After enjoying the rest of the day and evening with Ino and the huffy Hinata, who caught them ‘in flagrante’ when she came to his apartment in the early evening and Ren had to give her a lot of loving attention to stop her pouting, Ren teleported back to his shadow clone who by then passed the border and was once more in the Land of Hot Water.

He spent the following two days touring the big cities of the country, widely regarded as the best holiday destination in the world. They had it all. Good restaurants. Amazing hot springs. Great hotels and service industry.

The only thing Ren did not visit were the brothels. He was happily in a relationship, after all. But in one hotel lobby, he overheard a merchant sing praises about how this country had the best prostitutes far and wide.

Then again, the Red Light Districts in Konoha and the Capital of the Land of Fire had similar reputations. Considering that working in a brothel was regarded as an easy job with less risk for better pay by many experienced kunoichi from the ‘Intelligence’ Department when they entered their thirties and therefore got too old for their usual honey trap schtick so they were allowed to retire, Ren believed the claim of Konoha’s Red Light District to be the best more.

In his previous life, Ren wondered how Jirayia got anything done with his intelligence network when he spent most of his time in brothels. But after living in this world and getting a bit of insight on how these things worked, Ren’s eyes were opened to the truth.

And because of that, he got shivers whenever he was just passing by a brothel. There was no way he would ever enter any such establishment. He simply wasn’t brave enough.

Most people usually did not care about the uncomfortable reality. They did not think about it. But Ren didn’t close his eyes in front of it. He couldn’t. He peered into the abyss because of his curiosity, and now he could never unsee it.

He once might or might not have peeked at unimportant mission reports from the Intelligence Department in the village.

He now had a very real inkling of just how many ‘accidents’ happen during post coital bliss in brothels. Especially when the hidden villages had the prostitution industry of their countries mostly firmly in their grasp through their undercover kunoichi honey trap slash assassins slash info gatherers, who were spread all over the country and sometimes even beyond.

These women were not strong. As kunoichi, they wouldn’t be able to hold their own against a kunai fodder from the Genin Corps. On the battlefield, they would not even amount to be a speed bump for regular genins. But they still slit more throats ‘per capita’ for their village than all the genin corps ninjas combined. All done in the bedroom while their victim was cumming his lower brains into them.

Ninja life was not at all only about fighting and big flashy jutsu like the anime portrayed it. Some of its aspects were just… not pretty.

It seemed almost stupid to let the fangirl culture fester in the academy. But…

Here is the thing. It was basically a different take on a subtle seduction and anti-seduction training for dummy ninja-wannabe kiddies.

Ren never thought that eight-year-old girls getting interested in boys and starting to crush on them to the point of turning into rabid fangirls was natural. And sure enough, it wasn’t.

In his previous life, he suspected the influence of chakra, and while that wasn’t a completely wrong assumption because the kids grew up and entered puberty faster than in his previous life, it wasn’t all there was to it.

What Ren didn’t take into account in his past life was human nature and deviousness. The whole fangirl thing? It was subtly induced by the teachers in the kunoichi classes.

The most aggravating thing was that it worked out well for the village. In many, many ways. It was ridiculous how beneficial the fangirl culture was when the big picture was considered.

The girls chased after their crush and tried to seduce the poor lad while competing with each other. That put them under pressure and made them more ‘creative’ in their attempts.

They either learned to seduce real well for a kid, or they decided to train a whole lot to become stronger to impress their crush.

One of the two was going to happen in the years it took for most fangirls to graduate from the academy.

Even those rare girls who didn’t fall into this norm usually found some other talent they had or trained some skill that would be useful later down the line in their ninja life. All to impress their crush. Their teachers did not even need to motivate them much.

Peer pressure did most of the work.

And the poor lad who found himself as the target of the fangirls’ affections? He was usually from a clan. Somebody who had a lot of talent and promise as a ninja. That was by design. Because it was that kind of guy who would need anti-seduction training the most in his future.

Once the guy grew up and made a name for himself, seduction attempts and honey traps would come. It was the most basic tactic in the book. And it was not used only by the enemy villages but also by the allied kunoichi who were more into the whole gold-digging aspect of life.

Ren would know. Ever since he made a name for himself in the past few months, Hinata and Ino mastered the glare the competition away no jutsu because of how many random headband-wearing girls ‘accidentally’ tried to bump into him on the streets, or grope a feel, or leaned forward to give his eyes just the right angle at their suspiciously large cleavage…

Ren honestly understood why Gai and Kakashi behaved like weapons of mass anti-female-attention. It probably wasn’t the only benefit, but their behavior most likely put off ninety percent of women who would otherwise try their luck with them.

Even Sasuke lost most of his fangirls when he became the Sasugai. And Ren knew the kid just loved it. Ren suspected that Sasuke more or less imitated Gai exactly because of that. At least partially.

The idea behind the fangirl culture was that the more bad flirting and harmless seduction attempts by the female classmates a talented boy experienced, the more resistant he would become to it later down the line.

And if it somehow failed successfully and the boy would fall for one of his fangirls? Then all the better for the village! Skilled ninjas were usually like Kakashi or Gai. They have seen too much and had too many screws loose. They did not do relationships. Many avoided sex altogether for the most part, dying before they could even have kids.

So, softly giving the eight-year-old girls an idea to be persistent in trying to seduce strong and talented ninjas suited Konoha well. It both ensured that at least some mentally screwed up but skilled ninjas would have progeny and a good reason to not take the easy way out of the mortal coil once their profession becomes too much for them to bear.

Hell, it sounded like such a stupid bullshit to Ren. His modern mindset was still offended whenever he was reminded of this situation. And he almost choked because the retarded system fucking somehow worked!

The numbers did not lie. Ever since it was created by… Hiruzen Sarutobi, by the way. Because, of course, the esteemed Hokage had a hand in it, the suicide numbers had gone down, and the ninja kids’ numbers outside the clans had gone up.

Funnily enough, it was one of the reasons why Konoha could afford to throw so many fresh bodies into the meat grinder every war. Every village that knew of how the female academy students behaved in Konoha looked down on the village for it.

But the joke was on them!

Not to mention, most of the girls from the academy would not go the combat ninja route anyway. They would never become powerful. Never amount to an impactful force on their own. Most of them would become intelligence gatherers, spies, and saboteurs… the ninja stuff that was more suited to a more feminine touch and did not require beyond civilian strength.

This way, the girls got a head start in seduction training since most of them ended up being useless for anything but the honey trap route. There was no such thing as ‘dropping out’ of the ninja academy after graduating. Graduating meant they entered the village’s military forces. They enlisted. And that was that. There was no easy way out after that.

And if the only thing they could be used for was to spread their legs for the village? Then that’s what they would be trained in even if they didn’t particularly like it.

That was the brutal truth.

Of course, Ren was making it sound far more grave than it actually was. Many girls find special talents of their own and are scouted by various divisions in Konoha’s forces. Like that girl, Shiho, from Cryptoanalysis. It was not as if all non-combat-oriented kunoichi had no choice but to spread their legs for the village by default.

Plus, the seduction specialists were paid very well. It is usually either the path of seduction specialist or the Genin Corps for the ‘left-over’ girls and boys. For some reason, the females in that situation especially do not choose the Genin Corps after hearing about the substantial pay difference.

Konoha did not need to force them into that kind of lifestyle. Not after they are sat in front of the available choices to them and one financially outweighs the other. Not after the kunoichi classes general desensitization.

On the outside, they learned pressing flowers, some womanly crafts and were given some lectures. It sounded like a waste of time for future kunoichi. But over the years that shit had as much effect as the fabled Will of Fire. It was insidious as heck.

Ren could see it on Ino and Hinata. Nakedness did not make them stop. During their first time, they did not feel as much shame as virgins should. They were mostly curious. And some of the positions they wanted to try… well, it painted a picture to Ren about the lectures the girls were getting in their kunoichi classes.

He felt exasperated because, on one hand, he approved of his girls’ boldness. He expected Hinata to be a stuttering mess, but instead, she was a wild and curious whirlwind. On the other hand, he realized the underlying purpose of that class. Well, he was not the Hokage, so he couldn’t change it, so he didn’t dwell on it.

It was what it was.

And even those talented girls suited for more important, combat-oriented, medical, or other roles lost nothing by getting some seduction training either. They were kunoichi, too, and while the chance of them being sent on a honey trap mission was pretty much nil, one never knew when such a skill might prove useful.

If not in their kunoichi life, then in their personal one.

Of course, the seduction attempts by fangirls were pretty basic. Resisting them was nothing spectacular. But the kiddies in the academy were just that. Kids.

It was a start for gaining a very necessary skill.

So, Jirayia had quite a nice and cushy gig going on for him. He toured the brothels that secretly belonged to Konoha. There, he flirted, drank, and had fun talking and getting praised by the girls until he ‘randomly’ picked one and went to the private room with her.

Of course, the man knew exactly who from the working girls was an undercover Konoha kunoichi. There was nothing random about his pick.

And in the private room, Jirayia gets to enjoy fucking the girl while she reports her findings to him. That’s what many of the reports Ren sneaked a peek at stated.

Not in these words. Not this bluntly. But he understood what the reports tried to convey.

His opinion of Jiraiya dropped a bit after that, but he quickly realized that this was not an anime. This was a real world with real people. Jiraiya wasn’t celibate. He was not some one-dimensional super pervert who was secretly a virgin and kept it that way because he still hoped that one day he could jump Tsunade’s bones.

Well, he did want to do that, and he prided himself on being a super pervert. But he lived his life in a more NSFW way. Then, he wrote books based on his experiences and earned millions.

Honestly, Ren admired the pervert a bit for that.

He had to give it to him. He had his life sorted out. Other ninjas risk their lives for their village on a weekly basis. Jiraiya, however, gets his Jiraiya junior wet on a regular basis for the village.

It doesn’t take a genius to see which of the two was the better deal.

Shaking his head, Ren quietly chuckled to himself as he arrived near the entrance to the supposedly abandoned ancient underground village carved into the cave where he was supposed to deliver the documents to the client.

His eyebrows furrowed as he saw the entrance to the massive cave, easily as big and wide as the Hokage Tower. He didn’t feel very good about going in there.

Something about this felt a bit fishy.

Here he was. A dark cave in front of him, and he was supposed to go in. What could go wrong, right?

It felt like some shitty trope from a third-rate horror movie whose author was too lazy to even half-ass it.

But no matter how much Ren looked around, the surroundings seemed clear. Even his detection seal did not alert him to any hidden presence. So, with a deep breath, Ren started walking inside, hoping the client would get there fast so he could go home.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep