Inheritance

Naruko and Natsumi both naturally beat him to the end of the Trials, though they graciously waited for him at the final post. There stood a grand door carved into stone, with instructions written clear as day.

Share Your Blood.

Without a word, the three Uzumaki siblings each cut their palms and pressed their blood to the door. With a great groan it pulled apart, and revealed that which lay within.

Stepping through the entrance way, they entered into a humongous room practically the size of a Kage's tower, and yet entirely underground and enclosed. And everywhere about were piles of coins waist high, shelves stacked with scrolls, small tables with artefacts set upon them in stands, and countless other relics and treasures just waiting to be approached and appraised. The Uzumaki Vault. The Trials were officially over. Now they received their spoils. By right they could claim any one artefact in this room for themselves.

Immediately the trio split, moving between the piles of loot, their eyes scanning over everything. Naturally Naruto moved towards one of the piles of coins and began to seal away a small ransom into storage seals. You never knew when you were going to need more cash, and there was so much laying around here that he could go through his entire supply of storage scrolls and he'd have gotten maybe a quarter of it all. He wasn't going to actually do that though. This was the Uzumaki Clan funds. Taking it all for himself, or even just for his small family would be incredibly selfish and rude. You never knew when future Uzumaki might need it.

Once he had enough, he turned away from the coins and instead turned his attention to the various artefacts. Natsumi was over on the far side of the room staring at a whole shelf of books and scrolls, letting out little squeals every few moments as she found something more impressive. Naruko seemed to be focusing on weapons, though there was a whole shelf of scrolls she seemed to be glancing at every now and then with a feigned disinterest that he saw right through from experience.

He looked around. He wasn't sure what he wanted to go after. His mother was a practiced sword user, so if he grabbed a sword then she would definitely have a few tricks she could train him with. But swords were one of the most common weapons available, hell there were even Samurai in the Land of Iron who were able to do a weird form of jutsu via swords that supposedly didn't use chakra. Swords were kinda conventional. Known threats. Ninja were usually at their best when they were unconventional. So maybe something else would be better? A spear or a halberd or something maybe? The Third Hokage used a gigantic metal staff and he was widely regarded as one of the strongest ninja to ever live. But was that just being unconventional for its own sake? A sword was a known thing yes, but it didn't matter if the enemy knew to expect it if you were good enough to kill them anyway, and swords were so prevalent because they were still effective against trained opponents like ninja. Spears and Halberds were very much not.

Then there was the question of did he even want a weapon? What about a scroll of cool jutsu? He didn't know his elemental affinity so he'd probably have to go with some more generic ones. Time-Space jutsu were incredibly powerful, though that came with the caveat of requiring near perfect control of one's own chakra. They almost universally required you to be able to control your chakra not just in its pure form, but actually be able to break it down into the constituent physical and mental energy that combined to create it, and be able to remix those energies in specific ratios to fuel the exotic reality warping effects.

Yeah, he was probably a long way off from that. And that was presupposing he would even be able to use such a technique given he was a Jinchuuriki. Having a Biju flooding your system with incredibly potent super chakra all the time kinda made control more difficult.

All the time he was wondering about what to pick, he was also wandering through the treasure horde. And he stopped dead when he ended up reaching the back wall of the vault. There was a pattern written on it. Ink. Stepping back a bit, he could see that the entire back wall was actually covered in a huge sealing array. And not just that wall. His eyes kept tracing it as it flowed up the walls onto the ceiling and down across every surface, even down into the floor, the lines of complicated seal strokes even passing underneath and through the treasure horde, using every inch of available space.

What ever this seal did, it was fucking huge. Possibly the most complicated sealing array ever created. He had no clue what the hell it could be. There was so much intricate detail it was like it had been painted onto the walls with the tip of a senbon rather than with a traditional brush. And what little he could make out was utterly incomprehensible. This was the product of sealing arts well beyond anything he had ever seen before. A few characters stood out. Human repeated a few times. He recognised the twinned characters for Time and Space. But there was so much, and he didn't even know where to start and where was the end.

But there was one part that stood out. There was a circle of blank space at one spot, and inside it had been drawn the symbol for Chakra. That was.... He was guessing it was maybe instructions for where to stand when activating it? And if that was right.... well his curiosity couldn't let him just not turn on this fucking humongous mega seal array now that he had noticed it.

He got into position, and began to push chakra into the ink beneath his feet, the seal beginning to glow slightly blue as it was saturated with power.

But it kept wanting more. He could feel it asking for more chakra, feel it just wasn't quite ready to activate yet, and so he kept feeding more power into it, and it just wasn't enough. He could feel himself beginning to feel faint, the onset of chakra exhaustion from how much he was expending, but the glow of his power had only just made it up the first three meters of the wall. It needed a lot more if it was going to reach all the way up to the roof and activate the full array.

Suddenly he felt a hand fall on his shoulder, Chakra being pushed into and through his body down into the seal. "Hey Bro. If you found something fun, I'm pretty sure you are supposed to let us know." Naruko grinned at him as her power flooded into him. That turned into a somewhat concerned frown as she felt just how much was being sucked from her, but with a burst of crimson she was cloaked in a tail of Kyuubi's power and he felt the chakra surge through him, the glow of activated seals shooting up the wall and coming to a stop almost at the roof. But not there yet.

"You guys! You shouldn't activate random seals. You have no clue what this does!" Natsumi looked very cross with them, her face in a disappointed pout. "This section here is about engraving something onto the soul. Do you have any idea how dangerous that can be?" She asked. "This could kill you!"

"Oh can it book worm. We're Uzumaki Jinchuuriki. We can take anything it throws at us!" Naruko fired back, though she was a little less steady on her feet, swaying slightly as the exhaustion overcame her as well, her cloak of biju chakra flickering. Naruto himself didn't dare to speak. He was feeling very faint now. Any sudden move felt like it would have him keeling over.

"Urgh. Fine! But if this goes badly I am telling mom and she is gonna kick both of your asses!" And with that Natsumi reached out and placed her hand on his other shoulder. The power ran through him, leaving him little more as a conduit as his little sister's chakra was sucked through him into the seal, which finally reached activation. All the Ink all over the room turned a bright blue, then red, then dulled to purple.

And suddenly he felt pain. Pain within his body, pain in his bones. Pain on the back of his eyes, burning like flames.

He stumbled, falling out of his sister's grasps as things began to go weird before his eyes. One moment he was looking at them, and the next he was looking through them. And then another moment later they were solid again but there were labels floating above them.

Naruko Uzumaki. Level 32. Natsumi Uzumaki. Level 35.

He supposed Natsumi would like having the higher number. But then his eyes felt like they were on fire again and the numbers and labels disappeared. And now he could see a book on the floor. And then it changed to a metal screen thing. And then it was on his hand like a bracelet. He was just seeing things. Visions. Hallucinations. Whatever. And through it all he was burning. His bones aching and creaking. His sisters looking concerned. He might have been screaming in pain, he couldn't tell from the rush of blood through his ears.

And then all at once it stopped. And he stood there in silence. He took a deep breath. And another. And then his legs failed and he collapsed forwards. The girls dashed forwards to catch him. And he just wished he could land on something soft.

Suddenly they were closer. His head falling right into the valley of Naruko's breasts.

And then the darkness took him.