Konoha's unification should've been the end of the grind.
Of course, that was a lie.
The moment the cheers died down, my desk became a burial mound of scrolls, budgets, population reports, clan zoning drafts, and the kind of mission ledgers that made my old salaryman migraines come back with interest.
One tap of my stamp, and the entire village roared to life.
Departments expanded.
Clan lands were re-drawn.
Training grounds rebuilt.
New offices constructed.
Old ones demolished.
A thousand shinobi sprinted in a thousand directions, like a living network of chakra running through the village's veins.
Konoha was no longer a battlefield camp.
It was a growing, snarling beast of a city.
The population climbed to 170,000 civilians.
Seventy thousand shinobi.
On paper, the largest military force in the world.
In reality?
Half the so-called shinobi were wandering mercs or washed-out fighters who ran here during the war, and another chunk were one injury away from civilian life. The Warring States had scraped every bowl clean — now that it was over, no one new was arriving.
And as peace settled, shinobi numbers would shrink. People would go home.
Others would walk away from the kunai life altogether.
If nothing changed, Konoha would eventually taper down to twenty or thirty thousand active shinobi — just like the later generations.
Which, in fairness, was more realistic.
You can't keep seventy thousand ninja fed by D-rank chores like "catch the runaway chicken."
Trust me. I tried to stretch the budget once. Never again.
The Coming Downsizing
"Konoha has too many shinobi and too few missions," I muttered one night, flipping through reports.
One mission that used to take one team?
Now split between three.
Pay divided like stale bread among starving pigeons.
It was pitiful.
If I didn't act, we'd collapse under our own weight.
So yes—disarmament.
A careful, humane downsizing.
The weak, the chronically injured, the exhausted veterans… all would be offered retirement, stipends, and work within the village's civilian sectors. Being a ninja was a high-risk path. For many of them, it was a mercy to step away before the next war butchered them.
But it had to be gradual.
A rushed cut would push whole families into resentment.
And resentment grows into rebellion faster than people think.
Thankfully, the world beyond Fire Country was still an active battlefield.
I had time.
The Book of Seals
Meanwhile, the clans resisted my next order:
"Submit one ninjutsu per clan for the Konoha Library. For the village, not for yourselves."
The collective outrage could've powered a wind turbine.
Until I deposited several of my own secret jutsu into the library first.
The room went silent.
Then the clans gritted their teeth and followed — as long as their bloodline techniques and clan-defining arts remained untouched.
Soon, Konoha's once-empty library was overflowing.
And from that dense mass of chakra theory and technique manuals, I created something new:
A massive, classified scroll — a sealing vault of forbidden jutsu.
I named it:
The Book of Seals.
A tool for future generations… and a weapon for the worst-case scenarios.
Beyond Konoha: A World Rebuilt by War
While we rebuilt, the rest of the shinobi world tore itself apart — or, depending on perspective, rebuilt itself through fire.
Land of Earth:
The two leaders of the Libra Clan unified most of the country.
A shinobi wielding Dust Release pushed the borders like a natural disaster.
He would soon be known as the First Tsuchikage.
Land of Lightning:
A rising hero declared himself First Raikage and mobilized every clan under the thunder banner.
Unification was only a matter of time.
Land of Wind:
The vicious duo of Liedou and Chiyo crushed opposition with the daimyo's support.
By year's end, Liedou crowned himself the First Kazekage.
Land of Water:
The island clans formed an alliance, elected a First Mizukage, and began cleansing the archipelago of internal conflict.
A world defined by five great nations — five great villages.
A pattern already familiar to any Naruto fan.
But I wasn't here to replay canon history.
Canon history ends in endless war.
I refuse that ending.
The Balance of Five… and the Rise of One
The problem with five equal powers is simple:
Equality breeds competition.
Competition breeds suspicion.
Suspicion births war.
If I wanted true peace, the system needed a new spine.
In my old world, we'd call it a unipolar structure with multilateral constraints.
In simpler terms:
One superpower at the top — Konoha — checked by a coalition of strong but lesser powers.
Konoha keeps the world stable.
The other nations keep Konoha honest.
A perpetual balance where no single spark can ignite a continent.
Only one thing could enforce that kind of equilibrium:
The Tailed Beasts.
Those walking natural disasters.
Those chakra gods wrapped in flesh.
But not Hashirama's naive "let's divide them equally" dream.
No.
Konoha would hold the majority.
The other villages would receive a controlled portion.
A leash disguised as generosity.
This wasn't cruelty.
This was survival.
If the world kept repeating its old pattern, every generation would drown in another war.
If one village held overwhelming force, then war could be prevented before it even began.
And right now, while the other nations were still fighting?
It was the perfect moment to capture them.
All of them.
One decisive move.
A new world order forged in secret.
...
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