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With booze and meat on the table, what more could you ask for—a bicycle?
Tsunade was eating like she was in ecstasy. If she had a tattoo sleeve and a machete propped up next to her chair, she'd look exactly like a bandit queen lording over her mountain stronghold.
"Lady Hokage, slow down, please slow down!"
Shizune kept covering her face in embarrassment, constantly reminding Tsunade.
Take it easy—no one's stealing your food.
But Tsunade was used to going all out, especially after a few drinks, and paid zero attention to Shizune's pleas.
Shizune kept shooting desperate looks at Kazuki, begging him to say something. Kazuki just smiled—he had no intention of intervening.
Do whatever feels good. There's no one else here; who cares about etiquette?
Compared to Tsunade tearing into huge chunks of meat and chugging sake, Kazuki and Shizune ate at a leisurely pace.
While enjoying the grilled meat, Kazuki recounted in detail his entire meeting with the Raikage.
"Iwagakure…"
Tsunade didn't say anything, but her expression said everything.
If she got the chance, she wouldn't mind stabbing Iwagakure right in the back herself.
During the Third Great Ninja War, Iwagakure had suddenly declared war on Konoha and sent massive forces into the Land of Fire. The losses were enormous, and thanks to certain people's idiotic maneuvers, Konoha ended the war utterly exhausted.
For a long time afterward, Konoha had to tuck its tail between its legs and behave.
Even though Tsunade hadn't been in the village during the Third War, that didn't stop her from holding a grudge.
So satisfying.
Tsunade drained an entire bottle of sake with a series of loud gulps, then handed the empty bottle to Shizune with a look of pure bliss.
"It looks like the Raikage is absolutely burning to avenge the deceased Third Raikage. Otherwise he never would've agreed to such ridiculous terms."
Kumogakure draws all the fire up front while Konoha waits for the perfect moment to backstab Iwagakure and clean up the scraps afterward.
The deal was beyond exploitative, yet Ai still accepted it. That alone showed just how fiercely his desire for revenge was blazing.
Kazuki smiled and said:
"If he couldn't convince Konoha to join and form an alliance with us, the Raikage would never be able to persuade the rest of Kumo's higher-ups to move against Iwagakure. That's why, no matter how outrageous our conditions were, he had to grit his teeth and agree. Compared to profit, revenge matters more to him. Ōnoki probably never imagined that Iwagakure would end up targeted—or that Konoha, of all villages, would be the one stabbing him in the back."
Tsunade's tone was complicated when she said that.
Under the Third Hokage's leadership, Konoha's reputation in the shinobi world had always been excellent.
The price of that good reputation, unfortunately, was that everyone felt free to take a bite out of Konoha whenever they pleased.
Everyone assumed Konoha would never start a war lightly. Even if they suffered huge losses, they'd swallow it for the sake of the village's long-term development.
It was precisely because of that impression that Ōnoki dared to redirect his village's internal conflicts outward through war.
If Konoha had always been as aggressive and meddlesome as Kumogakure—hard-line, quick to provoke other countries and villages—Ōnoki wouldn't have dared start a war so casually.
"We'll just wait. Maybe Ōnoki will find a way to resolve the village's underlying contradictions."
It was still too early to discuss this seriously. Iwagakure's latent problems were surfacing, but they hadn't reached the exploding point yet. It would still take time.
Before something actually blows up, everything is just a possibility.
For example, Kazuki and Ai had made their agreement, but if Iwagakure never imploded—if Ōnoki never turned his spearhead outward and instead found another way to smoothly resolve the village's hidden dangers—then the pact between Kazuki and Ai would be as if it never existed.
"That's enough for tonight. You two take your time eating. I'm going home to sleep."
Full and satisfied, business mostly concluded, Kazuki planned to head home and crash.
Looking at Tsunade, once she was stuffed and tipsy, she'd definitely need a long nap to recover before she could get up and handle paperwork again.
Western coastline of the Land of Wind.
Along the long stretch of coast, Kirigakure had built numerous large and small camps.
After paying a certain price, Kirigakure had finally secured a foothold, planning to use these coastal camps as bases to slowly wear down Sunagakure.
Although the Akatsuki organization controlled Yagura and had personally arranged the assassination plan for the daimyo, they didn't interfere much with the direction of this war.
In fact, Yagura, the Mizukage, had never once left Kirigakure; the entire war effort had been left to the village itself.
"Is Rasa part ostrich or something?"
Terumi Ichifune—the father of the future Fifth Mizukage, Terumi Mei—slammed the table in fury.
In Kirigakure, the Terumi clan's status was comparable to the Hyuga and Uchiha in Konoha.
They were one of the village's top ninja clans, and after the decline of the Hōzuki clan, the Terumi clan had become even more dominant.
With Mizukage Yagura never coming to the front lines or taking full command, Ichifune had been elected through a high-level meeting as the field commander for this war.
The war plan had already been decided back in the village during those high-level meetings.
Step one: Transport large numbers of ninja via sea routes into the Land of Wind.
Step two: The advance forces that landed would secure a section of coastline, build camps, then gradually push deeper into the country using the many camps scattered along the shore as bases.
The plan itself was solid.
But the moment it began to be executed, Rasa fed Ichifune a mouthful of pure rat shit.
Among the five great nations, the Land of Wind had the harshest environment—frankly, almost no country in the entire shinobi world had it worse.
That was why, despite having the largest territory, the Land of Wind was so dirt-poor it was embarrassing. Even their neighbor, the Land of Earth, was only marginally better.
Most Kirigakure ninja specialized in Water Release, and the desert environment suppressed their strength to a certain degree.
What was truly disgusting was that, from the moment Kiri's advance forces—and later the main army—landed and began constructing camps, Sunagakure's ninja, under Rasa's orders, never once engaged them head-on.
Instead, they harassed them relentlessly, using their familiarity with the terrain and control over the weather to constantly sicken and frustrate Kirigakure.
In the great deserts of the Land of Wind, if you were unlucky enough to run into a sandstorm or any other extreme weather, forget ordinary people—even ninja could die.
Kirigakure's troops had come thousands of miles to the Land of Wind, only to be constantly ambushed and harassed, leaving everyone exhausted and miserable.
And because the Land of Wind was so barren and its territory so vast, Kirigakure couldn't even sweep through and clear the area properly.
If this were the Land of Fire, they could just force Konoha's hand no matter what tricks Konoha pulled.
Refuse to come out and fight? Fine—we'll raid your towns and villages and see how long you last.
That kind of vicious tactic worked great against Konoha.
But when the opponent was Sunagakure, it was completely useless.