Naruto: Rebuilding the Hidden Sand

Because the host killed a plot character, you gained positive experience points of 1200.

Because the host killed a plot character, you gained positive experience points of 1000.

Please note: because the host killed characters who are members of Konoha’s special era and background, you gained 60 Konoha hatred value and will be subject to hostility and targeting from certain Konoha plot characters.

He heard the system notifications and processed them.

The experience gained was slightly less than he had expected. After all, Inuzuka Tsume and Yamanaka Inoichi were both members of Konoha’s golden generation. They were future pillars and senior figures of the Leaf Village. Although their roles in the original story had not been the most prominent, they had still carried genuine presence and value.

It was all about strength, he thought to himself.

Comparing the two of them to future generations of ninja, they were certainly not weak by any small margin. Being around twenty years old was not a young age for a ninja by the standards of this world. But compared to himself and Sasori, their raw combat strength was still considerably lower.

Inuzuka Tsume had been somewhat stronger in direct combat. But Yamanaka Inoichi and Nara Shikaku both belonged to the type of ninja with specialized battlefield positioning.

Although they were fully combat-capable, their focus was on support and strategic control rather than direct fighting.

A thought passed through his mind.

Two members of Konoha’s future senior structure were now gone. Inuzuka Tsume was Inuzuka Kiba’s mother and the future head of the Inuzuka clan. Yamanaka Inoichi’s descendant was Yamanaka Ino.

He did not pay excessive attention to every detail of the original plot and its characters, because he was not a Konoha person and his concerns naturally did not center on the affairs of opposing forces.

If Minato had hesitated even slightly longer, he could have used that window to kill Nara Shikaku as well.

He moved quickly through the forest, narrowing his eyes as he assessed what had been lost and gained.

Shikaku was the future battlefield strategic general of Konoha, the most suitable front-line commander the village had. His role could not be underestimated.

And Yamanaka Inoichi’s intuition and intelligence-gathering capabilities functioned like a lubricant on the battlefield, ensuring tactical deployments achieved maximum cohesion and balance.

The last Great Ninja War had shown clearly just how terrifying an army capable of perfectly executing coordinated tactics could be. Although neither of those two had been as powerful as himself in direct combat, their hidden strategic value was enormous.

But things could not always go according to plan. Killing Inuzuka Tsume and Yamanaka Inoichi while simultaneously disrupting Konoha’s tactical arrangements was already a significant success.

Inuzuka Tsume was destined to train Konoha’s ninja dogs in the future. Her death was a real loss for the village. As long as the enemy suffered losses, the Sand Village gained an equivalent benefit.

He was also fortunate that it had been him facing these four rather than Sasori. If Sasori had faced the same combination, with Minato among them, the outcome would likely have been different.

The ability to win and eliminate enemies simultaneously had not come purely from information advantage. The Leaf Village people not being sufficiently familiar with his full capabilities had also been a factor. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

But beyond those things, there was another reason that had been equally important. His advantage as a transmigrator had played a crucial role. Because he understood each of his opponents’ core logic, he had prepared corresponding solutions before the engagement even began.

This was the only framework that could realistically repel Minato’s fighting style. Without that kind of prior understanding, Minato’s approach would simply have carved through opponents as it encountered them.

He also noted the hatred value. Killing Leaf Village personnel in this engagement had generated a considerable amount of it.

He was not entirely certain what practical effect the accumulated hatred value produced beyond the general statement that certain Konoha plot characters would become hostile and prioritizing targeting him.

Both sides were now locked in open warfare anyway, so the implications were not a pressing concern. Though he did have a theory that Orochimaru’s assassination attempt on him in the Sand Village had been connected to the hatred value accumulation from earlier operations.

He moved quickly toward Sasori’s battlefield.

Compared to his exchange with Minato’s group, what he found on Sasori’s side presented a completely different picture. The scale of destruction inflicted on the surrounding terrain was even more exaggerated. And when he arrived, he happened to witness Sasori deploying his secret technique to end the battle.

Under Sasori’s control, countless densely packed puppet components appeared in every direction. Arms extending and intertwining, spreading across the battlefield like a tide.

These were not complete puppets but collections of mechanical puppet components, spreading outward under Sasori’s direction like a wave of machinery engulfing the entire field and swallowing the two Leaf Village Sarutobi clan Jonin within it.

As the mechanical arms expanded, they did not simply explode into fragments. The arms themselves disintegrated in sequence, revealing hidden venom-infused blades that drove toward their targets from every direction simultaneously.

The range of the technique was extraordinary, leaving the two Leaf Village ninja with no viable escape path.

Yuji narrowed his eyes.

He was not merely marveling at the power of Sasori’s Puppet Technique. His mind registered the sheer scale of what the Puppet Master profession demanded in terms of preparation and accumulated resources.

Since the year they had begun operating separately, he had not been entirely certain how many samples Sasori had accumulated or how much military equipment he had stockpiled.

Now, seeing what was deployed in front of him, he understood clearly that what he had seen in Sasori’s house over the years had only ever been the surface.

"So many limbs. Even if they were cheap to produce individually, the cost and time and effort required to manufacture all of them is unimaginable. And all of it was spent in a single technique."

Yuji swallowed hard.

He felt a pang of something close to regret on Sasori’s behalf, then immediately wondered whether any of the components could be recovered and reused.

He also understood something now that he hadn’t fully appreciated before. After he had owed Sasori money and Sasori had demanded repayment, it had not been framed as a loan.

It had been a righteous and matter-of-fact demand. At that time, the village’s pharmaceutical industry had already been generating substantial profits, and as the person overseeing the operation, Yuji had been keeping a portion for himself beyond what was submitted to the village. He had accumulated a considerable personal sum.

But most of it had ended up going to Sasori.

In other words, the Puppet Technique’s extraordinary resource consumption had been partially funded by him. He had played a role in burning through all of it.

Undeniably, his presence had allowed Sasori’s strength to develop at a faster rate than it would have in the original story. After all, in Sasori’s eyes, even though they were close friends, they had always been competitors to some degree. Sasori did not want to lose to him.

Because this was a matter art.

The battle ended. Just as Yuji was still processing what he had witnessed, and half-expecting Sasori to carefully collect the scattered puppet materials from the ground, Sasori spotted him.

Simultaneously manipulating several complete puppets and using chakra threads to pull up the two Leaf Village Jonin corpses, he walked toward Yuji with a steady unhurried stride.

As for the mechanical arms scattered across the ground, some were collected into scrolls. But more of them were simply left where they had fallen.

Sasori did not even glance at them.

Yuji’s eyelid twitched.

"What a spendthrift."

Of course, from an outside perspective, the production cost of those puppet components was extremely high. But for Sasori, it was apparently not something he considered worth dwelling on.

Different professions truly were separated by a mountain’s worth of difference in perspective. The financial cost was real and substantial.

It was also, in a sense, a burden that fell on the Sand Village, which fortunately now had a pharmaceutical industry as its economic backbone. Without that, this kind of expenditure would have been unsustainable for any ordinary person or organization.

"How did it go?" Sasori’s puppet armor had taken some light damage, likely from encountering difficulty during the fight with the two high-ranking Jonin. But overall, his condition was fine.

Sasori had not noticed Yuji’s expression and asked with characteristic indifference.

"Two escaped. Two died," Yuji said, clearing his throat.

"Where are the bodies?"

"Over there."

"Let’s go."

The two of them moved quickly and left the area without further conversation.