Chapter 323: The Path to the Bloodline Snare
Kushina had made her choice. She would enter ANBU for specialized training—not because anyone forced her, but because she wanted to grow stronger. The shadow of her grandmother's sacrifice loomed large in her heart, and she refused to let that sacrifice be in vain. Uzumaki Mito had given her life to ensure the Nine-Tails was sealed. Kushina would honor that gift by becoming powerful enough that no such tragedy would ever happen again.
There was also the matter of Ragnar. He had grown so strong—strong enough to make even the Hokage speak his name with a mixture of respect and wariness. Kushina was proud of him. Deeply, fiercely proud. But she did not want to be left behind. She did not want to be the person who needed protection, who had to be saved, who could only watch while others fought her battles. Girls liked to be protected, yes. But that did not mean they wanted to be vases. Beautiful, fragile, and useless.
Kushina still had her pride. She still had her dream of becoming the first female Hokage. And becoming Hokage was not easy—especially for a woman. She would need to be strong enough that every shinobi in the village acknowledged her without question. That path started here.
The night before her departure, Ragnar and Kushina made dinner together. It was nothing extravagant—simple dishes prepared with care, eaten across a small wooden table lit by a single lamp. They talked. They laughed. They made memories that Kushina would hold close during the long days of training ahead. For one final evening, the cabin was warm and bright and full of life.
Later, they lay in the same bed. Just lying there. Her head resting against his shoulder. His arm around her, steady and solid. They listened to each other breathe. They did not speak. They did not need to. The silence between them was comfortable—the silence of two people who had seen each other at their worst and their best and accepted both without reservation.
Nothing happened. Nothing needed to happen. They were young. There was time.
But something had shifted between them. Deepened. The bond that had been forged over years of shared isolation, of leaning on each other when there was no one else to lean on, had grown stronger. Kushina fell asleep with a small smile on her face. Ragnar stayed awake a little longer, watching the moonlight trace patterns on the ceiling, feeling the warmth of her beside him.
The Next Morning — ANBU Headquarters
Ragnar delivered Kushina to the ANBU training facility personally. She would be working with a specialized sealing class—instructors who understood the unique properties of the Uzumaki clan's techniques and could help her develop her innate abilities. The goal was twofold: to strengthen her sealing arts to the point where she could fully suppress the Nine-Tails, and to begin teaching her how to draw upon the fox's chakra without being overwhelmed.
The Uzumaki clan was famous for their sealing techniques. That was their legacy. Kushina's abilities were almost entirely oriented toward that ancient art, and this training would push those abilities to their absolute limit. The gap between her and her grandmother had been painfully clear during the Nine-Tails' rampage. Mito's chains had held the fox for decades. Kushina's had shattered in moments. The difference was not merely one of power—it was one of mastery.
If Kushina's sealing technique reached sufficient depth, the Nine-Tails would not be able to break free so easily. Even if she could not match her grandmother's strength immediately, she could at least restrain the beast long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
At the entrance to the training wing, Ragnar was met not with suspicion or distance but with open respect. The ANBU operatives who passed through the corridors paused to acknowledge him. Some bowed. Some simply pressed their fists to their chests in silent salute. His mask was off, but his identity was known here. To these shinobi, he was not merely a colleague or a superior officer. He was Rakshasa. The Demon of the Battlefield. The man who had ended the Second Shinobi World War.
Hatake Sakumo was the White Fang—the spiritual leader of ANBU, the symbol of its highest ideals. But Ragnar was something else. He was living faith. Proof that an ordinary shinobi with no bloodline, no clan, and no connections could rise to the very pinnacle of the world. Most of the ANBU were young—close to Ragnar's own age—and to them, he was not just a hero. He was an aspiration. A target to chase. A dream made flesh.
Ragnar sought out Moonlight Hayate and Aburame Shikumi. The former members of Squad Nine were still assigned to the sealing division's security detail. He explained the situation in a few brief sentences and asked them to watch over Kushina, to help her navigate the labyrinthine procedures of ANBU bureaucracy, to ensure her transition was as smooth as possible.
The two squad captains agreed without hesitation. It was the least they could do for the man who had saved their lives more times than they could count.
The Forest of Death — Later That Day
After parting from Kushina, Ragnar made his way alone to the vast forest that sprawled behind the Hokage Monument. In later years, this place would earn a fearsome reputation as the Forest of Death, the site of countless Chūnin Exams and the grave of many promising young shinobi. But today, it was simply a convenient location. Secluded. Uninhabited. Far from prying eyes.
He walked deep into the woods until the trees grew thick enough to blot out the sky. Only then did he stop. He formed a hand seal and pressed his palm to the earth.
POOF.
White smoke erupted in a thick plume, and from its depths emerged the Five-Tails. Kokuō's dolphin-like body gleamed in the dappled forest light, steam venting gently from her flanks. She shook her head, her five tails swaying, and fixed Ragnar with a look that was equal parts resignation and apprehension.
"Are you ready?" Ragnar asked.
Kokuō raised her head. Her large, liquid eyes studied him with an expression that was difficult to read. "Rakshasa. This idea of yours... it's somewhat dangerous."
"Is it?" Ragnar's voice was calm. Unmoved. "Great power requires great risk. If I don't do this, someone else will eventually. And I refuse to be left behind."
He had made his decision long ago. To stand at the true summit of the shinobi world—to be invincible not merely in this era but in all eras—he needed to transcend the limits of ordinary chakra. He needed the Bloodline Snare. The fusion of all seven chakra natures. The power that lay at the heart of every Six Paths-level technique.
Kokuō stared at him for a long moment. Then she sighed—a strange, gurgling sound that vibrated through her entire body. "Fine. Don't blame me if this goes wrong."
Her mouth opened. And kept opening. Wider than her face. Wider than her body. It was like watching a dimensional portal unfold from within a creature that had no business containing one.
Hurk.
With a convulsive heave, Kokuō regurgitated something from the depths of her being. A massive shape—scarlet, pulsating with malevolent chakra—slid from her throat and crashed to the forest floor. The Nine-Tails' chakra saturated the air, thick and oppressive, making the surrounding trees seem to lean away as if recoiling from its presence.
The object Kokuō had disgorged was a tail. One of the Nine-Tails' massive tails, severed during the battle and secretly collected by Ragnar in the chaos. Even separated from the fox's body, it was enormous—several times larger than Kokuō's compact form. Its chakra still burned with undiminished fury, a fragment of the strongest Tailed Beast, alive with residual hatred and power.
"Impressive," Ragnar murmured. "Even severed, the chakra density is extraordinary."
"Don't sound so happy about it." Kokuō's voice was dry. "That idiot Nine-Tails probably has no idea you stole one of his tails. When he finds out, he's going to be insufferable. More insufferable than usual, I mean."
A moment of silence for our fallen brother, Kokuō thought, with the particular irreverence of a sibling who had never gotten along with the sibling in question. May his tail rest in pieces.
Ragnar approached the severed tail. The crimson chakra emanating from it was hot—physically hot, like standing too close to a furnace. He could feel the fox's residual will pressing against his consciousness, a distant echo of the Nine-Tails' boundless rage. It wanted to destroy. To consume. To punish the world that had imprisoned it.
The Nine-Tails' power is fundamentally Yin-Yang Release, Ragnar thought. That's what makes it so much stronger than the other Tailed Beasts. Not merely chakra volume—nature.
The Sage of Six Paths had played favorites. There was no denying it. The Ten-Tails' chakra had been divided unequally among its nine children, and Kurama had received the lion's share. But more than that, the Nine-Tails' chakra carried a unique property. It was closer to the primordial source. Closer to the Yin-Yang Release that underlay all creation.
Yin Release represented spiritual energy—the power to create form from nothingness. Yang Release represented physical energy—the power to breathe life into that form. Together, they were the foundation of all existence. The Sage had wielded them to create the Tailed Beasts themselves. And a fragment of that power now lay before Ragnar, pulsing with residual malice.
In the original timeline, Naruto's extraordinary healing factor came not only from his Uzumaki heritage but from the Yang-attributed chakra of the Nine-Tails that constantly suffused his body. The fox's power, even when suppressed, transformed its host. Strengthened them. Made them more than human.
Ragnar had no bloodline limit. He was not born of the Ōtsutsuki lineage. He had no inherited gifts, no ancestral techniques, no dormant powers waiting to be awakened. If he wanted to surpass the bloodline of the alien clan that had seeded this world with chakra, he had only one option.
Become the first ancestor yourself.
No one was born strong. Not even Kaguya Ōtsutsuki, the so-called progenitor of chakra, had created her power from nothing. She had consumed the fruit of the Divine Tree. She had taken power that already existed and made it her own. Ragnar would do the same—but he would not rely on a single source. He would forge his own path.
He would not steal the eyes of others. He would not borrow the power of ancient monsters. He would build his strength from the ground up, piece by piece, until he stood above them all.
The Bloodline Snare was the clearest path to that goal. The ultimate fusion of all chakra natures—Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Lightning, Yin, and Yang. Every technique at the Six Paths level was fundamentally an expression of the Bloodline Snare. The Truth-Seeker Orbs. The Creation of All Things. The All-Killing Ash Bones. These were not techniques that could be learned through ordinary training. They required a complete mastery of chakra's fundamental natures, fused into a single, transcendent whole.
Ragnar already possessed three of the five elemental natures: Wind, Lightning, and Fire. His contract with Kokuō gave him access to Water Release and brought him closer to the water affinity. Earth Release could be developed through dedicated chakra nature transformation training—a long process, but achievable.
But the critical step—the step that separated the ordinary from the divine—was the fusion of Yin and Yang Release into the elemental mix. The five elements alone could be combined into various Kekkei Genkai. But the true Bloodline Snare required all seven. And Yin-Yang Release was the rarest of all chakra natures, possessed only by a handful of beings in the entire history of the shinobi world.
The Nine-Tails' severed tail offered a shortcut. By extracting the Yin and Yang chakra from the tail, condensing it into a seed, and fusing that seed into his own chakra network, Ragnar could incorporate those two missing natures into his being. It would not be easy. It would not be safe. But it was possible.
"Five-attribute chakra exists in a state of extreme balance within the human body," Kokuō said, her voice unusually solemn. "Each nature counters and complements the others. They exist in equilibrium. But Yin and Yang Release are different. They are primordial. Volatile. Once they enter your system, the balance will be disrupted. If you cannot integrate them—if your body rejects the fusion—you will die."
She paused, her tails stilling.
"Rakshasa. You have great ambition. I have lived for thousands of years, and I have never encountered a human who sought to become a progenitor themselves. It is... audacious. Perhaps foolish. Perhaps magnificent. I cannot decide which."
Ragnar met the Five-Tails' ancient, knowing eyes. "I've made my choice."
"Then let's begin."
(End of Chapter)
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