One couldn't at all compare life on the road with the kind of living we had experienced as guards—guests, even—at the Daimyō's palace.
And while Kanna and I had already experienced plenty of this kind of life, Karin had been too young to remember any of it; she only remembered living in the palace.
It was just a small courtyard, yes, but it was still part of the Fire Daimyō's estate, and so she had grown up in true luxury, surrounded by the best of the best.
The kind of noble upbringing she would have experienced only as a high-ranking member of the Uzumaki clan before the fall of Uzushiogakure.
So, to her, this kind of life was vastly different from what she knew. No kids to play with, no time to just run around and play—just walking. Endless walking.
"Can we take a break? I'm tired!" Karin complained only a few hours into today's walk.
"I'm sorry, Kaguya-hime," Kanna quickly apologized. "Karin, we only just started." She tried to calm her daughter down.
"It's fine." I'd known this would happen. Karin might be a very well-behaved child, but even then, she was still just a child, and children would always be children.
"Please?" Karin pleaded, ignoring her mother as she knew that, in the end, I was the final authority.
"Just a little longer. There is a nice spot up ahead where we can rest for a while," I said gently—something I always found myself doing when talking to her. Children, truly, were my soft spot.
"How do you know that?" Karin asked innocently.
"Karin, it's rude to ask something like that," Kanna quickly told her off.
"Why?" Karin asked, not understanding what the big deal was.
She was at that age when she questioned everything, tested boundaries, and for a child, yes—it was strange that I had a blindfold on at all times, and yet I could still see.
I had long since seen Karin try to wear cloth in front of her eyes, testing if she could see anything.
It had been a cute sight.
"It's a secret," was all I said.
And from the way she pouted, she clearly wasn't happy with it.
"You always say that!" She crossed her arms as she pouted.
"And yet you keep asking the same question," I replied with a smile.
"Because I really want to know!" Karin didn't hide her curiosity at all.
I honestly wasn't sure if I should teach her to better hide her true thoughts—if she should learn the essence of the shinobi trade.
I wanted her to have the ability to protect herself, to protect those dear to her. I wanted her to become strong.
After all, once I took over the world in the future, she would be another tool to protect this world—one far better than just a White Zetsu.
I had no intention of draining her of chakra. Not fully.
Chakra was, after all, naturally produced by the body and the mind—two energies coming together and giving birth to even more chakra.
My son had given everyone a spark of my chakra, and since then, they had spread that to more and more people, all of whom generated their own chakra.
The grand total of chakra in the world was far beyond what had been stolen and spread around; it was ever-growing, as was the amount of natural energy—the nature chakra used in senjutsu.
So there was no reason to take it all. It would be far better to simply recover my peak strength and enslave everyone.
It was that, or fully remove the spark… but that would kill anyone who had awakened their inner chakra: every shinobi, every samurai—everyone who wasn't a powerless civilian. And civilians were the most useless, even weaker than a White Zetsu.
So, I fully intended to keep Karin around long-term, which was why I was struggling to decide what kind of future I would grant her.
I still hadn't managed to track down Isshiki, so there was still no way of fully accelerating the plan to unseal my true form from within the moon—which meant there was still more than a decade before that would happen.
So, what should that decade look like?
I had some ideas, but when it came to Karin, some of them still depended on her.
To lead her down the path of a shinobi meant exposing her to more of the world's darkness—to teach her not just to be strong, but to be sneaky, to be a shadow.
Did I want her to learn to lie?
That was what it really came down to.
A shinobi had to be a master of deceit, someone who could lie perfectly and without guilt. An assassin.
And honestly, having gone through that training myself, I didn't think it was best for Karin. She should stay the bright little girl she was.
Still, I couldn't deny that a shinobi was far more efficient than something like a samurai or a monk—the two other major chakra-using professions.
After all, shinobi had no honor, no lines they wouldn't cross. They were quick to run, quick to hide, and quick to kill.
But it was a dark and dirty business.
There was a reason so many shinobi ended up a bit broken in the head.
Kakashi was far from the only one who had strange habits.
Even I wasn't free of that. While freeing myself from the Caged Bird cursed seal had allowed my Yin chakra to grow—strengthening my mind—I had clearly been heavily affected before that.
Gambling, alcohol, and women. Three things all shinobi were taught to stay away from—yet the world was filled with gambling dens for shinobi, and alcohol was cheap and easy to get.
And even Konoha had its fair share of brothels—not to mention the fact that nearly every shinobi in Konoha who took part in the last war had been heavily exposed to exhibitionism, something that had been unofficially—officially—supported.
People were open about their desires, a result of living their whole lives at the edge of death, always in the shadow of danger.
Was that what I wanted for Karin?
And the answer was no.
I didn't want Karin to become a shinobi, because the whole system was deeply flawed, and those with great personal power were forced into a system that treated them little more than tools to be used—tools to be discarded.
The strong often didn't have the pride of the strong, and it wasn't right.
I wanted her to be strong and free. Not a slave to a system that forced those who wielded chakra to serve those who didn't.
"Are we there yet?" Karin asked, breaking me out of my thoughts.
"Soon," I answered with a sigh.
Children. Wonderful. Troublesome. Always.
…
We reached the clearing soon enough—though not soon enough for Karin, who took great pleasure in seeing her mother's reaction to her question of "Are we there yet?"
Something she kept asking every few minutes, though at least it kept her busy and made her not notice how long she had to walk before we finally reached our destination.
Yet despite her complaints about being tired, she showed no such signs now.
"Let's play!" she yelled excitedly, bouncing around with energy that hadn't existed ten minutes earlier.
Children truly were strange creatures.
Kanna smiled faintly, sitting down near the edge of the clearing and setting her pack aside. "At least let her eat first," she said, though there was no real reprimand in her voice.
Karin ignored her completely.
She darted between trees, climbed a fallen trunk, jumped down again, laughing as though the road hadn't nearly killed her legs just moments ago. For her, the world had shrunk to this clearing—open space, sunlight, freedom.
I watched her carefully.
Not for threats.
For habits.
She ran without awareness of cover. Turned her back to blind spots. Made noise without restraint. Perfectly acceptable behavior for a child in a palace. Dangerous habits for the road.
Yet I couldn't tell if it was simply because she didn't know better, or because she trusted me that much.
Despite how young she was, she had long since learned that I knew everything—that I saw everything—despite my apparent blindness.
And in truth, she was in no danger. Nothing could hurt her here, not with me around.
I had long tracked every shinobi following us and, based on their chakra and behavior, figured out which forces they belonged to.
Root. They had a team following us. The very fact that Danzō had been able to resist making a move while we stayed at the Daimyō's estate was already a miracle. Now that we had lost that layer of protection, he clearly intended to gain his prize: his very own Uzumaki bloodline.
With that, he would be able to more easily make a move to get control of the Nine-Tails' Jinchūriki—not to mention that it would give Konoha, and more importantly him, a backup.
So yes, his men were there, well within the range of my Byakugan. Their every move fully under my watch.
And they weren't alone. There was a small team from Kiri—some of their Hunter-nin.
They were rather skilled; it wasn't easy to stay hidden within the core of the Land of Fire, particularly not at times like this.
After all, my little misdirection back with the Hyūga affair had caused tensions between Kiri and Konoha to rise.
They weren't here to kill me, though; they were far too weak for that. They were just keeping an eye on things, likely to report my position to a later kill team.
I honestly wished they would leave me alone. I had no intention of going and cutting down the Kaguya clan, but given how they were acting, I also wouldn't be doing anything to stop their extermination.
Those fools were honestly all crazy from inbreeding. Sure, it kept their bloodline pure, but they took no measures to prevent harm coming from such a practice.
Other clans had some degree of inbreeding as well, but like with the Hyūga clan, they kept a close watch on every marriage and made sure that none was too closely related—keeping everything within safe limits.
The Kaguya clan? They had no problem with siblings, or even parents and children, getting together. As long as they were strong, their bloodline pure, it was allowed and welcomed.
Yeah. They were a disgrace to my bloodline.
But beyond those, there were still a few other groups keeping an eye on me—and more groups than I had anticipated.
"This is getting interesting," I muttered with a slight smile as I focused my attention on them.
(End of chapter)
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