The next stretch of looting turned up five shuriken, two kunai, a map, and a compass.
"It's encrypted." Kiyohara narrowed his eyes at the symbols and coded markings covering the map. Learning how to read this kind of thing was one of the basic skills every ninja was supposed to have. If intelligence were written plainly, the enemy could seize it and use it against you in an instant.
"Encrypted?" Minato Namikaze rubbed his chin, thoughtful for a moment. Then he looked over at Kurenai. "Red, you're our genjutsu specialist. See if you can pry the information out of him."
Unfortunately, there were no Yamanaka clan members with them. The Yamanaka secret arts were perfect for extracting intelligence, but genjutsu could serve the same purpose in a pinch. Among the group, only Kurenai Yuhi specialized in illusions, and that made her the best choice for interrogation.
"All right. I'll try." Kurenai nodded and stepped forward. Her fingers flashed through a sequence of hand seals before she cast a genjutsu on the Iwa shinobi Kakashi had left alive.
As the illusion sank deeper, fragments of information spilled out of the captive. Their squad was only one of many small teams positioned in the shadows around Kannabi Bridge. Iwagakure had established multiple hidden outposts there, each one able to watch over the others and expand the range of their vigilance. If anything happened to the bridge, reinforcements would rush in immediately.
Kiyohara listened and thought, So that's why, in the original story, Kakashi had only just finished transplanting his Sharingan when the Iwa forces came down on him. Kakashi had collapsed from chakra exhaustion, and Minato had been the one to turn the tide and save both him and Rin.
The reason Minato had arrived in time was simple. He had given Kakashi one of his specially made kunai beforehand. Once the Flying Thunder God mark was in place, Minato could reach him instantly.
Which meant something else too: Minato had known where Kakashi and the others were the whole time.
"By the way, today is Kakashi's first mission after officially becoming a jonin. This is for you, as a gift."
As he spoke, Minato slipped the bag from his shoulder and drew out a tri-pronged kunai engraved with the words 'Sword of Shinobi Love and Endurance.' Its shape was distinctive, almost ceremonial, but there was nothing decorative about the pressure it carried.
"It's a little heavy, and it pulls oddly at first," Minato said with a smile, hooking a finger through the ring at the base of the handle. "But once you get used to it, it's surprisingly easy to use. Take it with you on this mission."
Then he placed the special kunai in Kakashi's hand.
They're here, Kiyohara thought. He had only just been thinking about this scene from the original story, and now it was unfolding right in front of him.
"This is for you too, Kakashi."
Rin Nohara stepped forward with a smile, holding out a specially made medical kit with both hands. She had assembled it herself and modified it to be easy to use in the field. It was the sort of careful, thoughtful gift that suited her perfectly.
"Thanks," Kakashi said, taking it.
Then he turned to Obito and held out his hand.
The meaning was obvious enough. He was waiting for Obito's present.
"Wh-what are you doing?" Obito blurted. "I don't have any gift for you."
Kakashi waved a hand dismissively. "Forget it. Whatever you'd give me would probably just be useless baggage anyway."
The moment those words landed, Obito bristled. He started insisting that he was an Uchiha and that one day he would definitely surpass Kakashi. The two of them began squabbling again almost on instinct.
Kiyohara rubbed his chin. Unfortunately, Kakashi would never really get the chance to return the favor, and both Obito and Rin would remain frozen forever at the chunin stage. Their futures had already been marked by a cruelty none of them could see yet.
Speaking of promotions, Kiyohara suddenly realized something. Once he returned from this mission, he ought to be advanced to chunin as well. Should he also expect some kind of congratulatory gift then?
He asked in his mind, "When you were promoted to chunin, did anyone give you anything?"
The rogue Kiyohara shook his head. "I didn't have your free time. Getting stronger mattered more than any of that."
That answer sounded exactly like him. The future version of himself had cared more about power than anything else. Otherwise, he never would have defected to Orochimaru in the first place.
"All right, all right, stop bickering. We're about to enter the Land of Grass," Minato said, cutting off Kakashi and Obito before the quarrel could get any louder.
Beyond the edge of the meadow stood a mushroom forest filled with towering ancient trees. Massive mushrooms clung to their trunks, each cap so huge it was larger than a house. The place looked less like a forest and more like something out of a fever dream.
"We'll rest here for now. I'll remain with you today, but tomorrow I'll be leaving."
The situation on the front lines was getting worse. Minato had to move as soon as possible to reinforce them.
"Yes, sir," everyone answered.
Once they found a concealed place to stop, Kiyohara took out the notes he had gotten from Tsunade and began practicing the Detoxification Technique and the Hemostasis Technique.
Hemostasis was relatively simple. In essence, it was controlled sealing and suturing. First, you stitched the wound at the surface. After that, in the middle of combat, you gathered chakra at the injury so it wouldn't tear back open under violent movement.
The Detoxification Technique was more difficult. It required using chakra to separate poison from blood. Usually, people trained by mixing two liquids with different densities into a single container and then attempting to divide them cleanly with chakra control.
Kiyohara used coffee and milk.
Because they were traveling light, he hadn't brought many supplies. He poured the two liquids together into a cup, waited until they blended, and then began guiding chakra into the mixture.
Whirr...
The liquid spun continuously inside the cup, twisting in tight, layered currents. Watching it gave him the bizarre sensation of witnessing some kind of microscopic separation process with the naked eye.
The rogue Kiyohara stood behind him, silently observing his practice.
Kiyohara had bought both of these techniques from Tsunade at a bargain, so this really had been a profitable deal. Even so, knowing the theory and doing it right were two completely different things.
"Hey, Kiyohara, you know medical ninjutsu?"
Rin, who had been resting nearby, turned her head after noticing what he was doing.
"A little. I just started learning," Kiyohara said with a nod.
Rin was a medical ninja herself, which meant she had gone through this exact kind of foundational practice before. She walked over after only a moment's hesitation and crouched beside him.
"If you angle your chakra like this, it should separate faster," she said gently, showing him where to make the adjustment.
Kiyohara listened carefully, revising his chakra flow little by little according to her instructions. Every time Rin pointed something out, the movement in the cup became slightly cleaner, slightly steadier.
After taking the forbidden drug, his chakra reserves had doubled. That eased his constant shortage enough that he could afford to spend a portion of it on training. For the first time in a while, he didn't feel like every bit of chakra had to be hoarded like a starving man guarding scraps.
If only there were more kinds of forbidden drugs, Kiyohara thought.
There had to be a limit to how much one body could stack, but reaching the chakra level of an elite jonin - or even a Kage - might not be impossible if enough high-grade drugs were combined. According to the rogue Kiyohara, there were several other formulas that could fully release a body's latent potential while keeping the side effects relatively light.
Sasuke was probably using that kind of combination in the future.
The only problem was that the rogue Kiyohara didn't know those recipes. He had never been someone trusted with Orochimaru's true core formulas.
That line of thought reminded Kiyohara of the fitness world from his previous life, where bad news surfaced all the time. If you wanted to forge a monstrous body, you usually had to rely on performance enhancers. In that sense, the ninja world wasn't really any different.
He was practically walking the path of Nine Dragons Body Tempering and ascending straight to Steroid Planet.
When it came to legendary drug users in the shinobi world, Kabuto Yakushi was in a class of his own. That man had stuffed every forbidden substance he could find into his body, then gone so far as to inject Orochimaru's cells into himself and seize Orochimaru's power outright.
Just thinking about it made Kiyohara click his tongue. In a world like this, if you wanted to become strong quickly, taking the orthodox path was for geniuses and bloodline monsters. Commoners like him had to squeeze every possible advantage out of whatever they could reach.
And right now, survival was the only thing that mattered. If he lived through Kannabi Bridge, then everything else could come later. Power, rank, future selves, even the chance to gather more techniques and more formulas - all of it depended on one thing first.
He had to stay alive.
Kiyohara steadied his breathing and focused again on the swirling coffee and milk. The liquid trembled, separated slightly, then blended together once more.
He didn't get discouraged. Not at all.
Because compared to the battlefield waiting ahead, this kind of failure was gentle.
And as long as he still had the chance to practice, that meant he still had time.