Chiba Shun kept speaking, his voice carrying cleanly across the playground."Konoha's ninja from the Land of Fire are demons. They want to put chains on the entire shinobi world. They want to slaughter the adults and turn every child into a slave."Many of the children stared at him in frozen silence. Others shifted uneasily, their small faces tight with confusion. Shun lifted his chin and pressed on before that uncertainty could turn into noise."You might not believe me," he said, "but I have proof."
He began listing names and stories one after another, weaving truth, distortion, and outright fabrication together so smoothly that even he had to admire the effect."The First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, was an ambitious tyrant. He forced countless ninja clans to kneel and serve his greed. Madara Uchiha was even worse—he didn't spare even his own younger brother. The Second Hokage tampered with the souls of the dead and carried out human experiments. The Third Hokage is a hypocrite who clings to power and treats the lives of his own people like dirt."He did not stop there. He named clan after clan, turning Konoha into a nest of monsters in the children's minds.
"Danzo Shimura toys with the lives and deaths of others.""The Hyuga watch people with those ghostly eyes of theirs.""The Nara kill through shadows.""The Akimichi are giants with monstrous appetites. They could swallow a child whole.""The Yamanaka invade people's minds. The Aburame aren't even human anymore—they were turned into insects."The more he spoke, the more the children's expressions changed. Fear took root first. Then anger followed close behind.
"Your parents died at the hands of people like that," Shun said, lowering his voice until every word seemed to sink deeper. "Many children like you were kidnapped by Konoha. You were lucky. The brave ninja of Kumogakure, sent by the great Raikage, rescued you."He spread a hand wide, indicating the village around them."And this place—Kumogakure—is sacred ground. It is the land where people rose up against Konoha's rule. It is the holy place that produced countless heroes: the First Raikage, the Second Raikage, the Third Raikage..."
His tone swelled with fervor."The First Raikage stood against the two great demons of Konoha—Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha—and protected the Land of Lightning. The Second Raikage even slew Tobirama Senju. And our current leader, the great Third Raikage, has forced Hiruzen Sarutobi—that scheming Third Hokage—to hide inside Konoha and not dare take a single step outside his village."He piled glory on glory, adding nameless Cloud heroes to the story until Kumogakure itself shone in the children's imagination like a fortress of legends.
The tales were a patchwork of fact, lies, and half-truths, but that hardly mattered. The point was not accuracy. The point was emotional direction.The older children, the ones who already understood hunger, grief, and humiliation, clenched their fists until their knuckles whitened. Some looked as though they wanted to charge toward Konoha that very instant and kill until the enemy fled.As for the youngest ones, seeds were being planted somewhere deeper than reason. Konoha became a demon's den. The Land of Lightning became a pure land. Kumogakure became holy ground.
In a quiet corner that Shun and the children never noticed, Aoki Yuuichi and the Third Raikage stood side by side, watching the scene unfold.Aoki muttered under his breath, half in disbelief, "He actually did it. He really is brainwashing them."Of course, Shun had not turned anyone into a fanatic in a single speech. Things were never that simple. All he had done was seize their emotions, stir them hard, and point them in a direction. To make it last, he would have to keep feeding them stories—some true, some false, all useful—day after day.
Over time, that would be enough. Enough to make children willingly throw themselves forward as the village's expendable blades. Enough to help them shape a ninja way before they even understood what that meant.The Third Raikage's gaze drifted elsewhere.In the distance, three towering statues were under construction. They were unfinished, but one had already begun to resemble the Third Raikage himself. That, too, had been Shun's idea.
Kumogakure could not carve a Hokage Rock into a mountain face like Konoha. The village sat beside sheer cliffs, and the terrain simply did not allow it. But statues could do the same work in another form.In the scroll Shun had given Aoki, he had written clearly that the statues must be visible from the Ninja Academy grounds. The children had to grow up under the eyes of the Raikage, bathed in the shadow of authority until reverence became instinct.After looking at the half-finished monuments of the previous Raikage, the Third Raikage turned and walked away without another word.
Aoki hurried after him, but before he could catch up, the Raikage spoke."I'll approve another grant. Improve their meals. Let them eat something decent."Aoki stopped short, stunned for a heartbeat. He understood that tone well enough. The Third Raikage was pleased—more than pleased. He had begun to expect something from the Ninja Academy now.Aoki glanced back once at the field, at Shun still standing amid the sea of children. Then he looked forward again, only to find that the Raikage had already vanished from sight.
He let out a quiet sigh."Lord Raikage is still absurdly fast," he muttered to himself.The next day, Chiba Shun was summoned to Aoki's office. The moment he stepped inside and saw the other man's expression, he knew things had gone well.
"Aoki-senpai," Shun said with an easy smile, "what did you call me here for?"Aoki answered by placing a thick bundle of money on the table and sliding it over."The Raikage approved this for improving the children's meals."For a second, Shun thought he had heard wrong. Then he picked up the stack, counted it, and his heartbeat jumped. Three hundred thousand taels. A full three hundred thousand.
That number hit him harder than any flattery could have.When Aoki had first come to the Ninja Academy, the salary promised to him had only been fifty thousand ryo a month. Six hundred thousand a year was already a massive income by the standards of an ordinary shinobi.Shun knew that better than most. He had lived the numbers.
Take his old squad leader as an example. In one year, the man completed five simple C-rank missions and forty more difficult D-rank missions, yet his total income only came to a little over two hundred thousand taels.Granted, squad leaders also received village subsidies. They earned extra from mentoring subordinates. When a subordinate advanced to Chunin, there was even a promotion reward—his own former squad leader had received two hundred thousand ryo when Shun was promoted.Even so, averaging it all out, many of them still could not match six hundred thousand a year.
As a civilian ninja, Shun did not come from a clan. He had no inherited techniques, no private teachers, no family stockpile of weapons or food. A steady income without dangerous missions and without heavy ninja tool consumption was the kind of thing people could build a life on.In the entire Ninja Academy, other than Aoki Yuuichi himself, nobody else was being treated like this. Now Aoki had handed over three hundred thousand ryo at once, and for a brief instant Shun truly felt dazed.The thought flashed through his mind before he could stop it: since this money was meant for more than two thousand children, skimming off a little for himself probably wouldn't be noticed.
He almost laughed at how natural that thought felt.The Raikage must have given Aoki even more than this, he reasoned. But the idea only flickered through him for a moment before he crushed it flat. Petty greed was the fastest way to ruin a promising future.My road is only starting to open up, he thought. There's no reason to lose everything over crumbs.
As if a new thought had suddenly struck him, Shun looked up and asked, "Is Lord Raikage planning to increase his support for the Ninja Academy?"Aoki nodded once. "He listened to your speech yesterday. He was very satisfied."Shun's chest tightened with excitement. That answer meant more than the money did. It meant he was beginning to enter the field of vision of Kumogakure's upper ranks. For a shinobi without backing, that was the real prize.
Aoki, however, did not pause to let him bask in it. He reached behind him, took out eight scrolls, and set them down one after another."Return them after you finish reading," he said.Shun's eyes sharpened instantly. Ninjutsu scrolls.After all these years, after all the frustration, he was finally touching proper elemental techniques.
A burst of excitement rose in him, then just as quickly turned into something dry and self-mocking.A few C-rank techniques, and I'm this worked up?Back when he had first transmigrated, his ambitions had been absurdly grand. He had dreamed of mastering the Lightning Release Chakra Mode, learning the Flying Thunder God Technique, developing a whole arsenal of hand-seal ninjutsu, contracting giant summons, flying, turning invisible, mastering medical ninjutsu, even learning the Strength of a Hundred Seal. He had imagined Dust Release, bloodline limits on par with Dust Release, sealing arts powerful enough to suppress the Nine-Tails, Perfect Sage Mode in combat, the Eight Gates, transplanted Hashirama cells, the Mangekyo Sharingan, the Rinnegan, Shikotsumyaku paired with the Byakugan, and in the end even the Tenseigan.
Now, after more than a decade of scraping through reality, he knew exactly what those dreams had been: fantasies.First, he lacked resources. Every kind of cultivation cost money, and he had never had enough of it.Second, his talent was ordinary. He had no particular affinity for Lightning Release, and whether he had any aptitude for space-time ninjutsu or medical ninjutsu remained completely uncertain.Third—and most crushing of all—he did not have enough time. Any high-level technique demanded years of study. Trying to complete all of that alone had always been impossible.
The trials of more than ten years had finally forced the arrogant boy he used to be to face the truth.That was one of the real reasons he had come to the Ninja Academy. Sooner or later, he intended to find promising talents here—children worth nurturing, children who might one day help him develop the techniques he himself could not complete.But that was for later. Right now, what mattered was what lay in front of him.
He calmed himself, glanced over the titles on the scrolls, and then let out a faint sigh."There's only one Earth Release technique?"Aoki leaned back and answered with a helpless expression. "You know how the village is. Kumogakure is full of Lightning Release shinobi and taijutsu specialists. Other elemental techniques are rare."He tapped the scroll pile lightly.
"As far as I know, the village has fewer than ten Earth Release techniques in total. And many of those aren't combat techniques at all—things like earth substitution, earth clones, petrification.""The only reason I managed to get you a C-rank Earth Release jutsu is because the Ninja Academy received support from the Raikage. Fire Release is in an even worse state. The village can't even produce a single C-rank offensive fire technique."He snorted softly. "Honestly, aside from Konoha, every village is like this. Iwagakure barely has any Lightning Release techniques either."
Shun nodded. That matched what he already suspected.Konoha's strength was not just its famous bloodlines or its parade of monsters. It was its depth. It had breadth in every field, stockpiles of techniques, institutional knowledge, and generations of accumulated advantage. The other great villages were strong, but their strengths were narrow.Once he understood that, the lack of variety in these scrolls no longer surprised him.
After taking his leave, Chiba Shun returned straight to his residence within the Ninja Academy.He had moved there not long ago, making it easier to handle both work and training. The room was plain, but now the money and the scrolls in his hands made it feel different. Not luxurious. Not safe. Just full of possibility.He set the funds aside, then picked up the first scroll with barely contained impatience and opened it.
His eyes moved quickly across the contents.C-Rank Lightning Release: Lightning Guiding Technique.He opened the second.C-Rank Lightning Release: Lightning Technique.His mouth twitched. All of them were extremely basic. The village was still cautious, still stingy, still unwilling to hand over anything truly valuable without layers of trust and proof. That much had not changed.
The third scroll finally made him pause.C-Rank Earth Release: Earth Flow Wall.The remaining five scrolls were what he expected: a total of five Lightning Release techniques, plus one Water Release, one Wind Release, and this single Earth Release technique. Not a single Fire Release technique among them."As expected," he muttered to himself, unable to help it. "The village couldn't even get its hands on a Great Fireball Jutsu that never hits anyone."The joke faded almost as soon as it left his mouth.
He pushed aside all the stray thoughts cluttering his mind and picked up the Earth Flow Wall scroll again.Of the eight techniques, this was the one that truly mattered to him.Then, with the room quiet around him and the weight of his future pressing pleasantly at his back, Chiba Shun lowered his head and began to study it in earnest.