NRaO Chapter 58 (Patreon)

The land of Fire Daimyo was a scheming man. He worked together with the leader of the ninja village to solidify his power even more. He even took the man’s firstborn son with the plan of holding him captive so the Hokage would never betray him. The man was weak and hadn’t been trained to be a ninja, perhaps he would exchange this useless child with another more talented one in the future.

He smoked his hash pipe as he called in for another concubine. The Daimyo had no proclivities as to what sex the concubine would be. Whether it be a man or a woman, he would have them satisfy him sexually. He held no power other than the political power of ruling a nation, which was becoming more and more popular as the other nations Daimyos also weren’t strong samurai like they had been in the past.

Only the land of Cloud’s Daimyo was a samurai; compared to his father or his father’s father, he was far weaker than either. Holding land with physical might had changed to threatening the strong to submit, it truly shouldn’t have worked and wouldn’t have if the coward Hashirama had allowed Madara to deal with them. The man waited in just a loincloth as a mostly covered person entered the room.

They stood near the door for a moment, most likely trying to gain the courage to face the Daimyo. The Daimyo didn’t notice the person placing a seal on the door to stop all sound from leaking out or chakra fluctuations. The person began to slowly disrobe the clothing that covered every inch of their skin, even hiding their eyes in shadows.

The Daimyo didn’t recognize the man in front of him, who would? He wasn’t that famous as most of his accomplishments were spy work and subterfuge, only the Hidden Mist Village might have recognized him. He bent over placing something else on the ground as a wooden puppet appeared out of thin air with a puff of smoke. The calm Daimyo’s eyes widened as he realized the man wasn’t here to sleep with him but to do something more nefarious.

“G-guards!” That was the single word he got from his mouth before the man closed the distance and clamped his mouth shut with a hand. The Daimyo looked on in terror as the man pulled out a gigantic empty syringe as the unknown shinobi spoke. “I’m sorry. If I had years to perfect this method you might have been able to live. Unfortunately, my hand was forced… Rest assured. I will put your body to good use!”

The man jabbed the needle directly into the Daimyo’s gut and it began to suck out all of his blood. The puppet began to open as the man took the Daimyo’s mummified corpse and placed it inside along with the attachment to circulate the blood through the puppet's false circular system. The Hyuga were a very rare class of shinobi that could see through transformation jutsu.

It wasn’t impossible for a different Daimyo to have a Hyuga as a servant to make sure that the Daimyo hadn’t been replaced. The method the man used would allow the puppet to produce the exact chakra signature of the man and circulate the man's real blood to prove it was real. The musculature would have to be spoofed as well but that was easy enough to fake by lying about the Daimyo finding an old artifact that stopped ninja techniques from scrying into the person's body.

It was hard work to prepare everything as the ninja wiped the sweat off his face before putting back on the many layers of clothing and leaving the false Daimyo behind for his plan. Hopefully, it would work but… If it didn’t, it was only one of many plans to deal with the true threat to all ninjas.

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White Fangs’ Point of View

With the destruction of the Land of Whirlpools, many of the restrictions on how we could handle the war were changed. We weren’t put solely on defense and we were now allowed to push into the stolen territories to retake them. In a perfect world, they’d want us to kill each other down to the last shinobi, but they needed us as well. The Land of Fire Daimyo realizing he could lose his golden goose had loosened our restrictions to get ahead.

It was too little too late for most. We had lost about 20% of our territory, most of that territory was crop fields and resource-heavy nodes. Years of less food and resources as the enemy had taken them to supply their own war machines. We weren’t at the risk of starving in Konoha, but it had increased the price of all supplies across the board. A meal was more expensive but so were ninja tools, everyday necessities, and even luxuries were more expensive.

As shinobi were fighting in war they were also not doing ninja missions, the village paying the bare minimum for most as guarding the border for a month was only classified as a D-rank mission. A high-risk, much longer than normal mission gave the same amount of ryo that catching a cat in peacetime would give. I had lost count of how many I killed, hundreds of low-rank shinobi and a handful of high-ranked at the very least.

I came across a pair which was odd, most groups followed the same rules as our village and ran in groups of three. Both were puppet ninjas which was odd, once again there was normally only one puppet ninja being supported by two other ninjas. Everything about the situation was odd but it wasn’t my place to judge, I was only here to reduce their numbers before the rest of the ninjas pushed in and retook the land.

I easily dealt with their puppets, neither were very skilled but they both worked together and would have been a problem to deal with for most normal groups of shinobi. As I moved in to kill them I sensed an attack coming and jumped back to avoid it. My heart skipped a beat as I saw who it was. The traitor of the village Orochi was here on the battlefield.

This wasn’t a good sign. Why was Orochi helping the sand village? What game was he playing? The last known location was on the opposite side of the continent but that was months ago. It was theorized that he defected to make his own ninja village but if he joined the hidden sand then he must die here. With the smirk he was known for he asked. “Can you look the other way for these two, please? They’re my poison master's children.”

I just looked at him, did he not know we were in the middle of a war on two fronts? The hidden sand and stone were still attacking us, they had been heavily reduced by the whirlpool attack but even with that it was still an uphill battle against superior numbers. All of that while our hands were being tied behind our back and we couldn’t retaliate too much otherwise we’d be punished. I had already been reprimanded for overextending by the Hokage as I pulled out my swords. It almost felt like the eyes of a predator fell on me as I began to rush towards the three.