When Kakashi entered the room, he saw Naruto lying there unconscious.
Meanwhile, Orion, whose face had been deathly pale earlier, had already completely recovered and no longer looked weak or sickly.
"How is it? Are you alright?"
Kakashi was still more worried about Orion's safety.
Orion glanced at Naruto and smiled.
"I'm fine. It was very successful."
"Oh right, I felt simply repairing the Fourth Hokage's seal wasn't enough, so I added another Eight Trigrams Seal onto Naruto."
"As long as Naruto doesn't actively request it himself, the Nine-Tails won't have another chance to force him into going berserk."
Kakashi froze for a moment.
"So the reason you looked so terrible earlier was because of the sealing technique?"
Orion shook his head.
"No. It's because I got attacked by the Nine-Tails inside Naruto's seal space. Fortunately, it was still willing to communicate and didn't continue attacking afterward."
Kakashi was stunned.
"You communicated with the Nine-Tails?"
In Kakashi's mind, the Nine-Tails was a natural disaster, a demonic beast.
How could something like that possibly communicate with humans?
The reason Kakashi thought this way was because he didn't truly understand tailed beasts. He subconsciously viewed them as weapons rather than living beings.
Orion nodded.
"Yeah. Tailed beasts are intelligent beings. Their intelligence isn't even inferior to humans', so naturally they can communicate."
"I originally wanted to negotiate with it and convince it to acknowledge Naruto so it could help Naruto grow stronger in the future, but it refused."
Orion sounded somewhat regretful.
Meanwhile, Kakashi's mouth twitched as he stared at Orion.
After living this long, this was the first time he had ever heard of someone trying to negotiate with a tailed beast like this.
Kakashi knew nothing about Killer B or perfect jinchūriki.
Naturally, he didn't know that humans and tailed beasts could actually coexist peacefully.
As a result, hearing Orion's words sounded practically mythical to him.
Of course, he definitely didn't doubt Orion.
He simply couldn't imagine how Orion had dared to communicate with the Nine-Tails in the first place.
And he had even tried convincing the Nine-Tails to help Naruto?
Wasn't that complete nonsense?
The fact that the Nine-Tails hadn't killed Orion already proved it was surprisingly reasonable.
Thinking about it now still left Kakashi feeling fearful.
"You were way too reckless. That was the Nine-Tails. Just sealing it alone is already extremely difficult, yet you still made demands like that. You're lucky to still be alive."
Orion smiled calmly.
"There's no need to be so nervous, Kakashi-sensei. At first, the Nine-Tails really was difficult to communicate with, but afterward we talked for quite a while."
"Actually, the reason it hates humans so much and behaves so violently is because it's been sealed inside jinchūriki for too long, causing it to develop deep resentment toward humanity."
"If you communicate properly, there are still some things it's willing to accept."
"Even though it refused to help Naruto, it did agree not to actively tempt Naruto into using its chakra anymore."
"At the very least, that should reduce the chances of Naruto going berserk in the future."
"Although the new seal I added can completely suppress the Nine-Tails, if Naruto actively seeks its power himself, the seal won't be able to stop that."
"And you can already imagine it, Kakashi-sensei. If Naruto encounters enemies he can't defeat in the future, he'll definitely still ask the Nine-Tails for power."
"But before he completely masters the Nine-Tails' chakra, overusing that power will seriously damage his body."
"Even though Naruto always recovers thanks to the Uzumaki bloodline and the Nine-Tails' vitality, every time he does that, it shortens his lifespan."
"So my suggestion is that until Naruto fully controls the Nine-Tails' chakra, he should avoid using it whenever possible."
Listening to Orion explain all this, Kakashi felt completely dazed.
He never imagined Orion could communicate with the Nine-Tails about these things.
More importantly, the Nine-Tails had actually agreed.
Looking at Orion, Kakashi genuinely didn't know what to say anymore.
Should he feel happy that his disciple was this incredible?
Or should he worry that Orion was far too reckless?
He had clearly seen how pale Orion looked earlier.
And Orion had even coughed up blood.
That was the first time Kakashi had ever seen Orion in such terrible condition.
Back when Orion trained Chidori and exhausted all his chakra, he had merely fainted.
But this time, Orion had genuinely come close to dying.
Kakashi remained silent for a long while before finally speaking.
"Don't do something this dangerous again in the future. Your own safety is the most important thing."
Orion looked at Kakashi's serious expression.
He understood exactly what Kakashi was worried about.
He didn't argue and simply nodded.
After finishing his conversation with Orion, Kakashi walked over to Naruto.
Looking at the completely transformed seal formula on Naruto's stomach, Kakashi could clearly sense the powerful chakra fluctuations coming from it.
"It's definitely different from the Fourth Hokage's seal formula. Even though it's the same sealing technique, why does it feel different?"
Kakashi looked toward Orion in confusion.
Orion explained calmly,
"Because my chakra is different from ordinary chakra, so the result naturally differs from the Fourth Hokage's."
"But I also strengthened the sealing effect of the technique. Actually, the Fourth Hokage intentionally left a major opening in the original Eight Trigrams Seal."
"I understand his purpose. He wanted to use that opening to continuously convert part of the Nine-Tails' chakra into Naruto's own chakra."
"That's why Naruto's chakra reserves are so enormous."
In reality, if Minato's seal hadn't continuously transformed part of the Nine-Tails' chakra into Naruto's chakra, Naruto's chakra reserves wouldn't be anywhere near this monstrous.
At the very least, Naruto wouldn't currently possess more chakra than Kakashi.
But with the Nine-Tails' chakra constantly being converted through the seal, Naruto now possessed more than twice Kakashi's chakra reserves.
And a few years later, it would become four times greater.
Of course, Kakashi's own chakra reserves were already extremely large.
If not for the constantly active Sharingan continuously draining him, his chakra amount would be even more terrifying.
Kakashi nodded thoughtfully.
He had long noticed that Naruto's chakra quantity seemed abnormal.
And clearly, the Nine-Tails' chakra accounted for the vast majority of it.
Without the Nine-Tails' chakra, Naruto during the Chūnin Exams wouldn't have been able to summon Gamabunta.
In the end, he had still needed the Nine-Tails' chakra to successfully summon him.
The Summoning Jutsu itself was merely a C-rank technique.
However, the stronger and larger the summoned creature, the greater the chakra required.
Just looking at Sakura and Tsunade activating the Strength of a Hundred Seal together and still only managing to summon one-tenth of Katsuyu's body from Shikkotsu Forest was enough to prove how terrifyingly high the chakra cost became for giant summon creatures.
Meanwhile, during the Chūnin Exams, Naruto couldn't summon Gamabunta at all without using the Nine-Tails' chakra.
This clearly showed that Naruto's own natural chakra reserves at this stage weren't truly that overwhelming.
They were greater than other shinobi his age, but definitely not greater than Kakashi's.
However, if the chakra accumulated through years of conversion from the Eight Trigrams Seal was included, Naruto's total chakra reserves were roughly double Kakashi's current amount.
Kakashi had always been confused about why Naruto possessed such massive chakra reserves despite being so young.
Even with Uzumaki blood, it shouldn't have been this absurd.
Especially since Naruto only inherited half of the Uzumaki Clan's bloodline.
Now that Orion explained it, Kakashi finally understood.
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