"Ah, Kaede, I heard you've been promoted to Tokubetsu Jonin. You've really brought honor to our whole street. Here, I prepared a little red envelope in advance—don't be shy."
"Big Brother Kaede, you made jonin! No one from our street has ever reached jonin before!"
"The Kitahara kid is something else…"
After the celebratory dinner for his promotion, Kaede Kitahara walked home on foot. Along the way, the enthusiastic neighbors greeted him one after another.
A few elders even took the chance to slip small red envelopes into his pockets when he wasn't paying attention.
He was the only one from this civilian district to rise to Tokubetsu Jonin and enter Konoha's upper ranks. To everyone around him, he had become the model "someone else's kid."
These uncles, aunts, and neighbors had watched him grow up.
His father had died on the battlefield when he was still very young. Although Konoha provided some compensation, it was far from enough to raise him to adulthood—let alone support the expenses of becoming a shinobi.
Back then, many people in the neighborhood had reached out to help.
When Kaede returned home, he found a pile of small gifts already stacked up inside. None of them were particularly valuable, but every single one carried heartfelt intention.
Fangko Kitahara was busy taking inventory, carefully recording which family had given what.
There were also gifts from fellow shinobi—people who had crossed paths with Kaede in the past and sent something after hearing the news.
Closer friends had sent theirs as well. Even Uzumaki Naruto, who was in the worst financial shape among them, had sent over a bundle of ninja tools.
After all, he had made quite a bit of money following Kaede around.
As he walked through the calm and prosperous streets of Konoha, Kaede felt a quiet sense of peace settle over him. But the thought that the village would soon face multiple catastrophic crises left him with complicated emotions.
Konoha was, after all, the central stage of the story.
It was never like anywhere else.
Standing on the rooftop, Kaede gazed out at the countless lights glowing across the village, and a certain resolve took shape in his mind.
[Among the thousands of lights in Konoha, there's always one that's left for me. If possible, I don't want to see this place destroyed either. But as the center of the world's stage, protecting it requires strength—overwhelming strength.
For an ordinary resident of Konoha, there's nothing you can do when disasters strike.
Who knows when someone might suddenly fly into the sky, shout "Shinra Tensei," and flatten the entire village in an instant, wiping everything out.
Or maybe one day the moon itself will come crashing down on you. At that point, there's no need to go to the moon anymore—it'll come to you.
Or maybe a single Tailed Beast Bomb from the Ten-Tails will sweep the whole village away.
Or maybe, one day, an alien shows up, tosses out an energy sphere, and the village gets destroyed all over again.]
Kaede stared at the lights beyond the window and let out a long breath.
When he talked about these future crises, it might have sounded casual—but in truth, he had no answers.
With his current strength, facing those threats was impossible.
Only by advancing further—reaching Super Kage Level—would he even qualify to search for solutions.
At first, he hadn't wanted to get involved. He understood his own limits too well. Against those world-ending disasters, his strength meant nothing.
Stronger.
Stronger.
Stronger.
As his power continued to grow, something that had long been suppressed by his instinct for survival began to stir within him.
At the same time, everyone who possessed a copy of the diary immediately sensed that it was updating.
Back in his home, Hatake Kakashi's face was still flushed. He had attended Kaede's promotion banquet and had drunk quite a bit.
After washing his face, Kakashi picked up the diary and began reading, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
For the first time, he could see a shift in Kaede's mindset. Between the lines, his sense of belonging to Konoha had clearly deepened.
That was something Kakashi wanted to see.
Whether it was Kaede's mysterious ability to predict the future or his astonishing strength at the Strong Kage Level, both were things Konoha desperately needed.
"So these are the future crises that could destroy the village?"
Kakashi pieced together some clues. He didn't know everything, but the one about shouting "Shinra Tensei" was obvious—it referred to the Deva Path.
After watching the earlier footage of Jiraiya battling the Six Paths of Pain, he had learned quite a bit.
That crisis would come from Pain—more precisely, from Nagato.
That much was easy to understand.
But what did it mean for the moon to come crashing down?
The way Kaede described it was almost humorous, but just imagining it made Kakashi suck in a sharp breath, his hair standing on end.
If the moon really fell…
There would be no saving anyone.
No jutsu in existence could protect Konoha from that.
And before he could fully process that, the next threat appeared.
A single Tailed Beast Bomb from the Ten-Tails, wiping out the entire village.
"Ten-Tails? Since when was there a Ten-Tails?"
After a full day of grueling training, Tsunade—working hard to restore herself to the peak condition of her younger years—saw the mention of the Ten-Tails in the diary and frowned deeply.
The entire world knew there were only nine Tailed Beasts.
There were plenty of other monstrous creatures, of course, but none of them were classified as Tailed Beasts.
A Tailed Beast wasn't just defined by the number of tails—it was a completely unique form of life.
Across the shinobi world, there were countless powerful beasts. Some belonged to structured systems, like the giant creatures of the three great sage regions. Others existed independently, scattered across the land.
Their forms of life varied wildly.
But the nine Tailed Beasts stood apart.
Not only were they unimaginably powerful—like walking natural disasters to ordinary humans—they also possessed something even more extraordinary.
Near immortality.
Since ancient times, they had existed without truly dying. Even if one was killed, it would eventually be reborn somewhere in the world.
Because of these distinct traits, the nine were grouped together and ranked from One-Tail to Nine-Tails.
Generally, the more tails a beast had, the stronger it was.
Among them, the strongest was naturally the Nine-Tails.
But there had never been any such thing as a Ten-Tails.
Even so, by following the logic that more tails meant greater power, it wasn't hard to imagine what that would imply.
The Nine-Tails alone was already a disaster on a massive scale. Konoha had paid an enormous price to capture it—the lives of the Fourth Hokage and his wife.
If a Ten-Tails truly existed and ever appeared…
It would be nothing less than a mythical catastrophe.