Chapter 49 (Patreon)

Looking at the furious Raikage before him, Dodai could not help remembering an encounter from the later years of the Third Shinobi World War.

Back then, A and Killer B—the A–B Combo—had faced Konoha’s Yellow Flash, Minato Namikaze.

The battle had appeared to end in a draw.

However, from A’s point of view, fighting two against one and still failing to win was no different from losing.

And now, the three of them had fought Minato Namikaze’s wife.

Three against one.

Yet this time, it had not even ended in a draw. Two of Kumogakure’s jinchūriki had been captured.

It was true that Kushina had won because they knew nothing about her abilities and had been caught off guard.

But shinobi battles were never fair contests with fixed rules.

Sneak attacks, traps, deception, and assassination were all part of being a shinobi.

If victories like Kushina’s did not count, then half the famous shinobi in history would have to give up the achievements that made their names known.

As for the conditions Kushina had given them, Dodai did not take every word seriously.

Those were only her opening demands.

The final terms would depend on the negotiations.

Even so, everything had happened too suddenly for Kumogakure. They had been completely caught off guard, which would make it difficult for them to argue from a strong position.

Dodai had advised several Raikage over the years, and it did not take him long to find an opening.

Kushina now held both Yugito and Killer B.

So why had she not led Konoha’s forces in a full attack?

Why had she asked for peace talks instead?

Was it because Konoha was kind and did not wish to see more people die?

Of course not.

There was only one likely answer.

Konoha could no longer afford to keep fighting.

Their situation was probably similar to Kumogakure’s original plan. Rather than allowing both sides to wear each other down, Konoha wanted to stop while it still held the advantage and take as much as it could from the negotiations.

Kirigakure had remained quiet, but Iwagakure and Sunagakure were both watching from the sidelines.

They were only waiting for an opening.

If Kumogakure feared being attacked from more than one side, then Konoha had even more reason to worry.

That meant Konoha probably wanted this war to end even more than Kumogakure did.

They had captured Yugito and Killer B, but they would not dare kill either of them.

If Konoha pushed Kumogakure into a fight to the death, neither village would come out unharmed.

Once Dodai reached that conclusion, he felt far more confident about the coming negotiations.

Konoha’s demands sounded outrageous, but their true bottom line was probably much lower.

On Konoha’s side, Shikaku reached almost the same conclusion after leaving Kushina.

In fact, he understood Konoha’s position even better than Dodai did.

The number of shinobi left to defend the village was at its lowest point in years.

Danzō was still causing trouble from within, and the rumours surrounding the bounty hunters had already begun to damage morale.

If Kushina had not suddenly captured the two jinchūriki, Shikaku did not know how much longer their forces could have held the defensive line.

Kushina had given him only one condition that could not be changed.

Konoha had to keep one of Kumogakure’s jinchūriki as a hostage.

The period was only three years, but if Kumogakure remained quiet during that time, it would give Konoha enough time to recover.

As for everything else, it would depend on Shikaku’s performance at the negotiating table.

The thought made the pressure on him feel even heavier.

After all, not everyone in Konoha would understand the true situation.

If he returned with only the hostage agreement, people would compare the final result to Kushina’s original demands.

He could already imagine what they would say.

All the work he had done holding back Kumogakure’s invasion might be forgotten, and every condition he failed to obtain would somehow become his fault.

It was not as though such a thing had never happened in Konoha before.

Sakumo Hatake had once completed countless missions for the village. His achievements had been great enough for people to consider him a possible Hokage candidate.

Yet after a single failed mission, everything changed.

He had chosen to save his comrades, but the mission’s failure caused losses for Konoha.

The rumours and accusations that followed had driven him to his death.

If the negotiations went badly, the next person buried beneath those same kinds of accusations might be Nara Shikaku.

Unable to sleep, Shikaku found himself thinking about Minato Namikaze again.

Had Minato still been alive, Shikaku would not have needed to fear what might happen even if the negotiations failed to meet everyone’s expectations.

Shisui Uchiha was also unable to sleep.

Half a year earlier, his Sharingan had evolved into the Mangekyō Sharingan.

When he first awakened Susanoo, he believed he had finally gained enough power to stop the conflict between the village and the Uchiha clan if the situation ever reached a breaking point.

Because of that, he had spent nearly all his free time training Susanoo whenever he was not away on a mission.

He had not even trained with Itachi, who was like a younger brother to him, for a long time.

After half a year of training, Shisui had believed he had grown much stronger.

Yet in less than two and a half hours, his confidence had been struck twice.

First, even after using Susanoo, he had failed to stop the bounty hunter Kakuzu from escaping.

Then Kushina had returned with both of Kumogakure’s jinchūriki.

Shisui had risked his life just to fight those opponents to a standstill.

Yet they had not even managed to disturb Kushina’s hair.

It made him question the records left behind by the Uchiha clan.

The records claimed that Madara Uchiha’s Susanoo could split mountains with a single strike.

Another record claimed that even the Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju, had once feared the Susanoo of an Uchiha from an earlier generation.

Shisui wanted to drag the people who had written those records out of their graves and ask whether they had exaggerated everything.

Susanoo was powerful.

But was it really as unstoppable as those records claimed?

After feeling discouraged for a while, Shisui eventually regained his confidence.

Susanoo was not the real reason he believed he could end the conflict between the Uchiha and Konoha.

His greatest hope was the new dōjutsu awakened by his Mangekyō Sharingan.

Kotoamatsukami.

It could enter a person’s mind and change their thoughts without them ever noticing.

Unlike ordinary genjutsu, the target would not realise that someone had taken control of them.

Once the technique took effect, it was almost impossible for the target to free themselves through their own power.

Its only major weakness was the time needed before it could be used again.

After one use, it could take around ten years for the eye to recover enough power to activate it again.

Otherwise, Shisui could simply use Kotoamatsukami on every radical member of the Uchiha clan and turn them into supporters of the village.

The conflict would disappear on its own.

Some people could not sleep.

Others were already lost in pleasant dreams.

In Kushina’s dream, everything Danzō had done was exposed to the village, and he became someone everyone despised.

Hiruzen stepped down as Hokage in disgrace.

Then, under Kushina’s leadership, Konoha became the strongest village in the entire shinobi world.

After finishing a long day of work, she handed the two-and-a-half-year-old Naruto to Kaorui and asked her to watch him.

Kushina then took a bath and prepared to invite Roy to spend the night with her.

However, just as she was about to reach the door, the barrier surrounding the courtyard suddenly reacted.

The scene before her changed.

In the next instant, Kushina found herself sitting behind the desk in the Hokage’s office.

A mountain of documents was piled up in front of her, all waiting for her signature.

“No! I don’t want to spend every day doing paperwork!”

Kushina jolted awake from the nightmare.

Before she could even understand what had happened, she sensed that something was wrong.

Roy was just as dumbfounded.

He had been sleeping soundly when Kushina suddenly jolted upright, dragging him awake with her.

The real problem was their position.

Neither of them was wearing anything, and Kushina was straddling him, her plump ass hovering directly above his now-hard cock. There was barely any distance between them. One careless movement was all it would take for him to slip straight into her already-wet entrance.

Roy went completely still.

He did not dare move even an inch, afraid that the slightest shift would be enough for the beast straining against its cage to break free and thrust straight inside her.