Everything in Akatsuki Village was developing in an orderly way according to Uchiha Makoto's plan.
Merchants coming and going felt a distinct atmosphere the moment they arrived—vitality, a flourishing energy where all things burst into life.
With massive injections of capital, Akatsuki Village had become a vast consumer market. Where there are profits to be made, people gather.
Where people gather, there is vitality.
Lately Makoto had been working to attract investment, drawing in merchants from across the shinobi world—not only from the Land of Fire, but from the other four great nations as well.
The livelier the merchants, the more developed the economy.
The benefits to Akatsuki Village were obvious.
A village's GDP matters.
His system chime kept ringing, the prosperity meter ticking upward.
"According to Lord Light Shadow's plan, this entire area will become the largest commercial district in the shinobi world, and the land opposite will be a technology park. The laboratories alone will cover…"
Kazuma was presenting Makoto's commercial blueprint to a crowd of investors. Through Darkness and her father's connections, they had gathered a group of noble magnates from the Land of Fire.
Not long ago,
this was barren ground.
But with construction crews and Akatsuki shinobi working day and night, building a mass of livable houses was the easiest thing in the world for shinobi. A few Earth Release stacks and the shell of a house would take shape.
At first, the clans' shinobi didn't want to get involved. Working like ordinary laborers didn't feel like a shinobi's job.
Having fought all their lives, the old-school clans couldn't grasp what Makoto's flashy commercial policies were good for. Expecting them to quickly understand something new and put it into practice at once was a tall order.
They were stubborn in certain ways, but Makoto didn't plan to argue.
If they didn't understand, fine.
They just needed to do the work.
Obey orders. Loyalty.
Surely they knew that.
Stick to the ninja-as-tools doctrine.
If you love executing missions,
Makoto issued a flood of D-rank missions. It's not as if he wasn't paying. Simple C-rank Earth Release could handle much of it; for elite jonin it was a mere flick of the wrist, at the cost of a little extra chakra.
Split off more Shadow Clones and you could finish several D-ranks at once.
Earn money without stepping out the door. Each job paid little,
but the volume was huge.
It added up to a tidy sum. Under Makoto's arrangements, the first shinobi to "eat the crab" quickly appeared, and then more and more Earth Release specialists joined in.
If you can easily make a bit of quick money, working alongside ordinary people isn't so hard to accept. The "so-good-after-all" law never goes out of style.
The wasteland vanished, replaced by rows of rentable shops, some already occupied.
Akatsuki shinobi would drop in to spend money from time to time, and soon they were enjoying the convenience.
Who doesn't want a convenience store at their doorstep.
Faced with Kazuma's tour,
the magnates looked deeply tempted.
Shinobi come and go in wind and rain, their heads figuratively tied to their belts. They've never been stingy with spending. Doing business in a shinobi village was a sure win.
Even more crucial was
safety.
Environmental work in the shinobi world is excellent—forests everywhere, jagged roads, travel is inconvenient. Merchant caravans often encounter wild beasts or step on some brightly colored little "cuties."
To ensure safety,
the trade routes opened by wealthy caravans are mostly fixed.
But public security in the shinobi world…
Along the routes, rogue shinobi and bandits lay in wait.
If a caravan had money and strength, it could hire shinobi escorts—expensive, but worth it. If not, it could only trust to luck. With bad luck, both people and goods were lost.
Now it was different.
To spur commerce, Makoto issued a license and a flag to every business entering Akatsuki Village. When traveling to do business, hang the flag high and proud. There was no need to fear rogue shinobi or bandits along the way.
Bandits might rob a merchant, but would they dare rob a shinobi village's property.
They're in the no-capital business of robbery, not the crematorium business of suicide. Anyone with a functioning brain knows whose goods can be taken and whose cannot.
Unless they truly have a death wish.
After a simple introduction,
the magnates had already decided to sign cooperation agreements with Akatsuki Village.
Seeing the first group off,
Kazuma carried the signed contracts into Uchiha Makoto's office.
The Light Shadow's office.
A red banner lay on Makoto's desk. Warm sunlight fell over him, easing his body and mind.
Soon,
he wrote a bold line across the red banner.
"All actions will obey Lord Light Shadow's command."
There was still much to handle, but he was not slacking. He was emulating advanced experience, planning to plaster such red banners with similar sayings all over Akatsuki Village. Some things must work subtly, shaping minds bit by bit.
The academy was even more important.
Education must start with the young.
"Lord Light Shadow, the commercial rollout is going smoothly. Over a hundred shops already have tenants."
Kazuma glanced at the room full of red banners. Though each line read differently, to his eyes they all spelled the same word: loyalty.
"Only a bit over a hundred… still a little slow."
Makoto curled his lip.
Kazuma felt the pace was already fast, but Makoto was not satisfied. They needed to build Akatsuki Village's reputation for an excellent business environment as quickly as possible.
Time for extraordinary measures.
"Kazuma, which newspapers are most influential in the Land of Fire?"
"What do you mean, Lord Light Shadow?"
Kazuma scratched his head.
The moment Makoto spoke, he sensed mischief brewing.
"I'm going to write an article. Contact the editors and get me the largest front-page space to run it."
"Understood."
If that was all, it would be easy enough.
But what would Lord Light Shadow write.
"Prepare pen and ink."
Makoto pondered for a moment and then his brush flew.
[A gold shop in Akatsuki Village suddenly went dark. The store was pitch black.]
[From the darkness came a few clatters—the glass counter shuddered as panicked customers bumped it. The manager shouted, "Nobody move. Crouch where you are to prevent a stampede." Then he added, "If you're holding any gold jewelry, keep a firm grip so it doesn't fall and chip."]
[Minutes passed with no recovery. In the dim gray, the manager took a deep breath and said, "By policy, all transactions just now are suspended. But customers are like the Sage of Six Paths—we can't let everyone go home empty-handed." He paused, then continued, "Please place the pieces you selected back on the trays. We'll record the weight and tag price. When the lights come back, if you still want them, we'll settle at the original tag. If not, no pressure."]
[Before the emergency patrol shinobi could act, the customers had already formed two lines: one gently returned gold necklaces, rings, and bracelets to the velvet trays, calling out the weight; the other line was shop staff, writing the customers' surnames on the tags and locking the pieces back in the cases. Five minutes later the lights blazed on. Not a single piece was missing, and even the scattered gold filaments had been twisted into a bundle and placed back where they belonged.]
[The owner opened the ledger: thirty-seven pieces, with a total tag price of 1.87 million ryo. In the end, not one of the thirty-seven customers left. All paid at the pre-blackout prices. After the last grandmother paid, she dropped the 2,000 ryo change into the donation box beside the counter and smiled: "Gold has a price. The light in the heart is priceless. Put this toward books for the youngsters." The next day a red notice was posted on the door: "Yesterday we recovered thirty-seven pieces of peace of mind and received 2,000 ryo of warmth. Thank you, everyone."]
[What a civilized, harmonious, honest, and orderly village.]
[A certain daimyo who wished to remain unnamed praised it: The business environment of a shinobi village is not determined by how many powerful shinobi it has, but by the quality of its ordinary citizens. Clearly, Akatsuki Village has an exceptionally fine business environment. Its residents had the chance to take gold for free, yet they declined and chose to pay honestly.]
[If I were a merchant, I would move to Akatsuki Village at once.]
[If free migration were allowed in today's shinobi world, the direction of the people's flow would be the direction of civilization—without a doubt, Akatsuki Village is civilization.]
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