Chapter 344: Reunion with Teacher
"Don't worry. Amado is fine." Kenichi scratched his head as he looked at Akebi, who was sitting blankly in front of him. Even so, he still comforted her, while inwardly complaining about Amado.
That old man really had guts, entrusting Akebi to him like this. Wasn't he afraid that the next time Edo Tensei was used, he would come back only to find himself a grandfather?
Of course, to be honest, while Akebi was indeed cute and had a very good figure, Kenichi truly had no interest in her. The thing he cared about most right now was still the experiment waiting for him in the Land of Snow.
"...Dad sacrificed himself to bring me back, didn't he?" Akebi asked softly, her eyes a little red.
Kenichi felt a headache coming on, but after everything that had just happened...
Thinking back to the sight of Amado slowly turning to dust in front of Akebi, his soul ascending into the sky while smiling and saying goodbye to her, Kenichi was inexplicably reminded of Naruto and Minato's farewell at the end of the Fourth Great Ninja War.
Akebi had barely managed to force out a smile and bid her father farewell. But the moment he vanished, she broke down completely. She had cried without making a sound, covering her face as her shoulders shook violently. Even Kenichi, standing on the sidelines, could clearly feel how deep her grief ran.
"Yes." Kenichi nodded.
Akebi was no longer a child. At this point, hiding the truth would have been pointless. Direct honesty was better.
After hearing his answer, Akebi fell silent again, her mind seemingly drifting far away. Kenichi scratched his head. This girl really was troublesome to deal with. Fortunately, he did not need to personally take care of her forever. He only needed to make sure she could live safely for the time being.
Still, there were no truly normal people left in the Land of Rice Fields right now.
Sasori was still locked up in his workshop tinkering with Unit 1. Deidara was even less suitable. Worse, Kenichi kept getting the feeling that Deidara had started looking at Hikari a little differently.
It was subtle, and Kenichi was not completely certain. Maybe Deidara just found Hikari interesting. But then again, wasn't it normal for teenagers to get infatuated? Children in the ninja world matured fast.
Either way, neither Sasori nor Deidara was suitable to live with Akebi. Those two unlucky guys would definitely drag her in some strange direction. If that happened, Kenichi would have no way to explain himself when Amado eventually returned from the Pure Land.
"It looks like I can only bring her to the Land of Snow. Then I can have Shiori look after her. Koyuki won't do. It has to be Shiori," Kenichi thought as he looked at the dazed Akebi and finally made up his mind.
Since Amado had gone to the Pure Land in person for research, Kenichi naturally could not let him down. At the very least, he had to take proper care of Akebi, so that when Amado came back, there would be an explanation waiting for him.
Otherwise, if Amado returned only to discover his daughter had become an explosion maniac, he would probably break ties with him on the spot.
"Akebi, do you want to come with me to the Land of Snow? Your father has a laboratory there," Kenichi asked.
Hearing that, Akebi slowly raised her head and looked at him with hollow, unfocused eyes.
"And we can prepare for your father's resurrection ceremony, or something like that," Kenichi added.
At those words, Akebi's eyes lit up slightly. She pressed her lips together, then nodded seriously.
"Can I help?" she asked, looking at Kenichi with determination. "I don't want to do nothing. Dad did everything he could to bring me back. Now it's my turn to bring him back from the Pure Land."
Kenichi glanced at her, then nodded. At the same time, he silently noted something in his mind.
After a soul was revived, it seemed to lose that strange obsession with the Pure Land.
That really was peculiar.
So Kenichi took Akebi and Hikari back to the Land of Snow by airship.
Something mildly interesting happened along the way. As they passed near the border, Kenichi noticed several small black dots in the distance. They were probably hot air balloons or some other flying devices being used by the Five Great Nations for border patrol.
He glanced at them once, then paid them no further attention. If those people kept investing their research into hot air balloons and airships, then their future would be very limited.
In his previous life, why had Zeppelin airships eventually been phased out?
Because people had realized that airplanes were the true future of aerial warfare and transport. Airships simply could not keep up, unless someone invented a way to let them turn flexibly at high speed and equipped them with some kind of energy shield.
Otherwise, they were just giant targets in the sky.
Back when he had attacked the Hidden Cloud Village, Kenichi had already realized that both hot air balloons and airships shared the same fatal weakness. They were too easy to target with Ninjutsu. If it had been a fighter jet instead, the situation would have been far safer.
"Once the ninja army is in place, it'll be time to continue researching improved crop strains. But even that won't be enough. The major villages are already wary of my thermobaric bombs and rocket bombs," Kenichi murmured, ignoring the patrol squads in the distance.
He was thinking about the road ahead.
Unifying the ninja world would not be easy.
After all, the ninja world had never been truly unified before. The people here, no matter which village or country they came from, had never possessed a single shared identity.
When introducing themselves, they always said they were from this village or that country. And between the five great ninja villages, the hatred ran deep.
"If everything is planned properly, Nagato alone might be enough to suppress... no, that won't work. Nagato's body is too weak." Kenichi shook his head.
Was Nagato strong?
Very strong.
He was the man who had once flattened all of Konoha in one blow, the same man who had made Naruto experience firsthand what it meant for someone else's Pain to have a far higher art budget.
But what if he faced two or more Kage level opponents at the same time?
And there was another problem. Nagato's body had been drained by the Gedo Statue to the point of near ruin. He could only truly fight through Pain. While his main body still had some combat ability, if an enemy at Kage level managed to close the distance, the situation would become very dangerous.
So if they relied on Nagato alone to overturn the entire ninja world, it would be extremely difficult.
Kenichi pulled a blueprint from his sealing scroll.
It was the schematic design for a uranium extraction and purification device.
"Nuclear weapons?" Kenichi murmured to himself.
Nuclear weapons were powerful, but the consequences of using them were also severe. Radiation could render an area uninhabitable for a long time, and the temperatures and shockwaves produced by the explosion were terrifyingly destructive. While thermobaric bombs were already very strong, they were still clearly inferior to nuclear weapons in that regard.
Combined with the complete set of nuclear physics materials he had received as a reward earlier, Kenichi now had some confidence in his ability to create one.
"Thermobaric bombs can still be kept in reserve for less troublesome situations. What I need most right now is a weapon capable of delivering a decisive strike." Kenichi narrowed his eyes, and a dangerous gleam flashed within them.
In his previous life, nuclear weapons had been considered the ultimate deterrent.
Whether or not one used them was a separate matter. The important question was whether one possessed them at all. Only those with the ability to produce and launch nuclear weapons had the right to stand among the truly great powers.
What was more...
"Missile theory."
Kenichi thought of the reward he had received from his mission in the Hidden Sand Village and could not help but raise an eyebrow. When he completed that mission, one of the side rewards had been a complete theoretical set on missile development.
There had been so many books that even Kenichi had felt his scalp go numb, just like when he first saw the nuclear physics materials.
This time, however, he had no complaints. Missiles were far too useful. Once he had them, he could even try to launch nuclear warheads by missile in the future.
At times, he felt as though his system had built an entire chain from the beginning. First thermobaric bombs, then nuclear weapons. If this continued, what would come next? Antimatter? Quantum technology? Dark matter?
Just thinking about it made him feel a little excited. Those were all things that had existed only as theory in his previous life, although quantum computers had at least begun to take shape.
"Brother Kenichi, what's that?" Hikari suddenly leaned over and pointed downward.
Kenichi followed her gaze.
At this point, the airship was already flying above the ocean. That was unavoidable. The Land of Snow was remote, and reaching it always meant a long stretch over the sea. Even by airship, much of the journey was over open water. If they had traveled by ship instead, it would have taken much longer.
"...It should be a ship," Kenichi replied after a glance.
From above, he could see a dark shape on the blue surface of the sea. It looked like a vessel. Nothing strange about that. Even though the Land of Snow was remote, it was still a country, and there were still merchant groups that did business there.
"No, Brother Kenichi. I just saw something fly up from it," Hikari said, shaking her head.
Kenichi narrowed his eyes and looked more carefully, but he still could not make it out.
The airship was flying too high. If he wanted a proper look, the best option would be to lower their altitude.
Just as he was considering what to do, he heard a noisy buzzing sound, like the static from an old television.
The noise was awful, and he could not understand a single word. Still, Kenichi immediately knew what it was. He turned his head and saw the brick like mobile phone sitting on the table.
At present, there was only one set of those phones in the entire ninja world.
He had one.
His teacher had the other.
Which meant...
"Teacher?" Kenichi picked up the phone, surprised.
Had his teacher finally stopped chasing Jiraiya around? Or had Jiraiya actually been caught? But considering Jiraiya's strength, Kenichi felt that was unlikely.
The Sannin did clash from time to time, but they rarely ever went all out to kill. Their bond still remained. When Naruto's memories had once been broadcast across the allied forces, Orochimaru had stood in silence before Jiraiya's grave. That alone said enough about how deep the ties between the three Sannin really were.
So if Jiraiya was still fine, how had he convinced his teacher to let the matter drop?
The phone continued to buzz uselessly, still impossible to understand. There was nothing Kenichi could do about it. The phone had been built by his teacher, and all the core technology was in his hands. While Kenichi knew a thing or two about scientific research, telecommunications were not his field.
"The ocean... hm? Could it be..." Kenichi's eyes narrowed as a possibility occurred to him.
The phone was ringing now, of all times.
So he lowered the airship.
And as it descended, the scene below became clearer.
Now he could see the vessel properly.
Three heads were hanging from the side of the ship.
A person was being dragged behind the stern.
And at the bow stood a black haired girl, waving at him.
Although the hair was black, Kenichi recognized the face at once.
It was his teacher.
He just did not know why his teacher had black hair now. The sea breeze stirred his long hair as he stood there at the front of the ship, looking almost leisurely.
—-
"That thing have grown this large already. This is the first time I've seen this kind of condition," Tsunade said in surprise back in Konoha, holding a petri dish in her hand.
Inside the dish was an odd, fleshy mass soaking in solution.
It looked vaguely like meat, but its shape was wrong in a way that made it deeply unsettling. It was not large, yet it gave off an unpleasant feeling just from looking at it.
"...You only cut out this much?" Hiruzen asked helplessly from the Hokage's chair as he looked at his disciple.
He had been expecting something serious, perhaps a condition that would require days of recovery and hospitalization. Instead, the matter had been resolved astonishingly quickly.
"Yes. I need to study it first and understand exactly what this thing is before I can determine the proper treatment," Tsunade replied, nodding.
She was deeply interested in every disease that existed in the ninja world. If there had been a better candidate to become the next Hokage, she would never have considered the position at all.
Being Hokage was far too troublesome.
She still preferred being a doctor.
The Third reached for his pipe, intending to take a puff, but the instant he noticed Tsunade's death glare, he quietly set it back down. He could always smoke after she left.
"Old man," Tsunade said, narrowing her eyes, "that Uzumaki brat in the village, he's this generation's Jinchuriki, right?"
Hiruzen looked at her in confusion, but still nodded. Tsunade obviously knew that much already.
She gave a brief nod, then turned and left, which made Hiruzen frown.
Tsunade was not someone who asked pointless questions.
Had something happened to Naruto?
Thinking of that, Hiruzen could no longer remain seated. He rose from the Hokage's chair and hurried out.
.....
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