‘But, even if I’m sent out again after just a month, it would be strange for them to assign two B-rank missions back-to-back to a genin team. Most likely, it’ll be a few C-ranks first. That’s my real window of opportunity… much harder for them to kill me with a borrowed knife on missions like those,’ Ryusei thought again.

He soon parted with his teammates in the usual perfunctory way before heading home alone.

His parents had once bought a house in the civilian district, far from the center of the village, to keep their identity out of the spotlight.

So he walked the quieter streets, taking in the sight of Konoha with a strange sense of wonder.

Not because it was impressive like the sprawling cities and towers of his past life, and not because of any so-called “Will of Fire” floating in the air, but simply because he was walking through the real version of what used to be a fantasy on a screen.

Moving through the neighborhood, he followed the original owner’s habits, offering polite smiles and greetings to the elderly.

They greeted him back warmly, asking about his mission or trading small talk.

Normally, he would help them carry baskets or fix something around the street, but this time his injuries were too severe to even pretend.

He excused himself softly, keeping up the image of the “good boy” Ryusei had always been.

Before long, he reached his modest home, plain walls, a narrow wooden gate, and a small garden patch that looked better cared for than the house itself.

He slipped inside, the interior just as he remembered it from the fragments of the original owner’s memories.

He changed clothes and washed up as best he could.

It took effort; his right arm hung limp, and his left palm was badly cut, but after a few minutes of awkward maneuvering, he managed.

Finally, he collapsed onto his bed, letting his body sink into the thin mattress.

For the first time since the mission began, he allowed himself to exhale deeply and lower his guard, even if just a little.

Then, after carefully tending to his wounds with chakra again, but this time deeper, which required more peace and precision than we he was carried toward the village, cleaning and then wrapping them in bandages carefully, he swallowed several of the medical pills his mother had left behind.

Only then did he allow himself to rest. His body sank into the sheets, exhaustion pulling him under.

When he finally opened his eyes again, the room was bright.

Glancing at the clock, he realized with a start that he hadn’t just napped, he had slept an entire day. It was already the next morning.

The original Ryusei hadn’t kept a diary, not even loose notes, for obvious reasons.

Every written record his parents left behind was sealed inside a single, rare master scroll.

It was compact, but expensive, crafted with layered sealing arrays that could only be undone with his blood and chakra signature.

The scroll was always carried on missions, hidden in a slot stitched deep inside his flak jacket lining, reinforced with chakra-resistant thread. To the untrained eye, it looked like an ordinary seam.

That was why his home held nothing unusual, nothing worth searching. The real treasure was always on his person.

Unsealing it now, Ryusei found the scroll’s inner compartments unfolding like drawers of pure chakra space, each section preserving books, notes, and medical records as if untouched by time. The contents were worth far more than paper; they were survival itself.

He studied them carefully, comparing official shinobi training manuals with his bird’s-eye knowledge from a past life, filling the various gaps and misunderstandings, or omissions of both knowledge streams, and slowly integrating them into one cohesive, superior worldview.

All of it would take roughly a month to go through, and that was with Ryusei only focusing on the essentials.

Anything outside of combat training-related information (jutsu scrolls and more general shinobi-related books), like the stack of non-shinobi-related ‘academic-like’ scholarly texts, he didn’t even bother opening.

Coming from modern Earth, he figured he was already far ahead of most people in this world when it came to such knowledge.

The compulsory education he’d received there gave him more than enough confidence on that front to blow everyone out of the water here.

As night fell, he once again treated his injuries with chakra, bandages, and the leftover supplies his mother had entrusted him with.

Then he let sleep take him. By the time he opened his eyes, morning light was spilling across the floorboards again.

He repeated the same routine day after day, only stepping out once in a while for a quick trip to the convenience store.

Another week slipped by like that.

From how things stood with his team, Ryusei figured he wouldn’t see them again until the date agreed upon three weeks from now, when they’d gather at the Mission Desk under the Hokage’s orders to be assigned their next mission or, if luck allowed, given a choice about the exact mission this time.

In Konoha, the law was simple: if you were a registered shinobi, you couldn’t reject a mission once it was assigned.

Every shinobi, depending on their rank, all received a set of fixed benefits separate from mission pay.

Healthcare, disability coverage, pensions, even perks for their children like free access to the Academy or some orphan subsidies, those were guaranteed.

In theory, they applied even if a shinobi went without missions for a long stretch, though that almost never happened.

Konoha was the strongest village in the world, situated in the wealthiest country; there were always assignments to go around.

And those very benefits were another reason refusal wasn’t tolerated. You took the missions, or you lost the right to be a shinobi.

Disobedience was the one crime the system never forgave.

Still, the higher-ups weren’t blind.

If they pushed too hard with nonstop missions far above someone’s level, they risked breaking their soldiers and sparking rebellion.

That was why the Mission Desk carefully tracked every shinobi’s workload and skill level.

On paper, once the mission was handed down, you had no right to refuse, but in practice, the stronger you were, the more leverage you had.

A genin or chunin had no room to negotiate; they were expected to build loyalty and discipline through constant assignments.

But a jōnin was another matter. There were barely five hundred of them in the entire village, and each one was worth more than gold.

The Jōnin Council, although mostly of ceremonial roles and power, especially in recent times, had been created mostly to appease their status, since even the Hokage couldn’t afford to alienate them.

A powerful shinobi could sometimes push back against the Mission Desk, even force a reassignment.

Today marked the day Ryusei finally finished going through his father’s and mother’s personal notes.

The academic materials would take longer; he was barely a third of the way in, but the personal writings were different.

Closing them at last gave him something far more valuable: a more complete picture of this body’s background and the circumstances he now stood in.

It was now beyond doubt for Ryusei that there could never be reconciliation or coexistence between himself and the so-called Hokage’s faction, unless it was balanced solely on strength.

Joining them or making concessions was impossible; at best, he would be stabbed in the back.

The notes made it clear. His father had been one of the leaders of the Senju revivalist movement, a faction that openly resisted Tobirama’s policy of dissolving clan power into the village.

After Tobirama’s death, these hardline Senju saw Hiruzen as a weaker Hokage and began gathering again, speaking out, building connections, quietly plotting a political comeback.

For Hiruzen and Danzo, this was intolerable. They moved to secretly eliminate the group relatively easily during the Second Shinobi War.

Ryusei now suspected the timing of Root’s creation was no coincidence; it had been built specifically to deal with this problem.

With his father as one of the leaders, Ryusei himself would be seen as doubly dangerous: not only of a talented lineage, but also someone who might uncover the truth of his father’s death. As a child or academy student, he posed no threat. But once he graduated, when accidents and assassinations could be pinned on enemies or missions, he became fair game.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep