Chapter 22

As soon as I finished my outraged tirade, Grandpa chuckled.

"As long as there are people in Konoha like you, there is still hope, and I'm very proud to have such a grandson!" Ryuji proudly declared.

"Yeah, I'm glad for myself too!" I replied, puffing up my chest with a self-satisfied expression, but I couldn't hold it for long and joined in the laughter with Uzumaki.

"And what will you do now, in light of the revealed danger?" Grandpa asked a little later, when we had calmed down.

"I don't know yet," he shook his head, "first, I'll deliver the news to the Uzukage, and then the entire clan council will decide."

"Of course, I don't understand much about military matters, but why don't you just hide the whole island from everyone? After all, you're known masters of barriers, so set up some kind of spatial-temporal barrier, if they really decide to attack you," I suggested.

"Are you sure you're only four years old, Ryu-kun?" Uzumaki asked, shaking his head. "At your age, your head should be filled with games and mischief, not world-scale problems."

"Huh, I'm a Nara, and as you had the chance to see in our recent game, smarter than you," I couldn't resist teasing my relative.

"Hey, it was just one game!" the seals master exclaimed indignantly.

"The second one will have the same result!"

"We'll see about that! But returning to the topic at hand—even if we were to erect such a barrier, I doubt that even our entire clan could sustain its existence for long..."

"Well, then find another source of sustenance," I shrugged, "I remember reading briefly about the chakra of the world in a book about the Sage of Six Paths. Why don't you use it? If it's really generated by the world, it certainly won't run out in the next few centuries. So all you'll have to worry about is spies and traitors."

"It seems Saya wasn't joking when she called you a little genius," Ryuji sighed.

It's easy to be a genius when you have vast amounts of information, including about the future! It's time to build a monument to myself!

"Alright, considering everything you've told me, we can't delay," Uzumaki removed the barrier, stood up, and in the same moment, his exact copy appeared next to him, quickly leaving the room. Shadow clones without hand seals! Wow!

"My clone will inform the Uzukage of everything, and in the meantime, we'll visit our clan's training grounds," Grandpa answered my questioning look. "With the impending war, you'll need all the help you can get, and I'm not planning to bury you anytime soon, Ryu-kun. That means—training, and more training!"

And I don't mind—considering the general laziness of all Nara, I'll have to push for extra training, and considering the general endurance of all red-haired shinobi, including myself, I don't think many will be able to keep up with me. 

The training grounds for young shinobi and kunoichi of Uzushio were located outside the walls, just like the Shinobi Academy itself, so it took us about half an hour to get there, considering the speed of movement at the level of an average chunin, set by Grandpa. Interestingly, there were only a couple of genin guarding the opposite gates through which we left the village, indicating the level of possibility of attack from this side of the island. Considering the whirlpools surrounding the entire island and the absence of a port to overcome them, one might as well forget about guarding, because even with a divine predisposition to the water element, attempting to stop kilometers-wide water funnels could be considered suicide. And for the jinchuriki as well.