It took the girls two hours to deal with the bodies and Ren enjoyed watching them struggle and rage. They could have just dragged them underground with the Hiding Like a Mole technique and been done with it but clearly, that did not come to his students’ minds yet.

So, instead, they dragged all of them outside the camp, one by one. Put them on a pile, and set them on fire. Very inelegant and mundanely uninspired way of corpse disposal. But watching his girls curse under their noses and scrunch their faces due to the smell was a treat for Ren’s sore eyes.

Their faces when he told them the Hiding Like a Mole trick, only after they were done, of course, were priceless too.

Not to mention, the corpse bonfire pretty much alerted everybody in the vicinity to their position due to the smoke. But the labor, as distasteful as it was, helped Hinata to center herself.

When they were finished with the work, the evening was quickly approaching. There was no reason to waste a perfectly good camp so Ren decided they would be staying there for a night.

After unsealing some fresh meat and other ingredients from his storage seal, Ren set up a bonfire and started to cook proper food to reward his students for a job well done.

The dinner and everything went well and Ren couldn’t help but be happy. The mission was done. Their little trip was coming to an end. And there was no unexpected incident.

What was there to not like?

After dinner, Ren was back to comforting his students. He lay on the grass, looking at the stars while Hinata almost desperately cuddled into his left side, her head lying on his shoulder. The poor girl was still shaking a bit.

Contrary to how Ren perceived her, Hinata did feel down, but she was also delighted. Ren had his hand around her stomach and held her tightly against him. She couldn’t help the excited thrill that refused to leave her mind as she felt Ren’s muscles on her body.

Butterflies were storming through her stomach and she was inwardly squealing in delight! He soothingly caressed her hair. Making her melt into a happy puddle.

Hinata wanted to stay like this forever!

Ren couldn’t help but inwardly sigh as he felt Hinata quiver in his arms. The killing clearly affected her a lot.

He also noticed that she was very touch-starved.

It made sense. Her father was not the most touchy-feely person. Her clan was doing its damnedest to separate her from her sister. And her mother was dead.

The only touch she got growing up probably happened during training and resulted in bruises.

“Will we have to kill a lot of people as kunoichi?” An unbothered voice suddenly cut through the air as if talking about the weather and Ren inwardly winced as he felt Hinata stiffen against him.

He glanced down at Ino who was leisurely lying near him, her head on his stomach. She was using her wind chakra to float a book above her head, reading some crappy romance novel she brought with her from the village.

The girl was cool as a cucumber. Even during the corpse disposal, Hinata showed a lot of distaste and a touch of regret but Ino? She was just annoyed that she had to deal with the unpleasant grunt work and Ren forbade her from using clones to do her part.

Ino was stone cold.

Then again, Ren did expect it. But seeing her attitude still threw him a bit for the loop. Interacting with the girls could lull one to the false belief that they were simply normal teenage girls. But that was not true.

Both of his students were clan-raised kunoichi. It was a small miracle Hinata felt bad enough to cry after her first kill. If nothing else the village and the clans were very efficient in raising ninjas. The academy was low-key desensitizing the kids toward killing and causing bodily harm for years before they even had to step out of the village.

The spars were not only to practice fighting, after all. A kid couldn’t just go into it with a haphazard attitude and expect to win. No, to win, a kid needed the resolve to cause bodily harm to his classmate. And over the years? Such resolve became a normal thing.

After so many years in the academy, kids end up more or less like Ino. Ren glanced at the blonde girl who was peacefully reading her book with a wide content smile on her face.

Yup. Not even a shred of guilt.

It would be hard to believe for a normal person that the same adorable girl had just slaughtered a score of men in a very bloody fashion. And she did feel bad and a bit nauseous afterward. But these feelings passed in a few moments for her. It wasn’t even a blip on her radar by now.

The killing was a part of their job. And the academy was subtly sending this message to the kids for years. They did not have stories about heroes saving innocents and catching the villains. They had stories about ninjas saving princesses and killing the rebels. About saving the village by killing the traitors to the village. About saving innocents by killing the bandits.

For Ino, killing was a normal thing like learning physics was for a kid from Ren’s previous life. She didn’t seem to enjoy the act very much, for which Ren was immensely grateful. Psycho Yamanaka did not sound like a very good combination to deal with in his day-to-day life. But at the same time, the girl found killing at worst bothersome rather than having a true aversion to it.

It’s simply the way she was raised.

There was a reason why in the anime Naruto never showed much remorse after he killed people. They were ninja and this was a part of their life.

To Ren, Hinata’s reaction showed that, no matter how confident she acted, she was still a very kind girl and it made him glad that his training did not manage to rid her of that trait.

“Yes. You will kill more people than anybody should be comfortable with.” Ren told the Yamanaka girl the truth with an uncomfortable sigh, causing Hinata to attempt to bury her face into his skin while Ino just hummed. “The only advice I can give you is to never show you enjoy it.”

“Why?” Hinata interjected.

Ren turned his head toward her, “Because the village has an entire team to make profiles of their ninjas. If you show dislike for killing, you are more likely to end up on protection detail rather than assassinations or missions where a wholesale slaughter is required.”

Konoha could pick and choose the right man for every mission. More or less. The village had a lot of manpower. Some ninjas downright enjoyed killing, rape, and torture. But the village had no reason not to use them. They were a loose canon, sure, but why waste resources?

“That makes sense.” Ino casually nodded.

“Ye-” Ren started only to freeze when his chakra detection seal suddenly showed three chakra signatures running in their direction. Ren created a clone nearby and instantly substituted with it, leaving it to the mercy of the girls.

Both Hinata and Ino instantly noticed and Ino looked at the real him, “Something’s up?”

“Yes. Three ninjas approaching.” Ren said as he nodded at Hinata who activated her Byakugan.

“One kunoichi from Kusa running from two… er, I don’t recognize the headband mark but it is a musical note. Threat level, uhm, I’d say low-chunin? High-genin? Somewhere around there. The girl has the biggest chakra reserves but she doesn’t seem very well trained.” Hinata tried to sum up her observations while Ino grinned.

“Yosh! Let’s g- whoah!” She excitedly spoke and tried to swing herself onto her feet only for Ren’s clone to quickly put his arm across her shoulders, pulling her head back down onto his stomach.

“Your parents would try to murder me if I let you face off against real ninjas.” The real Ren deadpanned at the Yamanaka, making her pout.

“We don’t have to tell them?” Ino tried to weakly protest but Ren just shook his head, causing her to huff as she realized there was no more action for her today.

A mischievous gleam entered her blue eyes a second later and she twisted in the clone’s grip, enough to loosen it. She quickly took the clone’s head into her hands and pressed her lips onto his for a moment.

Breaking the kiss, Ino looked at the real Ren who had his eyebrow raised at her. She grinned, “Oh? What are you waiting for? Don’t you have three ninjas to deal with? Well, go on. I’ll just stay here, making out with my teddy bear. I’ll try to make it memorable.” She teased Ren with a grin before turning back to the exasperated clone who did not struggle much when she once again kissed him with a moan, her tongue demanding an entry to his mouth.

The original Ren resisted the urge to facepalm. Instead, he just rolled his eyes at the girl. From her wording, she was probably under the misconception that she could seduce him this way because he would get the memories of their kissing once his clone popped.

He would need to clear that misconception one of these days. Yes. Clones did share memories. But memories did not contain proper sensations or feelings. So, Ren’s clone was probably enjoying himself and Ren would most likely blush once he got the memories, but he wouldn’t be feeling her kiss or the feelings it invoked in his clone.

It’s why not many ninjas use it for sex unless they want to make their partner happy. The technique did not properly convey sensations so yeah, having the memories of dogpiling your partner in bed might be nice for an ego boost and your partner will most likely enjoy herself immensely if she is into that. But you will still only get the pleasure from your original body.

‘I wonder how Ino will look once I tell her that.’ Ren inwardly chuckled to himself as he used shunshin to disappear from the camp and ran toward the approaching chakra signatures.

Landing on a tree after two minutes of running, and seeing the two sound ninjas chasing a girl, Ren owlishly blinked.

‘Is that… Uzumaki Karin?’ He thought while stifling a groan, ‘And the mission was going so well too. Of course, some bullshit needs to screw it up.’

Exasperation filled Ren as he watched the desperate redhead stumbling through the forest while running for her life and gasping for air, tears streaming down her face while her eyes were full of fear as the two sound ninjas were clearly having fun with the chase.

Karin suddenly tripped over a root with a startled yelp and fell roughly onto the ground. The two grinning sound ninjas jumped at her, restraining her hands above her head, and whispered something to the terrified girl whose eyes widened in horror.

Ren was too far to hear them but he quickly realized what was going on when the ninja holding her hands started to fiddle with his pants and the other one began tearing Karin’s clothes off while she screamed and kicked in protest and desperation as she struggled in their grasp.

Ren had a decision in front of him. Get mixed in the situation despite his seal detecting S-rank chakra signature coming closer to their position or…

‘Who am I kidding?’ He dejectedly sighed at his luck as he jumped to intervene.

He owed it to Naruto.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep