Speedrunning Naruto to the Top

"Lord Hokage, are you alright?"

"No casualties—thank goodness. It's all thanks to Izayoi-sama stepping in at the right time!"

"That was incredible. That single punch looked powerful enough to shatter a mountain!"

"As expected of the legendary Wood Release!"

"…"

With the battle over, the terrifying "demonic mask" enclosure slowly opened.

Konoha's shinobi swarmed in, crowding around a guilty-faced Tsunade and the others, checking the unconscious Anbu and shinobi. Seeing everyone alive, albeit wounded, they breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Because Izayoi had intervened in time, none of the wounded comrades bled out. The "attack" by Ōtsutsuki Toneri had only destroyed the Hokage Building.

"You say besides the Hokage Building, there were three other places sealed with the Four Red Yang Formation?"

Tsunade, just regaining her wits, heard the bad news from Nara Shikaku, and her face instantly grew grim.

"Yes, Lord Hokage."

Nara Shikaku nodded respectfully. "Those three Four Red Yang Formations were placed around Izayoi's home, the Uchiha Clan district, and some convalescent site on the outskirts."

"Why would that guy suddenly turn on us—and with such specific targets?" Tsunade frowned. "Could he be hunting us? Maybe he wants to make corpses into new human puppets, bolstering his army?"

"I find it fishy," Shikaku said calmly. "From what I and some of the Hyūga have observed, although these puppets were gunning for high-level combatants like you, Lord Hokage, something about their behavior stands out. Their chakra seemed to fluctuate between weak and strong: whenever a puppet faced multiple opponents at once, its chakra spiked to match or exceed the strongest target's."

"But when facing a single opponent one-on-one, the puppet's chakra either matched that person's or was slightly weaker."

"More bizarrely, they didn't fight to kill—they aimed to stab black rods into their targets, disrupting chakra flow, then knocking them unconscious. They never finished them off or carried them away. After knocking people out, the puppets just teleported elsewhere."

"That happened with Anbu, with Uchiha Sasuke, with Uzumaki Naruto—everyone.

"This doesn't feel like they were hunting high-level targets for new puppets. It's more like…an experiment."

Tsunade's brows knitted again. "You think he was using us to test the capabilities of his puppet army?"

"That seems more likely than a direct attempt to hunt us," Shikaku replied. "While chakra doesn't necessarily reflect true strength, casting Four Red Yang Formation demands the combined chakra of four Kage-level users. Four separate instances of that barrier means sixteen total puppets with Kage-level chakra. Plus, the ones who fought you, Jiraiya-sama, and Izayoi also have Kage-level chakra. The rest have at least jōnin-commander or special-jōnin–level reserves.

"All this chakra transmits via those black rods into each puppet's 'chakra core,' pretty much like a Tailed Beast transferring its chakra. It's unlike last year's human-puppet army. That leads me to suspect that Ōtsutsuki Toneri must have obtained a Tailed Beast or become a Jinchūriki himself."

Hearing Shikaku's analysis, Tsunade sighed. "It looks like the second round in this 'Sage Eyes' conflict might be on the horizon. In the face of such overpowered fighters, even one of the Five Great Nations is nothing but a testing ground. It's humiliating."

"If it really was just a 'test,' we can assume the other villages didn't escape unscathed either," Shikaku lamented. "Like he calls us 'monkeys,' perhaps in his eyes the shinobi of the Five Great Nations really are nothing more."

"For our sake, I hope all he truly wants is to reclaim the Demonic Statue," Tsunade said in a grave tone. "If he just takes the statue and returns to the moon to remain above us all, I'd actually prefer him winning that second showdown."

Shikaku stayed silent. That line of thinking went beyond his usual purview, but he couldn't disagree. If the moon-dwelling clan took the statue and left, then the future of the ninja world would lie in the hands of Konoha's Mokuton user.

Because these were all Konoha's own people—and Izayoi didn't want to kill his future subordinates—he let his puppets run wild for only about half an hour. After Sasuke was defeated, Izayoi personally ended the battle.

No such luck befell the other Hidden Villages. Anyone beaten instantly was quite fortunate and kept their life; whoever dodged the puppets' "Lightning Release + black rod" opener often wound up dead or critically maimed unless they possessed a purple-rank entry.

Izayoi's Wood Clone had no patience for cat-and-mouse, starting battles with big moves that either knocked them out or killed them outright.

But ninja with purple-rank entries received more leniency—Izayoi was willing to "play" with them a bit. After all, look at Sasori and Deidara—he hadn't killed them thanks to their interesting personalities and their double-purple-rank status.

Purple ranks have a yearlong cooldown, after all, so it's better to harvest "the same crop" annually than kill them in one go.

Hence 95% of the deaths in the four major villages were from ninja lacking purple-rank entries. If a purple-rank ninja was accidentally killed, the puppets carried the corpse away to strengthen their ranks.

After roughly an hour, the turmoil ended across the shinobi world. The puppets disappeared the same way they had come, leaving behind only ruined Kage Buildings.

The surviving Kage, if they hadn't been defeated or killed, were left furious and bitter but utterly powerless. However much they wanted to tear Ōtsutsuki Toneri limb from limb, they couldn't do a thing. To them, he was like an unbridled Uchiha Madara with no Hashirama around to rein him in.

Within two days, news of Ōtsutsuki Toneri's "brutal spree" spread anew through the ninja world. Those smaller villages he'd never bothered with breathed a sigh of relief, feeling smug that he didn't target them, hoping he'd keep whittling away the big nations' power. Their wish was granted, to a point.

A week after the chaos subsided, each of the large villages had analyzed the attacks and wanted to consult one another—maybe organize a Five Kage Summit.

Then the puppet army struck again, once more descending upon the Five Great Villages, raising those barriers again.

This time the puppet count was double, but not all used the Four Red Yang Formation. Only one such barrier trapped a particular Kage or Jinchūriki; other puppets used Four Violet Flames Formations on those who had purple-rank entries but hadn't dropped anything last time or who hadn't been targeted previously.

Five of Izayoi's Wood Clones managed the puppet army, while two more kept track of those who dropped entries and those who didn't.

Again, the goal was obvious: if Izayoi didn't shake loose all the hidden purple-rank entries in the Five Great Nations, he wouldn't quit.

Repeatedly, Izayoi couldn't help lamenting how "few" prime targets remained in this peaceful era. With the Senju nearly gone, the Uchiha and Uzumaki clans decimated, and the Hōzuki, Kaguya, and Yuki clans similarly wiped out, the pool of Bloodline Limit users was thin.

The only real "big family" was Konoha's Hyūga. But the Hyūga Clan was Hinata's clan, and she alone knew Izayoi's Tenseigan secret—that he was "Ōtsutsuki Toneri." Though she wouldn't blame him, Izayoi couldn't bring himself to thrash his future father-in-law and in-laws too hard.

In a wartime era like the First, Second, or even Third Great Ninja War, he could easily have farmed massive points, eventually upgrading his Ōtsutsuki lineage entry to red. With enough time, he might have surpassed the Sage of Six Paths entirely.

But now, at least there was Naruto, Sasuke, Hinata, and the real Toneri on the moon. So Izayoi's main focus remained Naruto and Sasuke. The rest of the big villages were simply "side quests."

If even one red-rank entry dropped, that meant a minimum 100k or more points. By some stroke of luck, he might earn 990,000 points in one go—enough to boost a red-rank entry to that "unknown new grade."

So…

Every week, the puppet army descended upon the Five Great Villages again, harvesting points. Gradually, the Five Kage realized that they were being used for "combat training," and the puppets mostly left them alive or only lightly maimed them. Some serious injuries happened here or there, mostly from an overpowered strike going too far.

But there was nothing they could do. Even the raging Fourth Raikage, who might have tried building a "chakra cannon" to blast the moon if he had the tech, was stuck in impotent fury.

…

Word of the situation inevitably reached the Akatsuki. In the Kamui dimension, Nagato, Obito, and Black–White Zetsu were holding a meeting on the topic of Jinchūriki and Tailed Beasts.

"Other than the Three-Tails, which hasn't revived yet, all Jinchūriki from One-Tail to Nine-Tails are still alive," Black Zetsu reported to Nagato. White Zetsu added in confusion, "And that giant chakra source doesn't appear to come from a Tailed Beast. What's more, he targeted the Jinchūriki from Sand (One-Tail), Iwa (Four- and Five-Tails), Kumo (Two- and Eight-Tails), and Konoha (Nine-Tails) but never tried to kill them or rip out their beasts."

"Looks like the situation you feared has come to pass," Obito remarked. "He must've found that Gelel Stone vein."

Nagato tapped his wooden table lightly. "The Gelel Stone's energy is purely natural energy and life force. Haido's flying fortress harnessed it to create those armored soldiers, but it can't become chakra on the level of a Tailed Beast. If this is 'training,' those puppets should be monstrous or in Sage Mode—like Haido's men—but they aren't. Their colossal chakra either means he's gained an incredible boost himself, or…he's tapped into a Tailed-Beast-like chakra source."

Black Zetsu fell silent, again sensing events slipping out of his control. Not knowing about the Shiki Fūjin or how the Reaper had split the Nine-Tails, he couldn't understand how Toneri had half of Kurama.

He simply suspected an unknown power or item providing enormous chakra that wasn't from the standard Tailed Beasts—doubly alarming.

Nagato, his mind now sharper, also couldn't piece it all together. "Zetsu," he said at last, "speed things up. My gut tells me that once he's finished whatever his unknown objective is, he'll come after us."

"Understood!"

…

Two months passed. Week by week, the puppet army had raided the Five Great Nations. The villages, highly alert, were assaulted every time.

But now it was another new week—and they'd braced themselves for the next ambush, only for nothing to happen. Day turned to night, still no sign of the puppets. Another day went by… Then a third.

The Kage and their shinobi found it hard to believe the terror was over. But as the entire week ended, and still no attack came, they finally relaxed.

Some even wept tears of joy. "It's over! The demon who tormented us without killing is finally gone!"

They had no idea that they'd simply "lost their value" for the moment—just weeds temporarily safe from the scythe. Someday, when they'd regrown, the reaper's blade could reappear at any time.

…

"Almost there…just a bit more…"

Izayoi lounged in his private hot spring, murmuring as he eyed his personal interface.

Displayed in its "points" column was a formidable six-digit figure:

[Points: 799999]

After two months of unrestrained hunts, Izayoi had gained 500,000 points.

~~~

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