I was completely *#$@%-ed—such a massive freebie slipped through my fingers. My inner greedy beast, whom everyone respectfully calls Hamster, is pissed! No, I'm not letting this go so easily. Missing out on THAT kind of freebie is just sinful. So, what did I need to do to complete the quest? Summon Hapsiel. Let's do this.
My path led to a distant, abandoned training ground. It hadn't been used in a couple of years. This was where I planned to summon Hapsiel.
Once I reached the training ground, I immediately started drawing a pentagram. But just as I was almost done, I remembered that Hapsiel is an angel, and pentagrams are typically used to summon demons—or so I think. I got lost in thought for a while, trying to recall everything I knew about summoning. Turns out, I didn't know jack. I'd seen in movies how demons are summoned with a pentagram and a sacrifice. But angels? No idea. Praying didn't seem like the way to go. Shamans, I think, summon spirits and other beings. Worth a shot—it can't get any worse.
For three hours, I dragged firewood for a bonfire, even using the training dummies on the grounds. Man, what a pain that was—digging them up and hauling them over took me two hours. Then I had to run home for matches. I only finished preparing for the summon by evening.
I lit the bonfire and started dancing around it, howling something vaguely resembling Native American chants. At the end of each circle, I shouted, "Hapsiel, come!" After three hours of dancing and singing to the monotonous beat of a drum, I started slipping into a trance. Where'd the drum come from? The system gave it to me after the second hour.
By the sixth or seventh hour—I'm not sure, honestly—I lost track of time after those mushrooms the system handed me a while after the drum. But after eating them, dancing got a lot more fun. It's always more fun with company—especially with those guys with purple wings. I even felt some kind of power awakening inside me. The system kept popping up with messages, but I didn't fully read them, focusing on my sensations instead.
And just when I felt like I was on the verge of summoning Hapsiel, I felt a sharp pain in my head and blacked out.
Hiruzen was in his office, reading the latest surveillance report on Naruto, growing more worried with every line. Earlier reports already showed Naruto was a bit mentally unstable, but the specialists assured him there was no threat to the seal's integrity. This behavior was deemed explainable.
Yet, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. Even on the day they sealed the Fox, he'd noticed oddities in the child's behavior, and they'd only multiplied over the years. Take the recent outbursts of unexplained aggression toward Naruto, for example. Sure, people already treated him poorly because he's a jinchuriki, but lately, strange incidents had been happening. Even the participants couldn't properly explain why they wanted to harm him.
This latest incident was far more alarming. According to the report, Naruto was wandering the village as usual but stopped in an alley near an open sewer manhole. He spent over half an hour talking to himself—mostly cursing.
— Where did he even pick up that kind of language? Ugh, I need to tell my subordinates not to transcribe everything so literally in the reports. It's turning into some kind of filth, not a report.
That alone would've been fine—they'd gotten used to it. But then he headed to an abandoned training ground, lit a large bonfire, and started dancing and singing around it while playing some strange musical instrument. Though, according to the observer, it barely qualified as singing. When Hiruzen asked them to replicate it, he deeply regretted it. Indeed, as the report said, "exceptionally grating howls."
This went on for nine hours. Toward morning, Naruto showed signs of the Fox's chakra influence—his eyes began glowing red, and flashes of orange chakra flickered across his body. After that, the ANBU observing Naruto decided to neutralize the target and deliver him to the hospital.
Examinations revealed the cause: hallucinogenic mushrooms Naruto had eaten. They put him in a hallucinogenic trance, allowing the Fox to influence him. Tests and analyses showed no threat to his health, but the medics said they'd monitor his condition for a few days.
— Where did he find those damn mushrooms? I need to order more free meal vouchers for him at Ichiraku Ramen. If he eats more of that junk, he might end up releasing the Fox.
— A painfully familiar ceiling. — That was the first thing I said and thought when I came to.
I figured out where I was, but now I needed to understand how I got here and why. The system should help with that.
Yeah, the system helped, alright. According to the latest logs, I was knocked out and brought to the hospital, where they thoroughly examined my unconscious body. Since I was securely strapped to the bed and no visitors had come to question me yet, I decided to review all the messages.
After going through them, I made several key discoveries. First off, I'm an IDIOT. How did I even come up with this? Well, I didn't think it through. I decided to check the settings to set a message filter and see what else I could tweak. In the settings, I found active, passive, and inactive skills—those I have but haven't activated yet. That's where the Illusory Barrier was.
As I later read on the forum, the "inactive skills" category is for disabling certain passive skills. It also includes active skills earned as quest rewards or bought at the auction or shop.
The author of the article said this was a very useful system feature. They'd gotten a passive skill called "Aura of Fear" from a quest, which made not only enemies but also allies avoid them. You can activate an inactive skill with a specific voice command, which you also set in the settings.
I was technically doing everything right when I tried to activate the Illusory Barrier with a voice command. But the activation phrase was, let's say, factory-set. When I read it, I wanted to bash my head against the wall—and I would've, if I weren't strapped to the bed. The activation phrase was "In the name of the Moon, open Illusory Barrier."
The second discovery was that I'm being watched. How did I figure that out? The reputation drop messages. Last week, I got messages about my reputation dropping with someone I'd never even seen. I racked my brain over how that happened. And now, it's the same thing again. During my summoning ritual, my reputation with an ANBU codenamed Cat dropped twelve times, hitting -1600.
Plus, according to the logs, he's the one who knocked me out, stopping my ritual.
— Hapsiel, love him for me. — I was so close.
I don't buy that he was just passing by—the logs clearly show he sat there for eight hours. So, the fact that I'm being watched is 100% confirmed.
Then why am I here in the hospital, strapped to a bed, instead of being interrogated by good ol' Uncle Ibiki with all his known torture methods? I've been so obvious—speaking in Russian, talking to myself (or at least that's how it must look from the outside). They probably suspect the Fox has taken over me. The only things saving me are the seal's integrity and their inability to poke around in my head. I need to be much more careful and think through my actions.
Luckily, my latest screw-up with the ritual can be blamed on the mushrooms. Thanks to the system for those. I can pin everything on them—say I've been eating them for a while. That should explain all my weird behavior, even the half-day bathroom stints. I can chalk it up to food poisoning. If I get away with it, I'll be more cautious from now on.
But the ritual, though incomplete, wasn't a total waste. Besides the drum and mushrooms the system gave me—which they took away (I get why they took the mushrooms, but why the drum? Did I actually summon something?), there's nothing in the logs about that. But I did get another questionable achievement.
Param-pam-pam.
Congratulations!!!
Achievement earned: "Stoned Shaman."
"Stoned Shaman":
Using a drum and a ritual, you can summon beings spiritually akin to you.
Why do I call this achievement questionable? First, they took my drum, so I can't repeat it without one. Second, and more importantly, given my true name, I'd probably summon some kind of entity just as weird as me.
But there was also something genuinely useful, with no sneaky wording or dubious benefits. My mana got unlocked, so now I'm a real mage—though my mana pool is small, and regeneration is weak, it's a start. The Fox's chakra also partially unlocked, and now I can use 0.2% of its full power. That's actually quite a lot. Guess that's why they knocked me out. My Stamina also went up by 2, and my Chakra Control improved by 5. I can now sense chakra, which is a good starting point—I just need to keep developing it.
Later, a medic came in, examined me, and asked questions. I put on the most honest face I could muster and told him that I found these "magic mushrooms," as I called them, on the orphanage grounds. Why magic? Eat one, and your mood's great all day; eat two, and it's downright magical. He listened, nodded, and asked if my stomach was bothering me. I admitted that yeah, I've been having stomach issues lately. This Dr. Dolittle explained that it's all because of the mushrooms and that I shouldn't eat them anymore, or I'd die. I assured him I wouldn't, and besides, I'm out of mushrooms anyway.
After the medic, I got a visitor I definitely didn't expect: Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage, aka the rare piece of garbage responsible for my "wonderful" life. I'm sure he and the elders pocketed the Fourth's inheritance. I doubt Minato had no savings, and Kushina was an Uzumaki princess—she didn't come to the village empty-handed. But that's all beside the point. The main thing is, after all my screw-ups, I expected to see Danzo or Morino Ibiki with a set of torture tools, not the Third. What the heck does he want with me?
When he walked into my room, I didn't even have to fake my surprise. At first, he asked standard questions—how's life, how's my health—but then hell broke loose. That son of a dog spent three hours eating my brain with a teaspoon, preaching about the power of friendship, love, unity, and, of course, the WILL OF FIRE. By the end of his monologue, I almost started believing in that Will myself. Yeah, this old baboon could talk anyone into anything.
After he finished brainwashing me and I got discharged, the old geezer decided to take a walk with me. As if he doesn't have better things to do than stroll with an orphan. Our little walk ended at Ichiraku Ramen, where the kind old grandpa treated me to ramen out of the goodness of his heart.
Now my previously dormant paranoia woke up with a vengeance, whispering that this is all very suspicious. And if I recall that the system didn't show any messages about the mushrooms' effects—no notifications about consuming mind-altering substances—I'm not so sure they aren't slipping something into the ramen.
After a hearty lunch, I said goodbye to the Third and headed home to think about my next steps. My newly awakened paranoia didn't go unnoticed by the system.
Param-pam-pam.
Congratulations!!!
Achievement earned: "Paranoid"
If you don't see a cunning trap in the broom standing in the corner, that doesn't mean it's not there—it just means it's well-hidden.
"Paranoid":
+10% chance to detect surveillance.
+15% chance to detect a trap.
+3% chance to uncover a secret conspiracy.
Well, damn… the system actually gave me a decent achievement. Something big must've died somewhere. I should check on the Fox, just in case.
A recent urgent report on the jinchuriki clarified a lot. Hiruzen had made his latest move. He couldn't place mental triggers due to some unknown protection, so he resorted to other methods. But he likely didn't expect the jinchuriki to consume the hallucinogens he'd planted in excessive amounts and so frequently. Thinking he found those mushrooms himself was foolish—checking the orphanage grounds turned up nothing.
There was no doubt it was Hiruzen's doing, and his subsequent actions confirmed it. Learning from his mistakes, Sarutobi ordered free meal vouchers for the jinchuriki at Ichiraku Ramen. A loyal subordinate there would properly dose the drugs and push propaganda in Hiruzen's favor, while also fostering attachment to that person and the village.
This method was less reliable than triggers or seals, but with the mind protection in place, other options weren't viable. It'd be wise to place my own agent in the jinchuriki's circle to influence him as well.
With that conclusion, Danzo began selecting a suitable candidate.