Chapter 100: The Eve of the Ghost
By the seventh and eighth months, Uzushio had transitioned from a construction site to a living, breathing machine. The jagged edges of the reconstruction had been smoothed over by the constant flow of commerce and the steady pulse of the Vortex Grid.
The "Sovereign" was no longer a desperate experiment; it was a regional power.
The Kin-Retrieval Protocol
In the quiet, low-lit map room of the Sovereign Tower, Ren stood before a holographic projection of the Elemental Nations. Beside him, Rimon leaned against a table, his eyes tracing the red lines that marked the secret extraction routes he had personally coded into the "Earth Memory."
"The first three families have crossed the border of the Land of Fire," Ren reported, his voice a calm, professional rasp. "Saki's brother and his wife. We used a localized space-time distortion to mask their trail near the Cloud's northern outpost. To the Raikage, they simply... vanished."
Rimon nodded, his expression unreadable. "And the cost?"
"A few thousand Sovereign Credits in bribes to the local merchants and a high-level exhaustion for our extraction team," Ren replied. He looked at Rimon. "But the morale in the Reform Center has spiked. Goro has requested a permanent residence permit. He wants to build the foundation for his daughter's future school himself."
This was the final piece of the puzzle. By proving that the Sovereign could reach back into the Great Nations to pull out the loved ones of its residents, Rimon had turned "prisoners" into the most loyal citizens of the state. They weren't staying because they were forced; they were staying because Uzushio was the only place that protected their families.
The Culture of the Whirlpool
On the surface, Month Eight was a time of unprecedented peace. The Academy was in full swing.
In the training yards, Kushina was a whirlwind of red hair and high-velocity seals, leading a group of younger students in a "vibration tag" game that left the stone floor humming. Nearby, Young Mito sat with a group of refugee children, teaching them the basic calligraphy of the Uzumaki—not as weapons, but as a way to "speak" to the world.
The Straw Hat influence had settled into a comfortable, daily joy. The local bakery sold "Gomu-Gomu Buns" (purple-glazed and extra chewy), and the children played a game called "Grand Line" in the fountains of the Central Plaza. The freedom that Luffy's crew had brought was no longer a memory; it was the village's default setting.
Hyuga and Kana had finally organized the first "Grand Union Festival." Under the mid-summer moon, thirty couples—mixes of Stone, Rain, Cloud, and Uzumaki—had stood before the Sovereign Seal and pledged their lives to each other.
The village wasn't just a military fortress. It was a home.
The Preparation of the Estate
As the eighth month drew to a close, Rimon spent his nights in the Western Plateau, specifically in a secluded valley filled with ancient, gnarled white-bark trees.
Using his [SSS] Earth and Life affinities, he had crafted an estate that felt like it had existed for centuries. It was a place of silence and shadow, designed with the aesthetic of the Warring States period. Deep, obsidian-lined meditation rooms, a private hot spring that bubbled with medicinal chakra, and a library stocked with the history of every clan in the world.
"He's coming soon," Rimon whispered to the trees.
He had felt the shifting of the world's "resonance." The Ghost of the Uchiha was stirring in his cave, his pride finally eroded by the isolation and the growing light of the Whirlpool that he could sense from across the sea.
Came back to current timeline.
Rimon is thinking about his next plan for uzushio. Next he want to target his cousin clan Senju and also Uchiha and Hyuga too. First of all he need to meet with Mito Uzumaki the 9 tail jinjuriki.