Sudden change in style
"Big Fox, I'm here again!"
As soon as Naruto arrived, he greeted the Nine-Tails—but the great beast didn't so much as twitch an ear. Kurama kept her eyes shut, clearly still annoyed about the day before.
Naruto didn't mind. He was used to playing alone anyway.
Yesterday, after discovering the sealed space—nearly a hundred and eighty acres in size—and realizing he could still access items from his mysterious warehouse, Naruto had been reminded of the many portable space novels he had read. Now, with this much land at his disposal, it felt like he had become the protagonist of one.
And as for pets? Farming protagonists usually had them. Naruto had one too—bigger and more powerful than anything in those stories. After all, how many "pets" towered over ten stories high?
In this era, he thought, a man's romance was size. And big was beautiful.
He walked to the boundary of the inner seal, pulled out a mud ball from his inventory, set it on the ground, and channeled chakra—no, magic—into it. The mud pulsed with light and expanded, forming a one-meter cube of dirt.
In his game system, mud showed up as balls but turned into full blocks when placed. In the Naruto world, however, anything that changed size on placement required magic infusion. Stones worked the same way. He'd figured this out during his experiments with furniture.
Standing on the new dirt block, Naruto sighed with relief. "Finally, I don't have to stand in water." He glanced back at Kurama. "How do you sleep in all that? Aren't you worried about rheumatism?"
He pulled out an iron pickaxe, dug a small hole, dropped in a few grains of wheat, and gently covered it up.
Hole dug, seeds planted, and soil patted down—it was farming, and he was a master of it.
As soon as the seeds were buried, the wheat absorbed the surrounding magic and sprouted. In moments, tiny green shoots about ten centimeters tall poked out from the dirt. They looked fresh and juicy—like they'd burst with water if you pinched them.
In the game's mechanics, wheat needed water to grow. Here, Naruto had lucked out: water dripped steadily from the giant pipes in the seal space, keeping the area damp enough for crops without him having to water them himself.
He dug two more holes and planted a pair of potted palm trees, tossing the empty pots into the trash area of his Small World. He buried the trees near the walls of the space.
His plan was to form a ring of palm trees around the boundary and hang lanterns from them. Most of the area would be used for wheat. If it didn't look appealing later, he could switch to potted flowers. He had plenty of white ones. In the advanced crafting tab of his shop, he'd seen beautiful blue flowers—like dandelions—but they weren't available yet. And even if he bought a few, they wouldn't be enough to fill the space. Maybe artificial pollination was an option?
Before planting his sixth field, Naruto pulled out a small hanging lamp and a coil of wire. He tied the lamp to one of the palm trees, illuminating a five-meter radius with warm light. He tied up several more, brightening the space around the entrance.
Apparently, due to conflicting laws of physics between his world and the seal space, these oil lamps never ran out. In the outside world, they'd burn through oil and go out. But here? They stayed lit unless manually extinguished.
Somewhere, physics professors must be screaming in their graves.
He continued digging, planting, and hanging lights. By the time he finished twenty plots, his magic was depleted. As a four-year-old, Naruto only had 21 magic points total, with no way to recharge other than natural recovery. So he sat on the sofa, eyes shut, meditating while waiting for his energy to restore, planting a few crops in between.
At exactly 10 PM, he yawned and waved. "Good night, Big Fox."
He returned to his Dragon Bed and fell asleep.
---
A Year Later
Another year passed. Naruto remained a complete homebody. Since turning three, he hadn't left his house, breaking every known record in Konoha for staying indoors.
His closet now contained figurines: Lexington, Helena, Kongxiang, Saratoga, Kiana, Mei, Saiyan Goku, Sun Wukong… even a certain invincible bald man.
He'd replaced the Hokage rock faces in his room twice—melting the old ones down when they got dusty.
Now, Naruto stood before Kurama's cage once again, hesitating.
After starting his farming project, he'd gradually been able to move freely within the seal. With his magic restoring 20 points every hour, he'd been able to work nearly nonstop. What should have taken nine years, he'd finished in just one.
Each night, he'd say goodnight to Kurama—even though she never answered.
Kurama always appeared half-asleep, as if hovering between slumber and consciousness. If he could, Naruto might've swapped her with Schrödinger's cat just to shake things up.
But today, something was different.
Kurama's massive red eyes were half-open, watching him carefully.
In the past year, the two sides of the cage had grown into completely different worlds.
Outside: bright, warm, and alive. The palm trees stood tall, three or four meters high, with oil lamps swinging from their trunks and golden wheat fields swaying beneath them in the lamplight. It was like a harvest festival that never ended.
Inside: dim, empty, cold. A fox the size of a mountain lay in the shadows, silent and dangerous. Her mere presence could make a child cry—or too afraid to cry at all.
Naruto stood at the edge of both worlds. The threshold between light and darkness.
Kurama had watched him all year and found him… curious.
Her first Jinchūriki, Mito, believed sealing the beast's power was the only way to protect others. She bound herself in fear.
The second, Kushina, was loud, proud, and said she could suppress the world—but ended up suppressing herself.
Both were weak in her eyes. Weak humans, pretending to be strong.
But this boy… he was different.
Despite knowing who she was, despite being ignored, he still greeted her each night without fail.
Kurama wanted to see: would he cross the line?
Would he dare?
Half an hour passed. Kurama was about to close her eyes again, convinced that humans were all the same.
Then she saw it: Naruto stepped forward, placing a single dirt block just inside the cage.
The block fused to the outside terrain, forming a seamless bridge across the gate.
Kurama's lip curled into a faint smile. "Uzumaki Naruto… interesting brat."
Naruto gritted his teeth. "Then die."
He planted the second dirt block. Then a third. Fourth. Fifth.
Kurama's tail twitched.
Naruto immediately turned and sprinted out of the cage.
When her tail lowered again, he crept back in and continued planting. He placed five more blocks.
Again, her tail twitched. Again, Naruto fled.
And thus, the rule of five was born.
Five blocks at a time, Naruto built a road across the cage.
That day, he spent over ten hours repeating the pattern—planting, running, waiting, returning—until he had wrapped the bottom of the entire gate in dirt. A low bridge had formed, linking the two worlds together.
That night, standing inside the cage for the first time, Naruto whispered:
"Good night, Big Fox."
Kurama blinked. For the first time, her voice echoed through the seal.
"Good night, little brat."