Hearing the smug edge in Chiba Shun's voice, Sakai Yuu froze for a second. She kept stuffing food into her mouth even as she stared at him, then mumbled, "What kind of mission did you go on?"
"Wait. Does your squad leader even dare take a B-rank mission?"
As she spoke, she leaned closer and carefully inspected the bandaged wound on Chiba Shun's chest. It had already been treated, but the sight of it still made her frown.
Chiba Shun laughed. "It had nothing to do with him. I found an enemy intelligence ninja on my own and killed him myself. He was at least chunin-level."
"If nothing unexpected happens, this should count as a B-rank mission. A B-rank mission that I completed alone."
He paused, the grin on his face widening. "And I should be a chunin soon, too."
In the Hidden Cloud Village, D-rank missions paid anywhere from five hundred to ten thousand taels. C-rank missions ranged from ten thousand to fifty thousand. B-rank missions paid fifty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand taels.
Before this, every mission Chiba Shun completed had been split apart before the money ever reached his hands. Half went straight to the squad leader. The remaining half had to be divided among the three team members, leaving him with almost nothing.
Take last year, for example. He had completed five relatively easy C-rank missions and earned around three thousand three hundred taels from each. On top of that, he had done forty better-paying D-rank missions, which averaged only around one thousand three hundred taels each.
As for B-rank missions, there had been none at all. His squad leader was far too cautious. The man did not even dare touch a remotely dangerous C-rank assignment, much less a true B-rank mission.
After grinding through an entire year, Chiba Shun's total income had amounted to a pitiful sixty-eight thousand taels.
Even without counting training costs, simple living expenses swallowed ten to twenty thousand a year. Another chunk vanished into ninja tools. The third blade he had used today had cost him three thousand taels last year.
After doing the math, Chiba Shun figured he had spent roughly ten thousand ryo on ninja tools alone over the past year. Since the missions his squad handled were not especially dangerous, the wear and tear had at least stayed manageable.
The remaining forty thousand had all gone into food.
And even that was only because Sakai Hajime had become a chunin before him and started earning far more money.
With Sakai Hashi supporting him financially, Chiba Shun had finally managed to raise his strength to the level of a chunin not long ago. Otherwise, he might not have been able to kill that Konoha chunin today at all.
This time, though, he had completed a B-rank mission by himself. Even at the minimum, that meant fifty thousand taels. That was practically an entire year's worth of income dropped into his lap in one go.
At last, the two of them could start eating real meals.
Sakai Yuu's eyes lit up. "That's great! You can finally get rid of that bloodsucker."
"You should build your own small team too. Then we can take missions together in the future."
Chiba Shun shook his head. "Not for now. I don't plan on leading a team yet. I want to go to the Ninja Academy."
Sakai Yuu scratched her head. "What would you even do there?"
A moment later, she waved the thought away. "Forget it. If it's your decision, then it's definitely the right one."
Sakai Hashi had made it this far not just because of her natural talent, but because Chiba Shun had guided her the entire way. His knowledge of the original story had helped her more than once, so by now Sakai Hashi trusted him almost blindly.
Mid-conversation, she suddenly seemed to remember something. Reaching behind her back, she pulled out four long blades.
Chiba Shun's eyes immediately lit up. "You can use four swords now?"
The four-sword style had also started as Chiba Shun's idea. He had only taught Sakai Hashi the theory, though. He himself had never managed to learn it.
Over the past few years, both of them had been groping forward on their own, and both had gotten stuck at the third blade. Using a fourth sword naturally and fluidly was far too difficult.
Yet today, Sakai Hashi had surprised him.
Sakai Yuu puffed up proudly. "Hehe. I ran into a samurai from the Land of Iron during this mission. I sparred with him a few times and got some inspiration."
"I held the fourth sword in my mouth."
Chiba Shun nodded slowly. "Learning swordsmanship from a samurai really is a good path."
Sakai Yuu grinned. "Since you're not forming a team, I'm heading to the Land of Iron tomorrow."
"I want to challenge famous swordsmen there and sharpen my swordsmanship."
Chiba Shun nodded. "That's fine. But don't reveal your chakra if you can help it. Especially not your Lightning Release techniques."
"Samurai usually don't have much love for ninja."
Sakai Yuu nodded at once. "I know."
After stuffing herself with a few more huge bites of food, she suddenly asked, "Shun, do you really think it's possible for someone to master eight swords?"
"I can't even figure out how to use five properly, let alone eight."
Chiba Shun answered without hesitation. "It's definitely possible. We just can't do it yet. First, our chakra level isn't high enough. Second, our swordsmanship still isn't good enough. Third..."
He paused, then narrowed his eyes slightly. "There's probably some crucial trick we're still missing. Maybe you'll find it in the Land of Iron."
Sakai Yuu nodded. "I hope so."
After they finished eating, the two of them moved into the yard and began sparring.
Sakai Hashi showed off the Four-Sword Style she had only just mastered. Chiba Shun could not imitate it on the spot, but at the very least, he now had a direction.
Once I become a chunin, my income will rise. I'll be able to eat properly, refine more chakra, and set aside more time for training.
Sure enough, early the next morning, not long after Sakai Hashi left, Chiba Shun received his official letter of promotion to chunin.
Along with it came two standard chunin uniforms, a small batch of basic equipment, and the reward for the B-rank mission—one hundred thousand ryo.
Chiba Shun counted the money carefully, one bill at a time.
That amount definitely included a bonus for uncovering an enemy intelligence ninja. Otherwise, an ordinary B-rank mission should not have paid this much.
The Land of Lightning was not as wealthy as the Land of Fire, and mission clients there generally paid less. The same was true inside Kumogakure itself. The village was short on funds, and internal assignments usually had the lowest rewards of all.
A wave of emotion rose in Chiba Shun's chest.
He had started training under his squad leader when he was only five years old. Back then, under that man's command, he had only taken on the simplest kinds of work. At the time, he had not even counted as a true genin yet, so his share of the rewards had been almost nonexistent.
The squad leader pocketed most of the mission money. Chiba Shun and the other two children only received enough to survive and buy the cheapest basic tools.
Later, as he grew older and his strength barely reached the standard of a real genin, the squad leader finally increased his share a little. Even then, Chiba Shun still had to hand part of it back as "tuition" in exchange for the man's guidance.
For an orphan who had lost both parents young and had no other source of income, life had always been brutally hard.
The pension left behind by his parents had long since been spent during childhood. Without proper nutrition, and without the chance to fully develop his body, his progress in strength had been painfully limited.
But things were different now. With this money, he could at least make sure there was meat on the table every day.
Ichiraku Ramen in Konoha was one of those foods that could quickly restore the body's energy. A plain bowl cost sixty ryo. The special ramen cost seventy. Miso ramen cost ninety.
If someone ate a plain bowl every meal and added ordinary daily expenses on top, the total cost for a year would reach one hundred and thirty thousand taels. It was an impossible burden.
And now that Chiba Shun had become a chunin, even one bowl of Ichiraku's ordinary ramen would no longer be enough to refill the energy his body burned through in hard training.
By his estimate, he would need roughly two standard bowls per meal just to maintain normal training volume.
Of course, cooking at home would cut food costs by half. But even then, this one hundred thousand taels was barely enough to feed him for six months.
And if our strength keeps increasing, our food consumption will rise with it. By then, one hundred thousand taels might not even last half a year.
Still, compared to the days when he never knew where the next meal was coming from, this was already a world of difference.
"With enough food, the body gets stronger. If the body gets stronger, I can extract more chakra. And with more chakra, I can train taijutsu and ninjutsu harder." Just thinking about it put Chiba Shun in a bright mood.
The next day, after changing into his new clothes, Chiba Shun headed straight for the ninja academy that had been established only a few years earlier—a place he had never once had the chance to enter.
That was right. Kumogakure now had a ninja academy too.
The biggest reason for that was the performance of Konoha's academy during the Second Shinobi World War.
The Konoha Ninja Academy had been founded by the Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju, but it had not played any major role in the First Shinobi World War led by Tobirama himself. The true beneficiary had been Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Third Hokage.
When Konoha found itself surrounded on multiple fronts and its ally, the Land of Whirlpools, failed to send immediate support, endless waves of fresh genin had appeared on every battlefield.
To the elites of other villages, those genin were little more than disposable cannon fodder.
But there had been too many of them.
Those so-called cannon fodder tied down the enemy elites, drained their attention, and chewed through their strength. Hidden among that mass were Konoha's real killers, the elites who struck when the enemy was exhausted and off-balance.
Konoha had used a sea of cannon fodder to prop up a war it should have lost. It held the line until the Land of Whirlpools finally joined the fighting. Orochimaru and his two teammates earned the title of the Legendary Sannin, and Konoha ultimately emerged victorious. In the process, Hiruzen Sarutobi's reputation soared.
That war forced the other great ninja villages—many of which still clung to old habits from the Warring States era—to realize that things had to change.
Several years after the war ended, Kumogakure and the other three major villages all established their own ninja academies.
He had heard Iwagakure was the first to copy Konoha, and by now their academy was already producing visible results.
But after watching Kumogakure's version for several years, Chiba Shun had come to one blunt conclusion.
The so-called ninja academy here was a complete mess.
Konoha could produce three or four thousand cannon-fodder genin in a single year. If Kumogakure's academy stabilized enough to graduate a few dozen annually, that would already count as good—and even then, those graduates would still be far weaker than Konoha's so-called fodder.
It was practically useless. The higher-ups had already been disappointed in it for a long time.
Most Cloud ninja were bold, blunt men who knew how to fight but not how to build institutions from scratch. Asking them to construct a new system from the ground up and compete with people who had already benefited from a functioning academy elsewhere was asking too much.
That was why Chiba Shun had come today.
He was here to change the academy's current state.
He had read the original story. He knew what Konoha's academy was like. He also carried the memories of two lives, and he believed with absolute certainty that he could build something better than the crude version run by Kumogakure's brutes.
Of course, there was another reason too.
The academy was relatively safe. It was a good place for quiet growth. Having just advanced to chunin, Chiba Shun needed time to convert his new status into real combat strength.
He looked at the academy gates ahead of him and quietly clenched his fist.
"This place will become the stage where I shine," Chiba Shun told himself.