Madara Uchiha was genuinely interested in what Hirofumi Ito had just said.
But no matter how he looked at it, Hirofumi Ito was still nothing more than a little brat in his eyes.
A scrawny, pathetically weak little brat at that.
He had his own plans.
Even if this little brat claimed he’d been deceived, that was no reason to abandon them so easily.
That plan was the dream he and his closest friend had shared!
If he could throw away a dream that easily, he wouldn’t be Madara Uchiha.
Still, this brat was worth watching.
The fact that he could say something like that was proof enough that he was no ordinary kid.
It was practically identical to how Madara himself had thought in his youth.
That realization brought a brief flicker of dazedness.
Because what he sensed coming from Hirofumi Ito was something that felt like it shared the very same origin as himself.
For just a moment, it was almost like looking at his own younger self.
The corner of his mouth curved into a faint, barely-there arc.
Madara Uchiha skipped any pretense of politeness, reached out, grabbed the food from the table, and began eating with full enthusiasm.
The sight of it made the corner of Hirofumi Ito’s mouth twist sideways all over again.
The Crooked-Mouth Dragon King, limited-time return engagement!
Madara had just taken a proper bite out of a braised pig’s trotter when a voice suddenly rang out from thin air.
He froze.
Wasn’t that his own voice?!
And in the next instant, a very bad feeling came over him.
Because why did those words sound so incredibly familiar?!
…You think you can make this old man feel grateful just because of some bizarre food?!
This old man is telling you, impossible!
Absolutely impossible!
This old man would sooner jump off the top of the villa and die from the fall right here!
This old man will absolutely never eat a single bite of your food!
Silence.
After the voice faded, Hirofumi Ito looked at Madara Uchiha, who was still gnawing on the pig’s trotter, with an expression that couldn’t quite decide whether it was a smile or not.
Madara Uchiha’s complexion cycled through white to green, green to purple, purple to red, and finally back to white again.
Truly a spectacular range of colors.
“You! Infuriating! Little! BRAT!”
Hirofumi Ito put on a look of tremendous surprise.
“Oh my, oh my! Where did that voice come from?! How strange! And why does it sound so incredibly familiar to me?! Hiss… and not just familiar — I keep feeling like I’ve heard it somewhere before?! Now where exactly was that? Madara… don’t you think the words that voice just said sound awfully familiar too?!”
BOOM!
Madara Uchiha hurled the pig’s trotter in his hand with full force.
Very reluctantly, but he threw it all the same.
Because that trotter was genuinely delicious.
“You little brat! Didn’t you want this old man to guide your training?! Then come on! Stop this damn eating! Today this old man will give you a real lesson! Let you understand what training actually means! What the hell training means! What the damn hell, the damn hell, TRAINING MEANS!”
Madara knew he had no way to actually attack Hirofumi Ito, that strange power would stop him.
But as long as he had no intention of killing the kid, that force had no reason to restrict him.
Since outright attacking was off the table, teaching was fair game, wasn’t it?!
Teaching ninjutsu, teaching taijutsu, and teaching meant hands-on contact, didn’t it?!
Kehehehehehehe…
You little brat!
Today this old man will show you firsthand what it means to face Madara Uchiha!
He didn’t bother finishing his meal.
He grabbed Hirofumi Ito by the collar and dragged him straight out to the open ground outside the villa.
Hirofumi Ito was absolutely thrilled.
Wasn’t this exactly what he’d been waiting for this whole time?!
Getting Madara Uchiha to personally fight on his behalf, that was still out of the question for now.
But getting him to oversee training?
Madara had already agreed to that earlier.
Looking at the furious Madara Uchiha, Hirofumi Ito knew the man wouldn’t hold back.
And Madara was absolutely planning to use this “teaching” session to give him a proper thrashing.
He didn’t care one bit.
As long as he could get stronger, everything else was fine!
This was Madara Uchiha, after all.
Getting beaten to a pulp by him was nothing to be ashamed of, and there was a real chance that through all that punishment he might just awaken the Sharingan.
He did have Indra’s Chakra, after all.
That thought made Hirofumi Ito decide to pour on a little more fuel.
“Madara, don’t you dare make me look down on you! Weren’t you supposed to be guiding my training? If you spend forever at it and I still can’t get stronger, that’s going to be pretty embarrassing for you! The great Madara Uchiha, scourge of the Shinobi World — surely he isn’t going to turn out worse than some chunin teacher at the Ninja Academy, right?! Gotta say, Iruka-sensei may not be much in a fight, but when it comes to teaching students, he’s genuinely excellent! Madara Uchiha isn’t going to end up worse than a chunin teacher, is he? That would really make people die laughing!”
“Hmph! You little brat! Watch carefully!”
A chunin?!
What kind of thing even was that?!
He could wipe out a whole pile of them with a single ninjutsu!
“A ninja’s combat comes down to three things: speed! Precision! Ruthlessness!”
With that, Madara Uchiha grabbed Hirofumi Ito and flung him straight into the air.
In the next instant he vanished.
Before Hirofumi Ito could even begin to react, Madara had already appeared directly behind him.
BOOM!
One punch.
Just one single punch.
Hirofumi Ito was sent flying.
And because Madara Uchiha had absolutely no intention of killing him, the Summoning System placed no restrictions on Madara either.
“You little brat!
Your reaction speed is pathetic!
Is this really the best you’ve got?
You’re completely useless!
I have never in my life seen anyone more useless than you!
You can’t even match a six-year-old from our Uchiha Clan!
Slow speed!
Slow reactions!
Weak strength!
Poor constitution!
You are deficient in every single way!
And you talk about unifying the Shinobi World with this level of ability?!
Don’t ever say that again — it makes people die laughing!”
Finally getting to discipline this infuriating little brat, Madara Uchiha went absolutely wild with his trash talk.
The verbal assault was just as ferocious as the physical one.
Hirofumi Ito, meanwhile, was brimming with excitement.
Madara Uchiha was really going through with it, the system hadn’t restricted his movements, which meant the man had absolutely no intention of killing him.
Kehehehehehehe…
The Crooked-Mouth Dragon King makes another appearance.
“Madara! Come on! Don’t go easy on me just because I’m a delicate flower!”
BOOM!
Hirofumi Ito went flying again.
“You infuriating little brat! That expression on your face is absolutely deranged! When a ninja is in combat, you do not make unnecessary movements or expressions! Because that will get you killed with no grave to show for it!”
➤ Next: Madara Uchiha’s Pig Trotters
Chapter 18 – Madara Uchiha’s Pig Trotters
The next morning, Hirofumi Ito woke up aching everywhere.
He couldn’t quite figure out why.
His body inside the Summoning Space was supposed to be made of condensed Chakra, yet every bit of pain from fighting Madara Uchiha had reflected back onto him with perfect clarity.
No, wait.
Calling it a fight was far too generous.
It had been a completely one-sided beating.
Even so, while Madara Uchiha almost certainly had revenge on his mind, Hirofumi had to admit that the man had been, grudgingly, infuriatingly, genuinely dedicated to teaching him while doing it.
One night of getting beaten around, and Hirofumi Ito felt like he’d gained an enormous amount.
Madara Uchiha hadn’t used a single ninjutsu.
Hadn’t even used something as basic as the Academy Three Techniques.
Pure physical conditioning and combat technique alone, and Hirofumi hadn’t landed a single counter the entire night.
The powerhouses of the Warring States era were truly terrifying.
And this one was among the strongest of that era…
Hirofumi had sparred with his father and grandfather before.
They were jōnin, whatever else you could say about them.
But after one night with Madara Uchiha, Hirofumi couldn’t help feeling that his father’s and grandfather’s combat technique was like children playing house…
And now he understood — deeply, viscerally — why Madara Uchiha always asked that question before a fight: “Do you want to dance too?!”
Because the way this man fought genuinely didn’t look like fighting.
It really was like dancing.
Graceful.
And absolutely lethal.
Right now, Hirofumi felt that the Summoning System’s first gifted summon, the one that had brought out Madara Uchiha, had been the greatest windfall of his life.
There was simply too much he could learn from Madara Uchiha.
If he’d tried to train under Hashirama Senju, Hashirama would probably have clapped both hands together, called out some giant Buddha statue, and pounded him straight into the dirt.
Hirofumi even had a feeling that if it actually came to that, Hashirama Senju would turn around with boundless enthusiasm and ask: “Pretty good teaching, right?!”
The moment that bizarre image crossed his mind, Hirofumi couldn’t help curling his mouth into a grimace.
He slowly got up and got dressed.
“Hiss… every bone in my body feels like it’s about to fall apart! That awful Madara Uchiha! Don’t even think about getting any more pig trotters!”
He’d noticed it last night, Madara Uchiha seemed to have a particular fondness for gnawing on pig trotters.
He’d been curious enough to ask about it, but Madara had hemmed and hawed without saying much, and only insisted that Hirofumi leave a massive pile of pig trotters behind in the Summoning Space before he left.
Inside the Summoning Space…
Madara Uchiha confirmed that Hirofumi Ito had gone, then picked up a blank scroll.
It was a scroll Madara Uchiha had asked Hirofumi to conjure out of thin air using that peculiar method of his.
He stared at it and studied it carefully for a good while.
He even activated his Mangekyō Sharingan, and yet the scroll really was nothing more than an ordinary scroll.
There was absolutely nothing unusual about it.
That surprised him.
That little brat’s methods were probably far more extraordinary than he had imagined.
But right now, Madara Uchiha wasn’t thinking about Hirofumi Ito.
He unrolled the blank scroll and began inscribing a sealing array across its surface.
For Madara Uchiha, a sealing array presented no difficulty whatsoever.
A moment later, a brand-new Scroll of Seals was complete.
He looked at it, and a faint, strange smile crept onto the corner of his mouth.
Had Hirofumi Ito been watching the Summoning Space at that moment, he would certainly have noticed, that smile was unmistakably doting.
The next moment, Madara Uchiha gathered the kitchen’s mountain of pig trotters, roasted pig trotters, braised pig trotters, five-spice pig trotters…, and sealed every last one of them into the Scroll of Seals.
He stared at the scroll now stuffed full of pig trotters, then tucked it away close to his body.
He remembered what that little brat had said, Hirofumi Ito could form contracts with the departed souls of the Hidden Leaf Village.
Madara himself had been summoned through this peculiar method and had signed the summoning contract.
Which meant that Hashirama Senju, that big fool, would very likely be contracted as well someday.
And when that happened, he would in all probability appear inside this Summoning Space too.
Pig trotters were that big fool’s favorite thing to eat.
When the time came, if he pulled out a scroll stuffed full of pig trotters and handed them over, that big fool would be absolutely thrilled, wouldn’t he?
When the time came, that big fool would definitely break down sobbing and throw himself into his arms in tearful gratitude, wouldn’t he?
The thought of that scene made the smile at the corner of Madara Uchiha’s mouth grow wider.
Insufferable Hashirama, you big fool, when that day comes, you’d better be properly grateful to this great lord.
Hehehehehehehe…
For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, after spending a night with Hirofumi Ito, that sense of humiliation and fury that had lived in his chest had already faded away.
And when he faced Hirofumi Ito, he always felt strangely as though he were looking at another version of himself.
The feeling was entirely new to Madara Uchiha.
Strange and impossible to articulate, and it made him miss Hashirama Senju all the more.
On Hirofumi’s end, he had no idea what was happening inside the Summoning Space.
He was not Hiruzen Sarutobi the Third Hokage, after all, he had no habit of spying on people.
After washing up and getting dressed, Hirofumi made his way to the dining table.
His father, grandfather, and mother were already there.
Hanako Ito glanced at the son sitting beside her, and a faint trace of worry crept into her expression.
“Hirofumi…”
“What is it, Mother?”
He was a little curious.
Why did she look so worried about him?
“Hirofumi… did you not sleep well last night?”
“Ah… it was fine, why?” He looked at Hanako Ito with genuine curiosity.
“Your dark circles look rather heavy… And you don’t seem to have much energy either… Hirofumi — is there a girl you like? Or have you already started seeing someone?”
Hanako Ito looked over at him with a gently probing expression.
“Pfft!”
Hirofumi Ito immediately spat out a mouthful of rice.
“Mother, what are you saying? I’m just a student at the Ninja Academy. Falling in love is still a bit too early for me, isn’t it? At least wait until after I graduate before bringing that up…”
➤ Next: Having Strange Thoughts Is Normal
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