Chapter 108: The Traitor Appears
Two months had passed, and there was still no news of Aizen.
The ruins of Uzushio Village had been placed under tight surveillance by several major ninja villages, including Konoha. Information obtained from Danzo claimed that Aizen, now labeled a traitor, was hiding in the ruins of Uzushio Village.
After those two months, the intelligence divisions of the other great powers finally confirmed that the shadow looming over all the researchers really was Konoha's ace, Aizen, who had defected for unknown reasons and completely severed ties with the village.
When they first heard this, the various ninja villages almost burst out laughing. Their first instinct was to mobilize everyone and deliver a decisive blow to Konoha.
However, after they glanced at their own citizens, then at the signal towers Konoha was building, cruel reality quickly cooled their overheated minds.
Unless the other four great ninja villages suddenly achieved perfect unity, set aside all past grudges, and joined forces to wipe out Konoha in a single strike, with their current state it was nearly impossible to cause any real damage.
The Moon Dream was a far greater threat to the other great powers than to Konoha. In Konoha, only a few people had sunk into Moon Dream, while in the other villages, only a few people remained conscious outside their own Moon Dream.
Even knowing this was the weakest Konoha had been in years without Aizen and many of its ninjas, all they could do was grit their teeth and watch as Konoha endured this brief period of weakness and swiftly regained its vitality.
The most infuriating part was that, even while barely able to survive themselves, they still had to pay Konoha to build for them. This was especially true for Sunagakure and Iwagakure, who felt pain and pleasure in equal measure.
Thanks to the roads provided by Konoha and the Land of Fire, they finally had the chance to see Konoha's prosperity with their own eyes. The wealth, the near-heavenly comfort of the people, the costly signal towers—everything about it filled the Sand and Rock ninjas with a jealous, bitter envy.
They could not even scrape together the funds to build enough signal towers to protect their own villages. Instead, they had to work for Konoha, building signal towers across various cities and towns in the Land of Fire and in Konoha itself to suppress the effects of Moon Dream. Only after receiving their payment could they afford to construct signal towers back home.
Especially after seeing that Konoha's ordinary villagers were living more comfortably than Sunagakure's jonin, an indescribable distortion began to grow in the hearts of ninjas from every village.
Even with just a construction mission, quite a few ninjas from Iwagakure and Sunagakure were already secretly considering defection.
Willpower does not seem so firm when weighed against material comfort. Or rather, most people's will was never that firm to begin with. Many became ninja not for the sake of the village or some lofty dream, but simply to make a living.
Looking at Konoha, where a person could make money doing almost anything, they inevitably wondered: why should I stay in Sunagakure chewing sand, or in Iwagakure mining stone?
On Konoha's side, however, due to international pressure and various considerations, Hokage Minato did not accept these defectors. Instead, he sent them back to their respective villages intact.
As for whether there were any spies or hidden traitors among them, Konoha's official answer was that there were none. And yet people still chose to believe that.
As time went on, the other countries gradually recovered under Konoha's unified directives, and the influence of Moon Dream slowly receded. Minato's mood, however, only grew heavier.
He had a beautiful wife at home, and he was the youngest Hokage in history, one of the strongest people in the world by any standard.
Even so, Minato's heart weighed like stone.
Jiraiya had recovered, but after learning that Tsunade had been the captain of the Fourth Division under Aizen, and that Dan had been resurrected by Aizen to serve as captain of the Second Division—and that the two were now reunited—Jiraiya's expression became hard to read.
The scars Aizen left on this village ran too deep.
Even though everyone was ostensibly united by hatred and anger, they had inevitably split into several factions.
The Thirteenth Division, led by Dan and the healed Kagami, was made up of former Aizen test subjects. They possessed immense power and terrifying strength, but their minds were unstable. They wielded all sorts of extraordinary jutsu and carried deep resentment toward Konoha for having turned a blind eye to their suffering. Their only goal was to one day take revenge on Aizen. Nothing else truly mattered to them.
The Mutual Aid Group, originally organized by Aizen, now largely believed that his defection had not been a simple betrayal. At the very least, they absolutely refused to believe that Aizen had willingly abandoned them. In their eyes, the worst casualties had been caused by the rebellion of Aizen's own subordinates, who had reduced the original Wandenreich to rubble and turned it into the current Gotei Thirteen. The Mutual Aid Group's main aim was to find Aizen and uncover the truth behind everything.
Finally, there was the old Konoha faction led by Tsunade. These remnants of old clans, facing the reality that their families had been nearly wiped out and the political landscape of Konoha was a turbulent mess, chose to rally around Tsunade.
This was rather ironic, given that she had served as captain of the Fourth Division of the Gotei Thirteen and was romantically involved with Dan. In essence, it became a merger of the Thirteenth Division and those clan remnants to oppose the Mutual Aid Group led by Minato.
Minato understood why they thought this way. After all, the damage Aizen had dealt Konoha was far too great.
Take Kagami as an example. This Uchiha who possessed unimaginable power had been treated like a dog, put through near-endless cycles of death and resurrection. Now he was half-mad, fixated only on revenge against Aizen and Sakumo.
Dan and Tsunade, for their part, seemed ready to give up their power and everything they had, and simply run away. But their lives and even their bodies were, in a sense, still under Aizen's control. If they could be certain their bodies were completely free, Dan would probably vanish with Tsunade without a second thought.
Just thinking about that gave Minato a pounding headache.
And that was without even considering the Third Hokage's old faction, which had faded away into the background, or Root, the borderless organization that was rapidly on the rise. Root's strength was growing every day across the ninja world, with confused ninja constantly joining its ranks. In some ways, the Root headquarters in Konoha carried more weight in the world than the Hokage's own office.
In other words, Danzo was completely fired up. He had no interest in the Hokage's seat at all anymore. Otherwise, it would have been questionable whether Minato would have been able to remain in that position.
Minato was curious whether other ninja villages had been divided into so many factions as well, each on the brink of civil war once a single obsession was lost.
Even he had to admit that, on the surface, Konoha looked stable, prosperous, and problem-free—but in truth, it was already riddled with cracks, held together only by its shared fixation on Aizen.
If Aizen were ever proven innocent, the Mutual Aid Group would almost certainly launch a massive purge against the rebellious Gotei Thirteen.
If Aizen were proven guilty, then the Thirteen would inevitably find some excuse to wipe out the Mutual Aid Group.
If Aizen were guilty, yet there was a deeper, hidden reason behind his actions, then when the Konoha elders were busy celebrating, they would be the ones overseeing the "cleanup," and everyone else would be the ones being purged.
The Hidden Leaf Village, now tied together by the name Aizen, was prosperous and wealthy. But without the support of that wealth, these tangled factions would quickly become a lethal threat to the village.
The victims of the Gotei Thirteen, the followers of the Mutual Aid Group, the old Konoha guard who had profited from the system, and the rootless organization with its own wildfire spreading across the world.
Laying all these things out in front of him, Minato wanted nothing more than to go find the Third Hokage and demand an explanation.
But remembering the old man's outrageous choice to march straight into the embassy, the urge faded.
[…Go check the signal tower construction.]
Minato glanced at the report on his desk about yet another clash between the Thirteenth Division and the Mutual Aid Group at a construction site, rubbed his temples, and opened a spatial passage leading to one of the construction points he remembered.
Having mastered space-time jutsu to its limit, Minato could teleport to any place he wished.
In the blink of an eye, a dark passage opened above a construction site on the edge of Konoha, and Minato stepped out, standing in midair as he looked down.
He immediately noticed something was off.
On the construction site below, two figures in white high-collared cloaks with swords at their waists were standing next to the unfinished chakra signal tower, casually asking questions to the Sand and Rock ninjas nearby.
The older of the two, a middle-aged man with messy white hair, stroked his chin and patted the base of the signal tower with open curiosity.
"So this is a chakra signal tower… I don't really understand this sort of technology. Kakashi, what do you think?"
"Stop interrupting me. I'm deciphering the core program. Once I'm done, we can connect directly through Konoha's network."
"...Kakashi? Sakumo?"
Looking at the two figures beside the signal tower, almost ignored by everyone else, Minato could hardly believe his eyes.
Kakashi and Sakumo.
The two S rank rogue ninja whose names were already carved into Konoha's wanted records were standing openly among Rock and Sand ninjas, chanting incantations as they examined the structure of the chakra signal tower.
As if feeling the intense gaze on them, the two of them instinctively looked up.
They saw Minato hovering in the air, staring down at them with an expression that was impossible to describe.
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