Naruto: I'm Not a Pokémon

Chapter 38 New Mission

The next morning, the Kirigakure Village was shrouded in mist as usual.

Mirukawa Kaito arrived at the training ground early today, mainly because today's daily tasks were a bit strange and did not include the most common training tasks as usual.

Instead, tasks like "say hello to ten people" and "walk ten kilometers" appeared. The system usually gives tasks that can be easily completed under the current circumstances.

This reminded Kaito of the situations when he left the village twice before.

Considering that Ao did not come to the training ground yesterday, Kaito guessed that there might be some new tasks today.

Sure enough, not long after, Ao and Zabuza arrived at the training ground one after another. Ao did not start to instruct the two in training as usual, but said to wait for Terumi Mei to arrive first.

Seeing Zabuza's expression of 'I knew it a long time ago' next to him, Kaito was even more certain that today was definitely not a simple training or an ordinary mission.

Not long after, Mei also came to the training ground. She looked at Kaito, who had listened to her confession yesterday, with some embarrassment.

Then she found that the three of them were staring at her with wide eyes, and Mei was also a little puzzled.

"Why are you standing here instead of training? Are you waiting for me?"

Ao, who was about to speak, looked at his disrespectful student and immediately began to doubt himself.

Am I too easy-going? Should I be more serious with them next time?

But after thinking about it, he realized that he had important things to do today, so he put aside his complicated emotions for the time being.

For safety reasons, Ao first formed hand seals and performed perception ninjutsu. After confirming that there was no one else around, he explained the whole story to the two students who did not understand the situation.

"That's basically the situation. Today, the Jōnin Yagura will arrange for a ninja tool shop funded by civilians to assign us a task. We will escort a clerk to the Takumi Village to order ninja tools."

"Of course, although this mission is to cover up a secret investigation, if you don't want to have another failure record in your mission resume, we must complete this open mission as well."

After listening to Ao's account of the series of events, Kaito felt that his imagination was still not rich enough. Such a task was just thrown to his team?

Even though there is a senior ninja named Ao leading the team, there is too little known information right now. Where should we start the investigation?

"We only have information about a merchant who is suspected to be from the Takumi Village. Which direction should we start our investigation from?"

Before Kaito could speak, Mei asked Ao the same question.

Ao did not answer Mei's question immediately, but instead asked the three students a question.

"How much do you know about the Takumi Village?"

Seeing that neither of her teammates had the intention to speak, Mei answered directly, "The Takumi Village is a small village located in the Land of Rivers which is between the Land of Fire and the Land of Wind. Takumi Village doesn't have many armed forces, and it is basically full of highly skilled craftsmen. Their combat power ranks last in the entire ninja world."

"However, thanks to the excellent ninja tool forging ability of the Takumi Village, the ninja tools they forged are highly respected in the five great ninja countries. Not only do they have regular ninja tools, they even often forge some advanced weapons containing chakra metals. This allows them to get along with all the great ninja countries."

Ao nodded. What Mei said was what they learned in class at the Ninja School.

"You are right, but what I want to say is that due to political pressure from all sides and the taxation of the Takumi Village, in fact, all the sales of ninja tools and the import of materials in the Takumi Village are strictly controlled by the chief of the Takumi Village. His status in the Takumi Village is not inferior to that of the Daimyo of the Land of Rivers."

Kaito asked thoughtfully after hearing this.

"That is to say, unless the smuggling was done by the leader of the Takumi Village, but that doesn't make sense. Privately reaching a deal with the internal forces of our country will not bring him much benefit. On the contrary, it may offend our Kirigakure. For a small ninja village with no strength, it is too costly."

"Or maybe it was done by some self-interested people in the Takumi Village. If that's the case, then the Takumi Village, which has strict control over domestic materials and finished products, should have more or less known where these things went."

"But the premise of all this is that the merchant is indeed a merchant from the Takumi Village, or the materials are indeed from the Takumi Village."

Ao gave him an approving look and added.

"Yes, so our main target for this investigation is the chief of the Takumi Village. The clerk of the Ninja Tool Shop who is to be escorted in the open mission will also trade with the chief of the Takumi Village under our accompaniment, which will facilitate our investigation."

Mei thought about it and asked her own question.

"So how long do we stay there? After all, what if we can't find any results in a short period of time?"

"Don't worry, the person who issued the mission was arranged by Jōnin Yagura. He will cooperate with us and stay longer. And it doesn't matter if we don't find any results in the end. After all, it's just a personal commission from Jōnin Yagura."

Zabuza, who had been watching his two teammates and Ao discussing the mission without getting a word in, raised his head slightly when he heard Ao's last words, but still didn't say anything.

On the contrary, Kaito agreed with Ao's words. To be honest, when he saw the village destroyed by pirates during the mission and the children who were abducted and trained as assassins, he was also very angry and wanted to punish the murderer.

However, so many days had passed since the incident, and Kaito had long lost his original indignation. After all, in this chaotic ninja world, everyone's life was worthless.

Kaito felt that it was not wise to get involved in the struggle between the civilian faction and the ninja faction for the sake of some strangers and offend either side.

Of course, if he had the strength of the Six Paths level at this time, it would be a different situation. Kaito might hold the banner of justice and sanction these people.

"How dare you do such a thing, you scoundrels! Shinra Tensei!"

"Okay, now that you understand the details, let's go to the Mizukage Building to receive our mission."

Ao spoke again, interrupting Kaito's daydream of punching Pain and kicking Six Paths, and signaled his students to follow him and head towards the Mizukage Building.

In cases like this where the client designates a person to complete a task, the village usually verifies the task and then notifies the task team to come and collect the task.

However, since Team Ao has already arrived at the mission acceptance point, it saves the village a lot of effort.

Although the reward for a designated mission is often higher than a normal mission, it is still the price of a C-rank escort mission after all.

Team Ao will also conduct investigations in secret.

Therefore, the entire team, even Zabuza, did not think that there was anything wrong in earning a little more money from Karatachi Yagura.

Because they didn't want to attract too much attention from other people, especially those clan ninjas, they didn't rush to the Takumi Village after receiving the mission.

Instead, just like an ordinary mission, they took their time to go to the Ninja Tool Shop to meet the person who issued the mission to understand the mission situation.

They each went back to make their own preparations before departure, and then took the clerk with them and left the Kirigakure Village.