Chapter 243: Back to the Front
"This is the Angkor Fortress from the Hidden Sky Village! We've made a fortune!"
Kakuzu was filled with emotion upon landing; his emerald eyes shone with a golden light. Even if it were sold for scrap, the fortress would be worth hundreds of millions.
Sasuke, quite naive, told him: "Kakuzu, it's valuable, but you can't cash it in. So what?"
"How can you talk like that?" Kakuzu rolled his eyes. "From now on, I'll live here. Sleeping on this shiny steel slab is like lying on a pile of money."
Looking at the already somewhat nervous Kakuzu, Sasuke couldn't help but roll his eyes. Kakuzu used to be quite cool-headed, but since he became chief financial officer, his personality had become more and more erratic.
Leaving Kakuzu lying on the slab, Sasuke led his men to the dungeons to take care of their custody. These men were savage ninjas or defectors, recruited by Kakuzu. Their strength and loyalty seemed low, but with seals on them and Umibozu guarding the area, they were not a problem.
"Yatai, from now on you will be in charge of dungeon matters. I'll come to extract standard jonin-level chakra every day. You'll organize it as you see fit."
"Yes, sir," Yatai said respectfully.
Since the meteorite couldn't provide energy for the mecha puppets, he had to find another solution. The fortress's prisoners became excellent chakra collectors. He even found some particularly ferocious ninjas and sealed some of the Five-Tails' chakra into their bodies, hoping to train them to become pseudo-Jinchuriki.
"Sizzle, sizzle!" Samehada, after devouring a Star ninja's chakra, exhaled a stream of bubbles, as if consuming something spicy. The sword preferred this chakra because it was beneficial for its growth. In particular, the radiant energy that the Star ninjas avoided stimulated it.
After absorbing the star chakra, Samehada transferred it to its energy storage system to charge its mecha puppets. The daily chakra requirement of a jonin was not enough to rely solely on these captives. Fortunately, they were about to depart for the Land of Grass front, where there were many prisoners.
After informing Kakuzu, Sasuke returned to Konoha. Just after dinner, Hiruzen's order arrived: he was to lead a group of freshly graduated youths to support the front the next morning.
The next morning, he was awakened by Duy. Shun also arrived, bringing with him three members of the Uchiha clan, claiming they had been assigned to him by the Hokage.
"Hello, little beauty, we meet again."
"Pervert, don't try anything or I'll make you pay," Mikoto said, raising her fist.
In addition to the Uchiha ninjas, the Ino-Shika-Cho clans also unexpectedly recruited ninjas, and they were the new generation: Shikaku, Inoichi, and Choza. This was something Shikaku had already discussed with him, a form of political co-optation.
Besides them, the other major ninja clans used their connections to attract a significant number of ninjas to the unit. Unlike the past, the unit, once renowned for its impressive achievements and extremely low casualty rate, now required connections to join. If Sasuke hadn't always assigned a fixed quota of civilian ninjas, the unit would have long ago been overrun by these clans.
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