A few days later.
Deep beneath Konoha Village.
“Bang!”
The dull sound of a heavy object hitting the floor echoed through the empty secret chamber.
The Root ninja B, the one who had fled, knelt directly before Danzo.
“Lord Danzo…”
“Your subordinate is incompetent!”
Before Danzo could ask,
B recounted everything he’d observed over the past month in full.
From the high-stakes gambling at the casinos.
To the drunken stupors at the taverns.
To how, when Tsunade was in a good mood, she’d casually teach that brat Chiba a scrap or two of Medical Ninjutsu.
And finally, the sudden, unprovoked outburst in the forest.
“Tsunade said…”
“if we dare send anyone to follow her again, she’ll march straight back to the Village and tear Root up by the roots.”
The report ended.
The whole secret chamber sank into deathly silence.
Danzo sat upright on a high stone chair.
His one remaining eye was half-closed, his fingers tapping lightly on the armrest.
“Tap.” “Tap.” “Tap.”
To the ninja below, that monotonous sound fell like a death knell.
Danzo was not angry.
Or rather, he didn’t care in the slightest whether the trash on the floor lived or died.
He was thinking.
His aged face, steeped in gloom, was full of shadow and calculation.
“She lost her temper?”
Danzo let out a cold snort.
The sound seemed to drift up from the depths of hell, cold enough to pierce bone.
“In the end, she’s still that spoiled princess.”
To Danzo, Tsunade’s outburst only proved the weakness behind her show of strength.
Had she truly uncovered some core secret—
had the brat named Chiba really carried some unspeakable secret—
Tsunade would never have made such a scene.
She’d have quietly hidden him away.
“A useless woman with a fear of blood.”
“Dragging two dead weights along behind her.”
“Hmph.
In the end, she’s just a pitiful wretch wallowing in the past.”
Danzo stopped tapping the armrest.
So what if she was the First Hokage’s granddaughter?
Today’s Konoha was already the world of Hiruzen and himself.
The Senju Clan?
Nothing more than a yellowed word in the history books.
And that civilian Chunin named Chiba?
An orphan whose parents had been mere cannon fodder—what waves could he possibly stir?
If Tsunade wanted an apprentice, let her have one.
Consider it something to keep her occupied, so she’d stop embarrassing Konoha all day long.
“Take him away.”
Danzo waved a hand carelessly.
Two ninja in animal masks flashed out of the darkness at once and dragged the kneeling B away.
Soon,
the chamber returned to deathly silence.
Danzo rose slowly and walked to a huge map on the wall.
His single eye fixed on a region at the center of it.
That was the Uchiha Clan compound.
“Compared to that stray dog…”
Over the past few months,
the mood within the Uchiha Clan had grown steadily stranger.
The frequency of their clan meetings kept rising.
These bearers of the cursed blood were surely plotting something!
“Pass the order.”
“Pull everyone off Tsunade.”
“Move them all to the perimeter of the Uchiha compound!”
“I want it locked down so tight that not even a fly can get out!”
“…”
The sun rose and the moon set.
The seasons turned.
In the blink of an eye, more than a year had gone by.
The last day of Konoha Year 53.
On the border of the Land of Fire, in a remote primeval forest.
The night was black as ink.
A fierce wind drove heavy snow, howling through the trees.
A campfire flickered in the depths of a cave.
Tsunade was fast asleep, a bottle of liquor clutched in her arms.
Shizune lay bundled in a thick blanket, the pink pig Tonton in her arms, letting out soft snores.
Outside the cave,
Chiba sat atop a towering boulder.
He wore no winter clothes against the cold.
Beneath his thin black ninja outfit, his muscles ran smooth and clean-lined.
The fierce wind tossed his black hair.
Chiba slowly opened his eyes, a sky full of snow mirrored in his pupils.
“System.”
He thought to himself.
A translucent screen only he could see unfolded before his eyes at once.
〔Name: Senju Chiba
Chakra Level: Late-Stage Super Kage
Physical Strength: Peak Kage Level
Chakra Nature: Water, Earth, Yang
Kekkei Genkai: Perfect Sage Body, Wood Release
Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique (A-rank), Water Dragon Bullet (B-rank), Water Formation Wall (B-rank)…
Earth Release: Swamp of the Underworld (A-rank), Earth Dragon Bullet (B-rank), Earth Wall (B-rank)…
Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence (S-rank), Wood Golem Technique (S-rank), Wood Dragon Technique (A-rank)…
Special Ninjutsu: Summoning Technique, Monstrous Strength, Mystical Palm Technique…
Overall Evaluation: You are the new God of Shinobi!〕
Looking over the information on the screen,
the corners of Chiba’s mouth curled up in a satisfied smile.
More than a year.
That year from hell!
Only he knew what he had truly been through.
Ever since the day he sent the Root rats packing,
Tsunade had dropped her disguise completely.
She turned into the most cold-blooded, ruthless devil of an instructor.
No more joking at the gambling table, no more drunken stupors at the tavern.
There was only endless fighting and grinding!
The first three months,
Tsunade sealed Chiba’s ninjutsu outright.
She let him fight her with Taijutsu alone.
The superhuman strength of a Kage-level powerhouse—each time it grazed his scalp, it whipped up a deadly gale.
Chiba had his ribs broken and bled internally from the beatings.
Once, Tsunade nearly punched clean through his lung.
But so what?
Each time he teetered on the brink of death,
Chiba’s Basic Sage Body would spin into overdrive.
A vast life force would forcibly repair his ruined body.
Together with Tsunade’s miraculous Medical Ninjutsu,
Chiba would be good as new, standing before Tsunade once more.
Through that inhuman torment,
Shizune would often wipe away tears in secret behind Tsunade’s back.
She even begged Tsunade to stop, weeping, afraid Chiba would be beaten to death.
But Tsunade only kept her face cold.
The way she looked at Chiba was the way one looks at a flawless piece of uncut jade, waiting to be forged.
Because she had discovered, to her terror—
this boy’s rate of growth simply did not belong to the human category!
Every beating, and he evolved.
Those clumsy Taijutsu movements grew simple, lethal, and flawless at a pace visible to the naked eye.
Tsunade put it all down to the terrifying talent of the Senju Clan.
But in truth,
this was Chiba’s God-Level Comprehension at work.
Any complex combat technique.
Any exquisite method of chakra circulation.
In Chiba’s mind, they were instantly broken down into the most basic code.
Three months on,
the Taijutsu training ended.
Chiba began his ninjutsu training in earnest.
That day, Chiba stood before a waterfall.
Having heard Tsunade explain the principle only once,
Chiba formed hand seals and unleashed a brand-new technique.
“Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet!”
A deep-blue water dragon, dozens of meters long, rose from the ground and split the entire waterfall in two!
In that moment,
the way Tsunade looked at Chiba changed completely.
From eyeing a promising asset to eyeing a monster!
After that came the core Wood Release training.
When Chiba first conjured a sun-blotting forest before Tsunade,
this legendary Sannin, who had seen life and death, trembled from head to toe.
She drank three whole bottles of sake on the spot.
Crying and laughing, like a woman gone mad.
The Senju Clan truly had hope!
She passed every Wood Release technique in her memory to Chiba, holding nothing back.
Deep Forest Emergence!
Wood Dragon Technique!
And even the Wood Golem Technique, mighty enough to rattle a Tailed Beast!
Chiba was like a dry sponge, madly drinking in this knowledge of Wood Release.
Of course,
what truly pushed Chiba into a whole new tier was the sign-in at the start of this year.
The system’s reward—〔Perfect Sage Body〕!
An ultimate constitution even purer and more overpowering than Senju Hashirama’s.
The night he fused with the Perfect Sage Body,
Chiba rolled in the mud in agony, blood seeping from every pore.
Old cells were torn apart.
New cells reassembled in a frenzy.
His bone density shot up, and his muscle fibers grew tougher than steel wire.
Most terrifying of all was his chakra.
Chakra that had once been as vast as a lake, under the blessing of the Perfect Sage Body, turned outright into a boundless ocean!
Limitless!
Endless!
A chakra level of late-stage Super Kage.
Paired with a terrifying body at the peak of Kage level.
It let him cast S-rank Wood Release without the slightest hesitation or strain.
No need for elaborate hand seals.
Often, a single clap of his hands, and whatever he willed appeared!