the body's restraints as usual and floated in the air.
Then he realized he had been mistaken.
The old man of the Six Paths was not that omnipotent—he was not some great being who could ride along the timeline and know everything.
Such an existence did not exist in this world. Gamamaru's so-called prophetic dreams were not, and even the legendary Ōtsutsuki god Shibai, whose soul had transcended the current world, was not either.
Makoto's drowsiness came from his own consciousness body; it was an instinct arising from his subconscious.
The moment Makoto's one-of-a-kind consciousness body appeared in the outside world, it immediately once again sensed the multicolored streams of energy permeating space.
Among them, the red natural energy was exceptionally violent, rampaging like a furious dragon and rolling through as it assimilated the other energies.
After observing them for all these years, Makoto had already more or less understood what the differently colored natural energies belonged to.
The dim red energy stream was natural energy tainted by the God Tree of the Ōtsutsuki Clan. The God Tree was the Ten-Tails, and the Ten-Tails was later divided by Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo into the nine tailed beasts. The Nine-Tails was the tailed beast closest to the Ten-Tails. Tonight, after breaking through the seal and appearing in the outside world, it was like a meteor crashing into the sea, stirring up a violent upheaval in natural energy.
This kind of energy was very difficult for humans to use. Its violent aura could easily crush human reason and turn them into monsters that knew only slaughter.
Jūgo was someone born with a constitution capable of absorbing this kind of energy, so once he lost control, he would lose his reason, be left with only the desire to kill, and at the same time his body would become monstrous, displaying the characteristics of the God Tree.
Later, after Orochimaru obtained Jūgo, he used his ability as the basis to develop the Heaven and Earth Cursed Seal system that could resurrect himself. Whether those who accepted the cursed seal could survive or not depended entirely on luck.
The green, purple, and cyan natural energies belonged to the three Sage Regions. If one came into contact with them rashly without undergoing specialized fusion training, the body would run the risk of mutating into something nonhuman.
All of these natural energies had very high inertia. They coexisted with humans in the ninja world, and there would be no particular effect between them. If humans wanted to train in Sage Mode, they first had to possess extremely high baseline qualifications. Only then, under the guidance of the special methods of the three Sage Regions, could they sense them.
Among them, the one with the highest inertia was the original white natural energy, but at this moment, under the impact of the red natural energy, even it had passively begun to grow active.
These kinds of natural energy were not living beings and had no autonomous consciousness, only the most basic primitive instinct to assimilate one another.
The instant Makoto's consciousness body appeared in the outside world, the white natural energy seemed to have found a vent and frantically rushed into his consciousness body.
Afterward, once it had been transformed by the consciousness body and stripped of its powers of decomposition and annihilation, it continued surging downward and was completely absorbed by the body.
Makoto had been carefully observing and sensing this absorption process the entire time.
Today's situation was different from usual. If he suddenly received such an enormous amount of white energy, in the past he likely would not have been able to hold on for even ten minutes before having to stop on his own. If he continued, his consciousness would risk being annihilated.
But now the powers of decomposition and annihilation within these white natural energies had been greatly consumed while resisting the assimilation of the violent red natural energy, which instead made it easier for Makoto to receive them.
As time continued to pass, at a certain moment, the strengthening of Makoto's body by the white natural energy seemed to reach a critical point.
The energy within his body began to grow highly active. Then, under the washing of the pure natural energy, large amounts of chakra began to dissipate outward into the surrounding space.
This chakra was expelled by the white natural energy, like garbage and impurities thrown out of the body.
Chakra was the special energy formed by the fusion of a ninja's physical energy and spiritual energy. It was used to perform ninjutsu, taijutsu, and genjutsu, and was the fundamental power of every ninja.
And now, this fundamental power was just being discarded like that?
Makoto fell into thought and carefully sensed the chakra that had been expelled while remaining in the state of his consciousness body.
In theory, every portion of a ninja's chakra contained their own spiritual will.
That was why they could control chakra to perform various ninjutsu, and even split off different kinds of Clones that carried their will and could act and think independently.
But Makoto could not sense any mental fluctuation or will belonging to himself within this chakra. That chakra had clearly come out of his own body, yet it seemed as though it did not belong to him at all.
What the hell was the difference between this and a man returning home only to discover that another unfamiliar man had been secretly living there all along?
In this home… no, in this body—were some of the things inside it really his?
Maybe they truly were not.
Makoto suddenly thought of something: originally, there had been no chakra in the ninja world. It was after the Ōtsutsuki Clan planted the God Tree that the primordial natural energy was transformed into chakra.
Afterward, Ōtsutsuki Kaguya ate the chakra fruit and then gave birth to the two brothers Hagoromo and Hamura.
The chakra used by all ninjas in the ninja world now, theoretically, was something diffused from that family. In other words, everyone only possessed the right to synthesize and use it, but did not possess the ultimate authority over it.
The ultimate authority rested in the hands of the Rabbit Goddess, Kaguya—or rather, in the hands of the Ōtsutsuki Clan.
And the chakra expelled from his body might contain information belonging to the Ōtsutsuki Clan. It was a seed-like power residing within the human body, growing and developing with the help of a ninja's physical and spiritual energy.
The seed within Makoto's body, however, had been flushed out under the washing of the enormous amount of white natural energy.
That raised a question: without the seed, would he still be able to use chakra in the future?
The answer was yes.
From the perspective of the consciousness body, the perception of time was different from that of the material world. Without noticing it, an entire night had passed, and the sky had begun to brighten.
Makoto, who was lying on the bed, suddenly woke up.
His perception had become sharper than before. Without deliberately activating his sensory ability, he could already sense that in the house's master bedroom his parents were sleeping soundly.
Makoto did not disturb them. Instead, he carefully sensed the changes in this body, most importantly checking whether he could still use chakra.
With a slight movement of his thoughts, his spiritual energy and physical energy rapidly fused together. A massive amount of chakra was refined and surged freely through the Chakra Pathways.
Not only that, he even felt a sense of relief, as if he had removed a weight that had been tied to his body all along. His control over the chakra was effortless, like moving his own arm—exceptionally easy, almost instinctive.
Makoto suddenly understood: the chakra inside his body now no longer carried any residual will of the Ōtsutsuki Clan. It was extraordinary energy that completely belonged to him.
Afterward, he tried to enter Sage Mode, but unfortunately failed.
However, he was not disappointed. He raised his hand and condensed a water mirror, and water-attribute chakra quickly formed, flowing more smoothly than before.
Makoto looked at himself in the mirror and was startled to find that the Sage Mode markings on his forehead were unusually clear and had not disappeared even though he had stopped absorbing the white natural energy.
In other words, he no longer needed to deliberately enter Sage Mode. At any moment, he was already in Sage Mode.
Nor did he need to deliberately absorb the white natural energy. Now, at every moment, he was in harmonious interaction with it.
In just one night, he had entered the third stage of the natural energy training he had planned: constant Sage Mode.
From now on, any of his methods would be senjutsu.
This was truly a delightful improvement. Kurama-sama was a good person.
At this moment, Makoto almost wanted to run to Minato's house, pull the big fox out of Naruto's stomach, and give it a fierce kiss.
Thank you, Nine-Tails.
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