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Naruto: The Art of Deception 11
🕑 Added 2025-03-08 22:02:53 +0000 UTCChapter 11: A Lesson in Fear
The seal burned into Naruto’s arm, locking his muscles and cutting off his chakra. Pain tore through him but he barely reacted.
Gaiya smirked. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”
Naruto let out a slow breath, then laughed.
It started quiet, almost like a chuckle, but there was something off about it. The sound grew, rough around the edges, stretching into something that didn’t quite belong.
Gaiya’s grip on his sword tightened. That laugh wasn’t normal.
Naruto tilted his head slightly, eyes gleaming red, pupils thinning into sharp slits. “You call this pain?”
Then his hands moved. Seals blurred together in rapid succession.
Ox. Ram. Dog. Snake. Hare. Horse. Boar.
Gaiya took a step back before he even realized it. The trees creaked, their leaves shriveling as if something in the atmosphere was eating away at them.
Then he saw it.
The chakra leaked from Naruto’s skin slowly, curling like smoke in water.
Naruto stopped on the final seal. His eyes locked onto Gaiya’s.
“Magen: Jigoku no Enkan” (Demonic Illusion: Hell’s Binding Circle)
Gaiya blinked. And the world shattered.
Something wet squelched behind him.
Gaiya turned.
His breath caught in his throat.
His mother. His father. His younger brother. All on their knees.
Bound in black chains. Eyes wide with terror. Blood pooling beneath them.
Naruto stood over them, katana in hand, the blade dripping fresh crimson.
Gaiya staggered back, his voice barely a whisper. “No… that’s not…”
“Not real?”
Naruto tilted his head, smiling.
“You sure?”
The blade swung.
His father’s head hit the ground with a sickening thud.
“NO!” Gaiya’s voice cracked.
Naruto sighed. “You shinobi are all the same.”
Another strike.
His mother’s chest split open. Blood poured out in a slow, endless flood, soaking into the dirt.
Gaiya tried to move. His body refused.
Naruto crouched beside him, close enough that Gaiya could see the way the red chakra pulsed beneath his skin. It slithered like something alive, something waiting to break free.
“You know, I’m not even angry.” Naruto’s voice was soft. Casual.
His grip tightened around Gaiya’s wrist.
Steel flashed.
The first hand hit the ground.
Gaiya’s scream tore through the air.
Naruto barely reacted. He watched, bored, as Gaiya writhed in the dirt.
“Still breathing?” His katana hovered over Gaiya’s remaining wrist. “Don’t worry. I’ll fix that.”
Another swing.
The second hand fell.
Gaiya’s screams broke apart into nothing. His body trembled, but he couldn’t even lift his arms. The world around him darkened, turning a deep, suffocating black. The air reeked of blood.
Naruto exhaled through his nose, shaking his head. “Pathetic.”
He lifted his sword.
And with a single, fluid motion, he drove it into Gaiya’s gut.
The blade sank deep.
Gaiya’s body jerked, a wet, choking gasp rattling from his throat. Blood bubbled past his lips, hot and thick, spilling over his chin as his fingers twitched uselessly in the empty air. His vision blurred. His pulse pounded in his ears. His body, his mind, everything screamed at once.
Then everything stopped.
The pain vanished. His breath steadied, his heartbeat still hammering in his chest, but his body remained unnaturally still. It wasn’t the stiffness of a dying man, the slow collapse of a body giving in to its wounds.
His eyes snapped open.
White.
A blank, endless void stretched in every direction. No horizon. No shadows. No depth. Just an empty, featureless expanse.
Where was he?
A sound broke the silence. Gaiya’s stomach twisted.
He was pacing a short distance away. His sandals barely made a sound against the nothingness beneath them. Left foot. Right foot. Hands resting loosely in his pockets. His head tilted downward slightly, eyes half-lidded, gaze distant.
Naruto crouched in front of him. His posture loose and unhurried, like he had all the time in the world.
But that was the problem. There was no bloodlust. No twisted satisfaction.
Like he wasn’t looking at a person, but something less.
“Let’s talk,” Naruto said, his voice light, almost conversational. “Why the festival?”
Gaiya clenched his jaw, refusing to react. His limbs were useless, locked in place. But his mind was still his own.
He forced himself to breathe evenly, to think.
This was Genjutsu. It had to be.
Naruto tilted his head slightly, as if hearing that thought, as if amused by it.
“Oh, don’t look so tense,” he murmured. “I’ll make it simple.”
A knife appeared. Gaiya’s pulse spiked.
His breath stilled, his eyes locking onto the blade resting in Naruto’s palm.
Curved, wickedly sharp, its edge gleamed even in the void’s empty light. Strange runes were carved into the steel, twisting and curling like veins beneath the surface. They pulsed, alive in a way that sent something cold crawling down Gaiya’s spine.
But it wasn’t just the blade that made his stomach lurch. It was the energy.
It bled from the steel in slow, invisible tendrils, seeping into the empty air like an unseen sickness. It coiled around his skin, pushing past flesh, sinking deeper.
Naruto turned the knife over in his hand, testing the balance with the easy familiarity of someone who had done this before.
“So. The festival.”
Gaiya’s lips curled back into a snarl. “Go fuck yourself.”
Naruto sighed, exhaling softly through his nose.
The blade pressed against Gaiya pinky finger.
Gaiya’s scream tore through the emptiness, raw and broken. His body convulsed, but his limbs didn’t move, trapped in whatever force held him still.
Naruto’s voice was gentle, too gentle, like a teacher offering quiet correction.
“Oh? That hurt?”
Gaiya trembled, breath jagged, his body shaking despite his best efforts to hold still.
Naruto watched him with quiet curiosity.
“That’s funny,” he mused, head tilting just slightly. “You didn’t seem too worried about pain before.”
His fingers reached forward, gripping Gaiya’s wrist.
Gaiya flinched. His body wouldn’t move, wouldn’t pull away, but the instinct to recoil was still there, screaming in his skull.
Naruto lifted his hand, turning it slightly, examining it like an artist assessing his work.
“Let’s try again.”
But this time Gaiya told him a little bit more.
