One or two months slipped by in the damp stone of the hideout, the days marked by training, blood, and the slow weaving of a new order.
The torches burned lower now, the air less feral, more disciplined.
At the center of the main chamber, three figures sat around a narrow wooden table.
Kimimaro leaned back slightly, posture straight but unhurried, eyes as calm and sharp as blades.
Reika sat to his right, sleeves rolled up, icy eyes half-hooded as she traced lazy lines on the table's edge with a fingertip.
Saya sat opposite, arms crossed, lips drawn into the same pout she always wore during these "meetings," though she never failed to listen.
On the table lay scraps of parchment with new hunting formations, sketches of seal arrays, and lists of potential targets.
Their "council" had become routine.
Kimimaro spoke, and the other two listened.
It wasn't an official agreement, not really, but reality had arranged itself that way.
Reika, who at the start had tried to stand beside him like a partner, had long since ceded ground. She wasn't foolish.
She could see he was even sharper, more insightful, and better suited to direct the cult she also barely considered a "home".
Even when she disagreed, it was always a question, never a refusal.
At some point, her role shifted, still close, still trusted, but undeniably a subordinate.
And she didn't regret it. In truth, she had gained more than she had lost.
Under Ashina's harsh and patient voice, Reika's holes were mended one by one.
Shinobi basics, she inadvertently lacked in some areas, seal foundations.
Already, she was also scratching at Uzumaki techniques most believed lost.
One in particular, Ashina hinted, might change everything if she managed to complete it.
Kimimaro always made sure he was present, whether openly sitting cross-legged nearby or silently watching through his senses as she trained with Ashina.
Not because he doubted her loyalty exactly, but because he wasn't going to hand over his 'grandpa goldfinger' to anyone.
In another world, in another genre, Ashina would have been the divine artifact spirit guiding a destined hero.
But this wasn't a Xianxia fairy tale.
Kimimaro was no "chosen."
He was simply someone clever enough to chain that spirit for himself.
Saya, meanwhile, was a different project altogether.
She had been a leader once, or at least had played the role, but in these weeks she had been broken down and reshaped, bit by bit.
Kimimaro's commands were met first with resentment, then with reluctant obedience, and now, more often than not, with silence that bordered on acceptance.
It wasn't only the orders, though.
Kimimaro liked to press on her pride, tease her too far, humiliate her in small ways.
At first, she had snapped back, cursed, even shaken in rage.
Now… she blushed more often than she shouted.
The sting of his words had become something else: confusion, embarrassment, strange warmth she would never admit.
Kimimaro knew it. He tailored every jab, every smirk, like a craftsman shaping a blade.
Saya was cruel, sadistic by nature, but cruel ones often folded differently once they met someone who could dominate them.
Bend them far enough, and that cruelty turned inward, became masochism, submission.
She wasn't there yet. But she was walking.
Reika and Saya. Two bloodline girls, both brought into his orbit in different ways.
One convinced, the other coerced. Both being remade.
Kimimaro watched them quietly now, hands folded.
He was ten. His body was still thin, his voice not yet changed.
He wasn't interested in romance, or flesh, or any of that. Not yet.
But he wasn't blind. He understood what they could become in time.
Loyal subordinates were one thing.
Loyal women, that was another tier of bond entirely.
And so he prepared the ground patiently, step by step, just as he did with his training, his cult, his ambitions.
Meanwhile, Kimimaro unfolded a rough parchment and tapped a cluster of names.
"About the most recent run," he said. His voice was as flat as the line he drew.
"It was successful, so I planned to elevate four more teams to the Inner Circle."
Kimimaro outlined the operation the way a tactician would: "Yugakure has grown soft. Tourism, baths, medications, hospitality, they've traded edges for coin."
"Their field shinobi are fewer, spread thin, and administrative staff travel outside the village, family in tow, errands, and the odd festival. That gap is a big weakness I targeted this time."
He set the story out simply: scouts watched a small group of clerks and their families traveling some time ago.
Four teams shadowed them, and three teams took the families while the remaining one kept observation and set safe perimeters.
No front-line shinobi interfered; those who might have could be tracked and avoided.
The captives were hidden in a secure cell, cared for because the operation needed living hostages to be credible.
They let the clerks go to feed them more precise info on the Yugakure deployments in the future.
Or else, they get their families' body parts delivered.
Saya chuckled, tapping her scythe against her shoulder.
"Yugakure's practically begging for it at this point. They're the most relaxed village in the whole world. Peace-drunk and defenseless. This cult truly couldn't have been started at a better location or timeline."
Kimimaro nodded, and his tone stayed calm, almost bored. "The tactics worked perfectly. This approach is way faster than hunting across the country and wasting time on chance encounters like recently until now. We might have to repeat this kind of operation a few more times, gradually in the near future."
"Because, after all, even with the hundreds more members we've gained through my recent better recruitment methods, it's still like groping in the dark in this entire country. So, only a handful of teams managed to rise to the Inner ranks… and claim a share of the new essence."
Reika crossed her arms, thinking it over. "But still, we can't keep repeating it too much. If too many vanish, they'll notice."
"Obviously, we still can't make full enemies out of Yugakure so openly, not to mention other great villages...", Kimimaro replied.
"That's why it's still selective. A few at a time. Enough to partially stay under the radar, for a while, not enough to trigger a full alarm immediately."
Saya grinned again, sharper this time. "Still funny, though. Yugakure's supposed to be a legit shinobi village, and here we are already twisting their clerks around like puppets."
Kimimaro smirked faintly. "Tourist town clerks. That's all Yugakure is now. A village that traded blades for bathhouses. Perfect hunting ground, as long as we're patient."
"We then continued the contact with the clerks," Kimimaro nodded and said, tapping the parchment where a list had been scribbled from blackmail notes.
"We continued to offer their families' safety in exchange for schedule intel: mission rosters, deployment times, even patrol rotations. We gave them an offer they can't refuse, and so they chose compliance."
Reika's mouth didn't move, but her eyes sharpened. "You also warned them not to alert authorities immediately, yes? If a dozen families vanish at once, Yugakure will smell a rat."
"Yes." Kimimaro's answers were methodical. "We interrogated them and took only the family members who were most likely to be off the main record. We also already planned staged deaths, illnesses, sudden logical relocation reasons when necessary, low bells the office won't notice. Yugakure is lax enough to allow those absences to go unnoticed to an extent."
"We keep them fed, we keep them with dignity. That's part of the blackmail: compliance without the obvious flames. We treat them as currency. Currency you preserve so it retains value. Absolutely no cruelty unless necessary. Show them they live well if they obey, and they'll obey better."
Reika made a noise that could have been a laugh. "Efficient," she said.
Kimimaro's expression didn't change.
He nodded and continued narrating.
"The intel we bought got us more ambush windows immediately. Those same four teams, now strengthened a little, then snatched two shinobi whose patrols were thin, mid-rank field operatives with enough chakra and technique to be useful in the rites."
"They were handed to ritual teams. Their value as sacrifice was far higher than any peasant."
"That is why we target Yugakure first: easy exposure, lower suspicion, and a supply of usable shinobi without the alarm a major village would raise."
Saya's eyes glittered with satisfaction.
"We only use what we need," she said. "Not wasteful."
Kimimaro inclined his head once.
"Exactly. Waste only creates noise: investigations, reprisals. We are very surgical."
"By the way, those four teams also handled the snatching, and they executed it with discipline. So, their first full-on legit ritual share and rank ascension ceremony will be prepared for next week, Saya."
Saya's lips curled into a sly smile. "Hmph. About time they proved they're not just dead weight. Discipline, huh? Guess they finally realized flailing around won't impress me." She flicked her eyes toward Kimimaro, the edge in her grin softening. "Fine. I'll make sure the preparations don't look like some half-assed festival. If they're stepping into the Inner Circle, the blood better spill properly."
Kimimaro gave her an interesting look before continuing, "Each success buys a little more ritual essence, a little more technology to refine the chalice frameworks Ashina gave me. Each success lets us take more ambitious prey next. So, we still go slow, but we get far."
Reika exhaled through her nose, a hint of a smile breaking her usual cool.
"So that's our foothold."
Kimimaro nodded once more. "
From their weakness, we climb."
They then set the practicalities, handlers to rotate, coded letters to send to coerced clerks, safe houses for families, contingency plans if Yugakure sniffed too close.
Reika added tactical changes: better formation drills, alternate extraction routes, and ways to fabricate plausible causes of absence.
At some point, she tapped her finger against her arm, thoughtful.
"We could refine it further. Use Uzumaki-quality seals. Something discreet. Let the family members return to the village now and then, and walk around in public. That would nullify literally all suspicion if there is any. But the invisible seal stays on them, and they have to go back to us eventually to get it periodically resolved, and behave while being alone there… So, if they ever think about slipping the leash fully, it explodes, or something similar, naturally."
Kimimaro's eyes narrowed with faint approval, and he even chuckled, "A clever touch, Reika. I'll consult Ashina about the right seals for this later. But it will take some time to make. However, once done, we will generally continue with only this approach in the future."
Saya then outlined ritual schedules and which Inner Circle team would receive first shares, still cautious to keep the distribution merit-based.
And when the meeting naturally wound down, Kimimaro folded the map.
"You understand the principle," he said quietly.
"We grow by taking power where it exists."
"The world's rules are simple: prey or hunter."
He let the thought hang there as fact, not argument.
"We are a small fish. For now. But an ambitious small fish that grows bigger by cleverly and brutally eating other small fish around them. So, in a few years, we will be something else."
Reika's answer was like a knife in the dark. "Then let us eat."
Saya's voice came softer than usual, but steady. "Then we feed our own."
Kimimaro allowed himself a thin natural smile.
Not a cruel kind of one, but an ambitious and mocking one.
To him, the shinobi they snatched for sacrifice deserved no sympathy or a "moral" approach.
Once you tied on a headband, you basically accepted being nothing more than a tool of your village's higher-ups, expected to carry out literally any mission without question, even if it meant burning, killing, torturing, or robbing others, no matter how "unethical" it might seem.
Yugakure's shinobi were no exception, willing to carry out whatever was written on a slip of paper, so long as it had the village's stamp.
Brainwashed to serve their village's, or its leaders' interests, blind to everything else.
Even if they changed a bit recently, they still have a long way to go, for the time to truly transform them and the old generations that carried such missions obviously to die out.
So, why should his cult of 'outcasts', from top to bottom, care for them?
Shinobi, on the other hand, marched proudly into their chains and called it honor.
So, if they ended up bleeding on his altar, it was just the natural correction of things.
In the end, they had also chosen that kind of life, knowing its dangers, knowing death could come at any moment.
If they fell into his hands, it only meant they were too weak or careless.
In the end, weakness was the only universal crime, around here, Kimimaro learned, and crimes of weakness were punished swiftly.
In this world, the only law that ultimately mattered was the size of your fist. Quite literally.