Chapter 105: Last Will
Sakumo maintained a rigid, ninety-degree bow. His posture was a masterclass in stubbornness, frozen in place like a stone statue planted right in the middle of the room. He clearly had no intention of straightening his spine until he got the answer he wanted.
Stelle leaned back, crossing her arms. Her index finger tapped a slow, rhythmic beat against her bicep.
Letting Hiruzen and his little gang of conspirators relentlessly pester her for that specific technique was becoming a massive headache. If she kept stalling, those shameless old men might actually orchestrate a four-on-one ambush. She could already picture it: jumping her when she was distracted, pinning her down, and having Kagami flash his Sharingan to forcefully rummage through her memories.
Sure, her mind was completely immune to genjutsu, and an ambush from them was laughable, but who enjoyed walking around with a target painted on their back? It was just a simple life-for-a-life resurrection technique. What was the big deal? She had cheat-like abilities; they were just fragile mortals.
"Do you really want it that badly?" she asked, her brow furrowing in irritation.
"Please, Hokage-sama," Sakumo replied, his voice muffled but resolute.
"Sakumo, you're making this incredibly difficult for me. Are you actively trying to strong-arm the Fourth Hokage you're sworn to protect?" Stelle spread her hands in an exaggerated display of helplessness.
Behind his curtain of silver hair, Sakumo's eyes shifted. Hiruzen's grand deception tactic had completely crashed and burned. What now?
He tilted his head just a fraction, catching movement from the corner of his eye. From behind a distant boulder, a weathered hand quietly slipped into view, flashing a rapid series of tactical gestures. Plan A failed. Initiate Plan B.
Right. There was still one final, desperate option: begging.
Sakumo straightened his posture, giving his head a light tap as if to jump-start his brain. In his youth, the White Fang was a notoriously straightforward man—a blade that only knew how to cut in a straight line. Hiruzen had explicitly ordered him to beg if the lies fell through, so he prepared to do exactly that.
There was just one glaring issue. The esteemed advisor had neglected to explain how to beg. A proud swordsman lived on his feet; there was no philosophy that romanticized dying on one's knees. The Anbu training manuals certainly didn't have a chapter dedicated to groveling.
Sakumo's tactical mind raced, frantically searching his memories for a viable reference. A sudden image flashed in his mind: a married couple within the Anbu ranks. He recalled a specific incident where the husband had blown through his monthly allowance and had to beg his wife for pocket money. Yes. That was the stance.
It was deeply, deeply humiliating. But if this sacrifice was for the sake of the Hokage's safety, there was no room for shame. He would stake his entire dignity as a swordsman on this single maneuver. He was walking out of here with that technique today.
And so, Sakumo executed the maneuver.
The Anbu husband had dropped down and hugged his wife's legs while sobbing. Since Stelle was currently seated in a rather awkward position, her legs were out of reach. Her arm, however, was perfectly exposed.
Closing the distance with terrifying speed, Sakumo shuffled forward two steps on his knees. He lunged, wrapping both hands tightly around Stelle's arm, and gave it two pathetic, swaying tugs. He must have doused his eyes with ninja-grade irritants beforehand, because the legendary shinobi—a man who wouldn't even blink if a kunai was driven through his thigh—was currently leaking massive, comical tears.
"Please, Hokage-sama," Sakumo choked out, his voice trembling with artificial grief. "I truly need that technique. I beg of you, please grant my wish!"
Stelle froze.
Every single hair on her body stood on end. A violent shudder ripped through her spine. Sakumo Hatake, the terror of the battlefield, was actually clinging to her bicep and weeping like a toddler! Good heavens, what kind of psychological torture had Hiruzen and the others subjected him to? They had completely broken the mind of a perfectly functional Anbu Captain!
"Stop! Stop crying, just stop!" Stelle yanked her arm back, thoroughly creeped out. "Come with me to the office. I'll write it down for you on a scroll."
Since you old bastards brought this upon yourselves, I won't hold back. Don't blame me for making your lives miserable.
Stelle shot to her feet. She glared at a very specific, seemingly empty rock in the distance, jabbing her finger at it twice in a fierce warning. Without another word, she channeled her chakra. A sharp swish of displaced air echoed as she used the Body Flicker technique, diving off the edge of the Hokage Monument like a massive bird of prey.
Plan B was a resounding success. Sakumo's tear-streaked eyes gleamed with genuine surprise. He immediately pushed off the ground, blurring into motion to follow his Hokage's trajectory. He blinked rapidly as the wind hit his face; he had definitely applied way too much medicinal irritant. The tears simply refused to stop flowing, stinging his corneas mercilessly.
Back on the monument, behind the exact rock Stelle had pointed at, Hiruzen let out a massive sigh of relief. He peeked over the stone edge, a triumphant grin splitting his wrinkled face, and extended his hand toward Danzo.
"It worked!" Hiruzen whispered fiercely. "She's actually going to give the technique to Sakumo. Thank the heavens. Now we don't have to lose sleep over Konoha's Hokage having a dangerously short lifespan."
Danzo met his hand with a crisp, perfectly synchronized high-five.
"I never doubted Sakumo for a second," Danzo muttered, adjusting his robes. "The man is undeniably handsome. I knew Stelle would eventually cave if we threw a pretty enough face at her."
"Exactly," Hiruzen chuckled, stroking his goatee. "Do you remember back when we graduated? She was dead set on teaming up with us and leaving the village to wander. But then the Second Hokage just gave her that slight smirk, asked her to 'help with some documents,' and she was so utterly enchanted by his looks that she lost all sense of direction. She agreed before her brain could even process the trap."
Retreating to a secure location to monitor the situation, the two seasoned veterans continued their relentless gossiping. They sighed repeatedly, sounding less like fearsome shinobi and more like a pair of worried, overbearing fathers.
"Only Stelle genuinely believes that the men in Konoha treat her like one of the boys," Hiruzen lamented, shaking his head. "In reality, if you lined up all her secret admirers, the queue would stretch from the Hokage Building all the way down to District One. I seriously think her visual prowess is defective when it comes to romance."
Danzo scoffed in agreement. "It is a tragic waste. Every major ninja clan in the village handpicked their most handsome, talented heirs, practically begging to send them over as her personal assistants. It was a blatant attempt to cultivate feelings and secure a political marriage! Yet, she remained completely oblivious to their intentions. She even had the audacity to complain about the courtship gifts they sent."
"Precisely!" Hiruzen threw his hands up. "She has those naturally expressive eyes that look deeply affectionate even when she's staring at a stray dog! She walks around accidentally electrifying people's hearts left and right. Who knows how many innocent young men have fallen into her unintentional traps?"
"A dense woman is a terrifying force of nature," Danzo sighed, a rare trace of exhaustion in his cold voice. "When my nephew's gift was casually rejected, the boy convinced himself his heart was shattered. He spends every day drowning his fabricated sorrows in cheap alcohol. The idiot was never even in love to begin with! What heartbreak? He even had the nerve to drunkenly complain that I 'didn't understand the complexities of young love.'"
"What did you do?" Hiruzen asked, amused.
"I beat him until he required hospitalization on the spot," Danzo replied flatly.
Meanwhile, inside the Hokage Office, Stelle yanked open her desk drawer and retrieved a very specific scroll. It stood out from the standard-issue parchment, boasting heavy, ornate golden edges. The moment she unfurled it across her desk, dense chakra surged along the golden trim. complex, visible curse marks shimmered to life across the paper's surface, glowing with an ominous light.
Stelle dipped her brush in ink and began drafting her 'Last Will.''To Hiruzen, Kagami, Danzo, and Sakumo. To all my beloved Konoha compatriots, the trees and plants of the village, and even the stray dogs roaming the streets—hello everyone.''By the time you manage to read this Last Will, I am entirely confident that I will already be dead...'
Her brush danced across the parchment, writing out a massive, rambling passage in one smooth, uninterrupted breath. Once the ink dried, Stelle silently read over her masterpiece. A wicked, satisfied smirk tugged at the corners of her mouth.
She rolled the scroll shut and immediately began weaving hand signs, layering seal after complex seal over the parchment.
After a dizzying flurry of chakra manipulation, the blinding curse marks faded. The scroll transformed back into a plain, unadorned piece of standard stationery. Even the extravagant golden edges were perfectly concealed beneath the sealing matrix.
She held the scroll out to Sakumo, who had been waiting patiently by the door. "It's done."
"Thank you, Hokage-sama!" Sakumo snapped to attention, standing ramrod straight as he accepted the scroll with both hands, treating it like a holy relic.
But before the silver-haired Anbu could even breathe a sigh of relief, Stelle casually dropped the hammer.
"By the way, just to practice my sealing techniques, I applied a total of ninety-nine overlapping seals to that scroll. Adding the final lock I just placed, that makes an even one hundred. As long as you can break through all of those seals, you'll get the secret technique."
Sakumo's eyes bulged, nearly popping out of his skull.
No. As the Hokage of this village, how can you possibly be this shameless?!
She had explicitly promised to give him the technique! With one hundred complex seals personally layered by her monstrous chakra, even if the entire Uzumaki Clan pooled their resources and worked around the clock, it would take them an eternity to unravel the matrix! She wasn't even an Uzumaki! Why in the world was her fuinjutsu so absurdly overpowered?!
Stelle, possessing a layer of thick skin that could rival a fortress wall, completely ignored his shocked, thoroughly betrayed stare. She even offered him a bright, entirely fake smile.
"Oh, and a friendly reminder! These seals are bound by my unique chakra signature. They share a direct connection to my life force, quite similar to the mechanics of the Nine-Tails' seal." She leaned forward, her eyes glinting with pure malice. "Of course, if I happen to die one day, all one hundred seals will automatically dissolve."
Sakumo stood frozen, his jaw completely slack.
Out in the hallway, Hiruzen, Danzo, and Kagami—who had been shamelessly eavesdropping on the entire exchange—suffered a collective stroke.
The good news: They had successfully acquired the life-saving technique.
The bad news: They might as well have gotten a blank piece of paper.
Later that afternoon, after rushing the scroll to the elite Sealing Squad and receiving the utterly hopeless diagnostic report, the furious screams and colorful curses of Hiruzen Sarutobi and his comrades echoed throughout the entire Hokage Building.
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