"Right now, the most important thing is still to defeat Konoha."
Rasa's voice was calm but heavy.
"For this past month, without that 'ghost of Konoha' meddling, our logistics have finally recovered enough. We can afford a large-scale battle again."
He tapped the map in front of him.
"And the sooner we fight it, the better. Konoha's medical system is already rebuilding. If Iwagakure hadn't declared war on them and tied up most of their attention, their field hospital would likely be fully restored by now."
Last time, Suna had slaughtered seventy to eighty percent of Konoha's precious medical-nin on this front.
But Konoha was still the First Great Ninja Village, birthplace of modern medical ninjutsu. Their reserve of healers was deep.
And the war had only just begun—far from the late-stage desperation of spent resources. Fresh medical-nin had already been dispatched to the front, working to re-establish the battlefield hospital.
"According to our intel, in at most one or two weeks, Konoha's field hospital will be fully operational again," Rasa continued. "We won't get another opportunity like the last one."
"So the best strategy is to force a decisive battle within a week—inflict as many casualties on Konoha's shinobi as possible."
He turned to Pakura.
"And now that you're here on the front line, Pakura, you are another major asset in our favor. With your power, our chances in this war rise again."
A Kage-level fighter was a fulcrum in any large-scale conflict.
Even if Pakura's "Kage tier" was closer to the entry level, her mere presence exerted tremendous deterrence.
"I understand," Pakura replied with a nod. "I'll coordinate with the main force."
Since she'd been called here personally, there was no way she wouldn't be thrown into the heart of the fighting.
"Good. All that remains is to find a way to push Konoha into a swift decisive engagement."
Directly storming Konoha's main camp would be too costly.
But with shinobi, provoking a large-scale clash was never difficult. You just had to gather enough forces and strike at the enemy's soft spots.
Konoha would not sit idly by while Suna marched on its territory.
The moment Suna made a clear move to advance in force, Konoha would have to respond.
—
"You did well, Feiyu-kun. Those two months where Suna couldn't stabilize their supply lines? That was all your doing."
Back in Konoha's camp, Orochimaru looked almost pleased.
"I've heard of Pakura of the Scorch Release. In terms of raw power, she's not much weaker than the Fourth Kazekage. You're still young—avoiding direct confrontation with her was the correct call."
Facing Uchiha Feiyu—who had returned without sending so much as a report—Orochimaru didn't reprimand him at all.
On the contrary, he praised him.
He didn't really have a choice.
Right now, Uchiha Feiyu was Konoha's top ace in this theater. Even if he cut corners during missions, Orochimaru wasn't about to nitpick.
Especially when Feiyu's "cut-corner missions" still produced results several times better than what an ordinary elite jōnin could manage.
With that kind of performance, Orochimaru would be insane to complain.
Feiyu's three teammates all quietly exhaled in relief.
Unlike Feiyu, their nerves weren't made of steel. On the way back, they'd been genuinely worried about being punished.
"Now that Pakura has joined the front," Feiyu said, getting straight to the point, "I'm guessing Suna will launch a decisive battle soon, right?"
He wanted intel—at least a broad sense of the coming situation.
"Thanks to your 'activities', Suna still isn't completely ready for a decisive battle," Orochimaru replied. "They're still somewhat short on supplies. But I estimate, at most another month, and they'll launch a full offensive."
"If they wait any longer and our new field hospital is fully functional, their chances of victory will drop sharply."
"One more month, huh…?"
Feiyu frowned slightly.
"Cutting it a bit close."
To be fair, his Gains over this period had been enormous.
Between slaughter and battlefield harvests, he'd amassed a staggering trove of souls—enough to push his ninjutsu to frightening heights in a short time.
The same jutsu in different hands could produce wildly different results.
A B-rank Fire Release in Uchiha Madara's hands, for example, could easily achieve ten times the effect of the same technique cast by an ordinary Chunin.
The difference wasn't just chakra volume—it included:
nature and shape transformation,
deep understanding of the jutsu's structure,
countless subtle optimizations,
and unique casting techniques honed over years.
Every shinobi, through years of trial and error, accumulated their own interpretive "refinements" on ninjutsu. Maybe each individual's insights were rough and limited—but once you stacked the experience of hundreds of shinobi together, that became the bedrock of Kage-level technique.
Right now, Feiyu held nearly five hundred souls.
Most belonged to shinobi he himself had killed; a portion had been gathered off the battlefield. Suna, Iwa, Konoha—every village was represented. All seven chakra nature attributes were present among them.
Included in that mass were twenty to thirty tokubetsu jōnin and full jōnin souls.
If he could fully digest all of their ninjutsu, his fundamentals would soar—he could walk the path of a generalist like Sarutobi Hiruzen, proficient in ninjutsu, taijutsu, and genjutsu across the board.
But even with a soul-harvesting system, fully assimilating that much accumulated skill wasn't something measured in days or weeks.
It was a process of years.
And this was still wartime.
No one was about to give him years.
Even so, a month was enough to take another solid step forward.
At present, with Hatake Sakumo overlaying his body, Feiyu's combat power was only a half-step shy of White Fang's prime.
Give him one more month of focused training, and he was confident he could fully reproduce the strength of the original White Fang—and then go beyond him in technique diversity thanks to Light-Weight Rock, Camouflage Concealment, and his deepening arsenal.
As for his own power, without Sakumo, he already stood among the stronger elite jōnin.
With another month, he might very well break through into quasi-Kage.
(At that level… even in the Great Ninja War, there won't be many who can truly threaten me.)
—
Back in his quarters, Feiyu lay down on his bed, closed his eyes—
—and opened them again in a world of pitch black.
By all rights, it should have been too dark to see anything.
But in that darkness, a heavy, pitch-black tome floated silently in midair, its edges sharp and clear, untouched by the surrounding void. If anything, the darkness only made it stand out more vividly.
Beneath the book sat a black altar.
Strands of ragged black mist wound around it, drifting and looping in confused spirals like a writhing ball of black thread.
Most people would have felt their skin crawl just looking at it. Anyone with a hint of trypophobia would have fainted.
Feiyu only needed a single glance.
"Three hundred and forty-two wisps of black mist…" he murmured. "So without noticing, I've killed that many shinobi, huh?"
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