Chapter 288: The Old Schoolyard
The taste of Ichiraku Ramen was truly unique—a flavor that lingered on the tongue and in the memory long after the bowl was empty. Ragnar found himself silently impressed. This is the golden brand of the Hokage's world. The flavor lives up to its legend.
He had not been able to hold back. Three large bowls, one after another, had disappeared before him with the quiet efficiency of a man who had spent three years eating battlefield rations and had almost forgotten what real food tasted like. He was, by his own estimation, about six-tenths full.
Namikaze Minato smiled as he paid. It was a brave smile. A heroic smile. The smile of a man watching his wallet deflate to the approximate thickness of a rice cracker.
The frog purse—the one Kushina had mocked on more than one occasion—was now visibly emaciated. Tragically flat. A shadow of its former self.
The four of them rose from their stools, stretching and laughing, the easy camaraderie of youth softening the edges of the afternoon.
"Little brother," Otsutsuki Ichiraku called out, his hands still working the dough with mechanical precision, "you look awfully familiar. Have we met before?"
Ragnar glanced back at the ramen chef. Three years ago, before the war, he had been a regular at this very counter. He had sat on these stools and eaten these noodles more times than he could count. But three years on the battlefield had reshaped him. His jaw was sharper. His shoulders broader. His eyes carried the weight of things that could not be unseen.
Only those who had been with him constantly would fail to notice the transformation. To everyone else, he was a different person.
"Maybe your eyes are playing tricks on you," Ragnar said, shaking his head with a faint smile. He offered no further explanation.
"Dazzled, huh..." Ichiraku muttered to himself, then shrugged. The lunch rush was picking up, and a ramen chef had no time for idle speculation. Making money, supporting a family, finding a wife—these were the things that occupied his mind now. The mysteries of familiar-faced strangers could wait.
Outside the noodle shop, the afternoon sun had softened to a gentle gold. The four of them stood at the crossroads, the moment of parting approaching.
"Minato," Ragnar said. "Thank you for the meal."
"You're welcome! More than that—I should be thanking you." Minato's expression was earnest, his blue eyes bright with sincerity. "The Rasengan you taught me... I've been studying it ever since."
"What Rasengan?" Kushina's head swiveled toward Ragnar with immediate suspicion.
"A ninjutsu. And even if I hadn't taught it to him, Minato has the talent to create something similar on his own. It was only a matter of time."
"You're too kind." Minato shook his head. "Developing an A-rank, seal-less technique from scratch... that would take me three to five years at minimum. The theoretical foundation alone is incredibly complex."
Ragnar said nothing. He had simply stood on the shoulders of giants—knowledge from another world, transplanted into this one. There was nothing praiseworthy in that.
Kushina, however, looked at Ragnar with renewed wonder. Even Namikaze Minato—the genius, the prodigy, the golden boy of the Academy—spoke of him with such admiration. And he had apparently learned one of his techniques from Ragnar. Just how amazing is he?
"The Rasengan has enormous potential," Minato continued, his voice quickening with the enthusiasm of a man discussing his passion. "The unique rotational force generation, the plasticity of its form, the fact that it requires no elemental affinity—it's unlike any other jutsu I've studied. Lately, I've been thinking about variations. Injecting larger amounts of chakra to create a scaled-up version. I'm calling it the Great Ball Rasengan in my head. And eventually, I want to infuse it with elemental chakra—nature transformation applied to pure shape manipulation."
His eyes were practically sparkling. "It'll take years. Maybe more. But when I'm done, the Sealed Book will need a few new pages."
"Study hard, Minato. Your potential is not inferior to mine. I have high expectations for you."
Minato rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks flushing slightly. "Compared to you, Ragnar-kun, I'm still far behind."
Ragnar smiled but did not elaborate. In the story he remembered, Namikaze Minato's talent was unquestionably among the greatest the shinobi world had ever produced. A man with no bloodline, no hidden inheritance, no Tailed Beast—and yet he had climbed to the very summit. The Flying Thunder God. The perfected Rasengan. The title of Fourth Hokage. If he had not died so young, there was no telling how far he might have gone.
Might Guy opened the Eighth Gate and nearly killed a god. Minato walked the path of the ordinary genius to the ceiling of what was possible. Both of them, in their own ways, reached heights that bloodline prodigies could only dream of.
Ragnar's own strength was built on constant, relentless advantage—the system, the Devil Fruits, the Haki. Without those crutches, under equal conditions, Minato would have left him in the dust long ago. Konoha's Rakshasa would not exist.
His presence in this world had changed the course of history. But Minato, at his core, remained the same. Brilliant. Kind. Relentlessly dedicated.
"Ragnar!" Kushina's voice cut through the conversation with the subtlety of a kunai. "Let's go look around somewhere else!"
She had been watching Minato chat with Ragnar for far too long, and the golden-haired light bulb was becoming unbearably bright. Her patience had officially expired.
Uzumaki Meiko caught Minato's eye and gave him a meaningful look—the kind of look that said you technical maniac, you've been talking about ninjutsu for ten minutes straight, read the room.
Minato's brain finally caught up with the situation. "Ah—Ragnar-kun, let's talk again next time."
"Alright."
"Meiko," Kushina said, her voice syrupy-sweet in a way that was obviously dangerous, "don't stay out too long. Some people look like little lambs on the outside but are actually big bad wolves underneath. Be careful."
"...What?" Meiko blinked in confusion.
Minato's smile twitched. Is she... talking about me?
"Let's go!"
Kushina seized Ragnar's arm and pulled him in the opposite direction with the decisive force of a woman on a mission.
Minato watched them go, then turned to Meiko with a hopeful expression. "Meiko... shall we keep walking?"
"No. I think I'll go home first." Meiko's voice was prim. Proper. Utterly serious.
"...Why?!"
Meiko turned away to hide the sly smile creeping across her lips. What a fool. He doesn't understand a girl's heart at all.
A girl's rejection, after all, usually meant the opposite.
Kushina and Ragnar walked on, leaving the market district behind. The streets grew quieter. The crowds thinned. And then, without quite meaning to, they arrived at a place that was deeply, achingly familiar.
The Ninja Academy.
Ragnar stopped at the gate. The building was smaller than he remembered—or perhaps he had simply grown larger. The wooden sign still hung above the entrance, its paint slightly faded. The training posts in the yard still bore the dents and scratches of countless young shinobi practicing their first punches.
A wave of nostalgia washed over him. Strange. He had not expected to feel this.
Most of his memories of this world were rooted here. The Academy. The training grounds. The endless hours of work. When he had first come to Konoha, they had tested him and found the flicker of ninja talent within. Not brilliance. Not genius. Just... potential. Enough to try.
So he had tried. Desperately. Relentlessly. He had known, with the cold clarity of a man who had seen the future, what this world held in store. War. Pain. Death. If he did not become strong, he would become cannon fodder. One of the countless faceless corpses that littered the background of a story about brighter, more important people.
But talent could only carry a person so far. His was average. Unremarkable. The gap between his ambition and his ability yawned like a chasm. So he had turned to the one thing that did not require genius—the body. Physical conditioning. Taijutsu. The brutal, unglamorous grind of pushing flesh and bone past every reasonable limit.
While other children played, he trained. While they learned flashy ninjutsu, he ran. While they made friends, he struck iron posts until his hands bled. The other students had looked at him strangely. That weirdo. That loner. That talentless fool who thinks he can become strong with push-ups.
He had been an outcast. Friendless. Isolated.
And now?
Now the children of Konoha wore masks of his face. They played at being Rakshasa in the streets. The same Academy that had overlooked him was now inundated with aspiring biographers trying to piece together his childhood.
Ragnar smiled. It was a quiet smile. A letting-go smile.
Bitter first, sweet later. Without the system, I would be nothing. But with the system, without the hell-training, without grinding through life and death, I would have squandered the gift. Thinking yourself invincible because of a cheat... that's how you lose everything.
He had not lost himself. That was worth something.
"Ragnar, let's go inside and look around?"
Kushina was already pulling at his arm, her eyes shining with the same nostalgia. This place held memories for her too.
"Mm."
They walked through the gate together, into the long-lost Academy.
(End of Chapter)
✨ If you're enjoying this story, please consider supporting me on Patreon:
Patreon.com/TofuChan
Get Access to Bonus Chapters