Chapter 88: Commission

Chapter 88: Chapter 88: Commission

At the Kusagakure Mission Center.

A middle-aged woman asked with a cheerful smile, "Sir, what kind of commission would you like to make?"

Hyuga Kagami replied politely, "I’m looking for someone, but I don’t know where she is right now. So I’d like to commission your village’s ninja to help me find her whereabouts."

"Looking for someone? No problem. Please fill out the information here."

Taking the form, Kagami gave it a quick glance.

The only information it required was details about the person Kagami wanted to find, as well as the amount he was willing to offer for the commission. As for Kagami’s own personal information, there was no requirement to provide any.

Seeing this, Kagami nodded inwardly.

Kusagakure wasn’t a large ninja village. If it wanted to compete with the other ninja villages for commissioned missions, it had no choice but to loosen its requirements for clients.

And that was one of the main reasons Kagami had chosen to come to Kusagakure in the first place.

After filling in everything he knew about the descendants of the Roran royal line, Kagami thought for a moment before writing one million ryō in the commission fee column.

The middle-aged woman at the mission center glanced at the form Kagami handed back and was startled.

"One million ryō?! That’s the commission fee for an A-rank mission! Is there a chance this mission will involve encounters with other ninja?"

Kagami smiled. "The person I’m looking for is most likely somewhere within the Land of Wind. Just to be safe, I’d like your village to assign capable ninja to handle my commission."

Seeing that this was a lucrative job, the woman’s eyes practically narrowed into slits from smiling.

"Sir, you can rest assured! Kusagakure is the strongest ninja village outside the Five Great Ninja Villages. We have plenty of powerful ninja in our village. We’ll definitely be able to meet your requirements!"

Kagami smiled faintly.

Among the smaller ninja villages, Kusagakure certainly wasn’t weak, but it definitely didn’t deserve the title of "strongest ninja village outside the Five Great Ninja Villages."

In Kagami’s opinion, only Amegakure could truly lay claim to that title.

If Amegakure’s geographical position hadn’t been so terrible—wedged between the three great ninja villages of Konoha, Sunagakure, and Iwagakure—then during Hanzo’s era, Amegakure might very well have risen to become the sixth Great Ninja Village.

A few hours later, four Kusa ninja appeared before Kagami.

One of them looked Kagami up and down before saying, "My name is Ryuran. I’m a jonin of Kusagakure. My squad and I will be responsible for carrying out your commission."

Kagami smiled.

"You can call me Mr. Ki. I’ll be counting on you for this commission!"

Kagami was fairly satisfied with the four Kusa ninja standing before him.

The leader, a Kusagakure jonin named Ryuran, looked rather young, but the chakra within his body gave off an exceptionally strong reaction. Even among jonin, he would be considered one of the more outstanding ones.

The other three Kusa ninja were all chunin-level as well, and none of them looked like pushovers.

After leaving Kusagakure, one of the Kusa chunin said to Kagami, "Don’t worry. Lord Ryuran is one of the strongest ninja in our village. A simple mission to find someone will be a piece of cake."

Kagami smiled. "Looks like I was pretty lucky to hire all of you."

Another Kusa chunin grinned. "You might be shocked to hear this, but Lord Ryuran is a powerhouse with a ten-million-ryō bounty on his head! Even if we really do run into ninja from Sunagakure this time, you won’t be in any danger."

Hearing this, Kagami took another careful look at Ryuran, who was walking at the front of the group.

He hadn’t expected this Kusagakure jonin to have a bounty on his head as well—and a sizable one at that.

In truth, coming all the way to Kusagakure to commission this mission had been something Kagami had done out of necessity.

After the ancient city of Roran fell into ruin, its people had adopted a nomadic way of life, traveling from oasis to oasis in search of water and pasture. As a result, they had no fixed place of residence.

For Kagami alone to find them within a mere month and a half would simply be far too difficult.

That was why Kagami had come up with the idea of commissioning a ninja village to handle the search.

Sunagakure and Konoha were obviously out of the question, so Kagami had ruled them out immediately. The remaining three of the Five Great Ninja Villages—Iwagakure, Kumogakure, and Kirigakure—were eliminated one after another as well. He either had bad blood with them, or they were simply too far away.

That left only two ninja villages relatively close to the Land of Wind: Amegakure and Kusagakure.

At present, Amegakure was the Akatsuki’s headquarters. It was practically a dragon’s den and a tiger’s lair, and Kagami had no intention of asking for trouble. So after disguising himself and taking a slight detour, he had made his way to Kusagakure in the Land of Grass.

By hiring Kusa ninja, he would also gain access to Kusagakure’s intelligence network. With the intelligence-gathering capabilities of an entire ninja village behind the search, finding the descendants of the Roran royal line would be much easier.

Land of Water.

Sasori sat on a rock, panting as he took out his canteen.

After taking a drink, he stood and surveyed the battlefield before him, the corners of his mouth curling upward.

At this moment, countless ghastly white bone spears jutted from the earth before him. Packed densely together like a bamboo grove, they covered the entire area.

From a distance, it looked like a vast forest of white bones.

At the very center of the bone forest lay a corpse.

Sharp bone spikes protruded all over the corpse as well, making it look more like some kind of monster than a human being.

Walking slowly over to the corpse, Sasori unfurled a scroll and carefully sealed the body inside it.

Just then, another figure appeared.

Sasori turned his head and said coldly, "Orochimaru, you’re late!"

Orochimaru gave a sinister chuckle. "The head of the Kaguya clan... seems he wasn’t much after all."

The state of the battlefield had caught Orochimaru somewhat by surprise. He truly hadn’t expected Sasori to single-handedly dispose of the considerably powerful head of the Kaguya clan so easily.

Sasori put away the scroll without paying him much attention. "Those people from the Kaguya clan are all lunatics. If he hadn’t been poisoned by me, taking him down wouldn’t have been nearly this easy."

Orochimaru looked around with interest at the bone spears jutting from the ground and smiled. "It seems you’ve collected quite a few high-quality materials for your puppets during this turmoil in Kirigakure."

Sasori glanced at Orochimaru. "You’re one to talk. That child in the dungeon—you were the one who took him, weren’t you?"

"And here I thought I’d managed to hide it from you."

Orochimaru chuckled unconcernedly, then continued, "Shouldn’t we be leaving? The unrest in Kirigakure seems to be coming to an end."

Sasori shook his head.

"Let’s stay a few more days. Opportunities to hunt down kekkei genkai shinobi like this don’t come around often."

Orochimaru pondered for a moment before nodding. "Very well. We’ll stay here for a few more days."

Having already found a surviving child of the Kaguya clan, Orochimaru had little interest in remaining in the Land of Water.

However, he and Sasori were partners. Since Sasori was determined to stay, Orochimaru had no choice but to remain in the Land of Water for a few more days as well.

As for why Sasori was so insistent on staying, it was naturally because he wanted to make up for the loss of his Third Kazekage Human Puppet.

If he hadn’t lost the Third Kazekage Human Puppet, he wouldn’t have had much interest in lingering in the Land of Water either...