Hey guys, here is the new chapter hope you will liked and read thru everything.
peak is coming soon
If we hit 100 PW I post a extra chapter
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Enjoy the chapter!
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The evening sun was beginning to color the massive dunes surrounding Sunagakure in orange and reddish hues. Inside the administrative tower, the heat of the day was starting to yield to the cool night breeze, but the work pace in the main offices remained overwhelming. Military files, village budgets, and trade documents piled high in mountains of paper across the desks.
Daigo let out a long sigh, dropping his pen onto the wooden table. He rubbed his temples with both hands, stretching his back after spending consecutive hours dealing with all the paperwork. Looking up at the wall clock, he realized he had finally finished his obligations for the day.
He rose from his seat and walked toward the door connecting to the adjacent office, which remained open. There, buried under filing folders and ANBU reports, sat Rasa. He sported deep dark circles under his eyes and was signing scrolls with mechanical speed, completely focused.
"Rasa," Daigo called out, leaning gently against the doorframe. "I'm done for the day. I'm heading home."
Rasa looked up from the papers for a brief second, pausing his ink-dipped pen. He let out a huff that was meant to be a complaint, but ultimately denoted pure paternal exhaustion.
"Alright, Daigo. Go get some rest," Rasa replied, adjusting his robes. "I'm about to finish this last stack of reports and will do the exact same. Karura sent me a message via messenger hawk an hour ago. If I don't arrive soon, I'll be in serious trouble."
Daigo let out a small chuckle, crossing his arms. "Paternal troubles?"
"You have no idea what it's like," Rasa admitted with a resigned half-smile, though his eyes reflected a deep pride. "Temari just turned one and has discovered she can crawl at an alarming speed across the entire living room; no furniture is safe from her. And Kankurō is barely a few months old, but he seems to have the lungs of an elite shinobi; he won't stop crying in the middle of the night demanding attention. Keeping order in that house is harder than controlling Gold Dust in the middle of a storm."
Daigo's smile widened, nodding with absolute empathy. Knowing that his right hand and former rival shared those same daily battles gave an unusual warmth to his role as a friend.
"Well, then I won't take up any more of your time so you can go help Karura," Daigo said, turning around with a parting gesture. "I'll see you first thing tomorrow morning so you can tell me more about what we discussed."
"See you tomorrow, Kazekage-sama," Rasa said goodbye, dipping his pen back into the ink with renewed energy to finish quickly.
Both men left the main tower at almost the same time, taking different paths through the streets illuminated by the first lamps of the night.
For Daigo, the walk home held a completely new meaning that evening. He wasn't heading to his old military quarters or the cold residential quarters in the upper tower. He was walking toward the northern residential district, where just the day before he had finalized the purchase of a new, spacious, and well-secured residence. It was a house built from reinforced stone, featuring a wide courtyard shielded from the desert winds and plenty of rooms for what was to come. His new family home.
As he crossed the threshold of the front door, the aroma of home-cooked food and the warmth of the environment welcomed him instantly. The sound of tottering footsteps on the fresh wood caught his attention.
In the center of the main hallway, on a thick plush rug that had just been installed that morning, a small child just over a year and a few months old was trying with all his might to keep his balance on his two legs. The infant wore a small, loose, and comfortable light-grey tunic. His hair, an extremely pale ash-white color, fell messily over his forehead, framing curious green eyes that observed the world with a seriousness that didn't belong to his young age. On his forehead, two small reddish dots decorated his skin—the unmistakable mark of the Kaguya Clan.
The little one took a stumbling step forward, making a small sound of effort as he extended his chubby hands toward a small wooden puppet toy lying a few inches away. However, gravity had its way, and the boy plopped down hard onto his bottom on the plush carpet, letting out a slight groan of frustration.
"Come on, Kimimaro, you can do it. Just one more step," a soft, melodious voice said from the nearby sofa.
Pakura observed the scene with an infinitely warm smile—an expression that the Sand's enemies would never have believed possible on the face of the dreaded Scorch Release heroine. She wore a loose purple robe that subtly concealed the beginning of her third month of pregnancy. Her belly wasn't prominent yet, but the way she sat and the grace with which she moved betrayed the absolute care she put into every action.
Daigo wiped his feet at the entrance, letting a genuine smile erase the lines of fatigue from his face. Seeing little Kimimaro try to walk in his new home had become his best therapy against the stress of the village. Following his conversation with Pakura, Daigo had pulled the strings the very next day to adopt him; the child was now officially under his legal guardianship. The Kaguya name was no longer a death sentence or a mark of savageness in Suna; now, this child was part of the Kazekage's household.
"That won't stop him," Daigo commented, walking slowly toward the rug and squatting in front of the boy. "He has that innate stubbornness of his clan. I imagine he's fallen five times in the last hour and hasn't cried once," Daigo said with a smile.
Pakura let out a small laugh, rising carefully to join him. "He's perfect for us, as little Kimimaro will make the best older brother. Besides, during his medical check-up today, everything is stable with his lineage and his body; it seems your sun exposure idea has really helped their condition."
Kimimaro, hearing his name, raised his head. He stared fixedly at Daigo and, pushing his tiny hands against Daigo's knees, managed to pull himself up once more. He let out a victorious babble while clutching the fabric of his new father's pants.
Daigo gently took him by the arms to lift him up. Little Kimimaro offered no resistance; instead, he rested his head against Daigo's shoulder, observing the new living room with analytical eyes.
"I still find it hard to believe that in a few months, there will be another pair of feet running through these halls," Daigo murmured, passing his free hand along Pakura's back, drawing her close protectively. "Going from ruling a military village to planning a nursery in a brand-new house is quite a change of pace, don't you think?"
"You'll do great, Dai," Pakura replied, resting her head against Daigo's chest while glancing sideways at the little one, who was already starting to drift off to sleep in Daigo's arms. "Seeing you with Kimimaro removes any doubt I had. I know you were afraid the council would view this as a distraction, but Rasa and the elders haven't dared to say a single word. The success of the underground tunnels and the backing of the 5 Shadows give you absolute authority."
"Rasa is busy with his own brats; Temari and Kankurō are giving him more trouble than the paperwork right now," Daigo admitted, keeping his voice low so as not to wake Kimimaro, who was already closing his eyes completely. "The council may have their opinions on adopting Kimimaro, but as long as resources flow and the village remains secure, they will bite their tongues. My only real worry is the outside future. The world is far too quiet after the war, and even though everyone is recovering, something could happen."
Pakura paused, gently stroking Daigo's arm as she guided him toward the main living area. "Enjoy this beautiful night in our house, Dai. Leave politics for tomorrow. Tonight it's just the three of us... enjoying the silence of the desert."
Daigo nodded, with infinite delicacy depositing little Kimimaro into a small wooden crib they had placed near the interior window. He tucked him in with a light blanket and returned to Pakura's side, taking her hand as they gazed at the tranquility of the night through the glass. Suna was in its golden age—or so it seemed from the surface.
While familial warmth filled the rooms of the Kazekage's new home, deep within the lowest levels of Sunagakure, the reality was radically different.
Sector Five of the underground vaults was a restricted zone—an area where access was forbidden to ninety-nine percent of the village's shinobi. The walls here weren't made of ordinary limestone; they were reinforced with thick layers of iron and containment seals that constantly vibrated with a dense, heavy, and suffocating energy.
In the center of the chamber, upon a stone altar surrounded by a moat of sand, rested an immense dark clay vessel. The surface of the container was entirely covered by strips of high-density sealing paper, inscribed with complex Fūinjutsu characters by Karinna and the select few in the village who possessed such knowledge.
Residing inside that vessel was the Seven-Tails, Chōmei. The gigantic insect Bijuu remained in a state of forced lethargy, its immense chakra being drained safely and millimetrically to power the village's emergency systems, trapped in a perfect containment cycle. The silence in the chamber was absolute, broken only by the hum of the chakra barriers.
Suddenly, an almost imperceptible distortion occurred in the chamber's stone floor.
The solidity of the rock seemed to melt away like stagnant water. From the depths of the earth, a figure began to emerge slowly, silently, and ghost-like. There was no chakra fluctuation, no sound, no seismic alert. The technique was so flawless that it completely bypassed the advanced sensors Daigo and Karinna had installed around the perimeter.
The figure that emerged didn't look entirely human. It was a silhouette vertically split down the middle. The right side was an absolute pitch-black, so dense it seemed to absorb the dim light of the chamber's torches; the left side was a pale, almost translucent white. Two skin extensions shaped like a Venus flytrap enclosed its body like plant armor, slowly opening to reveal the creature's face.
The figure stared at the massive Bijuu vessel with an eerie fixed gaze. The white side of its face maintained a wicked grin, while the eye on the black side remained cold, calculating, and devoid of any human emotion.
"So this is where the Kazekage hides his little toy; quite secure it was," the white half whispered, its voice sounding in a sharp, mocking tone that seemed to float in the damp cave air. "The ninjas of this village have become very clever. They are using the beast's chakra to stabilize their defenses. Quite an ingenious idea for Sunagakure."
"Daigo is moving too fast," the black half replied, its voice a deep, raspy, and ancient echo denoting a millennia-old intelligence. "His industrial growth isn't what worries me. What worries me is his gathering of pieces. He has secured the Yuki survivors, integrated the Kaguya remnants, and now his men are already tracking the Chinoike Clan in the Valley of Hell. If he continues consolidating this level of military and strategic power, Sunagakure will become an anomaly."
"An anomaly? For Madara's plans?" the white half asked, tilting its head with morbid curiosity.
"Exactly," the black half decreed, taking a silent step toward the edge of the sand moat. "Konoha has always been the center of attention due to the lineage of the Senju, the Uchiha, and the other clans. The plan to release the Nine-Tails using Obito is already in motion for this year. However, we cannot allow Sunagakure to remain intact and in its prime while Konoha plunges into chaos. If Daigo keeps his village at one hundred percent capacity, the balance of the shinobi world will tilt in his favor. He will react too quickly. He will interfere with our future movements when we definitively begin gathering the Bijuu."
The double shadow stopped just a few feet from the primary vessel. The eye of the black half gleamed maliciously as it analyzed the Fūinjutsu sealing layers created by Karinna. They were seals designed to withstand external attacks and contain the internal pressure of Chōmei's chakra. Anyone attempting to break them via brute force would trigger an immediate alarm that would bring the Kazekage and the strongest ninjas within seconds.
But Zetsu did not operate by the rules of brute force.
"So what shall we do? Do we take the insect?" the white half asked, swaying its body impatiently.
"No. Capturing it now would be premature and would sound alarms across the other nations ahead of time," the black half answered bluntly. "Tonight's objective is not capture. The objective is eradication. We will use Sunagakure's own strength against it. We will break this seal from its core, allowing the Seven-Tails to break free in a burst of blind fury right at the heart of Sunagakure's infrastructure."
"Oh! A beautiful internal explosion!" the white half celebrated in a harsh whisper. "The Seven-Tails must hate being locked up in small spaces. When it wakes up and sees it's beneath tons of stone, it will destroy everything, collapse the surface foundations, and tear apart the Kage's tower. Daigo will have to fight to the death inside his own home."
"If Daigo dies in the process, the danger is over," the black half continued, shaping a liquid, dark extension of its own body that slid through the air, bypassing physical barriers thanks to its unique nature. "And if he survives, he will rule over a graveyard of sand. A destroyed village with depleted resources and a decimated population will pose no threat to future plans. They will remain politically crippled for the next two decades."
The dark mass of Black Zetsu touched the base of the clay jar. It didn't tear the sealing papers; instead, it began injecting a frequency of corrupted chakra directly into the ceramic pores, altering the energy flow frequency keeping the beast comatose. It was a slow, meticulous process, designed to act as a time fuse. The seal wouldn't drop immediately; it would gradually weaken from within, eroding molecule by molecule until the Bijuu's pressure did the rest.
"It will take a few days," the black half muttered, withdrawing its limb as the vessel emitted an almost imperceptible red flash deep at its base. "The weakening will be invisible to the sensors. They'll think the fluctuations are mere readjustments of the underground industrial system. And by the time they realize the error... it will be too late to seal it again."
"The timing is perfect," the white half laughed, beginning to sink back into the solid rock floor. "The Scorch Release heroine is pregnant, the ninjas are relaxed celebrating progress, and the Kazekage believes he holds the world in his hands. The fall of Sunagakure will be a wonderful show to watch from the dunes."
"Let's go," the black half ordered dryly. "We need to monitor Konoha's movements. Minato Namikaze is advancing quite rapidly as well, especially with the unity within the new Konoha without Danzō and Orochimaru. The world stage must be set for the double tragedy."
The double shadow sank completely into the gloom of Sector Five. The stone floor regained its original solidity in a blink, leaving no footprints, no traces of chakra, nor the slightest clue of intrusion. The underground chamber plunged once more into absolute silence.
However, in the center of the altar, the massive dark clay vessel was no longer safe. From deep within its core, Chōmei's green, corrosive chakra began to stir slightly, sensing for the first time in months a tiny crack in its prison.
On the surface, entirely oblivious to the silent corruption taking place in the depths of his domain, Daigo walked through the hallways of his new house as night fell. He had left little Kimimaro fast asleep in his room and was now heading to the master bedroom.
Despite the peaceful dinner he had shared with Pakura and the satisfaction of finally having a home of their own for his family, a strange sense of unease had settled in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't a physical pain, but that sharp, developed instinct that every elite shinobi possessed—that inner voice warning him that something in the environment didn't quite line up, even if his rational senses told him everything was going perfectly.
Entering the room, he found a content Pakura sitting near the bed, brushing her hair in front of the mirror under the soft light of a wall lamp. Catching his reflection in the mirror, she immediately noticed the rigidity in Daigo's shoulders.
"You're still dwelling on something, Dai," she said, placing the brush down on the wooden table. "Is it because of the 5 Shadows' report on the Chinoike Clan?"
Daigo approached slowly, sitting on the edge of the new bed while unlacing his shinobi sandals. "Partially, yes. The Valley of Hell is a dangerous place, and the Ketsuryūgan is a power that shouldn't be underestimated. If we manage to integrate them into Suna the same way we did with the Yuki and Kaguya, the village will reach a level of tactical versatility surpassing any of the other four great nations. But that's not the only thing keeping me alert."
"Then what is it?" Pakura asked, turning in her seat to face him directly, her eyes showing genuine concern.
Daigo looked down at his own hands, channeling a minimal amount of chakra into the palm of his right hand. In a second, a tiny flower of flawless, translucent crystal bloomed between his fingers, shimmering with pink tones under the artificial light.
"The underground tunnel sensors reported a minor chakra fluctuation in Sector Five a couple of hours ago, right before I left the tower. Karinna checked it and assured me it was just a pressure readjustment of the sand due to the heat from Yler's boilers. The flow returned to normal right away."
"Karinna is the best barrier specialist we've had since she arrived in the village, Dai," Pakura reminded him in a comforting tone, standing up to walk over to him. "If she had seen an attempted sabotage or a real chakra leak, she would have triggered a red alert instantly. I think you're being overly paranoid because of the pregnancy and Kimimaro's arrival. You feel like you have so much more to lose now, and your mind is looking for dangers where there are none."
Daigo stared at the small crystal flower for a few seconds before closing it in his fist, shattering it into glittering dust. "You're right. Perhaps the weight of the decisions over these last few months and moving into this new house are taking a toll on me. Knowing I'm going to be a father changes the perspective on everything. I'm no longer just fighting for the future of a village; I'm fighting for the roof under which my children will sleep."
Pakura sat beside him on the bed. She took Daigo's hands in hers, interlocking their fingers firmly.
"And you're doing an incredible job. Look at Kimimaro. In just a few months, he went from being just another child destined for war in the Mist to a boy trying to take his first steps in our living room, smiling because he knows no one will hurt him here. That's the Sunagakure you are building, Dai. A place that protects its own. Rasa is going through the exact same thing with Temari and Kankurō; it's all part of growing."
Daigo looked into her eyes, feeling the warmth of her words finally dispel the tightness in his chest. He leaned forward, placing a tender kiss on Pakura's lips—a kiss that lingered for several seconds in the quiet of the room, reaffirming the unbreakable bond that united them.
"Thank you, Ura," Daigo whispered against her forehead, wrapping his arms around her shoulders as she snuggled against his chest. "I don't know what I'd do without you to keep me grounded."
"Making you the most powerful man in the Sand amounts to nothing if you don't have a home to return to after battles," she replied with a small smile, closing her eyes as she settled in to sleep. "Now rest. You have a long day tomorrow, and I need your mind to be clear."
"Goodnight, Ura," Daigo murmured, turning off the wall lamp with a subtle flick of his free hand.
The room of the new house was plunged into darkness, illuminated only by the cold moonlight streaming through the window. The Kazekage closed his eyes, allowing physical exhaustion to finally win the battle against his thoughts, falling into a deep sleep beside his wife.
Outside the residence, the desert wind blew fiercely, kicking up curtains of sand that battered Sunagakure's outer walls. The lights of the houses went out one by one, leaving the city in an apparent nightly peace. On the surface, everything was moving according to plan: the economy grew, the leaders shared the same human experiences, and the village looked toward the future with unprecedented optimism.
End of Chapter