Chapter 1: The Beginning of Everything
Rumble!
The deafening sound of water was continuous. Looking from afar, a massive waterfall stood atop a cliff, towering high with a rapid current.
On either side of the waterfall stood two massive statues. They were grand in stature, standing with fingers held up in signs, facing each other from a distance.
"Hey, did you know? Naruto."
A cold voice drifted from the foot of one of the statues, accompanied by the roaring sound of the waterfall.
The speaker had dark skin and fleshy wings on his back that looked like a pair of giant hands; his entire body was covered in crawling marks.
His dark, long hair reached his back, and his eyes were crimson, with three tomoe faintly visible spinning slowly within them.
A cold sneer played on his lips, and his entire being exuded a certain malevolence.
"People call this place the Valley of the End. It couldn't be more perfect as the final stage for you and me."
"Right, Naruto?"
On the other side of the waterfall, Naruto was shrouded in a layer of crimson Chakra.
His fingertips were sharp, his hair stood on end, and his entire body radiated a thick sense of malice.
His slitted pupils glanced slightly, thinking to himself that his left hand had already lost all sensation.
Then, he growled in a beast-like voice:
"No matter what, even if I have to break your arms and legs, I'm taking you back! Sasuke!"
Seeing this, Sasuke gave a cruel smile:
"It's about time to settle this, this battle."
"Our battle up until now! Naruto!"
After speaking, his hands quickly formed seals, and dazzling black lightning concentrated in his left palm, making a sharp sound like the chirping of a thousand birds.
"Chidori!"
The Chakra around Naruto began to condense, and a vermilion Chakra sphere appeared in his right hand.
"Rasengan!"
With those words, the two jumped simultaneously and charged at each other. The Chidori and Rasengan collided violently in an instant.
The waterfall roared, and the current trembled.
For a moment, a fault appeared in the entire waterfall as the shockwave continued to extend outward. The surrounding rock walls could not withstand such immense force and began to crumble away.
After a long time, the blinding light dissipated. Naruto lay on the ground, his face pale and eyes closed, with a visible puncture wound on his right chest.
Sasuke stood there, his expression weak yet empty. He had become the final victor, but not a hint of joy could be seen on his face.
The light in the sky slowly withdrew until it vanished completely, and dark clouds shrouded the entire sky in the blink of an eye.
Sshhh— Sshhh—
The rain began to fall, and his clothes were soon soaked, clinging tightly to his skin. Sasuke looked down at Naruto.
With a slight tilt of his head, his forehead protector slipped off quietly.
He just stared blankly at Naruto, letting the rain drench him, as Naruto's past words echoed continuously in his mind.
"When I'm with you, I often think that this is probably what it feels like to be brothers, hehe."
"Because you are a bond I worked hard to gain!"
"Sasuke, I know you've always been alone."
"How could I just leave someone like you alone!"
Suddenly, a sharp pain interrupted Uchiha Sasuke's thoughts. The intense pain in his left arm made him groan in agony.
He spat out a mouthful of blood and, as if finally unable to hold on, knelt on the ground, staring blankly at Naruto.
Rain flowed down Sasuke's nose and dripped onto Naruto's forehead protector. For a while, there was no other sound.
...
When Naruto woke up, the first thing that hit his eyes wasn't the rain, the waterfall, or the two confronting statues of the Valley of the End, but a total blank.
A borderless white, as if all the colors of the world had been wiped away, leaving only a hollow brightness.
His feet stepped on a surface of unknown depth; it wasn't earth, nor was it water—there was no sense of reality.
His head felt as if a piece had been hollowed out, incredibly groggy.
"Sasuke... Sasuke!"
Naruto looked up, his throat dry, but his voice burst out uncontrollably.
"Where are you? Don't go to Orochimaru! Do you hear me—"
He ran forward a few steps, but the white space didn't change at all. There was no echo, no sound of wind.
Naruto grew increasingly restless. He opened his mouth to continue, but an extremely cold voice suddenly came from within him:
"Shut up, brat."
Naruto stiffened abruptly.
The Nine-Tailed spoke with a low tone full of deep wariness, as if a beast had caught the scent of something it didn't want to touch.
"What... happened to you?"
"I told you to shut up," the Nine-Tailed's voice grew even lower.
"Be quiet. Use your eyes, use your ears, use your flesh and blood to feel it. Something is very wrong here."
Naruto instinctively wanted to talk back, but then he grit his teeth and forced himself to stop, slowing his breathing and suppressing his heartbeat bit by bit.
The moment it went quiet, he realized: this white space wasn't empty.
It was too quiet, so quiet it felt as if someone had deliberately erased all noise just to let a certain sound fall clearly.
It came from the depths of the void.
Overlapping layers, like hundreds or thousands of people speaking at once; it was a non-human voice.
Every syllable carried an indescribable weight.
Naruto couldn't understand every word, but he could roughly grasp the meaning:
It wasn't a conversation, not an inquiry, but a proclamation:
[You must go to battle, you must go to win.]
The Nine-Tailed let out a suppressed growl inside him.
Its perception was much sharper than Naruto's, and at this moment, it showed a tension that was almost pathetic.
"This thing..."
"Wrong, it's so wrong..."
Naruto frowned, sweat breaking out on his forehead. He could feel the Nine-Tailed's Chakra churning within the seal.
But that agitation wasn't excitement; it was instinctive alarm.
"What do you feel?" Naruto asked in a low voice.
The Nine-Tailed didn't answer immediately. After a few breaths, it squeezed out a sentence in a tone that sounded like it was grinding its teeth:
"It's hard to describe, as if facing an unspeakable existence..."
"More than Uchiha Madara..." the Nine-Tailed said coldly.
"Senju Hashirama, even... more suffocating than the Six Paths Sage."
The Six Paths Sage—that existence that only lived in legends. Naruto's fingertips felt slightly numb.
The Nine-Tailed was proud and violent, used to trampling everything underfoot.
But now, every word was forced out of its throat, carrying a humiliating wariness.
Those overlapping voices continued to fall, like carving words into the white space.
This time, a block of extremely stiff text suddenly floated into Naruto's mind:
[Victory: Uchiha Sasuke returns to Konoha Village.]
[Failure: Loss of Asura Chakra.]
Naruto's pupils shrank.
Sasuke... returning to Konoha?
These words were like a thorn, making his chest burn suddenly, yet the Nine-Tailed had no reaction.
It couldn't see this text, couldn't hear those proclamations.
It could only feel that some kind of existence was watching them from an indescribable angle—
Not looking at skin, not looking at flesh, not looking at Chakra.
But peeling them open from the inside out, as simple as lifting a piece of clothing.
Seeing through hair, bones, pathways, and even the very essence of their life, inch by inch.
That gaze had no emotion; just being seen by it made one's back turn cold.
A white light suddenly fell.
A clean, decisive coverage, like someone pressing down with a palm; the world instantly became a blank sheet of paper.
In the next instant, Naruto's body lost its weight, as if he were being cast onto a stage, vanishing from that place.
Then everything returned to blankness.
After an unknown amount of time, the familiar sensations of his body returned, and Naruto slowly opened his azure eyes.
He could no longer feel the Nine-Tailed; he only knew he had arrived in a strange place.
A soft breeze gently tapped his face, and the air was filled with a fresh fragrance.
Looking around, he found himself inside a city.
The sunlight was very bright, shining on the stone road and making the textures clearly visible.
The streets were wide, the buildings were orderly, and flags swayed gently in the wind, but the strange thing was—there were no people.
No sounds of street vendors, no sounds of wheels, no sounds of children laughing and playing.
This place looked like it had just woken up from a dream and hadn't had time to be filled with life yet, as if someone had deliberately deleted everything that would affect a battle.
"These buildings all look like they're made of stone."
Naruto walked forward aimlessly, looking through transparent glass at shops from a distance; the display windows were filled with exquisite food.
"Incredible, food can actually be made like this. It looks delicious."
At the same time, his stomach let out a few uncooperative "gurgle" sounds as he muttered:
"Ah, to catch up with Sasuke, I've been eating nothing but Food Pills along the way."
A crisp voice suddenly came from behind him:
"Want some? This place makes it pretty well."
"Whoa! Who's there?"
Naruto spun around and focused his eyes, only to find a clean-looking stranger boy.
The stranger boy had short blonde hair, emerald eyes, and a youthful face.
He wore a white-collared shirt with a red tie and carried a long sword on his back. The green hilt was very long, and the end of the hilt was shaped like a dragon.
The stranger boy walked into the shop as if he owned the place and familiarly took out a golden-brown roasted chicken from behind the display window.
The roast chicken had a plump breast and belly, quite a large portion, and was brushed with a layer of secret sauce, looking very appetizing.
Naruto stared at the roast chicken and swallowed his saliva, then looked at the boy with a hint of vigilance and confusion in his eyes:
"Why is there a kid here?"
The boy grinned and easily pulled a drumstick off the roast chicken, saying as he ate:
"I'm Meliodas. It's just me. What's your name?"
"I'm Uzumaki Naruto."
"How old are you, Naruto?"
"Hey kid, it's Big Brother Naruto! I'm 13 years old."
Hearing this, Meliodas smiled, pulled off the other drumstick, and handed it to Naruto, saying:
"Here, try it. It's delicious."
Naruto saw clear sincerity in Meliodas's eyes, with no intention of harming him.
So he went with the flow, took the drumstick, and took a bite.
The meat was very hot, and the fat melted on the tip of his tongue; it really was quite fragrant. He exclaimed:
"Wow, this is so good (swallow), it feels way better (swallow) than Uncle Ichiraku's char siu (swallow)..."
"Right!"
The two sat side by side on the curb with a large plate of food between them, eating and drinking heartily, quite happy.
"This place is truly amazing, to be able to perfectly replicate the Royal Capital of Liones."
"Though some parts of the city are different from my memory, the capital must have developed over these 10 years."
Naruto asked, "So this is the place where Meliodas lives?"
Meliodas replied, "Of course, this is the capital of the Kingdom of Liones, the largest country on the continent of Britannia. It has a population of about 160,000."
Naruto was surprised, "Eh, this Village called Lion-whatever has that many people!"
Meliodas laughed, "It's Liones. Naruto, you must get called an idiot a lot."
"I'm not an idiot! Even if that stuck-up Sasuke always calls me that!"
"But I will definitely prove myself to Sakura and to everyone!"
Meliodas teased, "This girl named Sakura, she's the person Naruto likes, right?"
Naruto blushed and said with some embarrassment:
"Sakura is very cute and very smart... of course I like her."
Then he added somewhat dejectedly:
"But the one she likes most is Sasuke. Sasuke is very smart and learns everything so fast."
Meliodas nodded, "I see. It seems you're quite pitiful too."
Naruto: "Hmm?"
"I hope you don't hate me, Naruto."