"With the knowledge that my information is, as far as the leader of the assailants believed, the truth . . . Why does the name Kurogane come as a surprise? Don't you even know who is after you?" Inori pressed Tomoe and Ema despite only getting silence as a response.
But suddenly, a very young but calm and steely voice shattered the silence.
"Because I am the last of the Kurogane." Beni, who had suddenly appeared without any sign, spoke in a weirdly detached tone.
'How the hell did I miss her!?'
'Chakra signature aside, even a random normal insect should be unable to slip past my senses when they're this close.' Shiki was shocked but showed nothing externally, his inner voice preventing any emotion from affecting him.
He still felt it but it was like the emotions belonged to someone else.
'Also, the way she is speaking . . . it sounds like me when I go full Hollow mode.' The boy internally noted.
"Hmm . . . The assailants served a man going by Kurogane Saburo. Sound familiar?" Inori questioned.
Tomoe and Ema's eyes widened while their mouths slightly opened with no sound but Beni seemed utterly calm.
"Uncle Saburo . . . So that's what happened . . ." The little girl murmured.
"Kurogane Saburo was a traitor, executed for his crimes against the clan." Beni explained.
"Well, it seems to me that his execution was not carried out very well." Inori commented.
With the revelation of the mastermind, the ladies laid out everything they knew without holding information back like before.
They realized that their best chance of handling this unexpected foe was to cooperate with the shinobi and rely on their information gathering capabilities to learn more.
*
The Kurogane clan's story was one not too uncommon.
A younger brother who saw himself as more worthy of inheritance than his elder sibling and thus planned a coup.
It was a tale told too many times to count.
The coup failed and the younger sibling along with his main conspirators were put to the sword and that should have been the end.
Smartly, despite his reputation for kindness, the head of the Kurogane, Saburo's older brother, did not choose to exile his sibling and thus give him the perfect opportunity for a comeback.
Unfortunately for him, his smart choice of execution was not carried out properly and Saburo survived, unbeknownst to everyone.
Or so it seemed . . .
The only one with all the answers should be Saburo himself and if they wanted to know them, it would have to be from him.
But the root of the problem laid elsewhere and to fully explain it, one had to look back on the history of not only the clan or even the Land of Iron, but of the whole known world, the Continent.
The shinobi's prominence as the main military force in the Continent was not that old of a development, it came as a direct result of the Warring States Period.
Before then, despite the existence of shinobi clans, the various Daimyos' samurai retainers were the main military power.
To maintain the loyalty of the samurai clans under them, Daimyos rewarded them with not only riches, but titles, authority and even territory in some cases.
Samurai became noblemen themselves and rather than abandon their lives of luxury to fight their Daimyo's wars, they preferred the safety of peace.
That said, the Daimyos and their highest ranking retainers still wanted the gains in territory and resources that could be gained from war and conquest but the samurai retainers did not want to waste their forces and thus diminish their value to their lord and thus their authority.
The shinobi clans that had been slowly but surely forming around the continent became a very appetizing choice.
Just spend a bit of money and they would savagely and ruthless fight without any issue. Not only would the Daimyos have someone willing to die for their wars, the samurai could be satisfied with this rising military being eroded through constant conflict.
But while continuous wars did indeed wear down the emerging shinobi clans, it also helped those that survived develop their power and skills, rising to prominence and being able to demand greater payment for their services.
This influx of wealth allowed those shinobi clans strong enough to survive to grow to an unprecedented degree.
By the time the samurai had caught on, they'd been replaced by the Daimyos with the stronger, more willing shinobi that were satisfied with monetary payments alone.
Although shinobi later organized into Hidden villages and grasped more power than the Daimyos had originally been willing to give, it was still an overall net positive for everyone other than the samurai clans.
Thus samurai became more ornamental than anything else and most of them transitioned into normal nobility rather than try and maintain themselves as samurai clans.
In the Land of Iron however, things did not progress that way. In fact, they mostly remained the exact same as before the Warring States.
The Land of Iron was a country immensely rich in mineral resources, chakra metal in particular, being their most important product.
As a result of this, they boasted a formidable standing military despite their small size with the samurai class making up the grand majority of nobility and the country being led by the Shogun, the general of the samurai, rather than a Daimyo.
Being a relatively small and easily defensible country with great military power and rich in mineral resources other countries desperately required to wage their wars, made the Land of Iron largely uninterested in expansion.
With their power making them unfeasible to conquer, other countries could only obtain their mineral resources through trade, making the Land of Iron quite prosperous and they had no intention of ruining that for territory they had no good use for.
As such, they never relied on shinobi and with the samurai being in control of the country, there was no way they were going to be replaced either.
So in the Land of Iron, samurai clans retained their positions of power and authority along with formidable fighting strength.
Among these great clans, was the Kurogane clan, the leader of which was known as the Left Hand of The Shogun in times past.
Though officially known as a samurai clan, most called them by another title, hitokiri, manslayers, known for their ruthless efficiency and bloodthirst as some of the finest, most powerful killers in the history of the country.
But that was in a time where the Land of Iron had to fight often to defend itself, something which became ever rarer.
With their fighting prowess becoming less necessary, the clan split into Dove and Hawk factions, something that had never happened in their belligerent history.
It was this division born from peacetimes that led to their downfall.
The Kurogane clan had innate gifts, Kekkei Genkai as shinobi called them, that made them suitable for their roles as hitokiri.
Clan members that manifested these traits held greater prominence in the clan, received priority in everything and benefited from the clan's resources to hone these gifts to their peak.
However, with peace, those in the clan that did not inherit these gifts for battle managed to gain ground in country politics and consequently, clan politics.
For the Kurogane clan, this was the beginning of the end.
+++++
Hey, Author here!
To promote the novel I will be releasing BONUS CHAPTERS on SUNDAYS based on the previous week's power stone count.
100 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter
500 Power Stones = 2 Bonus Chapters
1000 Power Stones = 3 Bonus Chapters
Every earned BONUS CHAPTER on Webnovel will also be posted on Scribble.
Just a reminder that you can read up to a FULL MONTH ahead of this site on pa-treon.
I'm trying to become a full time Author now and I'm not going to be starting any new novels just so I can make sure this one is properly completed.
Find those sweet advanced chapters on pa-treon.com/lusoba without the -