Chapter 589: A Spontaneous Trip
Land of Earth, Iwagakure.
Roshi prepared dinner for himself at home, just as he always did.
He had learned to cook when he was very young.
It was not because he had been especially sensible as a child, but because his parents had died before he was old enough to remember them, so cooking had become a basic survival skill.
In truth, it was also somewhat related to his identity as a Jinchūriki. As a Jinchūriki, Roshi had practically been hated by everyone in Iwagakure.
It was not to the point where people secretly tampered with his food, but just seeing those sour expressions whenever he sat down to eat was enough to ruin his appetite.
So Roshi usually bought his own groceries and cooked for himself.
At least that way, he could choose his own ingredients and did not have to worry about buying spoiled food.
Yet despite all his years of experience in the kitchen, Roshi made mistake after mistake today. The fish was burned, and the soup was so badly seasoned it was nearly undrinkable.
"Ōnoki, is this the choice you made?" Roshi muttered with a complicated expression as he ate the burnt fish and took a sip of the overly salty vegetable soup.
The ANBU had not disappeared. They had only been replaced with a new group.
Thinking in the darkest possible way, perhaps the new group was even stronger, all to make sure he could never escape.
Roshi let out a long sigh and began clearing the table.
"Should I leave?" he asked the Four Tails in his mind.
He was still hesitating.
Roshi was not an indecisive person, but this was no small matter. It was a major decision, both for himself and for Iwagakure.
Stubborn as he was, Roshi was not incapable of thinking clearly.
If he ran away now, it would be a considerable blow to Iwagakure.
A Jinchūriki was not merely a top tier combat asset for a ninja village.
A Jinchūriki also served as an overwhelming deterrent against entire armies.
A Tailed Beast Ball could easily destroy a mountain, and a Jinchūriki capable of full Tailed Beast transformation could fire several of them in succession.
For a human ninja, even the most famous monsters in the shinobi world, such a thing was impossible. The difference in chakra between a person and a Tailed Beast was simply too vast.
"Even though I'm sealed inside you, your leaving means I leave as well. Still, my suggestion is simple. Decide for yourself," the Four Tails replied.
From its own perspective, the Four Tails naturally leaned toward leaving Iwagakure.
It was a Tailed Beast with self awareness. Of course it had no desire to remain trapped in Iwagakure and treated as a weapon.
But the Four Tails acknowledged Roshi, and because of that, it did not want to force Roshi into a choice.
Otherwise, if Roshi regretted leaving someday, the one who had pushed him to decide would be left in an awkward position.
"That's exactly the problem. I can't decide, so I'm asking you," Roshi said helplessly.
If he had already made up his mind, he would not have asked the Four Tails in the first place.
"You don't need to make it so complicated. In the end, there are only two choices. Stay, or leave. If you want to stay, then stay. If you want to leave, then leave," the Four Tails said.
Roshi fell into thought.
The words sounded like nonsense at first, but they struck directly at the heart of the matter.
Maybe he really did not need to think about it in such a complicated way. The impact his departure would have on Iwagakure, whether he would be hunted afterward, all of that was secondary.
What he truly needed to decide was much simpler.
Did he want to stay, or did he want to leave?
At that moment, countless memories flooded his mind.
He remembered himself as a child, training harder than anyone else.
Because of his identity as a Jinchūriki, the residents and ninja of Iwagakure had all disliked him.
So back then, Roshi had thought, if he could control the power of the Tailed Beast, would everyone finally treat him like a normal person?
If he could control that power, he would never lose control. In that sense, he would only be another ninja with more chakra than most.
But reality had proved that effort did not always lead to success.
The attitude of the people of Iwagakure had never truly changed because of his efforts.
Of course, it was not that nothing changed at all. After he became stronger, fewer people dared to openly show him contempt.
But that was not the kind of change Roshi had wanted.
Then his thoughts shifted to the recent war.
He had followed Iwakura's orders, entered full Tailed Beast transformation, and used the Tailed Beast Ball to force a breakout for the army.
In truth, Roshi had never once thought about earning rewards from the start.
Although he had succeeded in leading the troops out, the method he used, even if it had been done under Iwakura's orders, was never something worthy of praise.
Because the path of retreat had not only been soaked in enemy blood, but also in the blood of his own comrades.
What Roshi had never expected was that, because of that, he would be watched, and that even after explaining himself, the surveillance would remain.
Sometimes, Roshi found himself wondering, if he had ignored Iwakura's order in that battle, refused to fully transform, and never used the Tailed Beast Ball against the troops, perhaps he would have died there and been remembered as a war hero.
Instead, though he had broken through with the army alive, he had become a monster who slaughtered his own comrades.
His conversation with Ōnoki in the office, the whispers he heard on the street, the fearful and hostile gazes of others, every one of those memories surfaced.
The confusion on Roshi's face gradually faded.
Now that things had reached this point, there was really only one answer left.
"I'm leaving," Roshi said firmly to the Four Tails.
The moment he said it out loud, it felt as if a mountain had been lifted from his shoulders. His entire body felt lighter.
After thinking it through carefully, he realized he did not need to look for reasons to leave.
Instead, he could barely find any reason to stay.
Why should he remain?
For the ANBU who monitored him?
For the ninja and civilians of Iwagakure who never treated him like a human being?
Or for Ōnoki, who wanted to turn him into a cold weapon that existed only to obey?
"Haha, so you finally figured it out," the Four Tails said with a relieved smile.
It knew everything Roshi had gone through. It had watched in silence from within him all these years.
It had watched a good kid who once struggled upward with all his strength gradually turn into a stubborn, isolated adult.
In the Four Tails' eyes, Roshi owed Iwagakure nothing. If anything, it was Iwagakure that owed Roshi.
Roshi had not begged Ōnoki to make him a Jinchūriki.
And after becoming one, he had still carried out mission after mission for Iwagakure. Since the war began, he had repeatedly risked his life for the village.
To the Four Tails, Roshi and itself were not so different. They were both pitiful beings trapped by Iwagakure.
The only difference was that the Four Tails had not been born there, while Roshi had.
"Let that old man Ōnoki regret it," Roshi said with a smile as he put away the washed dishes.
Tonight, he would let Ōnoki know that Roshi was a man who kept his word.
Then he stepped outside and quietly sat in the yard, reading a book.
He planned to leave once it got late enough.
Although he was leaving, Roshi had no intention of causing a scene. Those Iwagakure ninja and villagers were irritating, but they did not deserve to die for it.
The act of leaving the village itself was already a severe enough blow to Iwagakure. There was no need to create more trouble than necessary.
As time passed, the Iwagakure ANBU monitoring him began to feel that something was off.
Roshi had been reading for unusually long this time. Under normal circumstances, he would never sit in the yard with a book for so many hours.
Still, the change was too subtle to count as a clear anomaly, so the ANBU did not contact Ōnoki. They merely noted it down.
"It's about time."
Roshi looked at the fully darkened sky, closed his book, and walked back into the house to return it to the shelf.
This had still been his home, after all. If he was going to leave, at the very least he did not want to leave it in a mess.
Maybe someday, he might even have a chance to return and live here again.
After tidying up his home, Roshi headed directly toward the hidden location of the Iwagakure ANBU.
He was worried there might be a sensory ninja among them. If he simply left through the ground with Earth Release, he could be discovered immediately.
"He actually found us?" one of the ANBU thought in surprise when he saw Roshi walking straight toward them without the slightest attempt at concealment.
He knew why his team had replaced the previous one, but he had not expected Roshi's awareness to be this sharp. They had been discovered again so quickly.
"Roshi, what are you trying to do? Attacking ANBU is a serious crime," the ANBU warned as he revealed himself.
He was not particularly alarmed. The previous ANBU who had been exposed had never clashed with Roshi, so he believed Roshi would not attack them either.
Roshi smiled.
He was already preparing to leave Iwagakure. What meaning did threats like that still have?
Whoosh!
Without saying another word, Roshi released a massive surge of chakra, flashed behind the two Iwagakure ANBU, and drove the edge of his hand down against them with brutal force.
Thud. Thud.
The two ANBU collapsed.
After knocking them out, Roshi hid them away and then immediately sank into the earth, racing toward the outskirts of Iwagakure.
In truth, Roshi was not skilled at incapacitating people. He had only succeeded through overwhelming force.
And because he had not wanted to kill them, he had deliberately restrained himself, which meant he had no idea how long they would stay unconscious.
To be safe, he needed to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible.
The Four Tails, wanting to help Roshi escape from Iwagakure, poured chakra into him without reservation, pushing his strength to its peak.
The Four Tails was actually quite excited.
After being captured and used as a living power source by Iwagakure for so many years, it was finally getting out.
Once Roshi burst free of Iwagakure, he rose back to the surface and looked behind him at the homeland where he had lived for decades.
When he had first begun considering leaving, his heart had been full of hesitation.
When he finally understood what he wanted, there had still been a trace of reluctance for Iwagakure.
But after knocking out the ANBU and escaping, what Roshi felt now was exhilaration.
Now that he stood outside Iwagakure, all the weight in his heart seemed to vanish.
He no longer regretted his decision at all.
"Ōnoki, I hope this anger makes you lose sleep for days, hahaha!"
Roshi laughed loudly, released chakra, and sped forward once more.
There had never been anyone in Iwagakure who truly cared for him, nor anyone he could say he cared for in return. Thinking about it that way, there was really nothing there worth holding onto.
On the other side, the night shift members of the Iwagakure barrier team noticed someone breaking out of the village through the underground route and immediately reported it.
The ANBU Roshi had knocked out also woke up and quickly sent word that Roshi had attacked them.
"Tsuchikage sama, something terrible has happened!"
The moment he heard the ANBU's voice, Ōnoki, who had already been asleep, shot upright.
"What is it?" Ōnoki asked quickly as he threw on a robe.
Anything serious enough to wake him in the middle of the night was bound to be extremely important.
"The Four Tails Jinchūriki, Roshi, knocked out the ANBU assigned to him and escaped the village alone!" the ANBU reported at once.
"How dare he!"
Ōnoki's eyes widened and his fists clenched.
He had not expected Roshi to act so decisively. He had only threatened that Ōnoki would regret it during the day, and now he had already fled Iwagakure at night.
Still, Ōnoki knew this was not the time to dwell on Roshi's temperament. He immediately began issuing orders.
"Dispatch search teams at once, but do it quietly. Notify the border squads as well and have them search for Roshi. Under no circumstances can he be allowed to leave the Land of Earth!"
A Jinchūriki escaping was even more troublesome than a Jinchūriki dying in battle.
If a Jinchūriki died in battle, the Tailed Beast would revive on its own after some time. It could be captured again and sealed into another suitable host, creating a new Jinchūriki.
But if a Jinchūriki escaped, the situation became far more complicated.
If the Jinchūriki hid himself somewhere and never came out, Iwagakure would permanently lose a Tailed Beast unless that person died.
If the Jinchūriki were captured by another village, the consequences would be even worse.
Those were all outcomes Ōnoki could never accept.
"Gather everyone who already knows and order them to keep Roshi's escape a secret. The other villages must not learn of this," Ōnoki added.
As long as Roshi had any sense at all, he would never reveal his identity as a Jinchūriki once he was outside.
Doing so would only be inviting death.
If the other great villages remained unaware that Roshi had fled, they would still assume he belonged to Iwagakure and keep factoring his existence into military plans.
If they learned the truth, some of them might try to kill him simply to reduce Iwagakure's strength.
Others might go even further and attempt to seize the Tailed Beast within him.
In short, if Roshi ever exposed himself as the Four Tails Jinchūriki, there would be no good ending waiting for him.
That gave Ōnoki an opening.
He could simply pretend nothing had happened. As long as Roshi did not appear publicly, Iwagakure could continue acting as if it still possessed two Jinchūriki.
Jinchūriki were super weapons, and super weapons were not deployed casually in the first place.
As long as Roshi never showed up, Iwagakure's enemies would still have to account for him when planning wars against the village.
"Yes!"
The ANBU bowed his head and flashed away to carry out the orders.
"He really went this far." Ōnoki pressed a hand to his brow, a headache forming instantly.
He truly had not expected Roshi to flee.
This was the village that had raised him, and yet he would abandon it so decisively?
Had he learned nothing at all from the Academy's Will of Stone lessons? Or had the instructors simply failed that badly?
"I should have taken this matter more seriously," Ōnoki muttered with a sigh.
For once, he felt some regret. He should never have been satisfied with merely rotating the ANBU monitoring Roshi.
Given the outcome, he should have either withdrawn the surveillance entirely or strengthened it drastically.
Knowing himself, Ōnoki understood he would have chosen the latter.
Roshi's request today had been to remove the surveillance. Tomorrow, would he demand even more?
Ōnoki had no intention of yielding until Roshi turned into a Jinchūriki that obeyed properly.
Since Roshi had already begun entertaining thoughts of escape, in Ōnoki's eyes, that alone justified the surveillance.
He was a Jinchūriki who had "accidentally" killed large numbers of his own allies on the battlefield. Watching him had been the correct choice.
Still, though Ōnoki did not want to admit it, one thought would not leave him alone.
Perhaps it was not only Roshi who was stubborn.
Perhaps he himself was just as stubborn.
If either one of them had been willing to bend even a little, things might have turned out differently.
Ōnoki quickly changed clothes and rushed toward the Tsuchikage Building.
There was no point dwelling on those thoughts now. Roshi had already defected, and no amount of speculation would change that fact.
What mattered most now was how to minimize the damage this incident would cause to Iwagakure.
.....
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