The throne room was bathed in the light of the late afternoon as Brie continued to sit still on the steps. Above her, Arthur remained asleep in his chair. It was easy to forget the sheer scale of the chessboard he was playing on.
Having somewhat forgotten what happened next, she stood up, looked, and grabbed a paper from the research notes. The title read, "Ryugetsu's Temple."
"Oh yeah," she whispered. "I forgot you did that."
Her mind once again wandered through the timeline of Arthur's conquests.
Since his pockets were still deep, and the plaza was still being built, Arthur had adopted his Ryugetsu persona once more to interact with Sora again.
But the boy wasn't present at the time. Instead, the Temple was under attack by occultists that Arthur and Chiriku managed to eventually defeat.
Things were becoming too easy for Arthur at that point.
The politics, the disguises, the assassinations—it was all routine. But what was an acting feudal lord to do with so much power and idle time? He needed to test his physical limits without revealing his true identity.
So Arthur created a spectacle by using his authority and massive funds to organize the ninja world's first-ever taijutsu-only tournament.
It was hosted in the Land of Waves, which was perfect since it was still a neutral territory outside the direct jurisdiction of the five great nations. Flyers and promoters were sent to every corner of the map.
The premise was simple: no ninjutsu, no genjutsu, no weapons. Just raw, physical combat.
The turnout became staggering when shinobi from all over the world desired to come. Not everyone could participate, of course. Many applicants had active bounties on their heads, making it far too dangerous to step into an arena surrounded by law enforcement and elite ninjas.
But the roster that did make the cut was one for the ages.
The event had drawn in such a crowd that even the Raikage and the Mizukage attended as honourable spectators, sitting in the high boxes to evaluate the world's talent.
Notable names filled the brackets, such as Lars Alexanderson; Margaret; the two jinchūriki, Fu and Han; Naruto Uzumaki; and his cousin, William Uzumaki. Truly a gathering of anomalies and powerhouses.
Arthur had chosen not to sit in the audience; he joined the fighting by entering the tournament disguised as the blindfolded shinobi known as Hoshikaze.
Brie remembered him explaining the rules of the matches. They were strict to suit his needs, and the referees enforced them without hesitation.
As the tournament unfolded, the restrictions became the deciding factor in several key fights.
Naruto managed to advance through the early rounds through sheer grit. He eventually met Lars in the ring. While their fight was reaching its pivotal point, Naruto slipped by somehow awakening the Nine-Tails Chakra Mode.
It was a spectacular display of who was to become, but it explicitly broke the rules. Ninjutsu and chakra constructs were forbidden, so he was immediately disqualified.
Arthur could have intervened as the shadow sponsor to keep the boy in the bracket, but he let the technicality stand. Rules were rules.
When it was Margaret's turn to fight Fu, the match ended in controversy. Margaret possessed a passive healing ability that stitched her wounds closed almost instantly. The judges spotted the anomaly and disqualified her since healing of any kind was not allowed in a pure test of endurance.
Han was also disqualified before his match even began because he refused to remove his steam armour.
Then came the later brackets.
Arthur, fighting as Hoshikaze, stepped into the ring against Lars. The crowd expected a violent clash, which was delivered until Lars eventually stood down. He had sensed the sheer weight of Arthur's ambition and mainly surrendered out of pure respect.
Something Arthur had said made Lars understand on some instinctual level that he was going to change the shinobi world in a way Lars wanted to see unfold.
This forfeiture, therefore, pushed Arthur straight into the finals, where William was waiting.
William had run a gauntlet to get there by systematically defeating Ebisu, Iruka, Anko, and even Rock Lee. Even though he was seemingly clumsy, he knew how to operate in the ninja world like no other, becoming skilled in hand-to-hand combat.
The tournament's final lasted longer than any other bout in the tournament since chakra was permitted.
William tried to fight fair by summoning authentic shadow clones that perfectly matched his own chakra levels. But Arthur was simply unbreakable as he weathered the storm of clones and dismantled William piece by piece.
In the end, Arthur won.
He hadn't necessarily intended to take the crown. In fact, he told Brie that if Han hadn't been disqualified, or if the entire faction of Cloud ninja hadn't abruptly left because Killer Bee was attacked somewhere else on the continent, the brackets might have forced him out earlier.
But Arthur won regardless. He proved to everyone in that stadium that Hoshikaze was an apex predator.
He was so convincing that after the finals, Jada—who had been watching from the stands—followed him into the stadium tunnels. She cornered the blindfolded man and begged him to be her sensei.
Brie found a dark humor in that detail: Jada had asked the man tried to kill to become her teacher, entirely unaware of the predator beneath the cloth.
But none of these facts were the real prize. After Arthur walked away from the Land of Waves, he gained two massive advantages.
First, he had secretly recorded every single match and possessed hours of combat data on the world's strongest fighters. Ironically, he mainly let Koko study and dissect their fighting styles.
Second, before the final match, he had managed to secretly inject William with a microscopic Flying raijin chip. The tracker buried itself in the boy's flesh so Arthur could monitor William and Naruto's progress wherever they went.
With the tournament concluded, most of the Leaf ninja were still stuck in the Land of Waves, celebrating or nursing their wounds.
Arthur could not rest when there was such a gap in security for the Leaf Village. So he used the distraction to shift his focus back there, specifically to check on Sasuke Uchiha's progress.
Sasuke was still unknowingly under the influence of Arthur's Evil Illusion Flattery technique, a subtle genjutsu planted in his mind back in the Land of Tea. The suggestion planted in the boy was to leave the Leaf Village and seek Orochimaru for revenge against Itachi.
Arthur had learned a hard lesson during that encounter in the Tea country. Trying to outright kill main threats early on caused the world to react violently. If he killed Sasuke or Naruto, the variables would spiral out of his control.
So, instead of destroying the Uchiha, Arthur chose to steer him. And the best way to do that was to deliver him straight to Orochimaru.
Arthur infiltrated the Leaf Village under a new guise. He called himself Kaito.
Since the security was lax with the real threats in the Land of Waves, he slipped through the gates, located Sasuke, and made his move. Doing this subtly was paramount until Arthur needed to let out some steam by pummeling Sakura in front of Sasuke just to prove a point.
Once the boy was successfully influenced into leaving the village, Arthur used the memories he had forcefully extracted from Jirōbō to manipulate the seal on Sasuke's neck, advancing the curse mark to level two.
But the Leaf was not completely blind. A kunoichi named Alice Yamanaka, the village's best sensory-type, caught the disturbance the very next morning. She brought the intelligence to Tsunade, who authorized her to form a retrieval team.
Arthur had already linked up with the Sound Four outside the village walls. The four elite guards believed he was a subordinate sent by Orochimaru to assist the escort. How could they not believe him when he gave explicit detail of both their missions?
When Brie asked Arthur why he was going through such lengths, she was given a vague answer on how Kimimaro was truly supposed to be the one sent to help the group. Arthur had simply taken the latter's spot.
The group soon carried Sasuke in the containment barrel and moved fast through the trees. But to their folly, Alice was exceptional at her job since she and her team of Genin managed to track them down through the forest.
The woods became a warzone as the Sound Four turned to fight. Confident they could crush a handful of children, they were proven wrong. Alice's team overwhelmed them with coordinated tactics.
The situation spiraled further out of control when Naruto intervened. All the way from the Land of Waves, Jada had used her Flying raijin to teleport him directly into the battlefield to help Alice's team.
Arthur watched from afar as Orochimaru's elite guard fell apart. Kidōmaru was killed, Sakon and Ukon were eradicated, Jirōbō fell into the dirt, dead, and Tayuya was captured.
Arthur felt no pity for defective tools who broke under pressure.
With the Sound Four dealt with, Alice's team finally caught up to him and the barrel. Then the barrel broke open as Sasuke emerged. He was no longer under Arthur's subtle flattery influence since the sheer malice of the curse mark had overridden it, binding his mind entirely to Orochimaru's frequency.
And without looking back, the Uchiha fled toward the border.
Naruto screamed his name before abruptly giving chase. Arthur allowed the blond boy to pass on account their clash would be a necessity for his plans. The rest of Alice's team were blocked from intervening.
A fight broke out as Arthur used raw physical force to overwhelm them. He moved like a ghost, striking hard enough to crack ribs and break their formations.
But then, the unexpected happened: Alice bypassed physical combat entirely and used the Spiritualization technique.
Such a tactic was a direct strike to his spirit. His physical body was like a dense fortress. But his spiritual energy, at the time, did not compare to his extreme physique.
So the technique stunned him mid-attack. His muscles locked as his vision swam. And for a terrifying second, he had lost control of his own limbs.
He knew immediately that if he stayed, Alice could tear his mind out of his head. Spiritual energy was his glaring weakness, and she had found it.
Arthur had, therefore, received his first true loss.
Using the last bits of his chakra, he fled via the Flying raijin, teleporting directly atop the stone cliffs of the Final Valley.
The waterfall roared in his ears as rain poured down on the scene. Below him, things didn't fare any better because the blond boy had won. Sasuke was defeated, being carried motionless on Naruto's back.
This was unacceptable.
If Naruto dragged Sasuke back to the Leaf, Orochimaru wouldn't get his vessel, the Akatsuki wouldn't have their rogue, and the carefully balanced tension of the world would collapse into peace.
Arthur acted instantly by entering Simian Sage Mode. The moment the markings flared around his eyes, he dropped from the cliff face, moved faster than the tired Genin could process, and bang!
Arthur struck Naruto with pinpoint precision.
It was an instant knockout as it crashed through the foliage.
Arthur wasted no time teleporting Sasuke and himself out of the valley. In the Water Country, he dropped the unconscious Uchiha onto the wet grass, knowing that when Sasuke woke up, his pride and his desperation would force him to walk the rest of the way to Orochimaru's hideout.
Brie placed the report back on the pile. She then looked at the sleeping man.
To think he had lost to someone on a technicality and had been forced to retreat. In the end, he still somehow managed to continue dictating the shape of the world.