Kurenai, Itsuki, and Ren sat in an empty room in Tazuna’s house, still looking disheveled and weary as they had just arrived here a few hours ago, choosing to have a short rest before deciding on how to proceed.

Unfortunately, even if Kurenai’s students and Kenji died, Tazuna was found quivering in the bushes a bit further down the road. And since the client was alive, the mission was still ongoing.

Ren looked at Kurenai, noting the dried tear marks on her cheeks as she clutched the scroll where Ren sealed the remains of her students. The fact she hadn’t even bothered to try to hide them told him a lot about her current mental state.

Moving his eyes toward Itsuki, the brown-haired man seemed to have difficulty staying awake, his head constantly nodding off as he refused to fall unconscious.

His chakra exhaustion was nowhere near as severe as Kakashi’s in the anime, but it was obvious the man would be of no help for a few days.

“We should go on the offensive and get rid of Gato.” Ren plainly said, “We have the advantage now. He most likely doesn’t know that Zabuza is dead yet so he won’t expect it.”

“Not our mission.” Itsuki mumbled and he was technically correct. The ‘guidelines’ would not agree with that course of action. They were hired as a protection detail, not an assassination squad. According to the rules, they should not go beyond the parameters of their mission.

“Yes. But it is either that or risk Gato hiring additional rogue ninjas. And since Zabuza failed, he will go big the next time. Either in numbers or in quality.” Ren argued.

He honestly just wanted to kill the midget. With Zabuza gone, there won’t be that bridge betrayal scene and Ren needed an excuse to deal with him.

Zabuza’s and Haku’s death was not something Ren wanted to happen. He kinda hoped he could have saved them. But this was reality and that was a life-and-death battle. Ren long ago accepted that he simply could not control every outcome. Unexpected things happen in reality all the time.

Silence spread through the room as Ren waited for Kurenai to speak. At the end of the day, she was the Jonin in the room and it was her call.

“You are right.” Kurenai eventually said in a forcedly bland tone, “We can’t afford him bringing in reinforcements. But the client can’t be left defenseless. Ren, you will stay and guard Tazuna while I will deal with Gato.” She added and for a moment, Ren wanted to protest. But then he noticed that Kurenai’s grasp on the scroll tightened and realized that part of her reason for going out of her way and targeting Gato was probably revenge.

With a reluctant sigh, Ren nodded. That complicated his personal goal of ransacking Gato’s belongings but he knew there was no changing Kurenai’s mind now.

The meeting ended and Ren stood up, walking out of the house with the excuse of setting up some seals around it. When he was outside and mostly out of sight, covered by a few trees, Ren created a shadow clone who nodded at him and disappeared in a burst of speed.

The clone was going to look for Gato’s safehouses and gather the money and valuables there while dealing with as many mercenaries as possible.

Partly, it was because Ren wanted to help the people of this country. Dealing with Gato would leave a lot of jobless mercenaries on this island and Ren was sure they were going to turn into bandits in a short order. It was better to un-alive that problem.

These were not some kids trying to survive. Gato hired scum. Slavery, extortion, rape, murder… yeah, Ren was not going to lose his sleep over getting rid of them.

But he was a ninja and wasn’t above greed. He had to admit that the valuables were a bigger part of why he sent his clone on a hunt.

Fortunately, creating a sealing scroll with pocket dimension accessible through multiple seals bound to it was something Ren had already done during his attempts to recreate Hiraishin.

So far, he failed in that endeavor. But he still made a lot of good discoveries during his attempts.

Thanks to them, his clone could seal things into said pocket dimension and Ren would be able to retrieve them via another seal he had tattooed around his wrist.

The best part? Creating a shadow clone also copied the seal.

It was quite convenient. No longer did he have to fear losing his sealing scrolls. It was like having inventory from RPG games and Ren loved it.

Of course, he kept that discovery quiet from the village. He didn’t want to think about how much trouble the village’s higher-ups would give him if they knew about it.

The applications of that seal were quite juicy for a military force in an undeveloped world and as a part of Barrier Corps, Ren knew for a fact that the village tried to create something like that for the last thirty years, and failed horribly.

Just the potential for sending instantaneous messages or supplies from the village straight to the battlefield would make a lot of people salivate.

Ren could only wryly smile at how many secrets he had. Secrets he didn’t want the village to know. It was not out of malice or anything like that. Simply, if they knew, they would make his life supremely troublesome.

And then he would need to defect.

He didn’t want that. He might not be loyal to death to Konoha but he was still born there and lived his entire life there. Preferably, he’d rather avoid such a bothersome thing as having to go on a run.

It’s why he felt so conflicted about his first serious fight against someone like Zabuza. He was happy that he didn’t need to get serious and reveal more of his cards. But he also didn’t like that he couldn’t try his more destructive seals out.

If Kurenai wasn’t there, he could have cut loose. But she was and Ren was certain everything that happened would be diligently reported to the village.

The reveal of his exploding seals was already going to be a pain in the ass. The Hokage was no doubt going to try and have Ren produce them for the village.

Fortunately, Ren was a step ahead and ensured that, unlike exploding tags, these seals were usable only by the person inscribing them. It took him weeks of trial and error to manage that. But he put in the effort to ensure he couldn’t be asked to become some human printing machine for superior ways to explode things.

As for sharing the knowledge on how to create them… The Hokage was not stupid enough to demand that of Ren and Ren was not going to volunteer it. Personal techniques were a big thing for ninjas. The Hokage could order Ren to teach it to somebody, but that would ruin his reputation with many ninjas and clans who viewed personal techniques and clan techniques as sacred. It wasn’t worth the price and Sarutobi was not going to do it. That was not something Ren was afraid would happen.

It was honestly a quite stupid mindset. This was a reason why ninjas had a hard time truly progressing and advancing as a whole. They did not share their discoveries and even tried to keep them to themselves. So, a lot of knowledge was lost with the death of the pioneer who discovered it, found by somebody else, only to be lost again, found again, lost again… and so it went until somebody finally decided to spread the knowledge so it wouldn’t need to be rediscovered every ten years or so because ninjas died young and with them, all their hoarded knowledge did with them.

Well, as much as Ren was ranting about it, he wasn’t going to share his discoveries either. At least, not yet. In the end, it was hypocritical of him. But he could live with that.

Done with setting up the perimeter of detection seals, Ren walked back to the house while happily humming, intent on relaxing and enjoying his leisure time. With Kurenai after Gato’s ass and Zabuza dead, this mission was basically over.

From here out it was as good as a paid vacation.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep