After finishing all the bentos, Ryoko patted his still-flat stomach and began to stroll around the campus.
To him, this was a sense of ritual after finishing dinner.
A hundred steps after a meal will keep you living until ninety-nine.
Of course, there was actually another reason driving him to leave the classroom.
He faintly felt a vague sense of being watched, falling on him from time to time like a persistent fly, making him quite irritable.
At first, he wasn't quite sure, but the feeling appeared repeatedly, and the direction seemed to come from a high place, allowing him to immediately lock onto a suspect.
In Konoha Village, who else could have such a fetish and ability to enjoy voyeurism through a crystal ball, other than that Professor of Ninjutsu, the Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi?
"This old geezer, why is he always peeping at me for no reason?" Ryoko muttered in his heart, feeling very displeased.
Although he didn't know the specific reason, it definitely had something to do with his recent performance.
Unfortunately, he was still young, and his strength hadn't reached the level where he could ignore such surveillance, so he could only temporarily endure this frustration.
Once he grew up, he would definitely give this guy who peeps at everyone a harsh lesson.
To shake off this feeling and also to look for new business, he simply pretended to wander around, observing each classroom door one by one.
His gaze swept over every corner like a searchlight, hoping to discover injustices like school bullying again, so he could have the chance to stand up for justice once more.
Regrettably, such things didn't happen every day; he completed a circuit of inspection with no harvest.
"Sigh, the world is declining. Can't I even find a single guy who needs to be sanctioned by the Iron Fist of Justice?"
Ryoko returned to his class resentfully and plopped down in his seat, his face written with the loneliness of a hero with no place to display his skills.
Inside the Hokage Office, Hiruzen Sarutobi saw this entire series of Ryoko's actions through the crystal ball.
He leaned over the desk, exhaled a smoke ring, and a look of being caught between laughter and tears appeared on his face.
"This kid... really is a little rascal." He shook his head, having completely understood Ryoko's routine. "What 'punishing evil and promoting good'? He's clearly just using it as an excuse to find himself Long-term Meal Tickets."
In the beginning, he was actually startled when he saw so many children giving Ryoko lunch boxes.
He thought the boy was misbehaving in school, maliciously extorting his classmates' bentos to eat.
After observing for most of the day, he found that while Ryoko's behavior was eccentric, he wasn't a truly evil person.
Although most of the people who gave him lunch boxes were unwilling, they had all done something wrong and were being punished by him.
Small punishments for small offenses, merely fining them a week's worth of bentos, wasn't considered too excessive.
And Akimichi Ryoko's purpose for doing all this was very simple: it was all for food.
Approaching Kushina Uzumaki also seemed more like a coincidental transaction rather than a deliberate approach with political motives.
Thinking of this, Hiruzen Sarutobi's tense nerves relaxed a great deal.
As the designated next Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, Kushina Uzumaki was an important strategic deterrent for the Village, and her status was extremely sensitive.
He had always been most worried about the major Ninja Clans reaching out to her, attempting to influence or even control the Jinchuriki, thereby breaking the delicate balance of power within the Village.
Looking at it now, Akimichi Ryoko's behavior seemed more like personal mischief, with no instructions from the Akimichi Clan behind it.
This allowed his hanging heart to settle slightly.
"It seems I was a bit overly sensitive."
He murmured to himself, moving his gaze away from the crystal ball and turning it back to the pile of documents on the desk.
As long as he didn't touch the high-voltage line of the Jinchuriki, no matter how much a gluttonous child from the Akimichi Clan acted up, it was within his controllable range.
However, very soon, he would no longer think that way.
...
"Do you submit? Hmm? Are you still going to bully your classmates?"
On the way home from school, Ryoko's highly recognizable, sturdy figure was stationed at the mouth of an alley.
He was clutching the collar of a slightly older boy with one hand, while his other hand, balled into a fist the size of a sandbag, waved in front of the other's eyes, his tone filled with threat.
The boy he had restrained was grimacing in pain, yet he stiffened his neck and shouted with false bravado, "Pah! I don't submit! Kill me if you have the guts!"
"I'm telling you, I'm from the Sarutobi Clan! If you dare touch me, my family won't let you off!"
As he shouted, several other children who had also been knocked to the ground by Ryoko, their faces bruised and swollen, seemed to find a backer and began to clamor one after another.
"I... I'm from the Aburame Clan! You actually dare to hit us? The clan won't let you off!"
"And me, from the Kurama Clan! If you offend us, don't expect to have a good life in Konoha!"
"I'm from the Inuzuka Clan! Let us go quickly!"
...
They all blurted out their family identities, attempting to intimidate and scare off this fellow who had come from out of nowhere.
Hearing their words, Ryoko didn't react much, but a thin boy standing to the side couldn't help but shudder.
He wore tattered clothes and had injuries on his body; he was precisely the one who had been beaten by the children in front of him.
These children were a grade higher than Ryoko. Relying on their Ninja Clan backgrounds and having learned some Chakra extraction and basic Ninjutsu, they often teamed up to bully students from civilian backgrounds.
The civilian students, hindered by the prestige of their families, didn't dare to resist, which instead led to even more severe bullying.
But today, everything had changed.
Ryoko, passing by on his way home from school, happened to run right into it.
Regarding such a god-given opportunity to uphold justice, he naturally took it upon himself to strike out with heavy fists.
Despite the opponents being older, more numerous, and knowing a bit of amateur Ninjutsu, they were like children playing in the face of Ryoko's body—nourished by massive amounts of food, skin as tough as copper and bones as hard as iron, and possessing immense strength.
With just a few 'bang-bang' punches, these so-called upperclassmen were all beaten to the ground, easily stepped upon by him like a human pyramid.
Listening to them bring up their family names to scare him, Ryoko not only wasn't afraid but instead showed an even more disdainful expression on his chubby face.
He gave a cold snort and reprimanded them in a loud voice:
"Hmph! Sarutobi Clan? Aburame Clan? Kurama Clan? Inuzuka Clan? Are you that amazing?"
"Just because you're from a Ninja Clan, you can bully your classmates at will? You can be lawless?"
"Believe it or not, I'll go to the entrance of the Hokage Building right now, beating drums and gongs, and let the Third Hokage-sama judge whether it's right for his own Ninja Clan's children to bully classmates!"
He paused, leaned down, and lightly tapped the head of the Sarutobi kid at the bottom with his fist, saying word by word:
"Also, don't always think about using your family name to pressure people. I, Akimichi Ryoko, act upright and sit straight; that's what I fear the least."
"I am an envoy of justice specifically dedicated to cracking down on your kind of evil behavior. If I see someone bullying the weak, I will intervene. I'll beat you every time I see it!"
Sarutobi Oishi gnashed his teeth in anger upon hearing this.
He never imagined that his Ninja Clan's name, which usually worked every time, wouldn't work on this little fatty today.
Could it be that the opponent didn't know that the Third Hokage of Konoha Village was precisely from his Sarutobi Clan?
...Ãdvåñçé çhàptêr àvàilàble óñ pàtreøn (Gk31)