Chapter 635: He Took the Bait

This was the truly terrifying part.

For an ordinary person, diarrhea was merely unpleasant.

For certain groups of people, however, losing control like that was a completely different kind of disaster.

Bond-type shinobi, after all, possessed certain inherent disadvantages.

Those who understood needed no explanation.

Naruto had already covered his ears and closed his eyes. Now he even stuffed a few blades of grass into his nostrils.

He would still have to face the aftermath eventually, but until then, the less he saw, heard, or smelled, the better.

After an unknown amount of time, Naruto finally sensed the chakra signatures below weakening dramatically.

It was time.

Truthfully, his main objective had always been to incapacitate the relatively irrelevant Rōshi and Han.

Minato had merely been unfortunate enough to get caught in the collateral damage.

Looking down at his father lying weakly on the ground, Naruto couldn’t help sighing.

Sure enough—

filth really was the natural enemy of space-time ninjutsu.

No matter where it came from.

“Hahahahaha!”

Naruto took a moment to get into character, found a reasonably clean patch of ground, and jumped down in front of the three jinchūriki.

“You really fell for it!”

Of the three, only Minato remained conscious.

Rōshi and Han had already been tortured into unconsciousness by Orochimaru’s concentrated laxative.

“N-Naruto?”

Minato stared at him in disbelief.

“Why are you here? And what did you do to us?!”

His kindhearted son had suddenly appeared wearing an evil grin after poisoning them with laxatives.

What the hell was going on?

“Naruto?”

Naruto threw his head back and laughed wildly.

“Naruto is gone!”

“Namikaze Minato, this is the path you chose!”

Naruto felt his acting had reached its absolute peak.

At this rate, he could head straight to the Land of Snow and become a movie star.

Minato frowned deeply.

“What do you mean? If you’re not Naruto, then who are you?”

Unfortunately, tightening his brow did nothing to help him regain control over anything else.

“Minato!”

Naruto pointed dramatically at him.

“Do you remember Killer B?”

“The Eight-Tails jinchūriki whose dignity you stole with Flying Raijin all those years ago!”

“You thought only Iwagakure and Sunagakure were attacking Konoha?”

“Kumogakure made its move too!”

“They simply chose to operate from the shadows!”

Naruto was now fully exercising the storytelling talent he’d inherited from being Jiraiya’s student, improvising an entire conspiracy on the spot.

“What happened?!”

Minato’s face immediately worsened when Naruto mentioned Killer B and Kumogakure.

Kumogakure’s habit of secretly abducting people was infamous throughout the shinobi world.

And Minato really had done something he regretted involving Killer B years ago.

Everything lined up far too well.

“Killer B wanted revenge.”

Naruto continued.

“So he pretended he was going to teach Naruto how to master his Tailed Beast’s power.”

“Instead, he took him to the Falls of Truth and released his dark side.”

Minato’s eyes widened.

“Then you must be—”

“That’s right!”

Naruto spread his arms dramatically.

“I’m that dark side!”

“And now I’m the real one!”

“I control all of the Nine-Tails’ power, while that pathetic so-called original has nothing but his own worthless chakra left!”

“He’ll never come back!”

“Hahahahaha!”

Naruto did his absolute best to imitate the behavior of Dark Naruto from the period when his original consciousness had been trapped inside the mental world.

And technically—

everything Naruto had just said was true.

The only part nobody could possibly have predicted was that Dark Naruto had voluntarily surrendered an overwhelming advantage and chosen death purely so the original Naruto would be forced to endure the Sage of Six Paths’ relic himself.

Minato’s mind temporarily stalled as he processed the information.

He couldn’t immediately think of a solution.

Naruto seized the opportunity and continued piling on the lies.

“You fool!”

“You don’t seriously think you were my first target, do you?”

“Before coming to the front, I already dealt with those idiotic Konoha villagers!”

Minato’s expression changed.

Naruto grinned even wider.

“I told them Ōtsutsuki Isshiki had escaped.”

“Then I convinced them to line up so I could give them Nine-Tails chakra and protect them.”

“And once they were standing neatly in a row…”

“I wiped them all out with one Tailed Beast attack!”

“Hahahahaha!”

“What?!”

Minato had still been hesitating before.

But after hearing that this “Dark Naruto” had already murdered people—

not merely one or two, but huge numbers of villagers—

everything changed.

That meant Dark Naruto truly had no moral limits.

Even so, Minato still couldn’t fully commit to killing him.

Because destroying Dark Naruto would most likely mean destroying the original Naruto too.

There was technically one forbidden technique capable of resolving the problem perfectly:

the Reaper Death Seal.

If Minato extracted and sealed away Dark Naruto’s soul or consciousness, then the original Naruto should naturally regain control.

But Minato would never use that technique.

Not because he didn’t know it.

Because the Reaper Death Seal required the caster’s life as payment.

And the person Namikaze Minato loved most in the world had always been—

Namikaze Minato.

There was no chance he would sacrifice himself for anyone.

“Stay here!”

Minato forced himself to his feet.

“Whatever you’re planning, just wait!”

Then he disappeared with Flying Raijin.

The next instant, Minato appeared outside the Hokage’s office.

Why outside instead of inside?

Because respecting the Hokage’s privacy meant he had only dared leave a Flying Raijin formula by the door.

He pushed it open and immediately demanded that Shizune verify whether “Dark Naruto’s” claims were true.

“What?”

Shizune stared at him.

“Naruto’s dark side?”

She hadn’t understood at first.

Naruto had fooled her too, and she had deliberately avoided reporting what had happened.

Once Minato explained enough for her to realize something was seriously wrong, Shizune immediately ordered ANBU to investigate.

Only then did they discover that an enormous number of Konoha’s residents were indeed missing.

At least eighty percent of the villagers had simply vanished.

Because the entire village had recently been teleported away and everyone was living in temporary conditions, nobody had thought much of acquaintances disappearing.

They simply assumed those people had gone elsewhere to seek temporary shelter.

Not a single missing-person report had been filed.

And there was another reason.

Naruto had tricked entire households into lining up together.

Families had vanished as complete units.

Nobody returned home and discovered one person mysteriously missing.

“So it really happened.”

Minato’s expression finally became grave.

Now he could accurately judge the threat posed by “Dark Naruto.”

With another Flying Raijin, he vanished from Konoha.

“God, that smell…”

The moment Minato disappeared, Shizune finally couldn’t hold it back anymore.

She turned aside and threw up.

…

At the Konoha encampment on the Iwagakure front, everyone had been hit.

The entire battlefield had descended into miserable chaos.

After confirming the truth and returning, Minato briefly clashed with Naruto.

And very quickly—

he realized something terrible.

Even at full strength, he would have had great difficulty defeating “Dark Naruto.”

In his current exhausted condition, it was impossible.

There was only one option left.

Use the old solution.

Seal this powerful and evil Dark Naruto inside the Kamui dimension.

But for that to work, Minato first needed to lure Naruto close enough to Kakashi.

Out here in the wilderness, there wasn’t some gigantic prearranged Flying Raijin formation built into the terrain.

Minato’s anxiety steadily increased.

He had successfully drawn “Dark Naruto’s” hostility and gotten him to chase after him.

But there was one thing Minato couldn’t guarantee—

whether Kakashi would immediately understand what he needed to do and activate Kamui at exactly the right moment.

If Kakashi reacted even slightly too slowly, Naruto might realize what was happening and become cautious.

After all—

Dark Naruto wasn’t a mindless lunatic like Isshiki.

He could think.