____________
[— Manga Scene —]
"I will become Hokage… I can't lose here…" Naruto tried to get back up after taking a powerful hit from Kiba.
"You? Hokage?! Even though you're weaker than me?! Hahahaha!"
"I'll become Hokage for you! You know through this that you'll never become Hokage… so stop acting so tough!"
Kiba continued his deliberate mockery of Naruto, but in that moment, there was someone with a completely different opinion, and that someone was a girl.
'You're wrong, Kiba-kun… Naruto-kun is not weak…' Hinata was thinking this as she recalled moments she had witnessed of Naruto in childhood.
("I will become Hokage!! Everyone watch this!!")
That was what Naruto had once shouted in the past, as Hinata remembered.
'Naruto-kun is different from me in that he believes in his own abilities… I truly think he's amazing. It's something really hard to achieve, I understand that. But until now, no one has ever tried to see the real Naruto-kun…'
'No one has ever tried to understand the real Naruto-kun.'
"Get up, Naruto!" In that moment, Sakura cried out.
'But now… everyone is watching him. Everyone has come to know him…' Hinata smiled as she saw Naruto stand up once more before the eyes of everyone.
"If you want to compete with me for the title of Hokage… I'll beat you like a dog…" Naruto said with a mocking grin at Kiba.
[— End Scene —]
Vivid pages pulsing with the moments of Naruto and Kiba's battle, the readers in Konoha had not felt this particular kind of emotion through any of the previous fights… but now their feelings were a tangle of conflict.
This was the true impact of a fight involving the story's protagonist!
Or perhaps, no one had previously expected Kiba to be genuinely this dangerous, especially after he had shown a cowardly attitude in the face of Gaara.
The whispers rose and fell in waves, and the synchronized rustling of turning pages created a strangely captivating rhythm.
When Naruto stood up again after taking a sweeping hit from Gatsūga, a joint technique between Kiba and his dog Akamaru, where both transform into two tornadoes of fangs and claws and assault their opponent, the readers felt true excitement.
But when Naruto declared that he would become Hokage and couldn't afford to lose here, the readers were reminded once again of this boy's dream.
To become Hokage!
Could he truly be capable of achieving that dream?
Most readers already wanted to see Naruto make that dream real; their sympathy for him had been gradually growing alongside the number of chapters they had read so far.
The same applied to Uchiha Sasuke as well. They wanted to see him achieve his goal and kill the brother who may have been responsible for the massacre of his entire clan.
…
In a corner of the store, a boy with luminous blond hair and clear blue eyes, bearing a strong resemblance to the Naruto in the manga's pages, though with far less sharp features, was holding the manga volume, his fingers pressing gently against the edges of the paper.
His expression was a blend of seriousness and deep engagement. His brows knit together as he read the words of the blond boy on the page.
"He doesn't know how to give up…"
There was something in Naruto's stubbornness, something in that burning gaze hungry for recognition, that struck a sensitive chord within him.
He glanced left and right, watching people's reactions, his mind analyzing the fierce battle with the eyes of a genius shinobi, and he suddenly felt a strange, inexplicable bond tying him to this boy's trajectory.
In truth, this feeling wasn't new. It had surfaced many times by now, yet he had never been able to acknowledge it directly within himself, the way his reading partner beside him had.
Right beside him, Kushina sat perched on the edge of her seat, her entire body leaning toward the pages, her crimson hair falling over her shoulders. Her small fists were clenched so tightly that her knuckles had gone white, and her green eyes blazed with raw fury and deep emotion.
"What an insufferable jerk!" Kushina hissed through gritted teeth, overwhelmed by the urge to dive into the pages and punch Kiba.
"How dare he mock Naruto's dream?! He always gets back up no matter what, Dattebane!"
"You can't beat him with just that!"
"Come on! Naruto, hit that bastard!"
"This…"
But when Hinata began her inner monologue about Naruto, Kushina felt deeply moved, to the point where tears began to gather.
This was the first time she had learned that someone had been watching Naruto since he was a little child.
And that someone had been a child just like him… Hinata!
"Hinata… she's truly so much better than Sakura…"
From that very moment, Kushina was entirely in Hinata's corner.
As for Sakura? She no longer wished to even see her.
When Naruto stood up and declared he would beat Kiba like a dog if he dared to compete with him for the title of Hokage, the satisfied smiles on both Minato's and Kushina's faces grew wider, and the two looked at each other in that moment.
"No need to worry, he'll definitely win…"
…
While Kushina was reacting to the chapter's events in the outside world, there was another being living in the atmosphere in an entirely different way.
In a dark expanse overflowing with suffocating red energy, where stagnant water covered the floor, and massive seal bars rose until they disappeared into the darkness, the Nine-Tails lay crouched in terrifying stillness.
"What an insufferable mutt…"
The toxic red chakra surged violently, forming bubbles that burst with a dreadful hiss throughout the seal hall. The fox's enormous eyes, with their vertical slit pupils, gleamed with intense frustration and seething rage.
The Nine-Tails exhaled a sound like muffled thunder that shook the walls of the watery prison.
"Damn you, you little brat…" the Nine-Tails' voice rumbled with a tone heavy with frustration.
"How can a kid with nothing but a dog's claw, like Kiba, push you to this point? My pride is dragged through the mud watching my own chakra, even if it's merely a trickle, bound to a boy who gets beaten and crushed by nobodies!"
"Curse your weakness!"
And this was true, the Nine-Tails was genuinely furious.
The jinchūriki that was sealed in the future was being looked down upon with such contempt. Didn't that mean they were looking down on him, too? The king of the tailed beasts?
…
"Who could have expected Naruto to have battle intelligence this high!?"
Sakumo exclaimed in astonishment as he watched Naruto outwit Kiba in a brilliantly creative way that left everyone speechless.
Even without needing Sakura's childish explanation on the manga page, Sakumo and young Kakashi, as well, had understood Naruto's plan from the very beginning, the moment he transformed into Kiba.
Kiba's dog, Akamaru, had been taking Kiba's form the entire time, and that was the glaring weak point in Kiba's fighting style that Naruto had so expertly exploited in that moment.
Naruto transformed into Kiba, creating enormous confusion between Kiba and Akamaru. In the end, Kiba had believed Naruto couldn't easily trick him since he possessed great olfactory ability, as his teacher Kurenai had confirmed. But by the end of the chapter, that turned out to be nonsense.
"In the end, Kiba knocked his own dog Akamaru out of the fight… what a clever bastard, Naruto…"
Kakashi smiled seeing this. In truth, he was immensely proud of Naruto and what he had shown in this fight so far.
'Even though he hasn't really shown all that much.'
But in that moment, both young Kakashi's brow and his father Sakumo's furrowed.
"This…"
"…Embarrassing."
On the other side, Dai and Gai were laughing hysterically, clutching their stomachs.
"Hahahaha! He farted!"
"Oh, My God! Ninpō, Beast Mimicry amplifies Kiba's sense of smell many times its normal level. This is incredible! Hahahaha!!"
"This is truly the effect of youth! And here I was seriously waiting to see Naruto's technique! Man, stop it! Hahahaha!"
Dai and Gai were not the only ones wiping tears of laughter in that moment; most of the readers were doing the same.
…
Elsewhere, just moments before, Hiruzen had been praising Naruto's remarkable intelligence, how he had turned things around on Kiba and used his own techniques against him, even mockingly making him fall for the same trick twice in a single fight.
He had gotten Kiba's dog knocked out of the battle by Kiba's own hand!
"That was truly extraordinary… but what is this now? Can it really be a coincidence?"
The Hokage's expression of amazement shifted to one of embarrassment and utter speechlessness.
This fight had become a genuine comedy.
"This is the real Naruto that no one ever tried to see!"
Danzo exclaimed with disgust.
"Is this even a fight? End this clown show. I want to see a real battle."
Danzo felt the urge to step into the manga page, slap both of these kids, and disqualify them both.
But the fight came to an end shortly after, with Uzumaki Naruto Rendan, five clones of Naruto attacking an incapacitated Kiba and finishing him off with the close-combat style that Sasuke had copied from Rock Lee and Naruto had in turn copied from Sasuke.
"Well, it's over… though it wasn't particularly satisfying, he won in the end."
Hiruzen smiled, as did his sons, Asuma and Hajime, upon seeing the fight's conclusion.
In the end, Naruto was declared the winner by the referee.
…
"Your future student lost, Kurenai."
Yūhi Shinku looked at his six-year-old daughter nestled in his lap and said with a smile.
"He's an idiot… he deserved to lose…"
Little Kurenai said with an annoyed expression. Even if he was her counterpart's future student, she didn't like him.
In her view, Naruto was far more interesting.
"Next is your other future student, probably Hinata…"
Her father knew how much Kurenai loved Hinata.
At those words, little Kurenai nodded with visible anxiety… From the volume's summary, everyone already knew that Hinata would almost certainly be fighting Neji.
____________
Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
____________
Chapter 174: The Main House and the Branch House!?
Chapter 175: A Future Beginning to Change…
Chapter 176: Toxic Words
Chapter 177: Resilience in the Face of the Storm!
____________
Support the journey and unlock advanced chapters!
If you're enjoying Rob's story, his journey of publishing the Naruto manga inside the Shinobi world, and the impact it has on the world, and you want to know what happens before everyone else… there's always a way to stay ahead.
I work on this novel every day, developing its world and chapters, and every bit of support helps me keep delivering higher-quality content at a faster pace.
By supporting me on Patreon, you'll get exclusive access to advanced chapters before they're released to the public. You can move ahead in the story and read up to 30 chapters in advance!
📚 Support Tiers:
$5 → Read 5 advanced chapters
$10 → Read 10 advanced chapters
$15 → Read 15 advanced chapters
$20 → Read 20 advanced chapters
$30 → Read 30 advanced chapters
Every bit of support, even a small one, makes a real difference and helps me continue writing this journey that we're experiencing together.
Join now and start reading the stacked chapters before everyone else:
Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/BlackStar_BH
You can also get the same benefits on Ko-fi:
https://www.ko-fi.com/blackstar_bh
Thank you to everyone who supports the story and believes in this world. You are the reason it continues. ❤️
____________