38. Kushina Uzumaki

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...

Minato woke up about ten minutes earlier than usual. He never needed an alarm clock to get up for his work as Hokage because he had trained his body to naturally wake up at the same time every day, which was really helpful in his life. However, today he woke up unnaturally early due to a strange sense of negative energy beside him.

He looked at his wife, who was lying just a few centimeters away, and widened his eyes in horror. She was breathing heavily as if injured, and sweat was dripping from her face. Strange rashes had appeared on her skin, resembling burns, but Minato couldn't recall her having them the previous evening when they went to bed together.

He didn't wait long before teleporting her to the Konoha hospital and summoning Tsunade to examine her condition.

This situation reminded him of many years ago when Kushina suddenly woke up at night, coughing up blood. It was then revealed that their first child, Naruto, had the Nine-Tails' chakra within him. From then on, everything started, their troubles, Naruto's health issues, and his later disability...

Tsunade quickly entered the hospital room. If it were anyone else, she would have surely scolded him, but it was Minato. Whenever he called her like this, nothing good ever came out of it.

"What's wrong with Kushina? Why does she look like this...?!" Tsunade reacted sharply, seeing the strange rash on her skin.

"I have no idea. I just woke up, and she already looked like this! Everything was fine just yesterday...!" Minato spoke hurriedly.

Without wasting any time on unnecessary conversation, Tsunade immediately began examining Kushina's condition. She had a bad feeling just by looking at her. Those strange purple spots on her skin looked like burns, but it was most likely some kind of allergic reaction. Maybe it was the result of some poison? But who would poison her? The Namikaze family's home was under constant surveillance by ANBU, and no suspicious individuals had been lurking around the village lately!

"It's not any poison...! I don't detect any toxins in her body," Tsunade concluded, narrowing her eyes unpleasantly.

"It's too strange; I've never seen anything like this...!" she replied after a few more minutes of examining her condition with her medical chakra. "I need to conduct a deeper analysis; summon Shizune for me, and you should inform Naruto..."

Minato sent two of his ANBU to bring Shizune and his son, Naruto, to the hospital. However, the latter had his chakra well hidden, making it impossible for ANBU to find him.

Minato couldn't help but curse his son's excellent skills in this area. At that moment, he regretted teaching him the Sleeping Turtle technique.

...

Naruto was currently away from the main part of the village where people lived. He walked through dense meadows, observing the herbs growing around his feet. It was spring, and some plants were ready for harvest, but Naruto avoided them all.

He only picked poisonous plants with mild effects into his basket; he didn't want to accidentally poison himself by consuming highly toxic herbs. Such meadows, like this one, rarely contained strongly poisonous herbs; Leaf Village hardly had any poisonous plants. To encounter such, Naruto would have to enter the Death Forest, the forbidden training ground where the climate drastically differed from the rest of the village.

At one point, Naruto heard the rustling sound, most likely of a moving animal. He looked in that direction and, among the dense grass, saw a small snake, about forty centimeters long. It slithered towards him, swaying its green body from side to side, with a triangular head. When it noticed Naruto's gaze, it hissed menacingly.

Without hesitation or fear, Naruto grabbed the snake by the head and lifted it up, examining it.

"You're perfect...!" Naruto looked slightly excited.

In the next moment, he brought the snake's head closer to his wrist and forced it to bite him. He held it in place to prevent it from quickly withdrawing its fangs and forced it to inject all of its venom into Naruto's body. Only when Naruto sensed that the venom had run out did he push the snake aside, and it fled in fear.

"Alright..." Naruto immediately sat on the ground in a meditation position and observed the venom's effects on his body.

Thanks to the Sleeping Turtle technique, he was able to slow down or even stop the spread of venom throughout his body, and after several months of consuming poisons, he had learned to release them through his skin. So as long as he was conscious, he could remove most poisons from his body, making him immune to them. Maybe not literally, but when he wanted to, the poison wouldn't harm him.

After about ten minutes, Naruto noticed the first symptoms of the snake's venom; he had difficulty breathing, his bronchi contracted. Over the next few minutes, his body temperature rose to feverish levels, and he began to sweat more. A slight swelling appeared on his face, eyelids, lips, and tongue.

After about thirty minutes, the symptoms intensified and lasted for another hour until Naruto's body began to adapt and heal. Within twenty minutes, the swelling disappeared from his body, and within an hour, all other symptoms also disappeared.

"Not so bad," Naruto remarked, standing up straight. His body would continue to adapt throughout the day, and the next time the same venom entered his body, it would be about ten to twenty percent less effective.

"Maybe I should focus on animal venoms? Apparently, I can adapt to them faster than to poisonous plants..." Naruto pondered. For some reason, his body adapted more quickly to animal venoms than to those from plants. They weren't weaker, but apparently, his body functioned that way, and he had better predispositions for adaptation to them.

"I should spend the next few days searching for more snake or spider species; I'm craving their venom," Naruto chuckled. He wasn't crazy, but it would help him a lot, and besides, he finally had some time to strengthen himself, so why not take advantage of it?

However, his plans were disrupted by the appearance of ANBU before him.

"I finally found you, Naruto-sama...!" The ANBU replied, taking a deep breath. He had been searching for him for hours along with other tracking ANBU, and only by scent was he able to find him. "Hokage-sama is summoning you to the main Konoha hospital...!"

"What happened...?" Naruto asked, feeling a sense of impending doom gathering within him.

"T-there..." The ANBU hesitated for a moment, but quickly replied, "Lady Kushina is in the hospital, and it's not clear what exactly is wrong with her. Tsunade-sama is still examining her condition..."

Naruto immediately abandoned his previous activity and said hastily, "Take me there right away...!"

"Yes!" Using the Body Flicker Technique, the ANBU transported the two of them to the Konoha hospital within moments, where Naruto rushed to the hospital room where he sensed his mother's chakra.

She lay conscious on the bed, chatting with Menma and Himiko, who presumably hadn't gone to the academy today. Naruto approached closer and saw purple spots on Kushina's skin; they looked like burns, but it was probably more of an allergic reaction. However, he couldn't assess it just by looking; it required a deeper analysis, which Tsunade probably had already done.

"Ka-chan...! Why are you here? What's on your skin?" he asked, concerned, his eyes reflecting worry about her condition.

"Oh, it's nothing. I'm already feeling better; Tsunade-sama healed me with her chakra, so I should be back home soon," Kushina explained calmly, not worrying about her health at all.

Naruto narrowed his eyes at her unpleasantly. "What are you talking about? Nothing is certain yet, so why are you so calm about it?" Naruto felt angry that she was taking it so lightly.

Kushina smiled at him wordlessly. At that moment, Naruto realized that she was hiding her concerns behind a gentle smile, not wanting to worry others. After all, positive thinking is crucial...

"You shouldn't shout like that, Onii-chan...! Ka-chan needs to rest to get better, and your shouting might disturb her," Himiko scolded him. She probably thought he was angry at Ka-chan and felt the need to warn him.

Naruto sighed, "You're right, I'm sorry."

He touched the purple spots on his Ka-chan's arm and examined them with his sensory ability.

"You shouldn't touch me; it might transfer to you...!" Kushina scolded him, pushing his hand away, but Naruto was stubborn and held her firmly.

"Stop squirming; I want to examine it with my sensory ability, and touch is necessary for me to see better," Naruto said firmly.

He closed his eyes, shutting out external sounds, and focused on Kushina's condition. He felt her pulse on her wrist, listened to it, trying to detect the underlying cause of her illness.

After several minutes, he opened his eyes in horror and unconsciously let out a breath. Her vitality was definitely lower than before, and he felt it slowly diminishing. Those spots weren't burns; it definitely wasn't an allergic reaction to some poison or anything else.

Naruto looked at Ka-chan and doubted that Tsunade had told her about the sudden decrease in life force. She was probably unaware of it, just like Minato himself.

"What's wrong?" Menma asked, confused.

"Nothing, it's okay..."

At that moment, Tsunade chose to enter the room again, accompanied by Minato and Shizune by her side. Just by looking into her eyes, Naruto sensed bad news or the lack thereof, which was even worse because the absence of information was definitely worse, as they couldn't even begin treatment.

"Naruto...! Finally, you're here! Stop hiding your presence all the time because finding you in emergencies is almost impossible!" Minato scolded his son.

"Oh, sorry," Naruto quickly apologized, not wanting to argue about trivial matters. However, now he was curious about how this ANBU had found him? Probably by scent, one of the few drawbacks of the Sleeping Turtle technique. Although his scent was less emitted during that technique, it still existed, and anyone with a keen sense of smell, like someone from the Inuzuka Clan, could find him.

"What do you know?" Naruto returned to the topic of Kushina's health.

As he suspected, Tsunade looked at them sadly and shook her head. "Unfortunately, I have nothing. We just have to hope she'll get better in a few days. But that doesn't mean I'll stop searching for the cause..."

Although she said this to Kushina and her children, Naruto was sure she only wanted to comfort them or give them hope. After all, nothing just happens on its own and then disappears.

After a few minutes of discussing Kushina's health, Naruto apologized and left the hospital room.

After his attempt to find the cause of Kushina's illness in her body, he found nothing concrete except that something was draining her Life Force. He hadn't seen Tsunade's analysis yet, but it might be related to the Nine-Tails and its extraction from Kushina's body. Kushina was the only person, the only Jinchuriki, who survived the extraction of her Bijuu from the seal. There had never been such a case before, and we don't know the true consequences of such actions; they could be hidden for a long time and only show up years after the Bijuu was extracted from the Jinchuriki's body...!

Naruto truly felt great anger towards the Nine-Tails for all the problems it caused them. Although he knew it was only his speculation and nothing was confirmed, he involuntarily blamed it inside himself.

It was petty thinking, but Naruto loved Kushina so much and was so emotionally and psychologically attached to her that such thoughts and emotions arose in him and clouded his thinking. He also loved his siblings and father; he would surely feel immense anger if anyone hurt them, but whenever something happened to his Ka-chan, Naruto's mind went crazy.

Every child was naturally attached to their mother; after all, she gave birth to them and held them in her stomach for nine months. However, Naruto often put his own well-being above hers. It could be due to how much she suffered because of him during her entire pregnancy, and Naruto felt guilty; he wasn't entirely sure.