"The Fourth Great Ninja War?"
Kakashi Hatake saw those words first, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up instantly.
The one-country, one-village system had only existed for a few decades, yet in that short span, the shinobi world had already gone through three Great Ninja Wars. Every single one of them had been catastrophic. Every single one had shaken the world and swallowed lives by the thousands.
He himself had fought in the last one.
It was on that battlefield that he earned the name Sharingan Kakashi.
And it was in that same war that his teacher, Minato Namikaze, accumulated enough prestige to eventually become Konoha's Fourth Hokage.
But glory was always built on mountains of corpses.
A tiny number of people rose to fame in those wars. A tiny number carved their names into history. Most others suffered in silence, died namelessly, or were left carrying wounds that never truly healed.
Kakashi understood that better than most.
Even he had lost two of the most important people in his life in that war. One had died right in front of him. The other had died by his own hand.
So no—his memories of a Great Ninja War were not good ones.
And because he knew exactly what such a war meant, the phrase Fourth Great Ninja War sent a chill straight through him.
A conflict between two villages could not be called a Shinobi World War.
A border clash between two nations could not be called that either.
Even the previous conflict between Konoha and Kumogakure, intense as it had been, still did not qualify. The other major ninja villages had not been drawn in, so it could never be counted as a true world war.
That meant the future war Kitahara Kaede had mentioned had to be something far worse.
A genuine world-scale conflict.
One involving at least several of the major ninja villages.
Its scale must have been enormous—so enormous that Kitahara Kaede had described it as "a battle of gods," with "Gundams flying all over the place."
Kakashi had no idea what a Gundam was, but in context, he could more or less grasp the meaning.
It was a metaphor for absurd power.
For a battlefield so far beyond the ordinary world of shinobi that even calling it a war might not be enough.
What Kakashi could not understand was how Kitahara Kaede knew any of this.
Could he really see the future?
The thought sounded ridiculous.
And yet, the more Kakashi considered everything the diary had revealed so far, the harder it became to dismiss.
If Kitahara Kaede truly possessed some kind of ability to glimpse the future, then suddenly a great many things made sense.
His wariness.
His caution.
His refusal to casually speak.
His instinctive distrust toward Konoha's higher-ups.
Because if the village leadership learned that he could see the future, then maybe the Third Hokage would hesitate… but Danzō Shimura absolutely would not.
Danzō would seize him.
He would lock him up.
He might even cut him open and study him.
After all, who in this world would not want the power to know the future?
If the Fourth Great Ninja War was truly waiting ahead, then Konoha—situated in the very heart of the shinobi world—would never be able to avoid it.
The Land of Fire occupied the richest land on the continent.
That alone was enough to make it a thorn in the eyes of nearly every neighboring power.
If Konoha had not been strong enough, the Land of Fire would have been carved apart long ago.
So how many countries would be involved in that future war?
Based on current information, Kirigakure was probably not one of them. The Land of Water had been isolating itself for years now, and there was no sign that it intended to reopen itself anytime soon.
Sunagakure, as Konoha's ally, might stand beside them in the future. At least, that was a possibility one could infer from the current political situation.
If so, then perhaps the real enemies would be Kumogakure of the Land of Lightning—the village with the second-strongest military—and Iwagakure of the Land of Earth, often considered third.
Would it become two against two?
If that were the case, then the situation would be grave, but not necessarily hopeless.
Konoha had weakened considerably over the years, yes, but it had not fallen so far that it would be helpless in such a conflict. The truly troublesome one was Kumogakure.
Judging from the last confrontation with the Land of Lightning, they had developed far better than Konoha in recent years. In a real fight, their combat power probably would not be inferior to Konoha's at all.
"Another war is coming?" Kakashi sighed softly, though in truth he did not dwell on it for too long.
Compared to people like Uchiha Obito or Uchiha Itachi—men whose views had twisted into grand ideals, obsessions, and world-changing madness—Kakashi was actually a very ordinary kind of shinobi.
A pure ninja.
He did not dream of reshaping the shinobi world.
He had no grand political ambitions.
If his superiors ordered him to fight, he fought. If they ordered him not to, then he stopped.
That was all.
Even during the Third Great Ninja War, when he was already famous as Konoha's top copy ninja, he had still only served as a high-performing field jōnin. He had never stood at the level of a supreme commander or a strategist overseeing an entire nation's war effort.
So his perspective was still that of an ordinary shinobi.
Professional. Capable. Deadly.
But still ordinary.
What concerned him more, for the moment, was something else.
The Konoha Twelve.
What exactly did that phrase mean?
What was so special about this year's graduating class from the Ninja Academy?
If Kitahara Kaede really could see the future—not just fragments in dreams, not half-broken hints, but entire arcs of future events—then the name Konoha Twelve probably was not random at all.
Most likely, it referred to twelve shinobi from this year's class who would later shine in the Fourth Great Ninja War.
That, at least, was good news.
It meant the success rate of this year's academy graduates might be frighteningly high.
Normally, it was already considered excellent if three to five students from a class eventually grew into capable shinobi who could stand on their own.
Some classes produced none at all.
But this one?
This one supposedly had twelve.
Not bad.
Not bad at all.
Even so, Kakashi could not stop circling back to one thing.
What did it mean when Kitahara Kaede said "gods fought" and "Gundams flew around"?
The previous Great Ninja Wars had already been devastating enough to split nations, drown fields in blood, and reshape the entire political order of the world. Weren't those wars already terrible enough?
Just what kind of nightmare battlefield would deserve that kind of description?
***
Sasuke Uchiha, meanwhile, was deep in thought for entirely different reasons.
He did not care much about the Fourth Great Ninja War.
That was too far away.
Too distant.
Too abstract.
What mattered to him was the phrase Konoha Twelve.
If that title referred to this year's graduates, then he had to be one of them.
After all, he was the number one student in his grade.
But could there really be eleven other people from the same class who would also grow into major shinobi in the future?
That thought made something shift in Sasuke's mind.
For the first time, a different possibility appeared before him.
What if… revenge did not have to be carried alone?
Until now, Sasuke's obsession had always been simple: kill Itachi Uchiha with his own hands, then restore the glory of the Uchiha clan.
That was the path he had fixed in his heart.
But the overwhelming strength Itachi had displayed had slapped him awake.
It was not just a gap.
It was a chasm.
A monstrous, suffocating, despair-inducing distance.
Itachi Uchiha had become so powerful that even if Sasuke were willing to sell his body and soul to a devil, he still might not be able to kill him.
At that point, practical considerations had to enter the picture.
One person could not defeat Itachi.
But what if there were twelve powerful jōnin?
What if he had comrades strong enough to stand beside him?
Could that work?
Could that become a real path to revenge?
For the first time, Sasuke found himself seriously considering that possibility.
And then the diary updated again.
Looking ahead, the story of Naruto is about to begin, and Naruto Uzumaki is finally stepping onto the stage of history. It's hard to imagine that such a loser will grow into that kind of person in the future, but this damned world really is cruel.
The Hokage's son is still the Hokage's son, and the scapegoat's son is still the scapegoat's son. Hilarious.
If only that idiot Masashi Kishimoto hadn't kept expanding the setting, everything could have ended with Shippuden. Then I wouldn't have to live in constant fear. There are too many crafty old monsters in the ninja world now. Any one of them could destroy the world.
What does that hack manga artist Masashi Kishimoto know about Naruto?!
Sasuke stared at the page.
Then stared a little longer.
His expression gradually stiffened.
Naruto?
That dead-last idiot?
That loudmouthed loser who made trouble every single day?
He was about to "step onto the stage of history"?
And not only that—Kitahara Kaede's tone clearly implied that Naruto would become someone terrifyingly important in the future.
Sasuke's brows slowly knitted together.
He had never once taken Naruto seriously.
At most, Naruto was just an irritating fool who barked too loudly and did too much. Someone beneath notice.
But if even a person like Kitahara Kaede—who clearly knew astonishing things about the future—was speaking of Naruto that way, then perhaps Naruto really did possess something extraordinary.
Then there was another line that made Sasuke's eyes narrow sharply.
The Hokage's son is still the Hokage's son, and the scapegoat's son is still the scapegoat's son.
What did that mean?
The Hokage's son?
Who?
Naruto?
Sasuke's breathing slowed.
That line, combined with everything else the diary had hinted at, stirred a strange unease in him.
The Fourth Hokage's legacy.
The Nine-Tails.
Naruto Uzumaki.
The connection was starting to take shape, but it was still hazy.
As for the rest of the entry…
Sasuke had no idea who Masashi Kishimoto was.
He had no idea what "Shippuden" meant either.
And yet, he could clearly tell that Kitahara Kaede was cursing someone—or something—with genuine resentment.
A "manga artist."
Whatever that was, Kitahara Kaede clearly hated him.
Kakashi, reading the same page elsewhere, felt much the same confusion.
He could not understand half the strange references Kitahara Kaede casually tossed into the diary.
But he could understand the intent.
Naruto Uzumaki was about to become important.
Not just important to Konoha.
Important to history itself.
And if that was true, then the future had already begun moving.
Quietly.
Unstoppably.
The board was being laid out.
The pieces were taking their places.
And whether they were ready or not, the era of those children—the so-called Konoha Twelve—was about to begin.