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It took a full hour for Alaric to locate the Uzumaki Clan Compound on the overgrown, wild outskirts of the village.
The delay, however, had absolutely nothing to do with the geographical complexity of the hidden ruins, nor was it due to any lingering barrier seals that might have confused his senses. Rather, the delay stemmed from Alaric's own unapologetic priorities.
Instead of rushing through the dense foliage to locate the lost heritage of a fallen clan, he had opted to sit down at a highly recommended civilian restaurant in the commercial district, casually enjoying a steaming bowl of pork katsudon while a dispatched shadow clone did the actual, tedious legwork of searching the forest.
Now, with his stomach pleasantly full and the clone's memories integrated safely back into his mind, Alaric stepped through the shattered stone archway of the compound.
He held a freshly lit cigar between his teeth, the aromatic smoke trailing over his shoulder as he walked into the heart of the ruins. His boots crunched softly against the cracked, moss-eaten pavement.
He looked around, shaking his head slightly at the sheer desolation. The Uzumaki clan… the legendary cousins of the Senju, the undisputed masters of Fuinjutsu, and the original allies of Konohagakure… had been reduced to this. Walls that had once stood as proud testaments to their enduring vitality were now crumbling under the weight of invasive vines and decades of neglect. It was nothing more than a forgotten history, an empire of ink and blood swallowed entirely by the uncaring forest.
'So much for the pride of the whirlpool,' Alaric mused, his blue eyes sweeping over the collapsed roofs and rotting timber. 'When a clan becomes too useful, they become a target. When they become a memory, no one even bothers to sweep their floors.'
Guided by the memories of his shadow clone, Alaric walked straight toward the main building. According to the anime timeline he remembered, this was where Orochimaru had brought Sasuke, shattering the walls to access the Shinigami masks to release the souls of the Hokages. But in this timeline, Orochimaru was already dead… well not totally, executed quietly in a subterranean cell, and his destructive little field trip here will never happened.
Stepping carefully over the rotting threshold, Alaric entered the grand hall. Dust motes danced lazily in the shafts of fading sunlight that pierced the broken ceiling.
He looked around, puffing his cigar thoughtfully.
There were no masks.
The walls were bare, stripped of adornment save for faded tapestries and water damage. He scratched the back of his head, feeling a mild ripple of annoyance.
"Well, that's anti-climactic," Alaric murmured, his voice echoing flatly in the empty hall. "I suppose assuming the main hall held the darkest secrets of the clan was a bit too cliché."
He turned on his heel, leaving the main house behind to explore the adjacent structures.
He wandered through a series of smaller, interconnected shrine buildings, his senses expanding to detect any lingering traces of esoteric chakra. It didn't take him long. A few minutes later, pushing aside a set of heavy, rotted sliding doors in a secluded annex, he finally saw it.
The wall of masks.
There were dozens of them, hung in precise, eerie alignment across the back wall of the shrine. The air in the room was noticeably colder, thick with a residual spiritual pressure that made the hairs on the back of a normal man's neck stand up.
Thanks to his foreknowledge, Alaric knew exactly what he was looking for. However, as his Mind's Eye of the Kagura washed over the collection, he noticed something fascinating. The other masks weren't mere decoys designed to hide the true Shinigami mask. They resonated with distinct, albeit dormant, chakra signatures. They were focal points for other types of ancient, forgotten rituals… summoning mediums for minor spirits, elemental familiars, and sealing anchors.
His eyes locked onto the prize located near the center.
It was unmistakable. The demonic, grinning visage with sharp, interlocking teeth and two wicked horns protruding from its brow. The Shinigami mask.
Alaric stepped forward and plucked the mask from its wooden peg. The moment his fingers brushed the painted wood, he felt a faint, chilling hum—a tether connecting the physical object to the belly of the Death God.
"Gotcha," Alaric whispered, inspecting the craftsmanship before turning his attention back to the rest of the wall.
'I shouldn't mess with the other masks by trying them on or analyzing their specific rituals,' Alaric reasoned, pulling a blank storage scroll from the inner pocket of his crimson coat. 'I don't know exactly what they're for, and I frankly don't care. But rare, antique, chakra-infused ritual masks? The System will pay top dollar for these.'
With a swift, practiced motion, he unrolled the scroll, channeled his chakra, and sealed the entire remaining collection of masks into the parchment. The wall was stripped bare in a second.
He then looked down at the Shinigami mask still resting in his hand. He would definitely need it soon, right after he successfully rewound a fragment of Minato's body back into its original, living shell. To ensure he didn't accidentally mix it up with the others in his inventory, Alaric manifested a sliver of golden chakra at his fingertip and stamped a tiny, personalized tracking seal on the inside rim of the mask.
Satisfied, he rolled up his sleeve and pressed the mask against the complex storage tattoo inked into his shoulder. Poof. The demonic visage vanished into the dimensional void.
'Now,' Alaric thought, adjusting his coat and stepping back out into the cool evening air. 'I need to have a look at where Minato and Kushina's bodies actually are.'
He didn't bother walking back to the village.
Flicker. The sound was a mere displacement of air. Alaric vanished from the Uzumaki ruins and reappeared instantly, floating several hundred feet above the center of Konoha.
The sun had just dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in deep, bruised shades of violet and burnt orange. The village below was transitioning into night, lanterns flickering to life like a constellation of fireflies spreading across the valley.
Alaric hovered in the cooling air, looking left and right, scanning the vast expanse of the hidden village. Minato and Kushina's bodies were undoubtedly interred in the village cemetery. As far as he knew, Orochimaru had never bothered to physically exhume their corpses; the snake had likely only required a microscopic sample of DNA to prepare their Edo Tensei tags before Alaric had ruined his plans.
"I really should just buy a map for this place," Alaric chuckled to himself, running a hand through his windswept platinum-blond hair. "I keep having to float up into the stratosphere just to figure out where things are."
His sharp eyes caught the distinct, orderly rows of white stone monuments nestled against the forested hillside to the northwest.
"Ah. There's the cemetery..."
He descended smoothly, controlling his gravity with absolute precision until his boots touched down softly on the manicured grass at the edge of the burial grounds.
The Konoha Cemetery was a place of solemn, egalitarian quiet. The scent of burning incense and fresh lilies hung heavily in the air. Despite Minato's status as the Yondaime Hokage, the village did not believe in ostentatious, towering mausoleums for its leaders. In death, the Will of Fire dictated that all shinobi were equal. However, the graves of active-duty shinobi and ordinary civilians were clearly separated into different sectors for organizational purposes.
Alaric walked slowly down the central gravel path, his hands tucked casually into his pockets. Even in the fading light, there were still a couple of people lingering, placing fresh flowers on the stones of loved ones, offering silent prayers with bowed heads.
He navigated through the rows of the shinobi sector, his eyes scanning the carved kanji on the polished headstones. It took him several minutes of quiet walking, weaving deeper into the older sections of the cemetery, until he finally found the specific row he was looking for.
He stopped, his blue eyes taking in the arrangement of the graves.
There it was. Namikaze Minato.
And right beside him, resting in the same peaceful earth: Uzumaki Kushina.
Alaric stepped closer, noting the fresh offerings left at their stones… likely from Kakashi, or perhaps Jiraiya before he had departed the village.
But as Alaric's gaze drifted to the adjacent plots, a small, involuntary chuckle vibrated in his chest.
Directly next to Minato's grave stood the monument for Uchiha Obito. And right beside Obito's was the stone for Nohara Rin.
The poetic tragedy of the arrangement was profound, but to Alaric, the irony was thick enough to cut with a kunai.
'Obito's grave...' Alaric thought, a deeply amused smirk touching his lips as he stared at the polished stone honoring the tragic hero of the Kannabi Bridge. 'If only these mourners knew that the boy buried in this empty box is currently running a terrorist organization, wearing an orange mask, and plotting to plunge the entire world into a matrix-style dream.'
He shook his head, the amusement fading into a quiet, pragmatic focus.
He looked back at Minato and Kushina's graves. The soil was compacted, undisturbed for sixteen years. He could easily phase his hand through the earth, extract a sliver of bone, and be gone before the wind changed.
But he glanced over his shoulder. A few rows down, an elderly woman was weeping softly in front of a fresh grave, accompanied by a young boy in an academy uniform.
Alaric sighed, taking the unlit cigar from his mouth.
As detached as he often was, he drew the line at casually grave-robbing the village's greatest heroes in plain sight of grieving widows and orphans. It lacked a certain level of class.
'I'll just come back later tonight when the place is dead empty,' Alaric decided, turning away from the monuments and walking back down the gravel path. 'Might as well use the next few hours to finalize the intricate synchronization loops in my Fuinjutsu code. If I'm going to resurrect them perfectly, the math needs to be flawless.'
He merged seamlessly into the shadows of the falling night, leaving the ghosts to rest just a little while longer.
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