Next Bonus, 100PS
Let's push for 200Power Stones this week!!
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"This is the natural course of history. Growing pains. Every civilization has to go through them. If I step in and start forcing outcomes, I'll just push things in an equally bad direction. That's a losing move."
Manji said it the way he said most things. Quietly. Without fanfare.
He'd long since surpassed the power ceiling of the shinobi world. Dropping into the middle of it now, swinging his weight around, would accomplish exactly one thing: making himself the common enemy of every faction on the map.
Better to work from the shadows. Slow pressure. Subtle shifts. Let the world correct itself without ever knowing a hand was on the wheel.
And if he was being honest with himself, centuries of living had dulled certain edges. Human suffering? He'd seen oceans of it. There was a time, early on, when he'd used Sage Arts to heal ordinary people.
Wandered through villages patching up the sick, mending broken bones. But that version of him had faded somewhere around the fourth or fifth century. The closer you got to godhood, the harder it became to feel things at human scale.
Kurama's ears drooped. He didn't like the answer, but he'd never known his Master to be wrong about this kind of thing. A reluctant tail-swish. Acceptance.
"Fine, Master. I trust you. But you didn't come all this way just for a social visit, right?"
Manji nodded. "Two reasons. First, I wanted to check on all nine of you. See how you're holding up. Second, I'm going to make sure nobody lays a hand on you. The clans are getting bold enough to be dangerous, and I'm not about to let my students get chained up and used as weapons."
Kurama's drooping ears shot straight up. His crimson eyes went wide, then blazed with something he hadn't felt in years.
He knew it. He knew the old man wouldn't abandon them.
"Master! You're serious?? What's the plan?"
The massive fox pressed forward, nearly vibrating with excitement.
Manji chuckled at the eagerness. "Let's just say your Master has a few tricks in reserve. Sit tight."
Kurama wanted to push for details, but he recognized that look. The old man was enjoying the mystery. No point pressing.
"New outfit? What happened to the old one?"
Kurama tilted his head, studying Manji's disguised appearance.
"I'm the face of a global religion, remember? If I walked around looking like myself, every person within a hundred miles would drop to their knees and start praying. So I'm keeping things low-key. Sixty-something-year-old traveler. Nobody looks twice."
Kurama grinned, all teeth and mischief. "Honestly? I think this look suits you better. More 'wise immortal hermit,' less 'guy on a temple mural.'"
Manji stroked his white beard and laughed.
........
The next morning, Manji left Kurama and set out across the shinobi world.
Finding the remaining eight Tailed Beasts was trivially easy for someone with his sensory range. The whole trip took three days.
He headed north first. Deep in the storm-battered mountain ranges of Lightning Country, he found the Two-Tails, Matatabi, and the Eight-Tails, Gyūki. Both of them nearly tackled him the moment they recognized his presence, then spent the next hour venting about years of being hunted by shinobi clans, barely getting a breath between complaints.
West next. The barren wastes between Earth and Wind Countries yielded the Five-Tails, Kokuō. Further south, buried in a miasma-choked mountain valley, the Seven-Tails, Chōmei.
Every Tailed Beast he found reacted the same way. Years of isolation and constant threat had ground them down to raw nerves and defensive hostility. But the instant they sensed Manji's presence, all of that fell away. The wariness dissolved into something simpler. Relief. Trust. The uncomplicated joy of a student who'd been struggling alone for too long, finally seeing their Master walk through the door.
He visited them all. Shukaku. Isobu. Every last one.
Three days. Nine reunions. And behind the warmth and the catching up, Manji quietly laid the groundwork for something much larger.
........
He activated every covert asset Mount Myōboku had embedded in the human world.
Centuries of patient, invisible work had built something extraordinary. A network so vast and so deeply woven into the fabric of civilization that pulling on any single thread would rearrange the entire tapestry.
Mount Myōboku controlled global finance through the exchange houses. Controlled public narrative through the Six Paths temples. Controlled information flow through intelligence toads planted in every major nation. Wealth. Media. Religion. Espionage. Four pillars holding up an invisible architecture that nobody on the surface even suspected existed.
Not even the most powerful feudal lords, the Daimyō themselves, had any idea. They just knew that sometimes, the world shifted in ways they couldn't explain. As if some enormous, unseen hand had reached down and rearranged the pieces on the board while everyone was looking the other way.
Manji gave the order.
The results were immediate.
Across the entire shinobi world, the frenzied campaign to capture the Tailed Beasts evaporated overnight. One day, every major clan and nation was pouring resources into hunting them down. The next day, nothing. Full stop. As if someone had pressed pause on a war and forgotten to tell anyone why.
Then came the messaging.
Six Paths temples in every country began circulating a new doctrine. Monks and priests delivered sermons declaring the Tailed Beasts to be sacred guardians of the natural world, divine protectors sent to watch over humanity. Not monsters to be feared. Not weapons to be enslaved. But holy creatures deserving of reverence and protection.
The narrative spread like wildfire. Within two weeks, every Daimyō on the continent had issued official decrees classifying Tailed Beasts as supreme-tier protected divine creatures. Hunting, capturing, or enslaving them was now a capital offense.
Just like that, the Nine Tailed Beasts went from "apocalyptic threats to be captured at any cost" to "endangered sacred animals" in the span of a single month.
The weaker clans had been the easiest to flip. Most of them couldn't catch a Tailed Beast anyway. They'd been watching stronger clans like the Uchiha edge closer to success and sweating bullets over what would happen when that power gap widened even further. A universal ban? That worked perfectly for them. Level the playing field by taking the biggest prize off the table entirely.
Common folk took it even further. Within a generation, Tailed Beast sightings became good luck omens. Folklore sprang up claiming that seeing one brought wealth and prosperity. The Nine-Tails went from "run for your lives" to "everyone gather and make a wish."
Like dragons in the old legends. Terrifying in theory. Lucky in practice.
And nobody, in any country, at any level of power, had the faintest idea where any of it had come from.
........
Senju Clan territory.
"Chief! You're not going to believe this! Those Tailed Beast monsters are protected species now! Happened overnight!"
A Senju clansman burst into the main hall, practically tripping over his own words.
Senju Shūichi sat in the clan head's chair, tapping a finger against the armrest. He raised one eyebrow.
"And? That's supposed to be bad news?"
The clansman blinked, thrown off.
"Think about it." Shūichi leaned back, perfectly relaxed. "The Uchiha, the Uzumaki, the Hyūga, all of them have been burning resources trying to capture Tailed Beasts. Senichi was bragging last week about riding the Nine-Tails into our compound. Now that whole plan is dead in the water."
His smile was the satisfied kind. The kind that said the math had already been done and the numbers were favorable.
The Senju had been dreading the scenario where the Uchiha got their hands on a Tailed Beast. The Sharingan alone was bad enough. Add a living superweapon to the equation and the balance of power tips so far it never comes back.
This mysterious development had solved that problem without the Senju lifting a finger.
"Chief, don't you think it's suspicious, though??"
The clansman leaned in, voice dropping to a conspiratorial hiss.
"Just days ago, every clan in the world was going all-out hunting Tailed Beasts. Now they ALL stopped at the exact same time? You think maybe they cut some backroom deal? Something aimed at us?"
"Hahaha, you're overthinking it."
Shūichi waved him off with an easy laugh.
The major clans hated each other too much to coordinate anything. The Uchiha and Hyūga couldn't agree on what direction was north. The idea of them quietly forming a coalition behind closed doors was laughable.
"Drop it. No conspiracy."
He rubbed his chin, though, and let curiosity get the better of him.
"What I am interested in is what could possibly make Uchiha Senichi give up on capturing the Nine-Tails. Last time I ran into him, he swore on his ancestors he'd have that fox on a leash by spring."
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