Chapter 13 (Patreon)

Danzo felt that Hiruzen had changed.

Hiruzen, in turn, could no longer feel the same understanding between them that had once existed.

In the past, they had protected Konoha together—Hiruzen standing openly as Hokage while Danzo worked from the shadows.

One guarded the village beneath the sunlight, while the other handled the threats hidden beneath its surface.

At some point, however, that balance had begun to fall apart.

Danzo had grown dissatisfied with his position. His methods became more extreme with each passing year, until even Hiruzen no longer knew how to conceal the consequences of his actions.

The two old teammates stared at one another across the Hokage’s office.

The air between them grew increasingly heavy.

Hiruzen remembered the years immediately after he inherited the position of Hokage, when he and Danzo had worked together without needing to explain themselves.

Danzo’s thoughts were entirely different.

He was already considering how Hiruzen might be removed so that he could finally claim the Hokage’s seat for himself.

If I were Hokage, I would never hesitate the way he does.

Disappointment filled Hiruzen’s eyes.

A trace of killing intent appeared in Danzo’s.

Before the tension could rise any further, someone knocked on the office door and announced the arrival of an urgent report from the front lines.

The interruption finally broke the murderous atmosphere.

“Hmph. One day, Hiruzen, you will regret this.”

Danzo turned away, slammed the door behind him and left.

This time, Hiruzen did not remind him that he was the Hokage.

Instead, he remained seated in silence and began questioning whether he had been wrong to tolerate Danzo for so many years.

Had he placed stricter limits on Danzo from the beginning, would their relationship have reached this point?

Unfortunately, Hiruzen’s problems were far from over.

According to the latest report, Konoha’s forces were still holding the line against Kumogakure.

However, the enemy appeared to be preparing a major offensive.

Yugito Nii, the jinchūriki of the Two-Tails, had also arrived at the front.

“What is the Raikage planning?” Hiruzen muttered. “Does he truly intend to begin another full-scale war with Konoha?”

His first instinct was to call Danzo back and discuss Kumogakure’s intentions with him.

However, after their argument, Hiruzen could not bring himself to summon him again so soon.

More importantly, he was no longer certain that Danzo was still working toward the same goal as him.

“If only Minato were still alive...”

Hiruzen lowered his gaze.

“Minato alone could have held off A and Killer B.”

Thinking of Minato naturally caused Kushina to come to mind.

For a moment, Hiruzen considered sending her to the front lines.

The presence of the Nine-Tails alone might be enough to make Kumogakure reconsider how far it was willing to push Konoha.

But Minato had only just given his life for the village.

Naruto was barely a month old.

If Hiruzen now ordered Kushina to enter another war, what would she think?

What would the rest of the village think?

They might believe Konoha had become so desperate that it had no choice but to send the Fourth Hokage’s grieving widow into battle immediately after childbirth.

If the villagers lost faith in Konoha’s ability to protect them, could they still stand together against Kumogakure?

The more Hiruzen thought, the more troubled he became.

He raised a hand and scratched at his hair, remembering the Konoha of his youth.

When Hashirama Senju was alive, none of the other hidden villages had dared to openly challenge the Leaf.

Even under Tobirama Senju, Konoha’s military strength had remained far beyond that of its rivals.

“Teacher Tobirama...” Hiruzen murmured. “Did I lead the village down the wrong path?”

He thought of Orochimaru, who had abandoned Konoha.

He thought of Tsunade, who had left after losing faith in the village.

Jiraiya continued wandering the shinobi world in search of the Child of Prophecy, refusing every request to remain in Konoha.

Then there was Sakumo Hatake, who had been driven to his death by the condemnation of the very people he had protected.

Aside from Jiraiya, the loss of nearly every powerful shinobi seemed to be connected to Danzo in some way.

Yet Hiruzen knew that he could not place all the blame on his old teammate.

He had been the Hokage.

He had allowed it to happen.

“Third Hokage-sama.”

The shinobi who had delivered the report finally spoke when Hiruzen remained silent for too long.

“Commander Shikaku is still waiting for your orders.”

Hiruzen returned his attention to the present.

“Send word to Uchiha Fugaku,” he ordered. “Tell him to send members of the Uchiha Clan to reinforce Shikaku’s forces.”

His expression hardened.

“Kumogakure’s next attack must be stopped.”

Only then did Hiruzen remember one of Konoha’s greatest sources of fighting strength—one he had unconsciously avoided relying upon for years.

The Uchiha Clan might be difficult to control, but the power of the Sharingan could not be denied.

An experienced Uchiha who had awakened the Sharingan could often fight several ordinary shinobi of the same rank at once.

Hiruzen’s mistrust of the clan had deep roots.

Uchiha Madara had once turned against Konoha.

During Tobirama’s time as Hokage, Uchiha Setsuna had also led a faction within the clan that opposed the village leadership.

Because of that history, Hiruzen had never been able to trust the Uchiha completely.

Whether intentionally or not, his treatment of them had become increasingly restrictive over the years.

During the Nine-Tails’ attack a month earlier, Danzo had personally stationed shinobi around the Uchiha compound and prevented the clan from joining the battle.

Ironically, those same guards had later helped prove that the Uchiha inside the compound could not have been the ones controlling the Nine-Tails.

Without that evidence, the entire clan might already have been taken into ANBU custody for interrogation.

The Hyūga Clan was another matter.

They were often called Konoha’s strongest clan.

Unlike the Uchiha, the Hyūga rarely challenged the Hokage directly.

However, they also placed the laws of their clan above the needs of the village.

For the Hyūga of the present day, clan rules came before Konoha’s orders.

The division between the main family and the branch family had originally been created to protect the Byakugan.

Over time, however, that system had changed.

Members of the main family possessed unrestricted Byakugan and had access to the clan’s complete collection of secret techniques, yet many of them lacked true battlefield experience.

Hiruzen had once persuaded the clan to send a member of the main family to war.

Not only had that shinobi failed to distinguish himself, but one of his Byakugan had been taken by the enemy.

Their performance had not compared favourably with that of the Uchiha.

The Uchiha had many faults, but once they entered a battlefield, they never lacked courage.

The previous clan head had personally led his people during the war and died in battle.

The current head, Fugaku, had even brought his four-year-old son, Itachi, to witness the battlefield.

After the ANBU messenger and the shinobi carrying the report departed, Hiruzen lit his pipe.

He began considering how he might repair the growing distance between Konoha and the Uchiha Clan.

Once again, his thoughts turned to Minato.

Shortly after becoming the Fourth Hokage, Minato had told Hiruzen that he intended to rebuild the village’s trust in the Uchiha and bring them closer to Konoha.

He had died before he could put any of those plans into action.

“Would things have been different if I had chosen Orochimaru as the Fourth Hokage?”

The thought remained in Hiruzen’s mind only briefly.

He soon shook his head.

Perhaps Orochimaru would not have abandoned the village if he had become Hokage.

However, gaining that authority might only have allowed him to conduct his human experiments more openly.

And when the Nine-Tails attacked, Minato might still have sacrificed himself to stop it.

Even now, Hiruzen did not know exactly what had happened at the delivery site that forced Minato to use the Reaper Death Seal.

He suspected that Kushina’s survival was connected to Minato’s decision.

Perhaps Minato had given his own life so that his wife could live.

At that very moment, Kushina was speaking with the Nine-Tails inside her sealed inner world.

Ever since their first successful conversation, she had begun to realise that Tailed Beasts were not the mindless monsters people claimed they were.

If she ignored its enormous size, terrifying appearance and overwhelming power, the Nine-Tails was surprisingly easy to understand.

It clearly listened to everything she said.

Yet whenever she addressed it, it pretended to be uninterested and answered with obvious impatience.

Had Roy not stopped her, Kushina might already have removed every chain binding it.

Roy wanted Kushina to form a true bond with the Nine-Tails as soon as possible.

However, he could not allow her to rush.

The Tailed Beasts were no longer as innocent as they had been when the Sage of Six Paths first created them.

For generations, they had endured fear, imprisonment, hatred and exploitation at the hands of humans.

Those experiences had filled their chakra with powerful negative emotions.

Even if the Nine-Tails willingly accepted Kushina, she would not immediately be able to endure the hatred carried within its chakra.

That influence did not come from a deliberate attack by the Nine-Tails.

It had become part of its chakra after countless years of suffering.

Until Kushina was prepared to withstand it, releasing the seal completely would remain far too dangerous.