The God of Destruction

III

The realm, the world around them crumbled, turned into dust, and then disappeared.

Some factions considered realms as the higher planes, and some compared it to pocket dimensions. But to Shiva, realms were spaces created by pure divine or pure chaos magic. A hidden world that usually would have its own set of rules, at the same time following laws of their own dimension. As for how well they were hidden, their size, and even their stability, all of these depended on the beings or the faction who created them. Size-wise, they could go from a small city to a continent level.

But this realm was the size of a planet. Brahma personally made it for Shiva to train and spar here. Shiva knew how strong this realm was. Even the combined might of multiple mid-tier factions would not be enough to damage it. And yet, he destroyed it just like that.

Now, Naruto and Shiva were standing in the Dimensional Gap, away from each other.

“So, this is where you had hidden that realm,” Naruto said as he rubbed his chin and looked around.

Shiva kept his face expressionless. To use the ‘True Power of Destruction’, he had to enter his godly form. The changes in Shiva’s appearance were significantly prominent. His hair was loose, his skin had now a blue glow to it. But again, Shiva knew what captivated Naruto. It was his eyes. Shiva’s eyes were black with a slightly red and blue hue to them, and there were few small colorful dots here and there.

“It’s as if I am looking into the outer space, into the cosmos through your eyes,” Naruto had said this the first time he saw this form. Any other beings would have cowered, turned their gaze away. But never had Naruto turned his gaze away from him, even when he was an unranked individual. That was one of the many things Shiva liked about Naruto.

“Well, I guess the second round went to me,” Naruto smirked.

Shiva just smiled but did not say anything. To be honest, Shiva knew that he was going to lose that round. He figured it out in the middle of their fight. Yes, martial arts or tactical wise, Naruto still had some ways to go. But regarding their abilities or power. It might not look that way, but Naruto’s abilities were countering his. Shiva could tell that Naruto could have forced more power into his abilities to overpower his. But he was being very cautious. Shiva understood why.

The God of Destruction raised his guard when he saw Naruto closing his eyes.

Naruto’s skin and hair became normal, his tattoos fading. Surprisingly, Shiva felt Naruto was powering down. And then it hit him.

Naruto’s power spiked. The size and purity of Naruto’s divine energy were astronomically different from before. And then, he opened his eyes.

Shiva knew the types of eyes Naruto had. One, what he called ‘Rinnegan’, was characterized by concentric circles covering the eyeball. Sometimes it would be silver in color and sometimes it would have a golden hue to it. That was the eye he generally used. Then there was the other one where his irises would become gold as if it was glowing. Shiva saw it rarely. Naruto said that the state of his eyes become when he only relied on Senjutsu.

After the ascension, Naruto’s ‘Rinnegan’ changed. He noticed it during his earlier bouts. His Rinnegan now had black sclera with white ripple patterns. It felt like an ‘Inverse Rinnegan’. But now, the white rings had a small ‘Tomoe’ attached to it. And he could see that those white rings were moving.

It had a hypnotic effect to it.

And that was it. Unlike him, there were no other changes in Naruto. Appearance wise. His hair was still bright silver with two small horns protruding from his forehead. Then again, his eyes were so mesmerizing that no one would be able to focus on anything else other than that.

Shiva controlled his expression again. But he did not move. Of course, he knew Naruto would understand what he was doing. His stance was telling him to make the first move. And he knew that Naruto was never the one to shy away from such a blatant challenge. And as expected, he went first. Naruto raised his right arm up, his middle finger and his thumb pressing each other.

“If you insist like that, I can only oblige,” Shiva just smiled at Naruto’s comment. Naruto returned the smile, “So, shall we start the third round.”

Then, Naruto snapped his fingers.

In a flash, the scenery around them changed. Shiva could not feel any energy from the surroundings. There was no divine power, no chaos power… nothing. Even the flow of gravity and time felt different. But what was the most unique about this place was that below them was an endless ocean and above them was the infinite sky. The ocean did not have a single ripple and was just plain blue in color. As for the sky, it was pure white without a single cloud. Of course, he noticed the abnormality immediately. It was not just the visual but he could sense that many aspects of this world was amiss.

Shiva did not move his gaze away from Naruto. He could tell what Naruto wanted him to do. So, he decided to humor him. Shiva pointed his finger above him.

“Nasht,”

The world around them shattered into very small, tiny pieces. But in the next moment, all the pieces started to rearrange themselves. Within one second, the world was whole again. And this time the sky was below them while the ground was above.

“Interesting,” Shiva murmured as he looked around.

The True Power of Destruction was not enough to destroy this place. No, that was wrong. He had a feeling that he was able to grasp the logic and laws of this place. The core of this world might be different but it was still following the rules of their dimension. Meaning, the reason Shiva was unable to ‘Destroy’ this place was because Naruto had added something. Something very different. It could be the change of flow in time and gravity, which was quite obvious. Or it could be something subtle such as passive restrictions on divine powers.

Shiva smiled. He could try to fight Naruto here and slowly understand the world around or… he could just overpower it. Shiva turned around to lock his gaze with Naruto and then stretched his right arm. A very familiar trident appeared. This time he had summoned the original one. And he could tell that Naruto noticed it too. But before his opponent could get over his shock, Shiva synced his power with Trishula to boost himself,

“Nasht,”

This time, the world disappeared instantly without leaving behind a single particle.

Now Shiva could not hide his surprise. He blinked and he looked around, without moving his body.

They were back at the dimensional gap. But the surprising part was that Naruto was standing at the exact same spot, with the exact same position. His right hand up with his middle and thumb pressing together. And even he was doing the same stance before, meaning his Trishula that he summoned was not there. It was as if…

“Rewinding time… no, something similar perhaps…” Shiva felt the distortion in space when he destroyed that world but he did not think it would result in this. Then it hit him, “Time dilution, correct? Time in your world is different… separated from here.”

“Well, I am not going to explain about it now. You are going to hound me about my abilities later anyway,” Naruto’s word made Shiva to focus on him again. But he was not finished, “But I did not think you were going to use Trishula.”

Shiva just chuckled after hearing Naruto’s complain, “You want to test your power, isn’t that so?” Naruto just gave a sheepish smile at his question. He continued, “I can understand where you are coming from. You have now access to a bunch of new and deadly abilities because of your ascension. Some of them are useful, some are not. And in some cases, the combination could be disastrous. Then again, that is not what you are here for. What you truly want is to find out your domain... the domain that you have absolute control over. And this is the safest way you thought of figuring it out.”

Each of the high tier gods or goddesses had control over one or two domains. It was true that in some cases they had access to various types of unique abilities. But in the end, their core abilities came from the domain they controlled. Of course, it was not rare to see multiple individuals reigning over the same domain. In that case, it would then come down to who had better control or more power.

Shiva had a vague feeling of what Naruto’s domain might be.

“I know what you are going to say,” Naruto spoke up, “Few training sessions would have been enough instead of all this drama.” Shiva smiled at that. But Naruto was not done yet, “But the thing is, I already know what my domain is.”

This was not something Shiva expected. He knew when Naruto ascended. It was less than six months ago. But figuring out something of this level in such a short amount of time? It was not impossible but it was very hard. And Shiva knew for a fact that Naruto was busy handling his Kingdom’s matters.

“Well then, it is a bit awkward to stand like this,” Naruto grunted. Shiva had to agree with that. Standing like that, arm raised as he was about to snap his fingers, might look cool for a moment but holding this posture for a few minutes definitely looked bizarre in Shiva’s opinion.

“So, shall we start the third round.”

Then, Naruto snapped his fingers again.

This time it was an empty black space. Well, it was not exactly empty as there was a gigantic Sun made of black and white flame beside them. It was quite the mesmerizing sight if Shiva was being honest, how the black and white flames were moving in harmony.

“I was quite surprised that ‘***’ did not work. But then again, this is you we are talking about. But, I have a good feeling that ‘***’ will not be so easy for you.”

Shiva was surprised, and he was sure his expression showed it. It took a moment but he understood what just happened. Naruto told the name of his ability or spell, but for some reason, he could not hear it.

Seeing Naruto standing still, he summoned his strongest weapon again, Trishula. And then he pointed the trident toward the unnatural star, his power syncing with his weapon again,

“Nasht,”

He felt a vibration in the space, but that was it.

“YES!” Naruto screamed as he raised both his hands in the air.

Shiva did not speak but turned around and started to point his trident in random directions.

Between the normal version of Power of Destruction and his True Power of Destruction, there was only one major difference. True Power of Destruction was sentient. Why the power being sentient was so frightening? Because his power would destroy any enemies or opponents that would pose a threat to Shiva without him actually raising his finger. And that was just the passive ability. If he actively used this power on a specific target, True Power of Destruction would ‘Destroy’ it instantly. And if for some reason, it could not do so? Then it would start analyzing the target and ‘Destroy’ parts or concepts of the target that it could understand and then work its way from there; meaning ‘True Power of Destruction’ would never stop unless the target was annihilated.

In a way it was like a sentient virus whose sole purpose was to ‘Destroy’ his opponents, his targets.

Since the knowledge his power possessed was equivalent to Shiva’s, the most crucial thing required to properly use his True Power of Destruction was knowledge. It was not so that his power could destroy his target easily but to make sure his power would not accidentally destroy everything else.

Of course, Shiva had created variations of the True Power of Destruction. But he was not going to use them now. Even though he really wanted to.

The current version of his True Power of Destruction could not destroy the world around them. At least not for now. Meaning the world… the realm was made of components and logic that either did not follow the rules of their dimension or bent the rules in a way that he did not understand. If so, then his assumption on Naruto’s domain was correct.

“So this is your domain,” Shiva turned around and smiled, “Reality manipulation,”

Naruto chuckled, “Got it in one. Like I said I know what my domain is. But I have this feeling that there is more to it.” Naruto rubbed his chin as he looked around, “So I thought that maybe if I could push myself in the right environment, I can get a better understanding… or something like that?”

For a moment, Shiva did not say anything. He just let the calm silence reign for a while. It was because he finally understood what Naruto was going through. And with a gentle smile, he pointed it out, “You are afraid.”

As expected, Naruto flinched. He dropped his shoulders and sighed, “You know, I am not even that good at illusion types of magic or abilities. Sure I can cast something decent but it was never my forte. And now my domain is related to reality manipulation. This is messed up.”

“You are afraid of making a mistake.” It was not a question, but a statement.

“Of course,” Naruto sighed again, “Think about it. Depending on my power and understanding I can manipulate reality. It means I can alter something as tangible as physics or the laws of nature. And if I screw up, I can change something inconceivable like logic. The worst part, I am not sure about the scale, the range and the intensity of it yet. So as you can see, I am not that thrilled about my domain.”

Shiva smiled. He could relate to Naruto’s frustration. Then again, even the simplest domain could turn into a deadly one if the users knew how to, “Naruto, do you really want me to repeat what you said to me when we first met? I admit those words resonated with me. But repeating your speech to boost your morale is too cliché for my taste,” Shiva shrugged his shoulders with a smile, “But if you really need it, then as a good friend I will have to oblige.”

Naruto just gave a blank look which Shiva found quite hilarious, to be honest. Then with a grunt, he replied back, “Ha. Ha. Very funny. There’s no need. I already got tons of pep talks from various people. Just frustrated that my domain is based on something that I am not specialized in, and I cannot practice it without taking proper precautions. Many proper precautions.”

“But you did a wonderful job,” Shiva waved his hand as he pointed his surroundings, “Not only you figured out your domain, you were able to practice enough to create something of this caliber. You have time, be patient.”

Naruto just rolled his eyes but Shiva could see that he was trying not to smile, “Sheesh, I get it. How about we just start the third round for real now?”

Shiva sighed and a second later nodded his head.

With a grin, Naruto stretched both of his arms. Although it looked like Naruto made a fist with each hand but Shiva could see the gap between each fist. It was as if he was holding an invisible weapon in each hand. And then, he dashed toward him.

Shiva went defensive first. And one strike from each of Naruto’s invisible weapons was enough to tell him what they were. Naruto was using the Trishula replicate that Shiva created earlier. But an unknown factor was added because of which his original could not destroy them.

Suddenly, Naruto’s kick almost reached his chest. Shiva immediately created some distance. He realized he was getting distracted. Taking a deep breath, Shiva moved.

So did Naruto.

Both of them started to move almost at the speed of light,

Each of their clashes was creating a vibration that would shake continents,

But no one was getting the upper hand.

Ten seconds later, which actually felt like hours, Shiva finally got the full picture.

The first thing Shiva figured out was that his Trishula was actually destroying Naruto’s duplicates, as it should. But Naruto was immediately replacing the destroyed ones with newer ones. Either he was creating them on the spot or he had a stash of them. Second, Naruto matching his speed did not come as a surprise. To be honest, he felt Naruto was faster. But for him to keep up with Shiva’s offense was something he did not foresee. It took him some time but he figured out why. In this realm, the concept of time and space, gravity, properties, nature and many more did not exist. Even if they did, they were in a form that Shiva was not familiar with. And it was not only restricting his divine powers but also his True Power of Destruction.

So, in this realm, Naruto was not getting stronger rather Shiva was getting weaker.

That meant that a prolonged fight was out of the question.

Shiva created a dense energy bomb. Of course, he did it while moving. The bomb was the size of a table tennis ball. But the moment he threw it, it started to expand. Within a second, the bomb became big enough to cover a football stadium. And then it exploded.

But the fire and the destruction energy did not spread. It just stayed there, moving. As if the energy was confused. A moment later, the energy rushed toward the unnatural star. Shiva could not tell if the energy touched the surface or not, but it just disappeared.

Shiva felt his True Power of Destruction aura around his back becoming dense on their own. He understood the reason why as Naruto’s attack got deflected. It seemed he stopped for a moment to see the result of the explosion.

“That’s the core,” Shiva said after facing Naruto, who also stopped.

“Geez, I wonder what gave it away,” Naruto raised an eyebrow at him, “Also don’t stop like that in the middle of the fight.”

“Apologies, everything here is quite fascinating to be honest.” Shiva chuckled.

“See, this is why I didn’t want this to be a spar. You would have stopped the fight in the middle and just keep asking questions. You would not have taken this seriously.” Shiva had to admit, Naruto had a point.

Shiva smiled, and replied back smoothly, “None of us are taking the fight seriously anyway.”

“Well it’s not about fighting seriously, it’s about enjoying the fight.”

The way Naruto said it felt like he was quoting someone. Shiva was not sure. Regardless, it was true that they were not taking the fight seriously. The realm was affecting him, true. But those were more like subtle side-effects. Shiva knew that if Naruto wanted he could really make it hard for Shiva but he was still holding back. Both subconsciously and consciously. Meaning, if Naruto truly desired to win the fight then the moment they entered this realm the victory would have gone to Naruto’s side.

Of course, Shiva had many secret powers as well to counter that but he was not sure how would they react here.

“Maybe, I can ask him to let me test them here next time,” Shiva thought to himself.

But first, they had to finish this match. And he had a reputation to keep.

Taking a deep breath, Shiva stabilized his power. As he was about to raise his Trisula, Naruto was in front of him. It seemed, he knew what Shiva was going to do.

Shiva dodged Naruto’s attack and the follow-up attacks as well. But by doing so, his focus was disrupted. Shiva grunted as the high-speed clashes continued again. For this attack, he needed just a second or two to focus. But he could see that Naruto was determined not to let that happen.

Shiva compressed his energy and then let it out. A large sphere made of True Power of Destruction surrounded him which was easily bigger than the continent of Australia. He thought that Naruto would have taken some time to figure out a way to bypass this but it seemed he was wrong. Naruto’s body became transparent immediately, and he rushed inside.

Shiva had to maintain the sphere as well as to tackle Naruto’s attacks. The reason why Shiva was still keeping the energy sphere was because he was tweaking it. He was doing various combinations between multiple enchantments and concepts to see what would keep Naruto away.

“Fuck,” Naruto cursed all of a sudden, and then he disappeared.

Immediately, Shiva expanded the sphere to become bigger than the European continent. Then, he took a deep breath and focused on his power again. He released his breath and raised his Trishula, aimed at the black and white sun.

“Bring down my enemy,”

And then he threw his strongest weapon at the target.

Surprisingly, Naruto appeared in front of Trishula. Shiva was too distracted by what Naruto had on his hand to stop him.

Shiva knew one of Naruto’s favorite techniques was called Rasengan. And he had seen many different and unique versions of it. But he never saw this one. The size was slightly shorter than basketball but what surprised Shiva was what it contained. The sphere was entirely made of Japanese characters. They were blue in color, slightly glowing, a bit blurry, and were moving around constantly. But they were not going out of the sphere. And the characters kept changing so it was hard for Shiva to form all the words. Even then, he was able to understand three words which were repeating,

‘Create’, ‘Connect’, and ‘Change’.

And then Naruto hit Trishula with that odd Rasengan. The Rasengan popped like a balloon and disappeared. And Trishula changed its direction. Instead of going forward, it started to go up.

Seeing that, Shiva dashed toward Trishula and caught it.

Shiva knew that his attack could not be blocked. But it did not mean that there was no other way to avoid it. Curious, Shiva touched the tip of his Trishula.

“Hmm~ It seems he changed the trajectory.” Unfortunately, Shiva could not ponder over it as he saw Naruto creating another of that unique Rasengan. It was quite an odd way. Naruto’s left index finger was moving as if he writing something, on top of his right palm. And the blurry words started to move around to create a spherical shape.

Suddenly Shiva had an idea. If he could not destroy anything in this realm because the laws and concepts were unfamiliar to him, then he could try to disrupt them. And the easiest way was to summon some of his other realms to him. There are two scenarios he could see happen. One, his realms would not be strong enough to enter. But then they would be destroyed outside of this realm making this one unstable. Second, his realms would be strong enough to enter but he was sure that they would be swallowed by this realm. But if the realms were big enough, Shiva did not think Naruto’s realm would be able to completely absorb them. Meaning they would merge with this one. And in that case, Naruto would not have sole control over this realm.

“Let’s try that,”

Shiva raised his hand.

Two large vibrations occurred which made Naruto stop focusing on his attack. He looked at him and then narrowed his eyes. A moment later, “Are you shitting me?!”

Naruto groaned and tried to approach him but he already took a battle stance. He already commanded two of his realms to come to him. There was no stopping now. He could not wait to see what the result would be.

“I guess he was right; I am enjoying the fight more than I should.” Shiva thought to himself as he felt his excitement rising.

He could see Naruto was panicking as he looked around. Then out of nowhere, he dropped his shoulders and looked straight at him.

“Ahh~ Fuck it!” Then Naruto pointed his left index finger at the black and white sun. And uttered two words,

“Big Bang!”

Shiva blinked.

They were back at the Dimensional Gap.

Again.

Shiva’s mind started to process the whole scenario. Whatever happened was too fast even for him to grasp. But the keyword was there.

‘Big Bang’,

“Of course,” Shiva looked at Naruto who was cursing and rubbing his face.

Naruto had created a realm… no, it could not be called a realm. It was something far advanced. He created a void space… a small dimension where he tried to recreate the big bang theory, the beginning of everything. And that was why his powers were not working properly. It was not that he was becoming weaker but that he could not utilize his powers to the max. Because at that point of time, no laws or concepts were created yet. Of course, now that he thought about it, what Naruto created was far from perfect. But the fact that he tried and achieved something similar was a feat in itself.

“I think we should call it a day,”

Naruto gave him a flat look, “You just want to finish the fight so you can poke and see my new abilities.”

“Guilty as charged,” Shiva chuckled, “But you cannot deny that we will not be going anywhere. We will always hold back so that we do not seriously injure the other person. Then, how and when can we decide the victor? Besides, have you not already achieved all of your goals?”

Seeing Naruto looked surprised made him smile. Shiva decided to humor him, “First, you wanted to see if the core stone ranking was correct. Meaning that even with both of us holding back, can you match my strength? Or are you strong enough to surpass me? The answer is that you have the power to surpass me, yes. But you need a lot of polishing. And you need to be patient.”

Shiva really meant what he said. Even in the most basic forms, ‘Reality Manipulation’ was stronger than ‘Power of Destruction’. And Shiva could tell without a doubt that Naruto would improve his powers further. Now that Shiva thought about it, he could see that there was a possibility that Naruto could reach ‘The Beast’ class.

“Doesn’t that mean he could become the fourth…”

Shiva could not finish his train of thought as he felt his presence. He could see even Naruto felt it. Both looked at the source. It was a blunder. They should not have forgotten about him.

Even from far, the shape was massive. As for the newcomer’s power. It was enormous even by his standard.

“Who are the punks that dare invade my territory?!”

“We are fucked!”

Although crude, Shiva had to agree with Naruto’s comment.

.

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X

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Naruto’s home

(An hour later)

“Seriously, that lizard bastard chased us for an hour!” Naruto grumbled as he finished making some drinks.

At first, he thought to take Shiva to the castle but immediately got rid of the idea. As much as he liked shenanigans, he was too tired right now to handle one.

“Well, fifty minutes to be exact,” Shiva replied as he looked around. Naruto could understand Shiva’s surprise. Well, other than the people that came with him from his old world, everyone was surprised when they first saw Naruto’s actual home.

“Let’s forget about that wannabe delinquent. Now, where were we?” Naruto said as he passed the hot tea to Shiva.

“We agreed our match to be a tie since you achieved your goals,” Shiva answered as he took a sip.

“Ah yes~ You also figured out what my goals are as well,” Naruto sat down. They were on the dining table instead of the living room. Naruto was glad that Yasaka and Kunou were not here. Of course, their house would never be empty as Naruto’s and Yasaka’s clones would always guard it.

“Honestly speaking it was not that hard to realize. After all, it was something that I would have done,” Hearing that Naruto whistled. It was unintentional but he could not help it. After all, it was clearly a compliment.

“One,” Shiva raised his index finger, “You wanted to verify the core stone’s ranking. Two,” Another finger went up, “You wanted to test your control over your domain. And lastly, you were just being lazy and impatient about your power.”

Naruto’s smile turned stiff and he frowned at Shiva, who was clearly hiding his smile by taking a long sip, “Hey, that’s bullshit and you know it. I was not lazy, I was bored. Do you have any idea how much paperwork I had to last a couple of months?”

“Don’t you usually use your clones for that?”

Naruto blinked once, “Clones lives matter, alright.” He just hoped Yasaka’s clones did not hear that. Of course, if he had invested all of his time doing paperwork then he would not have time to test out his powers. Only Jiraiya knew about this. And he wanted to keep it that way.

“Look, let’s change the topic, shall we? The match was a draw.” Naruto stood up, raised his fist, and made a victory pose. He did not give a damn about what Shiva was thinking. He finally had his first taste of victory against Shiva. After all, when the strongest God of Destruction said their match was a tie, he would take that as a win.

Then he sat down as if nothing happened, “I want to ask you about something,” Maybe it was his voice or his expression, Shiva put down his cup and leaned forward, “Do you think anyone from the Biblical faction will accept my idea? Or even, let’s say, consider it at least?”

“I see,” Shiva leaned back on his chair, “You do not want to exclude them, but at the same time your relationship is not strong enough for you to extend the offer to them.”

Naruto sighed. This was a big hurdle. It was not confirmed yet but Naruto could already guess who would be attending the Elemental academy. All three sides of the Biblical faction would be sending students and teachers. But separately, meaning they would be admitted under their own faction but not as the Biblical faction. Then there was the Hindu faction, the Norse faction, the Greek faction and surprisingly the Egyptian faction agreed as well. Of course, the Alliance faction would be joining as well. As of now, it seemed like the devil faction would be sending the most students while the Heaven faction would be sending the most teachers.

Now, for his plan to work he needed powerful and respected figures from the majority of the attending factions. With Thor, he covered the Norse faction. He was planning to meet Amun-ra, and see if it was possible to make a deal with him. As for the Greek faction, it was out of the question. From the outsider’s perspective, their relationship might look neutral but honestly, both sides were borderline hostile toward each other.

As for the high-tier factions, with Shiva, Naruto covered the Hindu faction. But he really needed at least one person from the Biblical faction. If one person agrees, his side would approach the remaining sides of the Biblical faction and at least inform them what he planned to do.

In a way, he was trying his best to include the Biblical faction, either directly or indirectly. Was it something that he really wanted? No. But it was something that he needed to do. If their cover was blown and one of the high-tier faction did not know about it, things could get ugly. Even the best case scenario for this situation did not look appealing to Naruto.

“I will suggest that you approach Azazel first,” Shiva spoke, getting Naruto’s attention, “He has a good connection with both the Heaven faction and the Devil faction. He is quite respected in the supernatural world, and if I am not mistaken he is the most open minded in the Biblical faction. He will be able to guide you properly on your next actions regarding this particular issue. Again, this is just my opinion.”

“Will he try to favor his faction?”

“That’s a given, is it not?” Shiva had a point, “As far I know, he is relatively neutral. Even if he tries to make some benefits for his faction, he will not do it to the point it may create problems with other factions.”

Naruto rubbed his forehead. Even Jiraiya said the exact same thing. It seemed like he had to ask Jiraiya to handle this. He would have to wait and see how to proceed based on Azazel’s response. For now, he had to keep a promise. With that in mind, Naruto sent the command telepathically.

A moment later, one of his clones came and give him a book. He took it and looked at the cover. The urge was there, to touch the cover page, to open the book and see some of the illustrations again. He would do it later. Now, he had a story to share.

With a smile, he gently put down the book on the table.

“The Tale of the Most Unpredictable Shinobi,” Shiva put down the empty cup and read the title of the book.

Naruto rubbed the back of his head, “This story is a bit embarrassing for me to tell but bear with me.”

Shiva was surprised. He looked at the book and took it. Then his gaze went to Naruto, “Is it about your past?”

Naruto just smiled.