Returning to the office in the Hokage Building happened more than ten minutes later. The Third Hokage, Hiruzen, looked at the wall in his office, now bearing a gash made by a ninja blade—a mark left by an Anbu Ninja during the earlier scuffle.
"What happened?"
Hiruzen eyed the four Anbu Ninjas before him, asking for details about what had just occurred.
"Hokage-sama, someone infiltrated and stole information and documents from here."
The Konoha Anbu who had fended off the intruder answered.
"Did you catch the enemy?"
Hiruzen got straight to the point.
"I cut the enemy's body in two, but they seemed to have an immortal body. Even after being split, each half still possessed powerful life force, and they slipped underground and into the wall, disappearing."
The Konoha Anbu quickly knelt on one knee, bowing his head as he explained, then continued: "I'm very sorry, Hokage-sama. Even though I gave chase afterwards, the enemy moved quickly through the earth, and soon I lost track of them."
"Get up. It seems whoever snuck in here has some special abilities."
An immortal body, plus the ability to slip into walls and floors—and even shake off the relentless pursuit of Anbu Ninjas. Regardless of their combat ability, their infiltration skills are certainly not to be underestimated.
Hiruzen walked over to his desk, surveying the mess of documents scattered across it. These files covered countless topics, and for that reason, Hiruzen couldn't tell what exactly the infiltrator was searching for.
Member breakdowns of several Jonin Squads, records of missions received and recent squad reports, all sorts of outdated order forms—and among them, Hiruzen found a magazine featuring a sultry bikini model on the cover.
"..."
Hiruzen felt awkward, quietly slipping the magazine into a nearby drawer.
No helping it; as Hokage, he was constantly under enormous pressure.
Even a Hokage needs to read a variety of books now and then, just to lighten the load.
"Hokage-sama, what should we do next?"
"It shouldn't be a big deal; the files kept here aren't the most sensitive secrets in the village…"
But if such files were casually leaked to some unknown interloper, it'd still pose a certain threat to the village.
The key problem is that right now, there's no way to determine the enemy's identity or objective—their actions can't be tracked. Even knowing this infiltrator is a potential threat to Konoha, there's really nothing much that can be done.
They could only leave things as they were.
"Let's just leave it for now. Be more careful when working in the future."
Hiruzen didn't blame the Anbu here; after all, only one squad of four ninjas guarded this place.
The reason: none of the documents here contain Konoha's most vital secrets. Assigning more people would be wasteful and would reduce security elsewhere.
But it wouldn't be wise to take no precautions at all—these files are not entirely useless.
That's exactly what Hiruzen found strange: if the intruder came for Konoha's secrets, the information available here was obviously limited.
Like key Anbu personnel files, various research papers, forbidden and secret techniques—those are the true core secrets of Konoha, kept in far more hidden locations.
Guarding those places are elite Anbu Ninjas within the Anbu itself; not only are there many of them, their ninja techniques are mostly rare secret arts, and they're bolstered by special perception-type ninjas to prevent infiltration.
Unable to understand what the infiltrator was after, Hiruzen chose not to speculate needlessly.
◎
One day later.
A cruise ship departed from the port of the Land of Rainbow, heading toward the port of the Land of Fire.
On the deck of this ship, all kinds of people were having fun or gazing at the boundless blue sea.
"Hijin-sama, it's too dangerous to be out in the open here. You should really go back to your cabin."
Two adult male ninjas with white pupils spoke to a white-eyed ninja, who was admiring the blue seascape from the deck.
The ninja they called 'Hijin' was a handsome young man, wearing a Konoha Ninja Headband on his forehead—marking him as a Konoha Ninja.
And those three pairs of pure, unblemished white eyes immediately indicated their identity—the prestigious Hyuga Clan.
The Hyuga Clan is more than just a well-known ninja clan; top-tier ninja families like theirs have all sorts of complicated relationships with outsiders.
This time, the three of them had come purely to handle business matters with merchant associations tied to the Hyuga Clan in the Land of Rainbow.
Since someone with enough status was needed to show up in person, the Hyuga Clan sent Hyuga Hijin, scion of the Main Family, and assigned two Special Jonin from the Hyuga Branch Family as his escort.
Though not true Jonin, the two working together could handle any normal Jonin, possibly even defeat one.
And Hyuga Hijin, Main Family Ninja, was the strongest of the trio.
He was only twenty, yet already a famous Jonin prodigy in the Hyuga Main Family.
This lineup could easily escape even if faced with a hundred Chunin Level enemies—even if outmatched.
"It's fine, I'm only out here to relax a bit. After wrapping up the clan's business in the Land of Rainbow, you two really don't need to be so nervous."
Hijin brushed aside the concerns of the two Hyuga Branch Family ninjas with a smile.
"Even so, as a Main…"