In the blink of an eye, three months had passed since Sora began attending the Ninja Academy. Today, the entire school had the day off—because it was the day Minato Namikaze officially assumed the position of Fourth Hokage.
Under the eyes of the entire village, Minato donned his Hokage robe and began his inauguration speech.
Sora didn't bother listening. Instead, his eyes scanned the crowd, searching to see if any cards might appear for him to pick up.
Suddenly, a pair of cold, sinister eyes locked onto his. Sora looked more closely—Orochimaru.
Orochimaru glanced at Sora, then looked toward Minato, who was delivering his speech. Without a word, he turned and quietly left.
"Now that Minato's become the Fourth Hokage, Orochimaru's defection must be drawing close," Sora thought, watching the man's retreating back with some regret. He had wanted to stop Orochimaru from defecting—but lacked the strength to do so. He could only give up for now.
After a busy day, Minato was officially declared the Fourth Hokage, and Sora's status rose sharply with it.
Once the inauguration was over, life returned to normal. Every day, it was just the Academy and home—back and forth.
Battle Through The Heavens had officially begun publication, and just the sales in Konoha alone were bringing Sora over a million ryō per month. Once it spread to the Land of Fire and the Land of Earth and beyond, the income would increase even further.
Aside from that, Sora began considering how to develop a personal spatial dimension, inspired by the fantasy novel setting.
That idea came from Kushina.
Back when he accidentally entered the Nine-Tails' sealed space, he saw how Kushina kept the Nine-Tails locked away—inside a sealed dimension. That space clearly functioned independently, otherwise the Nine-Tails would only appear as chakra rather than as a physical fox.
However, that space couldn't house living beings directly—it was incomplete and couldn't store items properly.
With this as his motivation, Sora began learning fūinjutsu (sealing techniques) from Kushina.
But after some time, Sora realized he had zero talent for sealing. He couldn't learn a single jutsu—but he did manage to pick up multiple fūinjutsu through card drops.
From then on, every time they trained, he would have Kushina perform demonstrations multiple times just so he could collect cards she dropped.
After a full year of training and thousands of demonstrations, Sora had learned most sealing jutsu. Only then did he begin constructing his own personal storage space.
First was selecting the location to anchor the space. Kushina's seal, like Naruto's in the future, was placed at the navel.
After some research, Sora decided to anchor his seal in the palm of his right hand—for easier access and use.
With Kushina's help, he carved a Eight Trigrams Seal into his palm, forming a space similar to the Nine-Tails' cage.
After that, he integrated a portion of the Chakra Control component from the Yin Seal into his design, allowing him to freely open and close the space with a mere thought and a trickle of chakra.
As long as he directed chakra into his palm, the space could be accessed instantly.
For the final step, he needed to rely on Minato's help. Flying Thunder God allowed space-folding teleportation. Since Sora hadn't yet acquired the Flying Thunder God technique, he needed Minato to assist.
Using the moment when Flying Thunder God folded space, Sora applied his space-affinity to seize that fold and prevent the space from restoring itself.
Then, he imprinted the Eight Trigrams Seal onto it and locked the folded space using sealing jutsu—thus completing the technique.
"Hahaha!" Now six years old, Sora laughed out loud, unable to contain his excitement. "I've finally created my own jutsu!"
"Let's take a look!" Kushina was even more excited, her cheeks flushed with joy.
Even Minato looked eager. If Sora's jutsu worked, its value would rival Edo Tensei or Flying Thunder God.
In wartime, there would be no need for a supply chain—every shinobi could carry their own gear.
Seeing their enthusiasm, Sora smiled and said, "Alright, alright, let's take a look."
He channeled chakra into the palm of his hand, activating the pocket dimension.
He didn't know yet whether living creatures could survive inside, so he used his spatial affinity to sense it.
"It's about a hundred cubic meters in size. There's air, but it doesn't circulate. Once used up, it's gone—so living things can't survive inside."
"Besides that, the open-close function works perfectly. Just a single thought opens or closes it. And the chakra cost is minimal—about the same as casting a Great Fireball Jutsu!"
As he sensed it, Sora described every trait of the space out loud.
Minato stood nearby recording everything on a ninja scroll, carefully noting all the details and labeling it an "Ultra S-Rank Forbidden Jutsu" at the end.
Kushina grabbed Sora's head and rubbed it into her chest affectionately, exclaiming, "You're amazing, Sora! You created an ultra S-rank jutsu at just six years old!"
"Nmph—let go, I can't breathe!" Sora mumbled, struggling weakly. Only after Kushina calmed down did he escape from her grasp.
He shot her a glare, then jumped up and patted Minato on the knee. "Stop standing there grinning. You should have Kushina help you make one too. You already know Flying Thunder God, so you don't need my help. Plus, your space will definitely be bigger than mine!"
The size of the storage dimension depended on the strength of the Eight Trigrams Seal and the distance of the space folded by Flying Thunder God.
The farther the teleportation range, the larger the folded space. As long as the seal could hold it, the theoretical size was limitless.
In reality, the Eight Trigrams Seal could contain no more than about 500 cubic meters. Anything beyond that was unstable.
Aside from that, creating such a space required strong space affinity. Controlling the folded space from Flying Thunder God was only possible with that affinity.
And even if you had both, you still needed powerful sealing techniques to anchor the space.
As of now, only Sora and Minato met all the conditions. Not even Kushina could do it—she lacked spatial affinity and couldn't control the folded space.
"Alright," Minato replied, and he and Kushina immediately began the process.
Following Sora's earlier method, they created the seal on Minato's left hand.
A short while later, they finished.
Minato carefully sensed the space and turned to them with excitement. "It worked—over 400 cubic meters!"
Since Minato used Flying Thunder God himself, the space he folded was naturally bigger. When Sora eventually acquired the technique, he too could expand his own storage space.
Once everything calmed down, Minato asked, "Sora, this is your original jutsu. Do you want to hand it over to the village?"
"Do whatever you want with it—I don't care. It's not like anyone else can learn it anyway. Just don't let Hiruzen or Danzo see it."
With a wave of his hand, Sora ran back to his room and began rummaging through his belongings.
He poured the 30 million ryō he'd earned over the past year into his storage space.
That much was equal to Asuma's bounty. No way he'd take risks with that kind of cash.