Chapter 110: The Seal Weakens!
"Baka… why does this damn place have so many shinobi? Even trying to survey the terrain is a nightmare. The second I look slightly out of place, three or four pairs of eyes lock onto me from the shadows."
As a veteran Reincarnator, Imiao Ichirō had run five or six missions and traveled through five or six worlds.
He'd assumed this particular assignment would be the easy one—all he had to do was record the layout of Konoha, the specific building placements, the population density, and so on.
What he hadn't anticipated was that his unfamiliar face alone would cause this much friction.
Anyone who thought he looked new kept glaring at him.
Imiao started to suspect his cover had been blown.
But if it really was blown… wouldn't I have been swarmed already?
Imiao was deeply confused. He had no idea why any of this was happening.
* * *
What he didn't know was this: the Third Shinobi World War had ended only about six months ago. Konoha's civilians and shinobi alike were still operating at maximum paranoia.
Anyone with an unfamiliar face—like Imiao's—was going to get scrutinized. No exceptions.
Even Ryū, walking the streets on a casual errand, got stared at regularly. Sure, Ryū was technically a Konoha resident, but he was also a hardcore shut-in, which meant most people didn't recognize him either.
But Imiao didn't know any of this. All he knew was that he was getting stared at everywhere he went—and he'd started to genuinely wonder if he'd been made.
Drawing a terrain map under these conditions is going to be impossibly difficult. If any of these shinobi catch me sketching one, they'll label me a spy, and then I'll have half the village dogpiling me, won't I?
The more Imiao thought about it, the more stifled he felt. What was supposed to be a trivially easy assignment had, in his hands, become genuinely difficult.
He wanted to vent—but he couldn't even figure out where to direct his frustration. All he could do was silently curse the frustratingly alert shinobi of Konoha.
* * *
Still, at least we used a few Lord God Space artifacts. Otherwise the difficulty of this mission would have been off the charts. How to accelerate Kushina's labor. How to loosen her seal from a distance. How to time its release precisely.
Imiao glanced at the single-digit Point balance on his Reincarnation Watch and felt something sour settle in his chest.
He'd traveled through four or five worlds to accumulate his Points. Now he had… three left. Not enough to buy anything.
The three veteran Reincarnators combined had pooled their entire fortunes to pull this off. In truth, this Reincarnation mission wasn't easy at all—it only felt manageable because of the artifacts they'd deployed.
There were only around fifteen to twenty known Reincarnators in the Lord God Space at this tier. The three of them counted as old-timers.
Three veteran Reincarnators pooling every Point they have into a single artifact purchase—if that doesn't make the mission easier, what was the point of years of accumulation? That would be a catastrophic loss.
Because failing a mission meant the Lord God would take your life.
* * *
As Imiao walked aimlessly through the streets—silently memorizing the layout—a gaunt figure suddenly materialized behind him.
Imiao noticed nothing. He had no clue there was someone a few paces back.
A pair of vertical pupils settled on Imiao's back. Orochimaru's thin frame leaned against a cold stone wall, his brow furrowing slightly.
This man's body… something about it is off.
Orochimaru had originally been on his way to find Danzō—he'd wanted Danzō to look into Ryū. But while walking leisurely through the streets, he'd caught something. Someone who genuinely interested him.
Because he could "smell" it on this middle-aged man—a peculiar quality, something very specific. Hard to articulate. Just… special.
The "Yagami" he'd met earlier was also unusual—but there had been no way to tell from surface observation alone. Only after seeing Ryū's shocking appetite and hearing Minato's confirmation had he realized something was off.
This strange man in front of him, though—Orochimaru could sense the anomaly directly. This one had a body that was genuinely peculiar.
Is it because Ryū's power level is so far above mine that I can't read anything off him? And with this guy—because he's weaker, I can actually detect the anomaly?
A flicker of interest crossed Orochimaru's face.
If that's really the case, then things just got interesting. Should I… bring this peculiar-feeling fellow back to the lab?
The man wore no forehead protector, so he wasn't a shinobi. And yet even as a non-shinobi, he had a body strange enough to register on Orochimaru's instincts.
Tch… an unexpected find? Or just my imagination?
Orochimaru glanced up at the darkening sky, and without a ripple began to follow the man.
Meanwhile Imiao—"veteran Reincarnator"—had no idea the person now trailing him was named Orochimaru.
If he knew, who knows how he'd react. A jumpscare? Immediate sprint? Those would probably be the top two options.
* * *
Back at the secluded loft house in Konoha—
Minato's brow was knotted tight as he listened to his wife's pain-ridden cries carry from inside.
There was no way his mind was going to calm down.
His wife was a jinchūriki. And during a jinchūriki's labor, the seal weakened.
And to compound it, this was a preterm delivery. God only knew whether the baby would survive. Worst case—mother and child both gone.
Ptoo! Stop thinking about that. Stop jinxing it. Stay optimistic. Stay calm.
Minato drew a deep breath. He'd been pacing out here for he didn't know how long—his feet had started to go numb.
* * *
And then, from inside the loft, a voice rang out in pure delight: "Sh-She's—she's delivered! Only five or six months along, and the baby is perfectly fine—indistinguishable from a full-term infant!"
Minato froze. Momentarily unable to process.
Delivered? And… the baby sounds healthy? And Kushina's okay too?
Completely blindsided. An unexpected surge of joy.
Minato had just started toward the door when the voice inside abruptly shifted into panic:
"N-no—no good! The jinchūriki's seal—the seal is weakening! How can this be happening?! We took every precaution! What's going on?!"
A savage pulse of chakra erupted out of the loft.
Minato, mid-stride outside. Kakashi, standing sentinel nearby. The other shinobi guarding the jinchūriki—every face registered shock at once.
* * *
Inside the loft, Kushina—having just given birth and still in a weakened state—stared around her in stunned disbelief, her pale face tight with confusion.
"What—what's happening? The seal… it's like someone just ripped it clean off me? I haven't been in contact with any stranger. How can this be?"
What Kushina didn't know was that her seal was being erased by a group of Reincarnators using artifacts they'd purchased from the Lord God Space.
Using those exorbitantly expensive artifacts, the Reincarnators had forced her to go into labor several months ahead of schedule—a nine-month pregnancy compressed into four. They'd forcibly induced Naruto's premature birth, then leveraged the seal vulnerability that accompanied labor to remotely overwrite the seal itself using more artifacts.
The device Imiao Ichirō had been cradling earlier was the remote controller for those artifacts.
They were, of course, staggeringly expensive. Three veteran Reincarnators had emptied out every reserve they had—sold the pot to patch the stove, as the saying went—and poured it all into this single window.
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