Akagi Takeshi officially began his class, explaining the Will of Fire.
His serious attitude immediately intimidated the civilian students.
But when he looked toward the other side of the classroom, he saw that Naruto, Shikamaru, and the others were already falling asleep at their desks.
His mood instantly turned bad.
He had been appointed by the Third Hokage to pass down the Will of Fire to the next generation of ninja.
Being ignored like this made him furious.
"Uzumaki Naruto! Is this a place for sleeping? Stand up! Go outside and accept your punishment!"
Akagi shouted while pointing at the door.
He was not Iruka, and he certainly wouldn't treat Sasuke and the other clan heirs like princes.
But Naruto was just an orphan and the Nine-Tails' Jinchūriki, and Akagi only felt disgust toward him. He wanted to use Naruto to scare the other second-generation ninja.
Naruto looked at the "crazy teacher" with surprise.
Even though there had already been a Genin-level test two days earlier, Naruto was too lazy to listen to the Third Hokage's propaganda.
According to the textbooks, the Third Hokage was described as the strongest Hokage, which only proved that the cultural classes were mostly useless.
Amid the mocking laughter of the civilian students and the jealous looks of the weaker ones, Naruto calmly walked out of the classroom.
Akagi proudly turned to Sasuke and the others.
"See? That's what happens when you don't listen!"
Sasuke coldly replied:
"Idiot. He already left."
Akagi Takeshi:
"???"
He quickly ran outside the classroom, but the corridor was already empty.
Looking out the window, he saw Naruto walking toward the gate with his hands in his pockets.
"Stop!!" Akagi shouted angrily.
Naruto only responded by raising his middle finger.
Akagi returned to the classroom with a pale face.
That damned Nine-Tails brat.
But when he looked inside the classroom again, he froze.
Now only the civilian students remained.
The clan heirs had taken advantage of the moment when Akagi left to chase Naruto and had all escaped through the window.
Akagi's face instantly turned white.
"Damn… how did they all leave…?"
The next morning.
Sarutobi Hiruzen looked at the report from the Ninja Academy with a dark expression.
"Who chose this idiot!? Replace him immediately!"
Suddenly Hiruzen paused.
The teacher had actually been chosen by himself.
He took a deep breath and spoke toward the empty room.
"Has Uchiha Itachi returned?"
"Yes. Should he come here?" a voice replied from the shadows.
Hiruzen thought for a moment.
"Let him come."
After yesterday's forced lesson, Naruto didn't even bother going to the Ninja Academy.
Instead, he found a training field and lay under a tree to sleep.
As for trying to attract attention?
Naruto actually wanted the opposite.
But every day two ANBU were secretly watching him.
And since Uchiha Itachi had been assigned by Hiruzen to monitor his own clan, Naruto had almost no privacy.
So he could only quietly sink his consciousness into the sealed space of the Nine-Tails.
Dark tunnels.
A huge cage.
Inside the seal, Kurama was sleeping with his eyes closed. Feeling Naruto's presence, he lazily opened one eye.
"Don't bother trying. With your strength, breaking that seal isn't easy."
Kurama yawned and looked at him.
Naruto sat in front of the cage door with a frustrated expression.
"Damn it… they say the Third Hokage is the strongest Hokage. Then why is my father's sealing technique so hard to break?"
This wasn't Kushina's Eight Trigrams Seal.
This was the seal created by Namikaze Minato, a civilian ninja without any bloodline limit.
The seal consisted of two Eight Trigrams Seals.
One sealed the Nine-Tails' chakra, while the other allowed Naruto to slowly draw chakra from it.
In other words, the Nine-Tails became something like an automatic power source for Naruto.
If Kurama were still the Nine-Tails from the original story, constantly trying to break the seal, this system would actually benefit Naruto.
But the problem was that Naruto, who knew the future, had already influenced Kurama over the years.
Because of that, these seals had become chains limiting Naruto's power.
Only a fully released Nine-Tails could control its chakra without damaging Naruto's body.
Right now, forcing the Tailed Beast chakra to appear would seriously damage him.
The last time Naruto forced it, he destroyed Root ninja, but he was almost completely exhausted afterward.
In the end, Naruto still didn't have enough power to control the raging chakra.
Naruto stared at the huge iron gate.
Then he stood up and created a massive Rasengan.
He aimed it directly at the seal.
"Then I'll break it by force!"
This was the only method Naruto could think of before obtaining the key from Mount Myōboku.
Boom!
The Rasengan slammed into the iron gate.
Cold sweat covered Naruto's face, and he collapsed unconscious.
Kurama watched him disappear and sighed.
"This kid… he's really ruthless."
After all, the Naruto here was only a manifestation of spiritual energy.
Attacking the seal like that was like hitting his own soul with a hammer.
The pain was far worse than physical pain.
Naruto had been doing this for more than three years.