After an unknown amount of time, Kazan finally stopped when he felt his body approaching its limit.
He pulled off his shirt and wrung it out hard.
Sweat poured from the fabric like water from an open faucet, splashing onto the dry training field below.
It was proof of all the effort he’d put in.
“Are you heading back, Ka… Kazan?”
Seeing him stop, Might Guy finally stopped as well.
Ever since they started, Guy had been desperately trying to catch up with Kazan.
Yet the five-lap gap from the beginning had somehow grown to a full fifteen laps.
Guy had long since exhausted himself.
Only sheer willpower had kept him going.
“Yeah. It’ll be troublesome if I stay out too late.”
“That’s it for today, Guy. See ya.”
Kazan draped his wrung-out shirt over his shoulder and left the Ninja Academy without looking back.
The sun would be setting before long.
He still had to take care of tonight’s dinner.
Once Kazan had disappeared completely from sight, Might Duy walked over.
“We should head home too, Guy.”
“Mm.”
Might Guy followed his father home.
On the way, he couldn’t help asking,
“Dad… can I really become a powerful shinobi?”
“Of course!”
Might Duy answered without the slightest hesitation.
He pressed his thumb against his chest, right over his heart.
“Only your sweat will never betray you! Every step you run is the roar of your youth!”
“But…”
Guy’s voice dropped.
“Even when it comes to taijutsu, I can’t beat Kazan…”
He had no talent for ninjutsu.
As for genjutsu, he understood absolutely nothing.
Back when the Ninja Academy was accepting students, he had practically been the only applicant who was rejected.
It was only because his father had continually encouraged him that he kept going.
In the end, his persistence finally moved the Third Hokage enough to let him enroll in the Ninja Academy.
Guy had believed that as long as he kept working hard, one day he would catch up with everyone else and prove both his own ninja way and his father’s.
Then he entered the Academy and met Kazan.
In ninjutsu talent, he couldn’t compare to Kakashi.
And now, even in taijutsu, his own talent couldn’t compare to Kazan’s.
A fifteen-lap gap wasn’t merely a number.
It meant the amount of energy contained within his body was far inferior to Kazan’s—the genius who had abandoned ninjutsu and devoted himself entirely to taijutsu.
Even when it came to effort, Guy felt he couldn’t compare to either Kazan or Kakashi.
More than once, he had personally witnessed Kakashi training alone.
And he had also seen Kazan emerge from the Forest of Death covered in injuries.
I’m too weak!
Just as Guy lowered his head in dejection, Might Duy’s fist suddenly came flying.
Bang!
Might Guy was knocked several meters away.
“You idiot, Guy!”
“Precisely because they’re ahead of you, you should follow the path they’ve already carved out and chase after them even faster!”
“Listen carefully! Youth is a train with no return journey! Someone who’s always afraid of failure, always worrying about losing, will never achieve success!”
“Be brave! Don’t ask yourself whether you can defeat them. Ask yourself what you need to do in order to defeat them!”
Might Duy passionately passed on the lessons he had learned throughout his life.
Might Guy clearly hadn’t expected his father to suddenly say something so profound.
For once, it wasn’t something like, “The moment you die is when youth reaches its ultimate climax!”
For a moment, clarity returned to Guy’s eyes.
He shouted loudly at his father,
“I understand, Dad!”
“Guy!”
Father and son embraced each other in the middle of the street and burst into tears.
Passersby hurriedly gave them a wide berth.
Everyone was terrified of this lunatic father-and-son duo.
….
Meanwhile…
Kazan had already arrived at the Forest of Death.
Tonight’s dinner was inside.
As his age and strength increased, the amount of energy Kazan’s body required each day had become enormous.
An ordinary shinobi could fill their stomach with a bowl of rice, a bowl of miso soup, a fish, and some vegetables.
For Kazan, that was little more than an appetizer.
It wouldn’t leave him starving, but it was nowhere near enough to satisfy the tremendous physical potential brought by the Garp Template.
He needed vast quantities of food to meet the demands of his excessively active cells, supplying them with enough energy to gradually convert his body’s potential into actual strength.
Kazan entered the Forest of Death with the ease of someone visiting his own backyard.
This was a place that terrified ordinary Konoha villagers.
As one of the sites used for the Chūnin Exams, the Forest of Death was home to countless ferocious beasts.
There were giant snakes over a hundred meters long, enormous bears the size of houses, gigantic apes capable of leaping dozens of meters in a single bound…
Creatures like these could be found everywhere inside.
Kazan had barely entered the outer perimeter when a pair of scarlet eyes suddenly lit up in the shadows.
Clear saliva dripped from razor-sharp fangs.
Kazan looked over.
A massive tiger, nearly the size of a small house, emerged from behind a huge tree.
“Been waiting long, Hakimi?”
Kazan chuckled and waved.
Then something astonishing happened.
The ferocious tiger Kazan had named Hakimi instantly turned into an affectionate lapdog.
It pounced toward him and enthusiastically licked his face with its huge tongue.
Hakimi was Kazan’s “hunting dog.”
Kazan had found him two years ago, when the tiger was still a cub.
His mother had probably died fighting another ferocious beast, leaving the young Hakimi to wander out toward the edge of the Forest of Death.
Fortunately for Hakimi, Kazan had already eaten his fill that day.
Otherwise, the little tiger might have ended up in a cooking pot.
“Let’s go.”
“ROAR!”
Hakimi immediately lowered himself to the ground and let Kazan climb onto his back.
Then man and tiger charged deeper into the Forest of Death together.
It didn’t take long for them to find their target.
A gray bear even larger than Hakimi.
The giant bear noticed them at the same time, immediately locking its gaze onto Hakimi.
As for Kazan sitting on the tiger’s back, the bear didn’t even spare him a proper glance.
He was just a two-legged creature.
One swipe of its paw could kill something like him dozens of times over.
Clearly, it had no idea who the real boss was.
“That one’s dinner. Go, Hakimi Tiger!”
Kazan suddenly sprang high into the air from Hakimi’s back.
The moment Hakimi heard the command, he lunged at the gray bear without hesitation.
The bear reared onto its hind legs to meet Hakimi’s charge head-on.
BOOM!
With a deafening crash, the gray bear was knocked flat onto the ground.
But that wasn’t much of a problem.
A moment later, it smashed Hakimi away with one enormous paw, sending the tiger crashing into a nearby tree hard enough to knock it down.
Before the bear could even climb back to its feet, however, the insignificant two-legged creature had already descended from above.
“Fist Bone!”
Kazan clenched his right fist.
His body plummeted like a meteor.
“Impact!”
Under the gray bear’s horrified gaze, the fist in its vision rapidly grew larger and larger.
Then—
BOOM!
Kazan’s fist slammed directly into the bear’s skull.
There was no Haki reinforcing the punch.
There was certainly no Conqueror’s Haki coating.
All it contained was the raw power of Kazan’s fist, supplemented by chakra.
Yet that single punch nearly sent the gray bear straight to meet its ancestors.
“ROOOAR!”
The wounded bear went berserk.
Fresh blood poured over one of its pupils.
With its vision impaired, it began wildly swinging its massive paws in every direction.
One giant tree after another was snapped clean through the middle.
Kazan retreated to Hakimi’s side.
He squeezed his left shoulder with his right hand, then swung his left arm a few times to loosen up his body.
“Still alive after that? You’re pretty tough.”
Hakimi responded with a roar.
“ROAR!”
“Don’t bite its paws. I’m eating bear paws tonight, and I don’t want your drool all over them.”
With that, Kazan launched himself forward once more.
“Galaxy Impact!”
He roared as another punch came crashing down.