Not long after every side pulled back its troops, the news of the Eight-Tails' rampage in the Hidden Cloud camp spread throughout the ninja world through the intelligence networks of the major villages.
One rumor in particular spread especially fast.
World War II had only just ended, and World War III had nearly ignited again. In the end, however, both the Third Raikage and the Third Hokage chose peace and withdrew their forces. Otherwise, another great war would already have begun.
That version of events had, of course, been jointly polished by Konoha and Kumogakure.
At the Ninja Academy, Chiba Shun told the students that Lord Raikage had led the village to victory after victory. The small-unit battles fought by teams like his own were all woven into that grand narrative. And in the end, it was also true that the Third Raikage had forced Konoha to sign an unequal treaty.
This was the first unequal treaty since the founding of the Hidden Cloud Village that benefited Kumogakure while costing Konoha dearly.
The Hidden Cloud had obtained a huge number of new ninjutsu. The village was on the rise, while Konoha was already beginning to decline. The Will of Lightning was right, and Raikage-sama's leadership had been proven right as well.
Then Chiba Shun went into detail about his own battle with the Leaf ninja.
"We ran into an elite squad led by a genius of the Hyuga clan," he declared, pacing before the students with his hands clasped behind his back. "But neither Lord Raikage's son, Yotsuki A, nor I, retreated a single step. The four of us smashed straight through the enemy's eight-man line."
"In the end, only that Hyuga managed to escape. The other seven all died by our hands!"
He grinned and tapped his chest. "Your teacher has killed two more Konoha ninja."
"Grow quickly, inheritors of the Will of Lightning. The village needs you."
"The only reason Konoha is so strong is because it has more people. If our village had enough ninja, Raikage-sama could lead us directly into the Land of Fire, take Konoha itself, and rescue all those civilians from the Leaf's evil rule."
The students' eyes burned after hearing that. They were already full of admiration for the frontline troops, and now they longed even more fiercely to graduate and throw themselves into the same glorious struggle.
When Chiba Shun finished his speech, he glanced toward Aoki Yuuichi's office as a matter of habit.
Whenever he conducted a large-scale lesson on the Will of Lightning, Aoki-senpai would usually come out at some point to check on him. This time, though, the office door remained shut from beginning to end.
Chiba Shun shook his head and sighed inwardly before heading back toward his residence.
A lot had happened since he had been drafted to the front by the Third Raikage. Even though he had never truly joined a full-scale war, the things he had seen and experienced were enough that he needed time to sort through them.
The first thing on his mind was still Earth Release.
He had already mastered the basics of the A-rank Earth Release technique, Mountain Earth Technique, but that was all it was—the basics. It still wasn't reliable enough for real combat. He needed more practice. More importantly, he needed to reduce the number of hand seals.
The good news was that after successfully using Mountain Earth Technique in battle, his chakra level had improved again. The change was qualitative, not merely quantitative, and his control over chakra had become noticeably sharper.
He stood alone in the training ground behind his quarters and formed hand seals.
"Earth Release: Earth Flow Wall."
A thick slab of earth rose from the ground.
Again.
"Earth Release: Earth Flow Wall."
And again.
"Earth Release: Earth Flow Wall."
Using his most familiar technique as a benchmark, Chiba Shun quickly realized just how much his control had improved. His seal speed had gone from four per second to four and a half. It sounded like a small increase, but to a ninja, that half-seal difference was enormous.
It was the most direct proof that his chakra level had risen.
Not only that, but his understanding of Earth Release itself had deepened. Chakra really did sharpen a ninja's ability to learn.
As long as he kept polishing Earth Flow Wall, Earth Stealth, and Headhunter Jutsu, the number of hand seals required for each technique would continue to fall.
But Chiba Shun still wasn't satisfied.
Before he even began training in earnest, he went straight to the mission office and exchanged for every Earth Release ninjutsu Konoha had been forced to hand over under the alliance terms.
As a transmigrator, he knew something many others didn't.
If you wanted to simplify hand seals, the best foundation wasn't blind repetition. It was breadth of knowledge.
Where did knowledge of ninjutsu come from?
From learning more ninjutsu.
A lot more.
C-rank: Earth Release — Earth Clone.
C-rank: Earth Release — Earth Substitute.
C-rank: Earth Release — Earth Spear.
And more.
B-rank: Earth Release — Earth Wave.
B-rank: Earth Release — Petrification.
B-rank: Earth Release — Rock Fist.
The cost of exchanging for ninjutsu at the mission office was outrageous.
A C-rank technique averaged thirty thousand ryo. A B-rank technique averaged a hundred thousand. Chiba Shun stood there grinding his teeth and cursing the greed of the village in his heart as he exchanged for three B-rank Earth Release techniques and eleven C-rank techniques in one breath.
Six hundred and thirty thousand ryo vanished just like that.
Even the female chunin at the mission office stared at him in surprise.
She had seen plenty of people exchange for ninjutsu over the years, but never anyone like this. Most ninjas learned one technique, mastered it, then came back later for another. They chose techniques according to their fighting style. Nobody sane would buy out nearly an entire attribute line all at once.
Still, since Chiba Shun had the money and the mission record to qualify, she didn't stop him.
Exchanging for ninjutsu wasn't simply a matter of cash, after all. A ninja also needed the proper rank and enough completed missions. Put more elegantly, only those who had made enough contribution to the village were allowed access to its techniques.
Chiba Shun might have risen from chunin to jonin in a short period of time, but his mission record was absurd.
Three S-rank missions, all completed independently.
Under those circumstances, purchasing a handful of B-rank and C-rank ninjutsu posed no issue at all.
The problem was the money.
Even after blowing through the three hundred thousand ryo he had saved, it still wasn't enough. In the end, he had no choice but to cash in the S-rank mission he had earned for helping suppress the Eight-Tails.
That mission was also valued at the lowest bracket—one million ryo.
As for the S-rank mission from the White Fang affair, he had already exchanged that for the privilege to redeem an A-rank ninjutsu. He was still holding onto that chance. His plan was to master Earth Release first, then test whether he had any talent for genjutsu.
Once he added the Earth Release techniques from the mission office to the ones he had received from Danzo, Chiba Shun finally felt that his ninjutsu foundation had stopped looking embarrassingly thin.
Of the two A-rank Earth Release techniques he had extorted from Danzo, one was Mountain Earth Technique, which he had already begun to master.
The other was Swamp of the Underworld.
He still hadn't touched that one.
His days became brutally regular after that.
Every day, he trained Earth Release until his chakra ran dry and his head pounded. Then, when his body needed a break, he went back to the academy to preach the Will of Lightning, reshape a few young minds, and let that strange mix of work and ideology settle his own thoughts.
Life, once it fell into rhythm, passed frighteningly fast.
In the blink of an eye, three months were gone.
By then, Chiba Shun had mastered every Earth Release technique he possessed except for Swamp of the Underworld.
Most of them, however, were still only at the entry level. He could use them, but not elegantly. The number of hand seals remained high on many of them.
Only the techniques he thought would be genuinely practical in battle had been refined.
Earth Flow Wall, for example, had finally been reduced from five seals to three.
That was almost entirely thanks to the dozens of Earth Release techniques he had stuffed into his head. When it came to simplifying hand seals, having a broad theoretical base was unbelievably useful.
Earth Stealth had gone from twenty-five seals down to eleven. Chiba Shun considered that one extremely useful, so he had devoted a great deal of time to it.
Headhunter Jutsu, on the other hand, had not been simplified much. Chiba Shun wasn't in a hurry there. That technique could be prepared underground at a deliberate pace. In most practical situations, it didn't need to be cast quickly, so he had better uses for his time.
Then there was the most important one of all.
Mountain Earth Technique.
That was his strongest offensive option. After three months of work, he had reduced it from thirty-nine seals to twenty-seven. It was progress, but it still left him dissatisfied.
Twenty-seven was not combat-ready.
At that many seals, he would still need either time to prepare in advance or a teammate to cover him while he cast it. In a true one-on-one fight, it was still too slow to be trusted.
Unfortunately, Danzo's version of the technique had included no guidance whatsoever on how to simplify the seals.
Just as Chiba Shun was sitting in the yard, frowning over how to push Mountain Earth Technique even further, Yotsuki A came to find him.
The moment he saw Chiba Shun, he got straight to the point.
"Shun. Two months ago, that Hyuga jonin we let go really did go to the Land of the Moon."
For a second, Chiba Shun just stared at him blankly.
Then it came back to him all at once.
The Hyuga branch-family ninja. The lie. The bait. The sudden impulse to toss a hook into the dark and see whether a fish would bite.
He sat up immediately. "He agreed? That fast? The war in Konoha only ended two months ago."
Then his eyes widened. "Wait. Don't tell me someone's already pregnant."
That was what truly surprised him.
Kumogakure had ended its standoff with Konoha earlier than the other battlefronts, but Konoha itself had still needed to deal with the Sand and Mist fronts afterward. Chiba Shun had honestly thought that even if Hyuga Akira gave in, it would take at least a year or more before he acted.
He hadn't expected the man to make up his mind almost the moment the war ended.
It seemed Hyuga Akira had gone straight to the Land of the Moon the first chance he got.
Yotsuki A laughed. "A man named Hyuga Akira brought a genin team to Sunrise Town in the central part of the Land of the Moon. He stayed one night at the izakaya there without causing a disturbance."
"Three female ninja spent the night with him."
"The medical-nin confirmed it. One of them is pregnant."
Even though Kumogakure lagged badly behind Konoha in medical ninjutsu, checking for pregnancy was still trivial.
Chiba Shun inhaled slowly. "That was fast. Is he coming again?"
Yotsuki A nodded. "Yes. He left before he could know whether any of the women had conceived."
Chiba Shun thought for a moment, then said, "The next time he comes, tell him."
"Let the woman who's pregnant meet him in person."
"Then tell him clearly—if he doesn't want this matter exposed, he needs to start feeding the same temptation to the other branch-family members who hate the main house."
"Let them come to the Land of the Moon too."
He lifted a hand before Yotsuki A could respond. "But not too many at once. This can't be rushed. One at a time. Slowly. If word leaks too early, the whole thing collapses."
Yotsuki A's eyes brightened.
At that moment he could practically hear his father's voice in his head.
Shun really was the best at these twisted little schemes.
That was exactly why the Third Raikage had ordered him to pass the news to Chiba Shun immediately instead of handling it himself.
Chiba Shun caught the look on his face and frowned. "Ai-senpai, what's with that expression?"
Yotsuki A shook his head at once. "Nothing."
Then he paused, and added, "By the way, you don't need to call me 'senpai' anymore. You're a jonin now. Just call me Ai."