Meanwhile, at the same time, Ryusei was also on his way toward the gathering grounds.
His house, tucked away in one of the quieter civilian neighborhoods, was much farther from the village shinobi administrative center than the Hyūga or Hatake compounds.
That meant he had to weave through streets that were already busy with supply runners and shinobi, also moving for the same reason.
He carried the same narrow-eyed, faintly smiling expression he always wore, the "gentle" mask the original Ryusei had left him with.
To the ordinary villagers watching from the sidelines, it looked like calm confidence, even optimism.
Some of the neighborhood aunties, women who had seen him grow up since his mother's death, paused their chores when they noticed him.
Their eyes lingered, filled with the worry only civilians could have for a boy marching off to war.
A few called after him softly, asking him to be careful, to come back alive.
Ryusei didn't slow. He answered each word with the same bright, reassuring tone, that same shallow smile. "Of course. Don't worry, I'll be fine."
The replies were automatic, polished.
On the outside, he was a boy heading to war with a brave face, making sure those who worried for him felt reassured.
On the inside, his mind was already elsewhere, measuring, preparing, calculating.
He passed them by, leaving behind the worried stares and hushed voices, and continued further toward the forest beyond the gates where Konoha's forces were assembling on those same training grounds he and the Might family often trained.
Ryusei knew the village's war preparations were already complete.
Outside the gates, in the forest training grounds, the structure was taking shape, basic three-man cells gathered into squads under their captains, then grouped further under company commanders.
Of course, Konoha wouldn't throw its entire force into one direction at once.
The deployments would come in waves, each group rotated and committed as needed.
And today, it was finally Team Okabe's turn to assemble there.
During the last month back in the village, Ryusei hadn't done anything extraordinary.
He simply continued his usual routines, while also making sure to recover fully from his previous injury.
By now, he realized it had been six months since the day he transmigrated into this world.
He could still clearly remember the strange comedy of returning from the Land of Grass.
Hiruzen had been forced to host a welcome-hero ceremony for him, showering him with public praise, while inside, Ryusei could practically imagine the man seething.
A few times, even that perfect sanctimonious mask had slipped in the middle of the event.
The memory still amused him.
He decided he wanted to give the Hokage more of those kinds of surprises in the future, little humiliations, stacked up one by one, before eventually dealing with him completely.
He had personally received a generous bonus, plenty of flowery words from Hiruzen, and, despite suppression attempts, a noticeable rise in reputation among the higher shinobi circles.
But there were obvious limits to how far the Hokage was willing to let it go.
For example, Ryusei was still not promoted to Jonin, even though his record, means, and combat strength would have justified it.
And that wasn't an accident. Unlike Chūnin, Jōnin was the real breakthrough rank, the line between the village's many and its few.
In practice, there were only a few hundred official Jōnin across the forces, maybe five hundred at most if one counted clan guardians and specialists in other departments.
The moment you reached that level, your status changed.
You became something close to a minor celebrity, with the right to sit in the Jōnin council.
That council had long since been muzzled and marginalized under Hiruzen's control, but still, it was the closest thing Konoha had to a syndicate of working elite shinobi.
More importantly, as a Jōnin, you gained much more freedom at the mission desk, could lead squads of your own, and build your merits, independently and more easily.
It was exactly the kind of status and independence Hiruzen would never hand to him lightly.
So the Hokage fell back on a neat excuse. Ryusei had "just" been promoted to chūnin, and skipping again so quickly would "not be fair." Convenient.
The same story repeated with techniques.
Around this time, Hiruzen had publicly announced a new policy: any shinobi who achieved great merit in the war would be rewarded with techniques from the Hokage's personal vault, the collection everyone knew existed.
It was propaganda meant to fuel morale, because money alone could not pay for blood anymore, not when this most dangerous new war had broken out only five years after the last.
But Ryusei had received nothing.
The policy, supposedly, had been enacted only days after his mission. Another convenient coincidence.
When it came to his strength, there had been no sudden breakthroughs, only steady progress across all disciplines.
He could now construct his own basic seals in fūinjutsu, functional, though still of no remarkable quality and higher grade.
As for using them in actual battle, as techniques, that remained too far off.
Such things were the domain of true geniuses or the Uzumaki clan, and Ryusei knew well it wouldn't come quickly.
For now, he judged himself at a lower–intermediate level.
Still, he didn't devote himself to fūinjutsu alone.
His focus was broader, aimed at jutsu-shiki as a whole, the theoretical structures and formulae underlying techniques.
Building that foundation mattered more than rushing to flashy results, because it would let him eventually connect his training across all arts into something far greater.
The training grounds outside the gates were already filled when Ryusei arrived. Rows of shinobi were gathered, maybe fifty in all.
Enough for a company, but not a division.
The sound of steel adjusting on armor and murmured voices carried in the crisp air, mixing with the weight of anticipation that always came before deployment.
As he walked closer, he felt eyes turn toward him.
Some watched with respect, others with veiled scrutiny, a few with scorn.
It didn't matter; the fact was undeniable.
His name had grown heavier since the last mission.
Even without promotion or reward, his reputation had taken root among the ranks.
He spotted them soon enough. Okabe, Renjiro, Kanae.
Okabe stood off to the side, shoulders thinner, his posture slightly bent.
Some fresh bandages showed beneath his uniform, a slight pallor clinging to his face.
Clearly, he still wasn't fully recovered to 100% since the last mission.
Renjiro's presence, once sharp and straightforward, now carried something else.
A darker edge. His aura felt heavier, disturbed, like his blade hand hesitated between two paths. Ryusei noticed it immediately; the difference was subtle, but real.
And Kanae… her presence struck him most.
When Ryusei had first entered this body, she had been cold, indifferent, almost mechanical in her distance.
Over time, her edges had shifted, wavered, complicated themselves.
But now, standing here, she was colder still.
Sharper than before, almost deliberately so.
As if she had locked every door inside herself and made sure no trace of warmth escaped.
Ryusei slowed for a moment, watching them.
Each of them had changed since the Land of Grass.
Changed in ways that weren't only physical.
Ryusei's gaze swept the grounds, cataloging quickly, efficiently.
Their company was a normal-sized one, with three squads under one banner.
Above them stood the squad captains, three in all.
Each radiated the weight of experience, the kind that only comes from years of killing.
Their posture, their chakra, even their stillness, all spoke of at least mid-jōnin, nothing less.
Ryusei knew these positions weren't handed out for strength alone, but for experience and tactical sense. That was why someone like Okabe remained only a small team leader.
He was competent enough in combat, but lacked the years of command or inteligence and that distinction marked higher officers.
More likely, he was kept in this role to stay close and keep watch over Ryusei himself, rather than because he was fit to lead larger formations.
And at the center, slightly apart, was the man leading them. His presence was different.
Ryusei's senses sharpened a bit.
'Not much worse than me…' he thought, eyes narrowing ever so slightly.
Okabe remained their direct team leader, still thin and bandaged.
In this chain, team leaders were mid-jōnin at best, high chūnin at worst.
The structure was clear in an instant. Three squads, each with a captain.
All three were bound under the single company commander looming at the top.
And beneath them, the dozens of shinobi here, genin, chūnin, even a few younger jōnin, all pieces to be moved where the war demanded.
The squads here weren't made up of just neat little three-man cells like in peacetime.
Each squad carried a varying number of shinobi, broken down into smaller teams that didn't necessarily follow the standard formation.
Some had four, some five, others clung to the familiar three.
Wartime demanded flexibility, not textbook order, and the composition reflected that.
Ryusei kept his expression neutral, his slit-eyed "gentle" face unchanged as always.
Inside, though, he noted every detail, memorizing the hierarchy, the likely power distribution, the way orders would flow.
In a war, survival wasn't only about your own strength.
It was about knowing exactly who you answered to, who might cover your back, and who could decide to burn you as kindling if the larger strategy required it.
And right now, every line Ryusei traced ended at that commander.
Ryusei stepped into formation at last, closing the distance between himself and the rest of Team Okabe.
Okabe glanced at him first. His voice was steady, but the faint strain bled through.
"You're here. Good. We'll move soon."
Renjiro's eyes lingered longer than usual, carrying a restless edge.
"Didn't think you'd take your time," he muttered, half as a jab, half to cover his own unease.
Ryusei tilted his head slightly, unreadable. "I'm here, aren't I?"
Kanae didn't add anything.
She looked at Ryusei once, her expression colder than when they'd first met, then shifted her gaze away as if dismissing him.
A silence followed, the three of them falling into place.
They had greeted each other, yet none of it felt warm.
Ryusei caught the harsher and more cold-blooded edge in Kanae's behavior toward him than before.
However, he didn't comment, his own expression staying as gentle and unreadable as ever, but he understood instantly.
In the span of a single heartbeat, his senses told him everything.
After the last mission, they must have been summoned, questioned, and pressed hard by Anbu.
His teammates hadn't seen his strength for what it was until it was too late, and now the higher-ups would have cornered them, pried into their motives, demanded their loyalty.
With the war beginning, and with him about to leave the safety of the village's sensory barrier for good, it only made sense that his enemies wanted to secure the pawns placed around him as firmly as possible.
He didn't feel 'hurt', nor did he consider it 'betrayal'.
This was just human nature.
Like any animal, people looked after themselves first; shinobi only wrapped it in layers of discipline, duty, and masks.
Renjiro, for all his rivalry, was never more than a brief, half-friend.
Kanae, for all their 'closeness', had never acknowledged anything between them.
Hers was a nature more like his own: pragmatic, rational, and more intelligent, the kind of temperament that could suppress softer emotions when survival demanded it.
Add to that her reasons, her clan's chains, and the pressure of her cursed seal, and her choice was obvious.
Ryusei held nothing against her.
He was no fool; he had never built his plans solely on feelings.
He had already accounted for the moment they might turn, and the war would only give him opportunities to prepare his countermeasures.
When the time came, he would "open their eyes" himself.
And soon the entire company began to march, boots thudding against the earth as they moved northeast through the forest paths.
Their destination was still unspoken, known only to the squad captains and the company commander at the head, but every shinobi here understood the rhythm of war.
They would be stationed somewhere along the frontier, either on their own or side by side with other companies, spread thin to cover the Land of Fire's long borders.
Whispers moved through the lines in hushed tones.
Maybe this time, they would even see the commander of the entire northern front himself, the one everyone in the village both feared and respected.
Lord Orochimaru. The legendary Sannin.
The name carried a certain weight, almost a chill, as if even the trees listened when spoken.
To many of the younger shinobi, he was more myth than man, an untouchable figure who had risen beyond the limits of ordinary bloodline, standing alongside Tsunade and Jiraiya as one of the village's living weapons.
To the veterans, however, there was a different edge in their eyes at the thought of serving under him, as though they knew that following Orochimaru meant being dragged into the kind of battles where survival was only a coin toss.
Ryusei kept pace silently with his team, his expression unchanged, but his mind was already moving.
Orochimaru.
If he really took the lead of this front, then sooner or later, Ryusei would be crossing paths with him.
He would have to be careful, very careful, until the time came to twist even someone like Orochimaru's gaze to his own advantage.