Chapter 97 (Patreon)

The increase in Spiritual Pressure raised Roy’s overall strength by roughly thirty percent. More importantly, his expanded reserves now allowed him to use Kidō spells numbered eighty and above.

After absorbing the artificial summoning beast’s soul energy, Roy also inherited a portion of its memories.

Many years ago, the creature had been nothing more than an ordinary slug-like animal.

One day, several shinobi raced past its nest. The man being pursued killed his pursuers before fleeing with severe injuries.

Drawn by the scent of blood coming from the corpses, the slug instinctively crawled closer. Beside one of the bodies, it discovered a shattered bottle containing a small amount of liquid.

That liquid was what had drawn it there.

The slug swallowed what remained and immediately lost consciousness.

When it eventually awakened, all the corpses on the ground had disappeared. At the same time, an unbearable hunger overwhelmed its senses and stripped away what little reason it possessed.

It wandered through the forest and devoured countless animals before finally falling into a deep sleep.

When it awakened again, it was already on Summoning Island. A group of researchers kept it fed while regularly injecting it with some kind of serum.

At first, the creature remained docile. It had shelter, received regular meals, and had no reason to resist.

However, the serum gradually intensified the hunger inside it. With every injection, its desire to consume grew stronger until it finally lost control and began devouring every living thing it encountered.

The memories after that point were missing, but Roy could piece together what had happened from the information he already possessed.

Once the researchers realized the summoning beast was becoming uncontrollable, they brought Honoka, a member of the Uzumaki clan, to the island and had her assist with the research using fūinjutsu.

Their attempts to restrain it continued until today, when the creature completely lost control and devoured every researcher present.

They had created their own disaster.

Anyone with common sense would have destroyed the creature the moment it began showing an uncontrollable urge to consume everything around it.

Instead, the researchers chose to suppress it and continue their experiments. They repeatedly injected it with the special serum, further strengthening its ability to consume and destroy.

Unfortunately, the creature’s memories contained no information about the organization to which those reckless researchers belonged.

Roy was not particularly interested in whoever had funded them either.

What caught his attention were the shinobi he had seen in the creature’s earliest memories.

The man being pursued had stitches covering his entire body. That feature alone made his identity unmistakable.

A man obsessed with money who had once survived an attempt to assassinate Hashirama Senju—who else could it have been but Kakuzu?

The shinobi pursuing him had all been wearing Takigakure forehead protectors.

Roy had never seen any part of the original story in which Kakuzu was hunted by Takigakure shinobi. However, he suspected that the liquid carried by his pursuers had been Takigakure’s unique Hero Water.

Hero Water was considered sacred within Takigakure. Drinking it could increase a person’s chakra tenfold, but that power came at the cost of consuming the user’s life force.

After Kakuzu murdered Takigakure’s elders, stole the village’s forbidden technique, Earth Grudge Fear, and defected, the village must have sent shinobi carrying Hero Water to hunt him down.

In the end, they had still underestimated Kakuzu.

The pursuers were killed before they could even use the Hero Water. The bottle shattered beside their corpses, and the slug living nearby consumed its contents by accident.

As the Hero Water began devouring its life force, the slug instinctively ate the corpses of the Takigakure shinobi to replace the energy it was losing.

Afterward, it fell asleep and was eventually discovered by the researchers, who brought it to Summoning Island.

Until now, Roy had never understood how a monster capable of devouring everything around it had come into existence.

With these memories, he finally had his answer.

Before coming to this world, Roy had once read a theory about Takigakure’s Hero Water.

According to that theory, the Hero Water was sap produced over the course of a century by the enormous tree growing within Takigakure. That tree was supposedly a branch that had once been severed from the God Tree.

Because the branch was incomplete, it retained the God Tree’s ability to absorb natural energy but lacked the ability to store everything it absorbed. The accumulated energy was therefore released in the form of Hero Water.

Roy had never personally examined Takigakure’s great tree, so he could not know whether that theory was correct.

Still, it was a reasonable possibility.

White Zetsu, another product of the God Tree, also possessed the ability to amplify a person’s chakra.

Hashirama’s extraordinary life force and the disturbing ability of his cells to consume and assimilate other living tissue were also closely connected to the Ōtsutsuki clan and the God Tree.

In Roy’s opinion, Hashirama was essentially a weakened God Tree in human form.

The other reincarnations of Asura inherited the immense life force and physical energy associated with the Sage’s body, yet they could not suppress Tailed Beasts with ease.

Hashirama, however, possessed Wood Release—a power that appeared to be a direct reversion to the God Tree itself.

That would explain why Hashirama had displayed power far beyond Naruto’s before Naruto received the Sage of Six Paths’ power. Even after Hashirama’s death, his cells retained the ability to consume and assimilate living tissue.

Roy searched the surrounding area once more. Only after confirming that no trace of the artificial summoning beast remained—and that there was no possibility of it reviving—did he gather all the research materials he could find.

He then returned to the boat using Shunpo.

“Nonō, seal these materials inside a scroll.”

When Honoka saw a pile of documents and research materials floating down from the sky, she immediately understood that Roy, the person who had saved her, had returned.

She still could not see him, so she could only bow deeply toward the empty space before her and offer her thanks.

Once Nonō had sealed all the research materials inside a scroll, they continued with their original plan. The small boat left Summoning Island and headed toward the Land of Water.

Their speed on the return journey was both faster and more consistent than before.

That was because Honoka had replaced Nonō as the boat’s source of power.

It was less like replacing one person with another and more like replacing a hand-powered engine with a nuclear reactor. They barely needed to stop and rest during the entire journey.

With nothing else to occupy her time, Nonō began practicing what Roy had described earlier. She attempted to make the chakra spinning in one direction lose its orderly flow and rotate chaotically instead.

Naturally, she did not succeed.

Creating a Rasengan required more than simply making the chakra inside rotate chaotically. The user also needed to form an outer boundary that would contain that unstable chakra within a fixed area.

The principle was simple enough to understand, but that did not mean someone could master it immediately.

Balloons and rubber balls were used during Rasengan training because their outer shells temporarily contained the chakra before the user learned to do so independently.

In effect, the training tools allowed the user to skip the compression step at first and focus on controlling the rotation.

Still, Nonō had nothing else to do, so Roy saw no reason to stop her from experimenting.

Several days later, Nonō and Honoka had both reached the point where the mere sight of sashimi made them feel sick.

When land finally appeared in the distance, they were so relieved that they nearly jumped out of the boat.

The moment they reached the shore, the two women traded the remaining fish on their boat for other food and finally escaped their unchanging diet.

After eating and drinking their fill, Nonō did not forget the reason they had come to the Land of Water.

She immediately began asking the local residents for information.

“A child who can create powerful winds out of thin air? No, I’ve never heard of anyone like that.”

They searched several settlements in succession but found no information about Fūshin.

Instead, their questions attracted the attention of Kirigakure shinobi.

Ordinary civilians did not understand the significance of what Nonō was asking. The shinobi of Kirigakure, however, immediately realized that someone was searching for a child who possessed a kekkei genkai.

Kirigakure had not yet become the village from the original story, where the Fourth Mizukage was controlled and carried out a bloody purge against clans possessing kekkei genkai.

Even so, policies targeting those clans had already begun during the reign of the Third Mizukage.

Aside from the few powerful clans living within Kirigakure itself, most shinobi possessing kekkei genkai concealed their identities and abilities, afraid of what might happen if they were exposed.

“If there’s no information about Fūshin, then let’s find Haku first.”

After considering the situation for a moment, Roy looked down at the map spread open in Nonō’s hands and tapped a location on it.