Raizen and Amamiya Tian drank until the tavern lanterns burned down to stubs. Tian talked, Raizen listened, and the weight of every missed clan update slowly caught up with him. Turns out that when you're running Konoha in the middle of the Warring States, you lose track of a few hundred things. Or a few thousand.
Raizen didn't blame himself.
He barely slept as it was.
Leading a village wasn't glorious. It was standing at a desk from dawn to whatever-o'clock signing reports until your fingers cramped. On normal days, Raizen worked from six in the morning to ten at night. On bad days, he worked past midnight and woke up feeling like a respawned NPC with half his stats missing.
So yeah, clan politics slipped through the cracks.
Tian handled most of it now, along with the elders. Raizen trusted them. He had to. Otherwise he'd drown under the flood of tasks that came with dragging Konoha into existence.
"You give something up for everything you gain," Raizen muttered later, staring at the snowfall outside the tavern window. "If I'm going to end the Warring States, then I don't get to keep every old habit."
For a moment, the cold air and the fruit wine loosened the knot in his chest.
For the first time in months, he actually breathed.
The peace ended in the morning.
By sunrise, Raizen was back at the Chief's desk, knee-deep in documents. His dream of a slow day died the moment he picked up the first scroll.
"The Land of Earth actually founded a village already?"
Raizen froze.
Konoha had barely opened its gates. Most nations were still pretending they had never heard of the word "village." He expected someone to copy the idea eventually, maybe in a year or two.
But this?
This was way too fast.
The scroll explained everything: the daimyo of the Land of Earth invited all the major clan heads and forced cooperation under his banner. The new village was completely bankrolled by the daimyo himself.
"Huh. No wonder later Iwagakure always felt like the daimyo's personal pet project," Raizen grumbled, rubbing his temples. "The roots were rotten from day one."
He didn't even get time to process the migraine before the second report hit him.
"And the Land of Wind is preparing to move too?"
The puppet clan was consolidating power, and their patriarch Liedō and his wife Chiyo had met with the daimyo seven days ago. The reason wasn't stated, but Raizen didn't need a Byakugan to see through it.
They wanted backing.
They wanted Sunagakure.
And they wanted it soon.
"A restless bunch, aren't you?" Raizen slapped the desk, the sound echoing in the office.
A knock came at the door.
Sarutobi Sasuke entered with a stack so tall it nearly hid his face.
"My lord, these are the reports from the Land of Lightning and the Land of Water."
Raizen felt the universe preparing another punch.
He opened the Lightning scroll first.
A man named Ai had publicly announced the formation of Cloud Shinobi Village. Instead of getting laughed out of the capitol, he gathered support. And momentum. And people.
Great. Another village forming out of thin air.
The Water Country report wasn't better.
The Guideng Mizuki family had united the major clans for a meeting. Overnight, the murders, raids, and blood feuds stopped. The clans began exchanging resources as if the last fifty years hadn't happened.
A calm Water Country was the scariest thing Raizen could imagine.
After reading it all, he let out a long, defeated sigh.
Sasuke blinked. "My lord… is something wrong?"
"The Four Great Nations are all changing at the same time. At this pace, they'll form their own shinobi villages within a year or two."
"W-what?!"
Sasuke's shock was almost funny.
He had barely gotten used to Konoha. Now the entire world was rushing to catch up.
Raizen leaned back in his chair.
Konoha was months old. Literally months. The so-called "Konoha Alliance" before this was just clans huddled together, trying not to die. Compared to that, the big clans in other nations had been stockpiling power for decades.
If they wanted to create villages in a few months, they could.
They just needed the daimyo's blessing.
As much as Raizen hated it… the logic held.
"Well," he said, tossing the scroll aside, "we handle our own problems first."
Even if every country launched village-building projects, it wouldn't be instant. It would take years to stabilize. And if Raizen used those years well… Konoha might dominate before the others even found their footing.
He could even… technically… start the First Shinobi War early and crush them before their foundations set.
But that was exactly why he couldn't.
Other nations weren't weak. Not yet. And Konoha couldn't survive a full-scale world war while still holding itself together with hope, dreams, and Raizen's caffeine-fueled stubbornness.
"One wrong move and Konoha collapses," he muttered.
For now, he chose patience.
Patience, strategy, and the long grind.
The war would come on its own.
It always did.
...
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