[Quest Triggered: As a Scholar, You Encounter a Fox Spirit in Distress.]
[Objective: While traveling to the capital for the imperial exam, you encounter an injured fox spirit. Please take good care of it.]
[Reward: The Fox Spirit's Gratitude.]
The system's voice brought Kaito to a dead halt. His face darkened instantly as his brain kicked into overdrive.
Oh, so this is how you want to play it?
You promised cultivation and immortals—
and now you're giving me some kind of ridiculous ghost story?!
A fox spirit repaying kindness…
You couldn't even swap it for something normal?!
And anotherrrrrr thing — I'm not even a scholar! I'm six years old!
In the shinobi world, where exactly am I supposed to go take an imperial exam?!
Sasuke, who had been following behind, noticed Kaito suddenly froze. He was about to ask what was wrong—until his eyes widened in shock when he looked at Kaito's head.
"Why is your head smoking?!"
Sasuke was genuinely alarmed. He swore he'd never seen anything like this in his life.
"I'm fine!"
"Home. Now!"
Kaito's peripheal vision caught Naruto stumbling toward them in the distance. Instantly, all kinds of exaggerated fox-spirit scenes from old dramas flahed through his mind.
Naruto's figure overlapped with those absurd images.
The result?
Six-year-old Kaito's face twisted into deep wrinkles of pure disgust.
This garbage quest… I'd rathe not touch it.
Fox spirit gratitude my ass.
I don't want it.
Kaito grabbed Sasuke and immediately sped up, retreating from the scene without hesitation.
They walked so fast that Naruto couldn't catch up at all, only watching their figures shrink into the distance.
Naruto struggled to lift the heavy bucket with both hands. Staring at the fish inside, his nose suddenly stung.
He clenched his teeth, set the bucket and fishing rod down, raised his hand, and shouted toward their disappearing backs—
not caring whethe they could hear him or not.
"Big brotherrrrrr! Smug jerk! Thanks for the fish!"
"I'll definitely repay you!"
"I, Uzumaki Naruto, always keep my word — that's my ninja way!"
Kaito and Sasuke actually heard it.
The brotherrrrrrs nearly tripped in perfect synchronization. If they hadn't grabbed each otherrrrrr, they would've fallen flat on their faces.
"That brat—Kaito, you never should've given him the stuff!"
Sasuke wasn't just angry about the nickname. He was also furious that Kaito had decided to give everything away without asking.
After all…
He paid for that fishing gear.
And honestly, if the brat had only called him "smug jerk" and hadn't added "big brotherrrrrr" for Kaito, Sasuke wouldn't even be this upset.
"I regret it too! Go ask for it back yourself!"
Kaito rolled his eyes helplessly. Staring at the system notification, he felt completely drained.
[Congratulations, Host. Quest Completed.]
[Reward: Fox Spirit's Gratitude.]
[Fox Spirit's Gratitude: Night Encounter storyline unlocked.]
At that moment, Kaito truly wanted to speak from the bottom of his heart.
Brotherrrrrr, I'm begging you.
Can you please change worlds before giving me this kind of reward?!
If you at least changed the fox spirit into literally anything else, I might grit my teeth and accept this nonsense.
Kaito's muttering immediately triggered Sasuke's irritation.
"Why should I go ask for it back? You're the one who gave it away! Now you regret it and want me to clean up your mess?!"
As he spoke, Sasuke kept glancing back subconsciously. In the end, he turned his head away with a huff, pretending not to care.
"I don't care."
Thee was annoKaitoce on his face, but Kaito could tell there was more concern than anger.
The kid just didn't know how to express it.
Seeing Sasuke still sneaking glances toward Naruto's direction, Kaito couldn't help snorting.
"Stop acting tough."
"I am NOT!"
Sasuke's voice jumped several octaves, faithfully following the principle of if you're loud enough, no one can tell you're guilty.
That blond brat had been arrogant, sure — but hidden in his words was a genuine attempt to tell them that there were more fish upstream.
Honestly…
Sasuke had never seen such a stupid idiot.
The boy's malnutrition and patched-up clotherrrrrrs reminded him of many orphans in the village.
Their situations were practically the same.
Even when life was already that hard, he was still thinking about helping otherrrrrrs.
The brotherrrrrrs continued walking toward home.
Partway along the road, Sasuke suddenly sighed, as if something had occurred to him.
"Kaito… don't you think it'd be great if we could grow up faster?"
"Then Fathe wouldn't be so tired all the time."
"And once we're older, we can learn lots of jutsu and become really, really strong."
"Do you remember Fathe's three-tomoe Sharingan that day?"
"Maybe one day we'll have power like that too."
Sasuke turned into a nonstop chatterbox, enthusiastically listing all kinds of powerful clan techniques, genjutsu, and the might of the Sharingan.
While dreaming about the future, he still couldn't forget to complain that it'd be amazing if he could learn dog clone too.
Kaito listened quietly, not interrupting Sasuke's fantasies.
But when they were almost home, Kaito slipped his hands into his pockets, glanced up at the fading sky for a few seconds, and spoke with faint melancholy.
"Sasuke, sometimes… growing up isn't a good thing."
"You'll have a lot — a lot — of worries."
"You'll go through countless setbacks."
He almost added that strength had nothing to do with age—
but worried that would discourage Sasuke, so he swallowed the words.
"Tch, Kaito, you're copying Fathe and Itachi now, aren't you?"
"Boring."
Sasuke, still too young, couldn't understand Kaito's meaning at all.
To him, time moved painfully slowly. Even being six years old already felt boring.
When the brotherrrrrrs finally got home, night had fallen.
The system kept prompting Kaito about going to the fox spirit's location to trigger the follow-up quest.
Kaito ignored it completely.
His head still hurt.
He had already thought the system mistaking this world for a cultivation realm was ridiculous enough.
But after this ghost-story-style quest…
he realized the system wasn't just bugged—
it was running on top of a bug.
As for the follow-up quest…
Leaving aside whethe this fox-gratitude storyline was even reasonable, the idea of a clan head's son sneaking out at night to look for the Nine-Tails host was straight-up suicidal.
No matter how you looked at it, Kaito had zero intention of continuing this nonsense.
Forget it.
If the system could trigger quests, that meant there would be otherrrrrr chances.
After Kaito and Sasuke returned home, time seemed to fast-forward.
In the blink of an eye, a week passed.
Itachi seemed to have taken on anotherrrrrr mission. As usual, Kaito didn't forget to perform his "routine fortune-telling" before Itachi left.
After that, he didn't see him again.
As for his foolish little brotherrrrrr Sasuke…
After learning that dog clone truly couldn't be learned, the stubborn boy still refused to accept reality. For several days straight, he kept running to the Inuzuka kennels.
As for Kaito himself…
He practically wandered all over Konoha — from the Inuzuka kennels to the Nara family's medicine shop, to the Akimichi barbecue restaurant —
yet he still failed to trigger a single new quest.
That day, as usual, Kaito went to the kennels to look for Sasuke.
While passing by a flower shop…
the familiar system notification suddenly rang in his mind again.
...
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