Everyone has gone through something like this, more or less.
Like when you were a kid at school and the teacher suddenly left the classroom during evening self-study.
Or when you came home as a student and realized your parents had gone on a business trip for a few days, leaving you alone at home… with an unlocked computer.
Strictly speaking, Orochimaru never really restricted Amamiya Kenichi's movements, but the feeling was completely different.
Now that Sensei wasn't around, sprawling alone in his own lab, he could finally relax all the way down to his bones.
"Ahh… in a quiet environment like this, even my inspiration feels sharper," Kenichi sighed contentedly.
He stretched lazily in his chair, taking in the familiar sight of the Land of Rice Fields laboratory.
"…But seriously, how did Sensei manage to create that facial-recognition lock?" he muttered, a little curious.
Still, as nice as it was to lie around, work wasn't going to do itself.
And in any lab, the first order of business was always the same.
Cleaning.
He hadn't exactly been faithfully tidying up before he rushed out last time, so he decided to do a thorough sweep before starting new experiments.
Waste disposal in a lab was a delicate operation. Some things needed to be incinerated. Others had to be buried deeply. The concept of "proper chemical degradation of hazardous waste" simply didn't exist in the current ninja world.
Which meant scavenging trash in this world was extremely dangerous. You could very well "pick up" something lethal—especially near one of Orochimaru's test bases.
And sometimes, instead of garbage, you picked up… pieces of people.
Limbs. Organs. Bits of what used to be someone.
"…Now that Sensei's gone, how am I supposed to buy more materials?" Kenichi frowned.
He'd originally planned to continue researching thermobaric bombs, solving the problems in their current design one by one.
But when he came back, he remembered a key issue.
He'd already used up all his stock.
He didn't even have enough raw ingredients left to produce a batch of standard thermobaric explosive.
Fortunately, he had asked Orochimaru before about where to purchase raw materials, so leaving the lab to restock wasn't that big of a deal.
Everyone knew rogue ninja were wanted by every major village.
Which meant they couldn't just stroll into the official village supply depots to go shopping.
So when missing-nin and drifters needed gear or materials… what did they do?
Simple.
They went to places specifically designed to sell things to people like them.
When Orochimaru had explained it, Kenichi had thought, This sounds a lot like a black market, but once he heard the full explanation, he realized it was even more dangerous than that.
People who flocked to such places were, more often than not, missing-nin or wandering shinobi. And within that crowd moved another type of predator entirely:
Bounty hunters.
They came specifically to sniff out anyone careless enough to expose their identity, kill them, and drag their heads to the exchange offices to cash in.
Even Orochimaru used the Face-Erasing Technique to change his appearance when he shopped there.
Not because he couldn't handle a few small fry—
But because it was a waste of his time.
His time was far too valuable to squander on idiots blinded by reward money. Better to run one jutsu, avoid the trouble entirely, and get back to doing experiments.
Kenichi had never been there himself, but he'd heard enough.
So after finding a "lucky volunteer" on the road and borrowing his face, he headed to a black market near the border of the Land of Rice Fields.
It wasn't far from the Land of Fire.
From the outside, it looked like a perfectly normal small town. But the goods on display made it very obvious this place was anything but ordinary.
Broken weapons.
Piles of ration pills and explosive tags stacked together, half-wrapped, half-spilled.
Chest guards and other ninja armor, most of them dented, cracked, or bloodstained—clearly stripped from unluckier shinobi.
Kenichi even spotted one of the oldest businesses in human history operating in a corner alley.
He glanced once and immediately lost interest.
The "stock" on offer was mostly genin. Occasionally a chūnin. But jōnin? Those basically never appeared in places like this.
There were more… specialized networks for trading jōnin.
A fully trained jōnin was the backbone of any village. Here, they were nothing more than high-priced merchandise—and that alone was enough to tell you this was a part of the ninja world Naruto had never seen.
"…This is basically an IRL darknet," Kenichi muttered as he walked.
They even sold jutsu here.
Scrolls hung on racks, each labeled with the name of the technique contained inside. The prices were surprisingly low.
He even spotted an A-rank ninjutsu scroll: Earth Release: Swamp of the Underworld, priced at ten million ryō.
That sounded expensive, but for an A-rank jutsu—which would normally be tightly controlled and stored securely in a village archive—that was dirt-cheap.
In this world, knowledge was a monopolized commodity.
And here it was being sold off like discount groceries.
There were all sorts of bizarre techniques, too—
"Lightning Release: Muscle Activation Technique,"
"Water Release: Waterbed Technique,"
and other jutsu that made him raise an eyebrow.
But most of them failed to spark any interest.
What did catch his eye was a tattered earth-release scroll shoved into a corner.
Earth Release: Moving Earth Core.
A genuinely practical high-level ninjutsu. In Kenichi's eyes, this thing would've put a lot of construction workers out of business in his previous life.
With that jutsu, one could reshape terrain according to pre-drawn design plans. Building houses? Raising walls? Modifying geography? All trivial.
Still, he made no move to buy it.
Buying jutsu scrolls in a place like this was like buying "authentic antiques" at a shady street stall in his old world.
If you weren't truly an expert, your odds of picking up something real were microscopic.
And there were traps.
Orochimaru had warned him before: some stall owners would deliberately hand you a fragile scroll. The moment you opened it, it disintegrated into dust.
And then they'd blame you for breaking it and demand full compensation.
Kenichi had asked what happened to the poor soul who'd tried that scam on Orochimaru.
Sensei had smiled faintly and replied:
"He was absorbed by Hashirama's cells and turned into an irrational monster. Sadly, very unstable. I had to put him down."
Kenichi had no desire to invite that kind of trouble, so he didn't even glance twice at the Moving Earth Core scroll.
Instead, he headed straight for a shop with a "General Goods" sign hanging over the door.
"Welcome, customer. What can we help you with today?"
Behind the counter stood a young woman. Next to her, a young man. Both of them had one thing in common—
They were young.
And annoyingly good-looking.
"I need these," Kenichi said.
He pulled out a prepared list—the full set of ingredients required to manufacture thermobaric explosives—and handed it over.
The woman skimmed the list.
Her eyes lit up.
"We happen to have all of this in stock," she said, breaking into a professional smile. "How would you like to pay? We highly recommend our Golden Credit Plan~"