Chapter 55

"What?" The Kusagakure Elder stared at Naruto as if he were looking at a madman.

Naruto paid him no mind, turning to Karin instead. "Watch closely, Karin," he told her. "This is the ninjutsu most suited to our Uzumaki clan."

*Poof!* With a puff of white smoke, a single clone of Naruto appeared beside him.

"A Shadow Clone?" The Elder's conviction that Naruto was insane only deepened. 'He plans to use this against us? What a joke. They shatter with a single touch. And that powerful beam of light from earlier? Just as I suspected, that powerful beam from before wasn't a Kekkei Genkai, but some secret technique with clear limitations. If he hadn't exposed himself, I might have been fooled.'

'Heaven is truly on our side,' the Great Elder thought, a greedy fire igniting in his heart. Once he captured these two remnants of the Uzumaki clan, becoming the new leader of Kusagakure was well within his reach.

The newly formed Shadow Clone crossed its arms, making the familiar cross-hand sign. *Poof! Poof! Poof!* Puff after puff of white smoke erupted, one after another, until half the street was blanketed in a thick cloud. When it cleared, countless Narutos stood before them, their identical, masked faces staring back. There were at least a hundred of them.

'Shadow Clones creating more Shadow Clones?' The Elder was surprised, but not concerned. 'So what? They're still just a few clones.'

"Tear them apart!" he commanded. "Go, my elites! Make Kusagakure proud!"

The Kusa-nin charged the Shadow Clones. But the one-sided massacre the Elder had envisioned was not the one that unfolded.

The Kusa-nin charged forward, confident they were rushing towards victory. One taijutsu Kusa-nin, wearing knuckle duster, threw a confident punch, aiming for a Naruto clone's face. His fist met Naruto's ordinary one, expecting the clone to dissolve into smoke.

It didn't.

Instead, there was a sickening crunch. 'Huh?' The Kusa-nin stared blankly at his arm, or rather, what was left of it: only half. His knuckle duster shattered, his fist, indeed, half his arm, simply vanished with that single blow. A moment later, excruciating pain flared as his nerves finally relayed the damage to his brain. The Kusa-nin clutched the stump of his arm, howling in agony. He managed only a single shriek before a second punch, delivered instantly, exploded his head.

It was a slaughter.

The same scene played out across the street. Ninja were killed before they could even form a hand seal. Genjutsu users, with their weaker bodies, fared even worse. A clone would simply grab a shinobi by the neck, apply a little pressure, and the man's neck would snap, his head lolling lifelessly to the side.

Just as the Elder had predicted, it was indeed one-sided, only it was the Kusa-nin who were on the receiving end of the slaughter. His so-called Kusa-nin elites couldn't even withstand a single blow against these clones. Even elite Root Anbu were easy prey for Naruto. These Kusa-nin, inferior in both quality and quantity, were barely worth the term 'easy prey.'

The battle concluded in less than half a minute. The Kusa-nin lay scattered, none of them intact. Only five of Naruto's Shadow Clones burst, and none of them were due to the Kusa-nin, his defense was simply too strong for them to even scratch. 

Mainly, there were simply too few Kusa-nin for the overwhelming number of Shadow Clones. Many couldn't even find opponents, leading to an amusing internal squabble among the clones, the only reason the 'battle' lasted as long as it did. Only Naruto's clones could truly defeat themselves. 

Actually, a single Shadow Clone would have been enough to annihilate the entire force, but Naruto had insisted on summoning over a hundred.

'Imp-Impossible...'

Looking at the carnage, the blood mixing with severed limbs on the cobblestones, and then at the almost completely unharmed army of clones, the Great Elder's legs gave out. He collapsed to the ground, his earlier arrogance replaced by a wretched, hollow fear. As he gazed at the legion of demons before him, a single phrase burned itself into his mind.

A one-man army.

'Why does the Uzumaki clan have a monster like this? What in the world did we provoke?'

To the Great Elder, Naruto was a demon crawled from the deepest pits of hell. But to Karin, he was the hero who had come to save her, a radiant figure descending from the heavens.

"Is there anyone else?" Naruto's voice cut through the silent, corpse-strewn street, cold and desolate. No one answered him. Naruto's gaze shifted to the Elder, slumped on the ground.

'I actually quite liked your arrogant from before,' Naruto thought. 'Please, restore it. It's much more fun breaking that arrogance limb by limb.'

"It seems you've been abandoned, haven't you?" Naruto mused.

'Are all the Kusa-nin truly dead? How could that be? This was a ninja village, ranked relatively high in the ninja world, how could there be so few people? Were they hiding, or perhaps planning some fatal blow?'

"A disgusting village. Filled with disgusting people." Through Karin's memories, Naruto had seen everything Kusa had inflicted upon Karin and her mother. If the Kusa-nin were the perpetrators of atrocities, then the villagers themselves were accomplices, their actions often worse than the shinobi. They'd not only maliciously slandered Karin and her mother behind their backs, but also frequently tormented the pair. What they suffered was even worse than what Naruto suffered in Konoha.

He remembered one image with perfect, chilling clarity. An attempted rape. Karin had only been six years old. And the man who had tried it... he was one of the first Naruto had killed, his heart pierced by a red beam. But he hadn't been alone. Other villagers had been there, men, women, old and young. Not one of them had stepped in. They had watched. Some had even laughed.

Not a single person in this village was innocent. Killing them all ten thousand times over wouldn't be enough. The people of this village were like bedbugs, naturally inclined to drain and plunder. The putrid aura emanating from them made Naruto feel deep disgust even from afar.

"I have no interest in playing cat and mouse with you," he said, his voice flat. He wrapped an arm around Karin, pulling her close, and slowly extended the index finger of his right hand. A faint point of light began to gather at its tip.

"Since you won't come out..."

The point of light grew, but it wasn't white. It was a deep, ominous red. The energy ball swelled, from the size of a marble to a basketball, and it kept growing, pulsing with raw power. An indescribable unease tightened its grip on the Elder's heart.

'That power... what is that?' It wasn't ninjutsu. It wasn't a secret technique or a Kekkei Genkai. He searched his mind, trying to identify the source of the dark red energy, and finally came to a conclusion that he couldn't believe. 'It's not chakra.'

"...then I'll just have to destroy everything."

By now, the sphere of light at Naruto's fingertip was half the size of a basketball court, casting a bloody glow over the entire street.

"You've all shown me such hatred." His voice was deathly quiet, a whisper that carried over the carnage. "Now... feel mine."

===============

Dear Readers and Fans,

For those eager to dive into next chapters earlier before others, I invite you to join us on Patreon. By becoming our Patron, you not only gain access to exclusive advanced chapters but also help us continue this endeavour and expand it further. 

https://www.pat reon.com/8Ashes8

(no space)

You can read upto 7 Chapters in advance.