Someone else spoke up in the crowd.
"Maybe that old rumor was right after all. Maybe the Jiraiya walking around Konoha really is a fake."
Hiruzen had been about to reject Ōnoki's greedy demands outright. But the sudden explosion of "Hizashi's Last Words" across the village forced him to swallow his rage.
He looked back at Ōnoki's letter, face dark.
Accepting meant handing Iwagakure a massive advantage on a silver platter.
Refusing meant… what? He had no cards left.
"Ōnoki knows I'm desperate. And now this damn suicide note has made everything worse."
"Why does every disaster land on my head? What the hell did I do wrong?"
Hiruzen was furious and powerless at the same time.
"Damn it!"
After a long moment he forced himself to calm down.
"No choice. I have to accept Ōnoki's terms. We'll lose in the short term, but once war breaks out, everything can change. The Leaf still has a chance to take back what we give up."
He started writing his reply.
...
Sunagakure.
"Points: 3112!"
Rasa smiled.
"Spreading my own rumors to stir up the Jiraiya scandal again… and it worked perfectly. After all, I'm one of the people actually involved."
"On our side the story spreads freely. On Konoha's side they can't control it no matter how hard they try."
"Thirty consecutive draws. Start."
The invisible wheel spun.
[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained an F-rank item: one tael of gold.]
...
[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained a C-rank item: Ninjutsu Scroll (Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique).]
...
[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained an A-rank item: S-rank Ninjutsu Enhancement Card.]
Rasa raised an eyebrow.
"A Great Fireball scroll? Nice, but not exactly game-changing. Fire Style has never impressed me much. Even Amaterasu hasn't actually burned that many people to death. They call it the 'non-lethal' element for a reason."
He moved on.
"S-rank Ninjutsu Enhancement Card. This is the third time I've pulled one."
"First time turned Sand Substitution into the Anubis God Substitution. Second time turned Wind Style: Vacuum Wave into God's Vacuum Hand."
"Let's see what happens now."
He activated the card. Three names appeared.
Clone Technique.
Transformation Technique.
Sand Body Flicker.
Rasa thought for a second.
"The upgrades always seem to pull from the name itself. Sand Substitution became 'Substitution.' Vacuum Wave became 'Vacuum.' This time I'll go with Clone Technique."
He made his choice.
Light flashed across the card. The names vanished. Fresh knowledge poured straight into his mind.
[Clone Technique (Body Separation Technique)]
[—When struck by a fatal attack, you do not die. Instead you consume a massive amount of chakra and split your body into two complete copies.]
[If either copy receives a fatal attack, the same process repeats.]
Rasa's eyes narrowed with excitement.
"Avoid fatal damage? This is basically the Hellhound's split ability."
"As long as my chakra doesn't run out… I can't die."
"Insanely broken."
He already had four powerful summons — Yatagarasu for air superiority, the chameleon (too easy to sense), the giant bull (just raw power), and the Hellhound (the real monster). But now he had something even better.
"Imagine I cut myself once before a battle and leave one copy safe inside the Sun Disk core. The other copy can fight without any fear. As long as one copy survives, I survive. As long as I have chakra, I survive."
"This upgrade is massive. Taking a basic illusion clone and turning it into this? Completely ridiculous."
He checked his current arsenal.
Eleven S-rank techniques now.
Sand Soldier Emergence, Flowing Sand Shift, Arc-Moon Sand Dune, Antlion, Sandification, Bestow S/N, Anubis God Substitution, Electromagnetic Cannon, God's Vacuum Hand, Situational Awareness, and now Body Separation Technique.
"Eleven S-rank jutsu. Most entire ninja villages don't have that many."
"Attack, defense, movement… I finally don't have any glaring weaknesses."
"Plus my Ōtsutsuki bloodline is at thirty percent. The chakra reserves alone are absurd."
A sudden commotion outside pulled him from his thoughts. An intelligence operative sprinted into the Kazekage Tower.
"Lord Kazekage!"
"What is it?"
The man — Shazuke, one of Ebizo's rumor team members — was grinning ear to ear.
"Lord Kazekage, we just received something extremely valuable. It's going to hit Konoha extremely hard."
"Oh? What is it?"
"A suicide note. Hyuga Hizashi's suicide note. It clearly states that Hiruzen Sarutobi ordered him to sell Jiraiya's information to us. There are also plenty of handwriting samples from Hizashi's daily life. It all matches."
Rasa took the document, an amused smile spreading across his face.
It was the exact forged suicide note he had created earlier.
He hadn't expected it to come back to him like this — delivered straight to Sunagakure by someone inside Konoha.
Whoever sent this really wanted Hiruzen dead.
"Interesting. Very interesting."