Following that, Menma, Mui, and Shibuki engaged in a highly meticulous discussion regarding the merger of their ninja villages. The most crucial step was securing the approval of the vast majority of the high-ranking jonin.
These individuals were the core pillars of both villages.
Unless they were exceptionally reclusive lone wolves, any ninja capable of reaching the rank of jonin usually had a dedicated following. After all, true geniuses were rare. Most shinobi didn't reach jonin rank until their twenties or thirties. Over ten or twenty years, they naturally cultivated a group of subordinates and built strong relationships with capable comrades.
This was especially true for jonin holding key administrative or combat positions.
Gaining the approval of a single jonin like that meant securing the backing of an entire faction, along with the support of multiple families behind them.
Naturally, under normal circumstances, they only needed to focus on the shinobi themselves. Ordinary civilians and low-ranking ninja rarely had a voice in these matters; they only cared whether the village could protect them and provide the safety and benefits they desired.
Securing preliminary support within the two villages was only the first step.
Next, they had to handle the high-ranking aristocrats and politicians, spearheaded by the Daimyos of both nations. At the very least, they had to ensure these leaders wouldn't actively oppose the merger. Under the current system, the dynamic between a nation and its hidden village was a tacit, ironclad rule. Menma had no intention of shattering that precedent just yet.
You have to eat one bite at a time, and walk one step at a time.
Only after completing these first two steps could the formal merger of the two villages truly begin.
Reorganizing the military forces, merging administrative departments, rewriting the laws and regulations, and handling a mountain of miscellaneous bureaucratic tasks.
That night, the three of them debated late into the early hours of the morning before finally wrapping up.
The very next day.
Mui and Shibuki immediately sprang into action.
Persuading others was an incredibly time-consuming and exhausting task. As for the issue of changing the village leadership that Shibuki had brought up earlier, Menma decided to shelf it for now. They were going to merge the villages anyway.
There was no need to rush into officially taking the seat of the Hidden Waterfall's leader.
Besides, everyone in the village already tacitly acknowledged Menma as their supreme commander. It was a status Menma had earned through absolute power, combined with Shibuki's active, public support.
Right now, whenever anyone saw him, they immediately bowed respectfully and addressed him as "Lord Menma."
The situation in the Hidden Grass was much the same. Through this massive war and Mui's subtle, deliberate guidance, Menma had established immense prestige among the thousands of Grass shinobi. This was exactly why Menma felt confident enough to push for a full merger.
As for dealing with the Daimyos of the two countries, that required a professional touch.
The villages had always maintained specialized personnel responsible for liaising with their national governments. Both the Waterfall and the Grass had dedicated representatives stationed in their respective capitals. Letting these diplomats handle the negotiations was the most efficient route.
Menma assigned Karin as the chief overseer of this operation.
In the newly forged Great Ninja Village, Karin was destined to be Menma's most trusted manager for internal affairs and logistics. This wasn't just because she was the person closest to him, but because her growth over the past year of grueling trials was obvious to everyone.
Menma fully believed in her capabilities.
He knew Karin would organize the chaos and manage their future operations flawlessly.
The plan unfolded steadily and methodically.
While Menma and his inner circle executed their grand design, a response finally arrived from the Hidden Stone in the northern theater.
The Third Tsuchikage clearly had no intention of turning hostile against Menma right now. First, the Hidden Stone desperately needed time to digest the massive spoils they had reaped from the war. Second, even as the victors, the Stone hadn't escaped unscathed. The loss of two to three thousand shinobi was a brutal, undeniable reality.
Even with a massive tactical advantage.
Their opponent had still been the Hidden Cloud.
And the raw, destructive power of the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki was genuinely terrifying. To secure victory paying "only" that price was already a remarkable achievement.
Given the current landscape.
Onoki naturally had to adopt a more conservative approach. Furthermore, he had to seriously weigh the staggering combat power Menma's faction now possessed.
It was no longer an entity the Hidden Stone could handle alone.
Onoki had zero interest in launching a suicidal war just to clear the board for the other hidden villages. He didn't even need to look at history—the devastating losses just suffered by the Cloud and the Mist were the perfect, bloody examples of what happened when you underestimated the situation.
If he was going to make a move, he had to wait for the absolute perfect moment.
Therefore, as the war drew to a close and the message from Menma arrived, the Third Tsuchikage didn't hesitate for a second before drafting a reply that perfectly honored their "alliance."
However.
The very moment that friendly reply was sent...
Onoki immediately dispatched his most trusted operative with secret orders to infiltrate the Hidden Leaf once the dust settled.
He needed to lay the groundwork for the inevitable, earth-shattering collision to come.
This was the true mark of a village leader. In Onoki's eyes, the only metric for judging any action or decision was whether it benefited the Hidden Stone.
"Father, is it really wise to contact the Leaf so soon? Won't it make us look desperate?"
Inside the Tsuchikage's private office in the Hidden Stone.
Kitsuchi, having just returned from the grueling front lines, looked at Onoki with a pale, exhausted face.
With only the two of them in the room, they could drop the formalities and speak plainly.
"Hmm. Honestly, it does look a bit rushed. But that Menma Uzumaki has completely shattered every prediction this old man made. I have a terrible feeling in my gut. If we don't start setting up countermeasures right now, that brat is absolutely going to grow into an unstoppable monster."
Onoki didn't dismiss his son's concern. Instead, he nodded, his voice heavy with profound realization.
This war.
Had genuinely shattered Onoki's worldview.
It was like expecting a student to barely scrape by with a 60, only for them to score a perfect 100. And the most terrifying part? That 100 probably wasn't even their true limit.
They only scored a 100 because the test didn't go any higher.
Onoki had already elevated Menma's threat level to the absolute maximum. It had barely been a year, yet Menma had undergone an earth-shattering transformation. To Onoki, the whole thing felt dangerously surreal.
"True. The strength Menma displayed is simply terrifying. Even Lord Jiraiya couldn't suppress him. And he's only thirteen. He's nowhere near his physical prime as a shinobi. Could he really become the next..."
Kitsuchi nodded in deep agreement. But as he reached the end of his sentence, a heavy dread seemed to choke his words, and he fell silent.
Onoki understood exactly what his son was leaving unsaid.
In fact, Onoki felt it more acutely than anyone. Kitsuchi belonged to the current era of shinobi; he had never truly witnessed the apocalyptic terror of those two legendary figures.
Onoki had been "lucky" enough to experience exactly what it meant to suppress the entire ninja world through sheer, overbearing presence.
Staring into those blood-red Sharingan.
Onoki hadn't even been able to muster the courage to fight back.
It was an oppressive, demonic aura right out of hell itself. It was a dark, suffocating shadow that had never faded from Onoki's heart.
Would Menma reach that god-like tier?
Onoki had no way of knowing.
Logically speaking, it should have been impossible. The history of shinobi spanned over a thousand years, and in all that time, only Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha had ever reached that pinnacle. Deep down, Onoki desperately wanted to believe it couldn't happen again.
But what if it did!?
Menma Uzumaki.
Had already shattered his understanding of reality more than once.
A mere thirteen-year-old boy. Where exactly was his absolute limit? Onoki honestly couldn't see it. The only thing Onoki knew for certain was the very real, very thick dread pulsing in his own chest.
"Ah. Make no mistake, Menma Uzumaki is destined to become the Hidden Stone's greatest enemy. Every move we make from this day forward must revolve around dealing with that Nine-Tails brat!!"
A sharp, ruthless glint flared in Onoki's cloudy eyes.
The landscape of the ninja world was changing at a breakneck pace.
Today's ally could easily become tomorrow's bitterest enemy.
The relationships between the hidden villages always shifted around two core principles: power and profit. Friendship? Trust?
They weren't impossible concepts.
But they always took a backseat to the reality of the situation.
Hashirama Senju and Naruto Uzumaki were the ultimate naive idealists. As friends, people like that were incredibly reliable and comforting. But as the leader of a massive faction, they were hopelessly irresponsible. Their fundamental motivation, their absolute core, was never purely the survival and prosperity of their own people. It wasn't that they didn't care.
It was that they placed their lofty, idealized dreams on the exact same pedestal.
That was the single greatest mistake a leader could make.
They only survived because their sheer personal power allowed them to bend reality to their will.
Without that god-like strength, they would have been the most foolish leaders in history. Naturally, this wasn't an objective universal truth—it was Menma's deeply personal, highly subjective view. You could call it a personal bias, and you wouldn't be wrong. Menma utterly despised the "naive idealist" archetype. He firmly believed that mindset would inevitably lead a nation, or a village, straight to ruin.
A true leader!
Must keep their feet planted firmly on the ground. They must maintain crystal-clear awareness of their stance, their position, and their duties.
Therefore.
When the intelligence regarding Onoki's actions arrived.
Menma didn't feel the slightest bit of surprise. It played out exactly as he had calculated. If the leader of the Hidden Stone lacked that level of ruthless foresight, Menma would have actually been worried.
"Menma, shouldn't we start setting up countermeasures? We can't just let that old man maneuver against us like this, can we?"
The intelligence had streamed in through various open and covert channels, detailing different aspects and threat levels.
It was several days later.
Karin, having returned to the Hidden Waterfall and officially stepped into her role as Menma's chief administrator, hurried into his laboratory the moment she verified the critical reports. After delivering the briefing, she looked at Menma with deep concern in her eyes.
They had just barely survived a coordinated pressure campaign from four major villages. If the Hidden Stone threw their weight against them too, wouldn't that mean fighting the entire world?
Putting everything else aside, the moment the Five Great Villages truly united and went all-out, they could easily field a combined army of seventy to eighty thousand shinobi. Just thinking about it made Karin's chest tighten with anxiety. That was a tenfold disadvantage in raw numbers.
And that didn't even factor in the gap in logistics and elite fighters.
As confident as Karin was, she didn't delusionally believe they could crush an alliance of that scale. Unless Menma's personal power truly reached the mythical heights of Hashirama Senju or Madara Uchiha—at which point, raw numbers became entirely meaningless.
But what were the odds of that?
Karin barely dared to dream it. That was a level of terrifying power that could casually suppress the entire globe.
In a thousand years of history, only two men had ever reached it.
Having faith in Menma was one thing, but relying on him becoming a living god wasn't a real strategy.
Any viable plan had to be grounded in their actual capabilities and current reality.
"Heh. There's no need, Karin. Do we really need to prepare for the Five Great Villages holding hands? You don't even need to look at the past few decades—just look at this war. It paints a perfectly clear picture. Ask yourself: can the Mist ever trust the Leaf again? Would the Cloud ever willingly cooperate with the Stone? The Sand is basically a dying beast on life support. We knew exactly what that old man in the Stone was planning from the very beginning. This is just the natural result of mutual exploitation. Whatever he tries to pull is his business. We just need to stick to our own rhythm. They've already missed their best window to stop us. The initiative is entirely in our hands now, Karin."
Menma let out a soft, dismissive chuckle.
"Our greatest enemy moving forward won't be the so-called Five Great Villages. It will be something else entirely."
"You mean the Akatsuki? Are they really that dangerous? Menma, what if this whole thing about collecting the Tailed Beasts and the legendary Rinnegan is just Orochimaru feeding us lies to misdirect us?"
Karin bit her lip, her crimson eyes filled with heavy skepticism.
"They're vastly more dangerous than you can imagine, Karin. You don't need to doubt that. But that's a problem for the future. Right now, our absolute priority is the village merger. My hands are going to be tied with a few other projects soon, so I need you to keep a close eye on the process. The faster we fully integrate these two villages, the better off we'll be."
Menma nodded gently, his tone warm and reassuring.
"Mm, I understand. Don't worry, Menma. Give me three months, and I'll have all the preliminary integration sorted out flawlessly!"
Karin nodded, her expression dead serious.
Three months wasn't a short amount of time, but for the monumental task of merging two entire hidden villages, it was practically a lightning-fast sprint.
While raw violence could solve most problems, there were some things brute force simply couldn't touch. Even if he forced compliance through sheer terror, it would inevitably breed endless resentment and future disasters.
In the past, Menma had nothing to lose. He could afford to be reckless and act with impunity.
But now, he had real stakes. He had an empire to build. He had to start playing by the rules—or at least, his own structured version of them. He could no longer afford to act entirely on a whim.
The future Menma desired was one governed by a brand-new order, not chaotic, lawless ruin.
That was a line he had to draw clearly in the sand.