A ninja came out of a third house on a small settlement in a mountain. All of the people inside the house were now under a subtle genjutsu to hate a child they had not met once in their life. Since there were just seven houses in the mountain, the work was small for him.
He went to the next house and came out a few seconds after. This repeated until everyone was under the genjutsu.
"This should be enough," the ninja said before looking at his left. That side of the mountain was connected to the forest. After a second, he suddenly vanished from his position.
...
"Finally, a village," a small boy not older than 8-9 came out of the forest. From the looks of his appearance, one can easily say that he had not eaten his fill in days, and not taken baths for weeks. The boy was holding some bloody notes which he took out of his pockets.
"This should be enough for a meal, right?" he asked, though there was nobody around him to answer. Due to living most of his life in a cage or fighting, he didn’t know much about the world.
He slowly made his way towards the mountain. It was the farthest he could reach from the pursuers who were hell-bent on capturing him.
The boy was less mature than even a toddler but had the capabilities of a predator of the top dogs of the world. Due to that, he was able to either eliminate his pursuers or evade them until now. But it still saddened him to see everyone around him so hell-bent on killing him.
He shook his head to remove those depressing thoughts aside, and then took some leaves from a nearby tree to scrape off the dirt and grime clinging to his body. Even though he should be used to this after so long, he wasn’t—the smell was as bad if not worse.
"Maybe they will let me take a bath as well?" the boy said, moving toward the first house after he had ’cleaned’ himself enough.
Knock, Knock
"Coming," a voice came from inside, and then the door opened. Standing in front of him was a girl not much older than him. First, she was suspicious when she saw him, a beggar-looking person, but then her eyes went toward the two red dots on his forehead, and the boy flinched. This had happened too many times in recent days that he practically knew what was going to happen next.
"You... You... Daaad!" the girl ran away from him in fear. The boy could only shake his head. He knew he was not welcomed here as well, but just as he was about to go away, a man came out of the house, having an axe in his hand.
"You monster, what are you doing here? I am not going to let you kill my family at all," he said and lunged toward the boy.
"Sir, I just wanted some food. I can even pay for it. I am not here to do anything else," the boy tried to explain himself as clearly as his limited vocabulary could allow.
"Money? Like hell I would take your blood money! I know you just want me to let my guard down before slaughtering the village," the man said and once again swung his axe, almost hitting the boy on the head.
"Okay then, I would leave," the boy said, not wanting to retaliate at all.
"So that you can come back when I am not around? Like hell I am allowing you to do that," the man shouted. His strikes became more deadly.
Swoosh
A sound came like a very fast-moving object tearing the air and embedded itself in the forehead of the man. He didn’t even have time to register what had happened and fell to the ground.
"DAAAAAD!" the little girl from before came out running from inside and started shaking the man.
"Dad, dad, please wake up, dad." Tears started flowing from her eyes like a stream. The boy was about to say something when he noticed movement around the other houses.
He knew if others also came out, the situation would only turn for worse, so once again he left civilization and ran away. But seeing the little girl crying over her father’s corpse had once again broken a little something inside him.
"Why does the world hate me?" the boy asked, looking towards the sky before he kept on running.
The ninja who had cast genjutsu on all of the people before was watching all this from afar. His snake-like eyes were glowing in the dark, making his look more menacing than he already was.
"Soon, very soon you will be ready," a sickening grin spread on the ninja’s face before he decided to keep on following the boy in the dark forest.
...
At the dawn of morning, the merchant came back from his meeting. Kaida had decided to follow the man to learn a few things about the negotiations and rules, but he was not prepared for what happened next.
"For some reason, listening to all that flowery garbage was more tiring than fighting ten enemies," Kaida said with a sigh of exhaustion.
"Hahaha, why did you think others were so averse to the idea of following us? These merchants always have only one reason behind their every action—making money. For that, they will even hug their greatest enemy if the chance of profit was enough. Some clever use of silver tongue was nothing in front of that," Taizen said. Both Kaida and he had returned with the merchant a few minutes before and were making their way toward their room. Since they would leave the hotel at 8, they only had a few hours for rest. After confirming that others were not slacking off and were taking shifts guarding, they finally fell asleep.
After 3 hours, they were awake once again and were on the move. Now their journey on land was over, and a massive ship was waiting for them at the port.
"This thing is gigantic," Kaida said, straining his neck to look up at the ship, then looking at the merchant once again. ’Maybe he is more wealthy than I thought.’
"It is. I had spent quite a fortune to rent it," the merchant said.
"Rent it?" Kaida asked.
"Of course. Do you know how much I would have to spend on maintenance of this beauty if I owned it? It is better to rent these things when necessary," he said, once again giving an important lesson for free. If the merchant saw them as potential rivals, he wouldn’t have spoken a word about business logic in front of them, but for him, they were just brutes who earned money through fighting.
"True," Kaida said. The carriages had been loaded onto the ship by now, and various storage scrolls had also been placed inside. Kaida also saw some small-time merchants also placing their items on the ship. Seeing the attention of ninjas toward that, Ryozo gave the explanation.
"This ship is way too big for just us, so I decided to let some poor merchants use it as well, obviously for a fee," he said. Kaida could easily tell that this man must have already made enough from just this to pay for the rent of the ship.
’These merchants have much more expertise in this field than me. Maybe I should add them to my plans as well,’ Kaida thought, his brain once again starting to work on overdrive as he went through various future plans he had made to make sure his promise would not just be empty words.
In his thinking, he didn’t notice when all of the loading was complete and they set sail.
"Beautiful, isn’t it?" Taizen came to Kaida, who was standing at the deck of the ship looking toward the sea. The leader thought the boy was mesmerized by the beauty of the sea, while actually, the boy was planning about things the man couldn’t even dream of.
"Yes," Kaida said, coming out of his mind and looking toward the sea truly for the first time.
The boat was moving faster than its size should allow, which could be thanks to both the array at the bottom of the ship and the ninja below who was releasing D-rank jutsu occasionally like organic motors.
The cold breeze was refreshing, to say the least.
The journey to the Land of Water was not long on the sea, and they would reach the first island in 4-5 hours. While they had traveled for 2 hours, meaning half the distance, Kaida caught another ship moving toward them, not in their direction, but directly toward them.
’Wait, don’t tell me...’