Naruto immediately directed his Shadow Clones to start filling the crater, shoveling back the dirt overturned by the Rasengan, dragging broken tree stumps over to cover the marks of the trenches, and covering the charred bushes.
After filling it, Naruto walked over the area himself, stomping the ground firm with his feet to check everything before dispelling his Shadow Clones.
Having done all this, Naruto reactivated Negative Emotions Sensing, locking onto Sasuke and Sakura's direction. The Chakra of the two had stabilized in a relatively safe location ahead.
Just as he was about to set off to catch up with them, a flicker of Chakra brushed past the edge of his perception.
Tthis Chakra was highly unusual, carrying a strange sense of resonance.
Naruto's footsteps paused.
The bloodline resonance of the Uzumaki clan!
He had felt a similar thing in Kushina's Chakra.
Naruto thought for a moment and turned toward that direction.
A moment later, when he arrived at the source of the Chakra, the scene before him came into view.
A black bear over three meters tall was wildly swinging its paws, thrashing the tree in front of it.
On the trunk of that tree, a red-haired girl was clinging tightly to a branch, curled into a ball. Her glasses were askew on the bridge of her nose, and her Kusagakure ninja outfit was torn in several places by the branches.
'It's her.' Naruto recognized her instantly.
Uzumaki Karin
A ninja of Kusagakure, an orphan of the Uzumaki clan, possessing the unique Kekkei Genkais of Mind's Eye of the Kagura and Heal Bite.
'Mind's Eye of the Kagura? This is the perfect chance to test my theory.'
With this thought, a slight smile appeared on the corner of Naruto's lips, and his body vanished from where he stood.
Rasengan!
In the next instant, his figure appeared between Karin and the black bear, a blue sphere of Chakra spinning at high speed in his right palm.
Immediately after, he slammed the Rasengan right into the center of the black bear's chest. The spinning Chakra sent the entire bear flying. After rolling twice on the ground, it lay belly-up under a tree, dying.
"Saved..."
Karin slid down the tree trunk, her legs giving out as she sat on the ground.
She fumbled around on the ground for a long time before finding her glasses, which had fallen off on her descent. She wiped them with her sleeve and put them on with trembling hands.
Then, she saw a blonde boy standing beside the defeated black bear, his side turned toward her.
The boy turned his head to look at her, his blue eyes holding a gentle smile in the sunlight.
"Are you okay?"
Karin's heart skipped a beat.
—
An hour later, the sky had turned completely dark.
Night in the Forest of Death was much colder than in Konoha.
Naruto had found a spot beneath a rock wall, where a campfire was burning brightly.
The black bear killed by the Rasengan had been sliced into pieces, skewered on sharpened branches, and roasted over the fire.
Karin sat opposite the campfire, her knees pulled up to her chest. Every now and then, she would steal a glance at Naruto, who sat opposite her turning the roasting bear meat, only to quickly dart her eyes back to the fire the moment his gaze shifted toward her.
"So, you were used as bait by your teammates to lure others in?"
Naruto tore off a piece of roasted bear leg meat, and handed it to Karin on a clean leaf.
Karin took the bear meat and nodded.
Her teammates had told her to make noise on purpose in the forest to attract other teams, planning to ambush them from behind once they were lured out.
But she had run too slowly and got targeted by a bear. Instead of saving her, her teammates had abandoned her and fled.
Karin spoke of this in a very flat tone, as if talking about something that had nothing to do with her, but her fingers were unconsciously tearing at the edges of the leaf.
After hesitating for a long time, she finally mustered the courage to ask, "Why did you save me?"
"We're clearly not from the same village, and I don't even have a scroll on me. You're being so nice to me, but I have nothing to give you in return..."
"My surname is Uzumaki." Naruto smiled.
Karin's movements froze.
She looked up at Naruto, her eyes wide. Her lips parted a few times before she finally made a sound.
"You... you're also from the Uzumaki clan? No wonder I felt such a sense of familiarity with you, like we've known each other for a long time. We both carry the blood of the Uzumaki."
Karin lowered her head, burying her face in her knees. Her shoulders trembled slightly, and she quickly wiped her eyes with her sleeve before looking up again.
"Aside from my mom, I've never met another Uzumaki. They're all dead. Uzushiogakure has been gone for a long time."
Naruto didn't reply to this, simply waiting quietly for Karin to calm down.
A moment later, after Karin picked up the bear meat again and began eating it in small bites, Naruto asked a seemingly casual question, "What are your plans for the future?"
Karin's chewing slowed down, and the glow of surviving her ordeal dimmed.
"Go back and find them."
Naruto asked, "Looking for your two teammates? The two who threw you to the bear as bait?"
Karin nodded. "I have nowhere else to go. Kusagakure needs my ability, they will let me live."
"What ability?"