Chapter 02 – Treasury of Knowledge

After three weeks and several hundred Kage Bunshin, Naruto had pretty much seen every nook and cranny except for one section of the village. Where he was depressed before, he felt amazement now. The ruins of this now-destroyed village were magnificent. He simply had no other word for it. The pieces that were the most intact showed how large the buildings were. Naruto was used to buildings not being overly high, so they wouldn't stick out above the trees. But these buildings were all gigantic in comparison. He wondered if it had to do with the location of the village.

The Land of Whirlpools was a mere fraction of the size of the Land of Fire, but there was nothing else on this abandoned isle. He had been to Suna and Kumo, he even had a sneak peak at the building style of Iwa, but those villages had to hide their village in the country they were at. So buildings in Suna were extremely low to the ground. Buildings in Kumo were built IN the mountains of their village and Iwa even made their houses as if they were stalagmites. This village was on an island that was hidden on its own. No sailor could see it because they would stay clear of the well known whirlpools of this island and even if they wanted to come here because they knew of this village, they couldn't because of the very same reason. The whirlpools blocked the path.

The first week had been the toughest. In every collapsed building he found old personal items. They ranged from stuffed teddy bears to music boxes with family heirlooms and antique paintings to family crests. The people had to leave in a hurry when they left. It was sad really, seeing how much destruction a war could cause. He realized it as soon as he found the first few skeletons. It weren't the fully grown ones that freaked him out; he had seen plenty of death in the last war, it were the underdeveloped ones; the skeletons of children, that got to him the most. He was glad that after searching through 80% of the fallen village, he had only seen a dozen, but every one of them was one too many. He remembered breaking down when he saw the bones covered in a little pink dress, still holding a doll. It was too hard. He had collected all of the remains he had found and buried them on the cliff overlooking the sea, facing south-east, so the spirits of the deceased would not look upon another land, but the wide expanse of the ocean.

Today he would start on looking through the center point of the village. It was a collection of three buildings, two of which seemed to be a compound. He decided to save it for last, so he could use it as a focus point. He was pretty sure that he could find the most of his family in one of those building. He already had a pretty good idea to what they were.

The middle of the three ruins was most likely the main office for the ninja forces. From what he could see, it would probably have been three to four stories high and was round in design. The way all the main paths in the village led to it, it couldn't be anything else but some kind of administration office. There was only one major administration that a ninja village needed. The office of the village leader, the mission bureau and civil service. Since Uzushiogakure was inspired by Konoha, it wasn't a long shot to expect some of the lay-out to be similar.

The Uzumaki clan was the main clan in this village. They were the founders and they were the strongest, it was recorded in every bit of wisdom he had found so far. Diaries, journals and the few history books that remained. He briefly wondered why there so little books around. He hadn't even found something that would have resembled a library. In any case, seeing as the Uzumaki clan was as prominent as the Hyuuga or Uchiha in Konoha, it wasn't that strange to believe they had a compound of their own. He had no idea which of the two it would be, or to which clan the other one would belong to, but he would find out eventually.

X

The last part of the town, the part where the most answers should've been took the longest amount of time to look through. The buildings weren't high, but they were large enough. What seemed to cause the most problems was the amount of devastation that occurred here. Besides a few of the outside walls, everything was razed to the ground. There was not a single piece of furniture undamaged, no a picture unscathed, everything was destroyed. Naruto was depressed when he went through the last inch of the last compound. Not a single piece of his mother had been found, not a picture, a mention in a diary or some other kind of book. If he didn't know better, it would seem like the Uzumaki clan never existed here. But that was probably the intent behind the attack that destroyed this village. Wipe out the Uzumaki bloodline.

He went to sit at a dry fountain in the middle of the mansion he was at. He was wondering where he would go now. He could go and visit with Killer Bee in Kumo, or Chojuro in Kiri, maybe Akatsuchi in Iwa. He decided to make a tour through the Elemental Countries. Starting in Kiri, then to Kumo, proceeding to Iwa and ending it in Suna to see Gaara before heading back to Konoha. He still had 11 months before he promised Tsunade and Hinata to be back.

Naruto leaned back, thinking about the Hyuuga heiress, he moved his hands behind him to support him, but he didn't notice the jagged edges of the stone sculpture he was sitting on. He pulled his hand back as soon as he felt his hand being cut and sucked on the wound to clean it. He was swearing under his breath when he looked at the offending spot. What he saw was one thing he would remember until the end of time. His blood started to move on its own.

It moved towards the center of the fountain and spread out; forming some kind of seal. Naruto moved away from the stone decoration; he thought he triggered some kind of defense mechanism. To his surprise, the broken piece of stone started glowing brighter and brighter, till Naruto had to cover his eyes. He tried to sneak a peek through his fingers, but the light was painful to his orbs. He could vaguely see the stone shifting and reshaping until it looked like a doorway; a doorway that led to a spiraling staircase. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but Naruto would be a fool if he hadn't explored a mystery like this.

Who didn't like a good adventure?

The blond kept on going down the stairs until, after wait seemed like an hour, he stepped onto a solid floor. There was no source of light, but luckily Naruto had brought a torch with him, he wasn't stupid enough to travel underground without a source of light with him. Age had brought him a bit of wisdom; even if he didn't show it that often. He quickly lit the piece of lumber and looked around.

Naruto found himself in a circular room with several places for torches on the walls. There was one passage way directly in front of him and nothing else in the room. He sent a Kage Bunshin back upstairs to try and find as much pieces of wood that could function as a torch. He would need lots of light around here if he was going to look around. It took two days to look around the compound he just finished, who knew how long this secret cavern would take? As he and his clone split up, Naruto slowly walked towards the corridor. He immediately saw the Uzumaki symbol on either side of the path and more places for torches. He kept on walking, the path was straight so he didn't have to worry about getting lost, until he saw two doors. He moved his hand over a small metal plate next to the door on his right, trying to wipe away the thick layer of dust that had settled and found the word 'History' written on it.

He blinked once and then some more and grabbed the doorknob to open it. He felt a pinprick in the palm of his hand. He looked at it and found a small smudge of blood on it. He turned toward the doorknob again and saw it glowing, before opening itself. He came upon a room that was filled with bookcases. Each of them easily stood six meters high and all of them were filled to the brim with books and scrolls. He walked towards one of the bookcases and found another metal plaque on it. He wiped it away once more and found it saying 'Land of Water'. He turned towards the book case once more and grabbed the first book within reach. Browsing through the bundle of paper, he came to the conclusion that it was all about a researcher under command of the Shodaime Mizukage. He just put it back in its place.

At some point his clone came back and started placing torches on the designated area. Naruto felt his eyes bulge as he saw the amount of books here. He was wondering if all of this was really just history. So leaving another clone here to see if he could find anything about his clan, and the first one fetching some more torches, he made his way to the next door, directly across the hallway. He removed some more dust from a plaque and read the label.

'Geography'. It sounded boring, but who knew what kind of interesting things one might find. He never expected himself to read through history books either, so why not Geography too. Besides how much could there be about the land? He was right. This room was much smaller than the previous one, but still held an impressive amount of reading material. Wanting to cut this a little shorter than with history, he grabbed the first book and read the title. 'Iron'. Yeah, this was going to be boring.

He walked back to the hallway and looked what else could be found. He came from the left, so he turned right. He came to the next set of doors and cleaned both of the plaques before looking at the labels. One read 'Bujutsu' and the other one said'Taijutsu'. He was surprised to see the two forms of martial arts here so he eagerly opened the first door to unarmed combat. He was already getting used to the familiar pinprick every time he opened a door.

The new room was just like the previous ones and held a bucket load of books. He briefly wondered through it, but he had a suspicion that he wanted confirmed. He would explore every room, just to see how large the spaces were, if there were any other doors within the rooms. So after that he walked to the 'Bujutsu' room. Like before there were several cases. But the difference was that every book case had a weapon hanging over it. He walked towards the closest one, not wanting to spend so much time on it and grabbed out a book from the cases that had a Bo-staff hanging above it. Like he suspected, there was a style illustrated and explained on it. Now he really wanted to see if his suspicions were correct. The next set of doors proved it. 'Genjutsu' and 'Ninjutsu'. He hit the jackpot.

He skipped the door of the Art of Illusion. He had always favored Ninjutsu over everything, even ramen. This room was laid out exactly like the others, bookcase after book case. It resembled the 'Bujutsu' room somewhat, seeing as every book case held a symbol of some sort above it. He had to reach to see what it was, but it turned out that they were symbols of Elements. He really had found the jackpot.

He had to refrain himself from jumping into the scrolls and books. Instead deciding to explore a bit more. Now that his assumptions were correct, there should be one more room. By this time he had several clones walking around, lighting torches in every room or searching for interesting information. Once he was done exploring, he would make a ton of copies to look at all the Ninjutsu scrolls and literature.

Naruto continued the path down the hall until he came to one last door. The hallway didn't branch or anything, this was the last stop; the door that contained the art of his ancestors: Fuinjutsu. He made his way inside and he was shocked to see that this room was easily twice the size of the Ninjutsu room. He led his hand glide over the various scrolls and books and tried to catch a glimpse of some of the titles. He let his eyes rest on a title, he didn't know why; the title just seemed to scream out to look at him.

"'Fuinjutsu: Restricting the physique 3'?" Naruto wondered out loud. He opened it carefully; he didn't want to damage his family's treasures and browsed to the pages. His eye caught something again; he could almost swear it was the Kyuubi that was making him look at it. He looked through the chapter. And smiled the most evil smile one would ever see on him.

His clones had finished placing the light sources everywhere and he could see the vast expanse of knowledge everywhere. He turned around once, twice, three times but still kept on turning around. He laughed for the first time in the last couple of months. He had found his ancestral home and though he wasn't able to find anything more about his mother, he had found the means to try to make his own clan, his own village and a maybe even a way to take the ultimate form of revenge. All he would have to do is study. It was something that he hated to do. And hate was putting it mildly, but he was no longer a foolish boy; he was a grown man that understood the responsibilities of being a leader. He could not just become a leader of people if all he could do was use brute strength to fight. He could not start a clan without it being any different than a normal family. No, he would need knowledge, patience and the determination to do things that he didn't like to do.

Naruto dispelled his clones and closed his eyes for a moment to let the dizziness die down. He made his way outside and created fifty clones. He would build a house here, on top and around this entrance so he could sleep and eat. It wouldn't do if the entrance closed and he was stuck inside without knowing how to get out; he knew the way in. And it really wouldn't do for him to ruin or burn something if he ate or was in any way careless with his fountain of knowledge. He needed to check on one more thing.

"Kuruma, you awake?"

"What is it, Naruto?"

"I'm going to test something, but I'm probably gonna pass out. Could you keep track on how long I am out?"

"What are you up to?"

"Revenge on the Uchiha."

"Then I will help however I can."

Now all that was left was to use his treasure.