Ignoring Neji's sullen attitude, Su Ye smiled and led Hinata out of the school.
Most of the Chitauri inside the school had gathered in the courtyard, and they had been wiped out in the last wave. If they wanted to continue training, they'd have to head outside.
Seeing this, Neji silently followed behind.
Although he still disapproved of Su Ye's actions, thinking it was reckless to take the clan's heiress, Hinata, out into danger.
Despite his dissatisfaction, he refrained from openly opposing it again.
The feeling of personally taking down monsters was entirely different from training with wooden dummies or sparring with his father. The unrestrained impact of his strikes landing on real enemies gave Neji a sense of exhilaration.
Watching the monsters fall before him filled his heart with immense satisfaction.
'Brother Ye might be unreliable, but he wasn't wrong—only by experiencing the real battlefield can one become a true warrior.'
Neji agreed with Su Ye in his heart, but he would never admit it out loud.
"I'm only doing this to protect Hinata. Killing monsters is just incidental!"
Su Ye didn't comment. Once they left the school, the number of Chitauri soldiers increased significantly, and many were airborne, darting back and forth across the sky.
From time to time, Leviathan beasts would sweep through the air, smashing buildings into rubble.
Fortunately, the area around Midtown Middle School didn't have many tall buildings. The low structures made less appealing targets, so fewer Chitauri focused on attacking this area.
Those who did come here were mostly infantry who had jumped off Leviathans or unlucky soldiers shot down from their crafts. They gathered in small groups and attacked any humans they encountered indiscriminately.
With fewer enemies, the military avoided indiscriminately firing artillery or missiles in this area, providing a relatively safe environment for the trio.
The trio's goal was to train, not to eliminate enemies as quickly as possible. As a result, their progress was slow, and they frequently stopped to deal with small groups of two or three Chitauri.
Su Ye would herd the monsters together, allowing Hinata to face them alone. This helped her hone her Gentle Fist combat skills and improve her Byakugan's reaction time.
The results were quite impressive.
While the three were happily grinding, Su Ye's phone suddenly rang. As soon as he answered, his mother's urgent voice came through.
"Xiao Ye, where are you? Are you at home or school? The news says something's happened in New York. Are you okay?"
Su Ye held the phone slightly away. With his super hearing, his mother's urgency sounded particularly loud.
"Mom, I'm fine. I'm out with Hinata and Neji, just having some fun."
"Fun? How can you think of fun now? Get out of New York immediately! Go to Boston, Washington, anywhere—then fly back home. You're done with school there!"
His mother's voice was filled with urgency, but faintly in the background, Su Ye could hear his father's calm and steady tone.
"Why bring him back now? Life's too easy here. Do you want him to be a spoiled heir living off us? Let him stay in New York. Those aliens don't seem so tough. It's a perfect chance to get some real battlefield experience."
"When we were young, we all crawled our way through battlefields. No pain, no gain. A bit of hardship is good for a boy!"
Hearing this, Su Ye's mother immediately shifted her focus, unleashing a storm of scolding at his father.
"This is all your fault! I told you to teach him properly, but no! You gave him that scroll and even sealed the advanced stuff. If anything happens to him over there, I won't forgive you!"
"What could possibly happen?" muttered Su Ye's father, though not very confidently.
"It's not your flesh and blood, so of course you don't care. Men are all the same—useless!"
On the other end, Su Ye's father went silent.
"Xiao Ye," his mother continued after scolding his father, her tone shifting to a much softer one.
"Your dad's always been unreliable, ever since he was young. I'll deal with him later. For now, you don't have time to learn much else, so listen carefully—I'll teach you a new technique."
Su Ye raised an eyebrow. Truly, no one cares like a mother!
Even from thousands of miles away, she was constantly worried about her child's safety. And as for his dad... Su Ye's lips curled into a smirk.
Won't let me return to be a spoiled heir, huh? Forcing me to fight aliens and risk my life? Just wait—I'll eventually spill the beans about Terry being your real son. Let's see you endure some hardship and "rainstorms" yourself!
While plotting his father's downfall, Su Ye kept his ears open to listen to his mom's new technique.
After hearing the explanation, Su Ye frowned. The new technique sounded great, but his mom insisted he try it out immediately, which left him a bit conflicted.
Was this really the right time?
The technique his mom taught him was called Summoning Jutsu, a summoning technique that could conjure a spiritual beast from thin air.
Apparently, his father had learned it from his own teacher, and the summoned beasts shared a lineage with theirs.
Su Ye grimaced even more.
The fact that his father even had a teacher was a surprise. Could it be that the teacher was that sketchy guy from the "novels"?
So, his dad had been influenced by a pervy sage, and now he'd passed those tendencies on to Su Ye?
So the root of Su Ye's multiple girlfriends stemmed from this lineage, huh?
But that wasn't the main issue. The real problem was that his mom wanted him to use the Summoning Jutsu right now and contract a summoning beast.
Jiraiya's summoning technique brought out the toads of Mount Myoboku. What did Naruto summon the first time he used it?
Wasn't it a tadpole?
Could he summon something like that in front of Hinata?
If it was several billion tadpoles at once, maybe that'd be worth it.
But with Hinata practically worshipping him, if he ended up summoning just a single tadpole after all that buildup, wouldn't her image of him shatter completely?
Su Ye wanted to refuse, but his mom kept urging him over the phone, insisting he try it immediately.
Finally, with no other option, Su Ye sighed and began forming the seals: Boar, Dog, Bird, Monkey, Ram. Then he slammed his hand onto the ground.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
While slapping his hands together, Su Ye kept praying in his heart, "No tadpoles, no tadpoles, no tadpoles!"
With a loud bang, a white mist exploded in front of Su Ye. The massive mist shot up like a boiling furnace, reaching twenty to thirty meters high.
As the mist cleared, a gigantic figure appeared before Su Ye.
Seeing the towering figure, nearly twenty meters tall, Su Ye couldn't help but gape in astonishment.
Beside him, Hinata and Neji were so scared they rolled their eyes back... Well, to be fair, they always had white eyes.
Nearly twenty meters tall, it was dressed in a robe resembling ancient Dragon Kingdom's flying fish attire. It held a long smoking pipe in its mouth, had a massive embroidered spring blade at its waist, its body was covered in bumps, and a scar several meters long stretched from the corner of its eye.
Staring at this figure, Su Ye felt like his mouth had lost the ability to speak.
He had prayed that he wouldn't summon a tadpole and reasoned it shouldn't be one, given that his strength was significantly greater than when Naruto first learned the summoning technique.
No need to ask—it was all thanks to the system.
In Su Ye's imagination, at most he thought he would summon Gamakichi, and if it was the size of a poodle, that'd be great. But to his shock, he had summoned Gamakichi's father, the toad boss, Gamabunta!
While the appearance of this toad boss was fine, the flying fish robe and embroidered spring blade were drastically different from his depiction in Naruto.
So, in this Naruto adaptation, not only have characters like Hinata and Neji's family names been changed, but even Gamabunta has been localized into a Dragon Kingdom version? This level of localization is way too thorough!
Of course, for Su Ye, this was undoubtedly a good thing.
As someone from the Dragon Kingdom, he should summon a creature wearing Dragon Kingdom-style clothing. If he ended up with one dressed in a kimono carrying a katana, now that would feel out of place.