Chương 50: Missions and Mammon

The Third Great Ninja War was ignited by the Sand's invasion of the Leaf, yet their specific theater of conflict was the first to reach a sputtering conclusion. Currently, both titans are mired in their respective quagmires elsewhere, leaving them with little appetite for a second round. Only a skeletal force remains stationed at the borders—a token of vigilance against the unforeseen.

As the buffer zone and primary battlefield between the two superpowers, the Land of Rivers saw no reprieve following the peace treaty. Two years later, the nation remains a festering wound. War erodes industry; chaos breeds predators. Bandits, rogue ninjas, wandering ronin, and minor shinobi clans have gathered in these small, fractured nations like vultures at a feast, clashing over scraps of profit or hollow ideologies.

It is a perverse sort of vitality—a landscape where everything is in bloom, yet everything is rotten. Though its territory is substantial among the minor powers, the Land of Rivers lacks a hidden village of its own. Consequently, its military commissions are essentially meat in Konoha's pot, with Suna occasionally snatching a morsel. The Land of Rivers' Daimyo and nobility, shielded by the alternate protection of these two giants, care little for the decay of their country.

So long as the prosperous urban centers remain intact, the body count in the vast rural hinterlands is a matter of indifference. To the lords, the peasantry are like wild grass: close your eyes for a few years, and they simply grow back. It is a convenient, if gruesome, magic. Deep within the forest straddling the border of Fire and Rivers, the three members of Team 3 were engaged in a rare ground-level sprint rather than leaping through the canopy. Suddenly, Yugao Uzuki, taking the point, skidded to a halt.

She crouched, scanning the forest floor for an elusive trail.

"This is the way," she declared, her eyes sharp. Hayate Gekko nodded.

"Then we maintain the pursuit." Dongye Zhen followed in the rear, silent, adjusting his trajectory to match his teammates. Among the trio, Yugao was currently the least experienced in raw combat power, so the boys were intentionally deferring to her to sharpen her tracking and leadership instincts. The Land of Rivers was crawling with mountain bandits. Occasionally, a few "enterprising" souls near the border of the Land of Fire would attempt to expand their operations.

The villages within their own borders had been picked clean; there was no marrow left in the bone. Why struggle for scraps at home when the fat merchants of the Land of Fire were ripe for the taking? It required a bit of a gamble, but fortune favors the bold—or so they thought, praying they wouldn't cross paths with a shinobi patrol. It was a naive hope, born from a complete lack of understanding regarding a ninja's mobility and reach. Soon, the trio crossed into the Land of Rivers.

As the forest thinned into rolling foothills, a cluster of raw timber cabins came into view at the base of a mountain near a riverbank. The wood looked fresh, the architecture rudimentary and crude—a settlement built in haste.

"Zhen," Yugao asked, her voice hushed.

"Any shinobi inside?" Since adapting to the life of a professional killer, the girl seemed to have matured overnight. She no longer appended "-niisan" to Zhen or Hayate's names when on duty.

"None. Just civilians."

"Very well. As before—make it quick." They drew their steel and charged. With the assurance of overwhelming power, there was no need for the subtlety of a silent assassination against common bandits. The camp erupted in chaos as the sentries spotted the Konoha headbands. They didn't flee. Instead, they drew a motley assortment of spears, clubs, and rusted axes, charging with feral roars and faces twisted in desperate bravado. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Bastards! It's Leaf shinobi!"

"Just three brats!"

"Kill them! Kill them and we're safe!" It was a pathetic display. They had no conception of the gulf between them, nor did they understand how the military machine of a Great Nation operated. Zhen and his team were like wolves among sheep. No matter how frantically the bandits swung their weapons, they couldn't even graze a single hair on the children's heads. Screams punctuated the air as grown men were felled like wheat.

Eventually, the survivors realized the horrifying truth: a shinobi, even one who looks like a child, is a monster beyond their reckoning. The remaining bandits broke and scattered, but it was futile. Leveraging their superior speed, the trio systematically reaped the stragglers. There was no disgust in their eyes, no revulsion, and certainly no exhilaration. Two months had passed since their first kill.

Under Yunmi Gekko's guidance, they had scrutinized their own psyches, ensuring they didn't spiral into blood-drunk sociopathy. A shinobi must kill, but he must never let the act of killing define him. This was a job—a necessary pruning of predators who lacked a moral floor. When the screaming stopped, the camp was a graveyard. Only the leader remained. He was a towering, scarred man with long, matted hair, currently kneeling in the dirt and using his broadsword as a crutch.

He glared at the three children with a hatred that reached the marrow of his bones.

"I never imagined... that even the children in the Great Villages were such monsters," he rasped.

"Do you hear me? You're freaks. Why don't you all just rot?" Zhen had grown weary of such insults.

"Perhaps. But aren't you cut from the same cloth?"

"We are not monsters! We are survivors! We are rebels!" the man snarled.

"It was you Great Nations that turned our home into a slaughterhouse. You forced us into this!"

"Perhaps you're right," Zhen said calmly.

"But a mission is a mission. You crossed the border and raided two villages and a town in the Land of Fire. You murdered thirty people. It's time to settle the tab." The scarred leader sneered.

"And when will you shinobi pay for your slaughters?"

"The bill will come due one day. But you won't be around to see it. Farewell." In Zhen's mind, he thought of the Rabbit Goddess hanging in the sky; eventually, all chakra—and the lives tied to it—would be her feast. He raised his right hand, extending his thumb and forefinger in a mock pistol gesture. A tiny sphere of chakra condensed at his fingertip, surrounded by a violently rotating ring of wind-natured energy. It resembled a miniature, lethal shuttlecock. Wind Style: Gale Bullet.

It was another of Zhen's original, seal-less jutsu—a drastically scaled-down mutation of the Wind Style: Rasenshuriken, inspired by the Hozuki clan's Water Style: Water Gun. Could Zhen use the full-sized version? Naturally. But did it take that much chakra to end a single life? No. Chakra was life itself, and Zhen detested waste. Under the leader's horrified gaze, the whistling projectile punched through his chest. The razor-sharp wind chakra detonated internally, shredding his heart into a pulp.

The man felt a flicker of sharp pain before his world went dark. Hayate and Yugao watched the display with a familiar mix of envy and awe. They wanted that level of control, but they knew it required an exquisite mastery of both form and nature transformation that would take them years to replicate.

"Mission complete," Yugao announced. They began the sweep of the camp, focusing on cash and valuables. Anything of intelligence value was an added bonus. In the two months since the Sea Shark Syndicate's fall, they had completed several such assignments. Some escalated to B-rank when they encountered rogue or wandering ninja, but most remained C-rank affairs. A-rank threats were a different breed entirely.

Those usually involved Special Jonin or Jonin—individuals with enough status and skill to find lucrative work anywhere, making banditry a beneath-them profession. The spoils of war were the real highlight. A C-rank mission's base pay was meager, and even a B-rank peaked at 200, 000 Ryo, which had to be split between four people and the village. Much like the D-rank predator culls where Zhen meticulously marked the map, the "surplus" came from the recovery of goods.

The merchant ship from the Sea Shark mission, for instance, had been liquidated into cash by Hama Port officials. No one dared skim from Leaf shinobi unless they had a death wish. Granted, the team had unanimously donated the proceeds of that ship to the survivors. Shinobi were tools, but they weren't hollow. Having gathered the loot, Zhen looked at the haul and smiled.

"Let's head back and regroup with Sensei. I heard there's a decent hot spring in the next town. We could use a soak." After all, if they were going to work this hard, why not enjoy the spoils? Besides, the village never asked for the "extra" loot. Shinobi lived in the village, spent their money in the village, and fueled the local economy. The wealth would circulate back eventually; there was no need to breed resentment by seizing every scrap.