The battle was over; it was time to clean up.
Aburame Tetsumaru was thoroughly satisfied with his students' performance. A squad of three Genin had dismantled a team led by a Jonin, even managing to suppress the Jonin himself for a full two minutes.
This battle proved that their strength had firmly reached the level of a Chunin. All they lacked was the mission record to justify a promotion.
However, Tetsumaru intended to make them wait a bit longer. He sensed a major escalation in the war on the horizon. If the kids were promoted now, they would likely be forced to participate in the coming conflict as squad captains—a position far too dangerous for their current age.
Furthermore, the three Genin were currently at a critical stage of physical development. Every day brought significant growth. At this stage, the last thing they needed was to learn high-risk techniques that might damage their future potential. As their teacher, Tetsumaru felt he couldn't just let them go yet.
Uchiha Hiro took charge of the battlefield cleanup. After all, Tetsumaru had equipped him with ten extra hands.
In Team 121, Hiro and Inuzuka O served as the frontline fighters. They faced the greatest risks and had both encountered life-threatening situations during their missions—Hiro had even awakened his Sharingan because of it.
Constrained by their limited chakra reserves, these two Genin could only use their secret arts and ninjutsu as trump cards. For the most part, they relied on Taijutsu, creating a desperate need to bolster their melee capabilities.
In a stroke of inspiration, Tetsumaru had selected several suitable species of Attached Insect Limbs—originally components used to increase the mobility or lethality of his giant insects—to serve as "exoskeleton" gear for his disciples. He then refined the designs based on their feedback.
Combat had proven that the Attached Insect Limbs were incredibly effective in close quarters. These insects possessed zero intelligence and were controlled directly by the ninja; their effectiveness depended entirely on the user's skill.
For someone like O, who fought with a straightforward, "brute force" mentality, fixed-type prosthetics attached to his forearms were best. They only had two states—retracted or extended—serving simply as weapons and shields.
For a more naturally gifted ninja like Hiro, mastering Summoning Silk allowed him to use the more versatile "Free-form" Attached Insect Limbs. Once he awakened his Sharingan, his enhanced dynamic vision made his control over the limbs even more precise and fluid.
Tetsumaru had crafted a specialized set for him, drawing inspiration from Spider-Man's Iron Spider armor. Using a spider as the biological base, he enlarged two of the legs and combined five individual Attached Insect Limbs into a single unit.
This resulted in a multi-purpose array of ten appendages attached to Hiro's shoulders and waist. They weren't just for combat; they could be used for almost any task.
In contrast, a back-line ninja like Yoshito Nara found the prosthetics to be an unnecessary burden. After testing several varieties with poor results, they eventually abandoned the idea.
Instead, Tetsumaru guided Yoshito to focus on Ninjutsu. Under Tetsumaru's tutelage, Yoshito combined Water Style: Glue Technique with his own research to develop Water Style: Spider Silk and Water Style: Spider Web. When paired with his Shadow Style, Yoshito became a versatile support specialist, excelling at area denial and battlefield control.
Team 121 returned to their bridge-building mission. The attackers had timed their raid for when the bridge was near completion, so the final touches were finished quickly.
After signaling the inspection ninja and receiving the mission completion certificate, the four returned to camp.
However, as soon as Tetsumaru turned in the paperwork and collected the pay, a messenger ninja intercepted him.
The masked ninja handed over a scroll. "Special Jonin Aburame, the Commander has assigned Team 121 to an escort mission. Here are your orders."
"Again?" Tetsumaru groaned. It was no secret among Konoha shinobi that he despised escort missions.
As the war dragged on, a new generation of standout ninjas had emerged, with the "Three Great Aburame" being particularly famous for their distinct styles.
There was the "Perfect Shinobi," Aburame Shige, a master of the Kidaichu (Micro-Toxic Insects). His "Dust Cloud" poison was an instant kill upon contact. He was a silent, steady man who never complained and maintained a 100% mission success rate.
Then there was the "Energy Specialist"... what was his name? The one who mastered the Siphoning Bugs. He had refined the traditional Kikaichu into a perfectly balanced tool for scouting, tracking, combat, defense, and even medicine. He was arguably the most versatile of the three. Everyone knew him, yet for some reason, nobody could ever remember his name.
Finally, there was the "Giant Insect Messenger," Aburame Tetsumaru, who controlled massive swarms and giant insects. He excelled at melee and frontal assaults, was a legendary mentor for his subordinates, and notoriously hated high-mobility missions.
"Fine... I guess," Tetsumaru said, accepting the orders with a grimace.
Aburame ninjas never refused a direct order. Of course, they also weren't the type to throw their lives away in a fit of hot-headedness; they didn't believe in "mission completion at any cost."
Even their clan head had failed missions on his record. The 100% success rate maintained by Shige and Tetsumaru was largely due to luck—they were simply strong enough to handle everything that had been thrown at them so far.
Tetsumaru accepted the scroll with a look of distaste. He verified the mission codes with the messenger and confirmed the details before stamping the return scroll with his seal and injecting chakra to prove the orders had been received.
Once the messenger was gone, Tetsumaru let out a long sigh.
After building several bridges in a row, Hiro and O were already restless, their frustration threatening to boil over. While Yoshito didn't complain, he was becoming increasingly lazy.
Whatever, Tetsumaru thought. I might hate escort missions, but the kids need a change of pace.
A few days later, on the outskirts of a major highway in the Land of Fire, Tetsumaru found the perfect tree: a towering, healthy specimen with deep roots and lush foliage.
He cast the Summoning Jutsu, bringing forth five insect hives to release his Broodmother larvae.
Fat Longhorn Beetle larvae began hollowing out the trunk, their chewing creating a loud, rhythmic rasping sound. They quickly bored four holes into the bark and burrowed deep into the heartwood.
Tetsumaru placed four critical species of insects into these hollows, where they immediately began to pupate. These insects had different functions—receiving, amplifying, and transmitting signals. Combined with the Cerebrate (Brain Bug) that would grow into the heart of the Broodmother, they formed a biological signal relay station.
In essence, it was a ground-based signal tower. It could transmit information, though it lacked "dialing" capabilities; every communication was essentially a mass broadcast on an open frequency.
The technology for selective routing was complex—or perhaps it wasn't, but Tetsumaru simply didn't know how to do it. It was a classic case of "easy once you know how, impossible if you don't." Since he wasn't an engineer, the fact that he'd managed to rig up a functional radio-style signal was already a feat of effort. As for "dialing"? He wasn't even going to try.
So what if every transmission is a world-wide announcement? he thought. It's not like anyone else in this world can pick up my frequency.
And so what if it takes a massive amount of energy? It's not like I'm paying the electric bill.
Once the communication insects finished pupating, they would expand their reach through the tunnels carved by the beetle larvae, extending their "antennae" to every branch and root.
The massive surface area of the tree was perfect for signal reception and transmission. The vast root system allowed the hive to expand into a much larger subterranean space, which would serve as the Broodmother's main body and storehouse—holding sugar, fat, water, and minerals to sustain the communication insects and the host tree.
The Broodmother also managed three subordinate swarms: Sugar Ants for energy, Leaf-Cutter Ants for fats, and Tiger-Striped Wasps for defense.
Centering around the tree, these subordinate swarms would build their own nests, creating a self-sustaining Broodmother outpost that combined supply, reproduction, and communication. With this, Tetsumaru would establish absolute "Information Hegemony" over the region.
The second purpose of this Broodmother was to "graze" his Scythe-Mantises. Despite his title as the Giant Insect Messenger, Tetsumaru only had eighteen giant insects to his name.
He had no choice; Konoha had issued a direct ban. The Aburame clan was forbidden from keeping more than ten giant insects within the village, and with the eight sealed in his summoning array, he'd hit his limit.
My dream is a million-strong legion, he grumbled. How am I supposed to conquer with eighteen? This is ridiculous.
Of course, he understood the Hokage's concerns. Creatures like the Scythe-Mantis—meters long and weighing anywhere from 400kg to three tons—were destructive. They were terrifying monstrosities; keeping them in the village was a PR nightmare. It tended to scare the children.
Tch.
Furthermore, the space in the clan's summoning array was limited. There were only twelve large-scale summoning slots available for Scythe-Mantises, which wasn't even enough for a single reinforcement wave, and he couldn't hog them all for himself.
His only option was to release them into the wild. However, managing and coordinating them across distances was a headache. If he just let them go, the risk of genetic mutation or an accidental "insect apocalypse" was a real concern.
Tetsumaru wasn't actually afraid of the Scythe-Mantises themselves going rogue. Without his specialized nutrient feedings, these giant bugs would die off quickly in the wild.
What he feared were the dozens of tool-parasites living inside them. If those were released, there was no telling how they might mutate.
Just as he was considering phasing the Scythe-Mantises out, a breakthrough occurred: the Mantises had successfully adapted to the environment and begun generating their own chakra. They had become true Ninja Insects.
Because they now possessed chakra, the production cost of a Scythe-Mantis plummeted. More importantly, they could now actively respond to his Secret Technique: Domain Field Barrier. Their effective communication range had skyrocketed to a staggering fifteen kilometers, vastly improving his command efficiency.
With this range as a foundation, remote command through signal amplification became viable. Thus, the expansion of the Broodmother network was put on the agenda.
These new Broodmothers wouldn't just breed Mantises; they functioned as relay outposts. They could receive Tetsumaru's secret technique signals, amplify them, and rebroadcast them.
An amplified signal could effectively reach standard insects within a few hundred meters, Kikaichu within two kilometers, Scythe-Mantises within forty kilometers, and another Broodmother within two hundred kilometers.
With four Broodmothers acting as relays, plus the two base stations near his home and the Land of Rivers camp (which lacked brain bugs but handled signal routing), he had connected Konoha to the front lines. He could now call upon the Scythe-Mantises stored at home and have them march to the Land of Rivers on command.
The Scythe-Mantises still had a glaring weakness in stamina—they couldn't travel 900 kilometers in one go. If they ran for 300 kilometers straight, their internal temperature would spike, leading to irreversible organ failure.
The Broodmother network solved this. A Mantis could run 200 kilometers to a hive, rest, and be replaced by a fresh Mantis from that hive. This "relay" system allowed for ultra-long-distance deployment of his giant forces.
Additionally, the Broodmothers allowed him to treat the entire escort route as his own territory. He would never have to worry about running out of reinforcements again.
Tetsumaru performed a final check. Everything was ready for the final step: signal synchronization.
He created three Shadow Clones. Standing around the trunk, the four figures focused on their hand-seal charts. They began weaving signs with such speed that their hands became a blur of shadows.
Signal activation was an adaptation of an Aburame secret technique. The core remained the same, but Tetsumaru had added layer upon layer of amplification and range-extension modules, resulting in an absurdly complex sequence.
The entire construction had to be completed within five minutes. Even after extensive streamlining, it still required over four thousand hand seals. Even with Tetsumaru's speed of four seals per second, he couldn't do it alone—hence the Shadow Clones.
The grueling process finally ended. With the final seal, chakra poured like a tide into the three relay insects in the heart of the tree.
The insects shuddered violently. Their feelers extended through the bored tunnels, causing the entire canopy to tremble. Waves of intense signals rippled outward, and moments later, they caught the response from the five other signal sources. Connection established.
Tetsumaru checked the status of his other Broodmothers and his "grazing" giant insects. He ran a series of tests: transmitting commands to military outposts, simulating Mantis deployments, triggering egg-hatching, and even testing a self-destruct sequence.
Everything was functional. It would take ten days for this Broodmother to fully mature, after which it would begin producing thirty different types of insects to assemble a brand-new generation of Scythe-Mantises.
He exhaled, carefully camouflaging the four entrance holes before departing.
After an hour of sprinting, Tetsumaru caught up with the supply convoy and secretly swapped places with his Shadow Clone. No one noticed that the captain of the escort squad had ever left.
He had to keep this a secret. He didn't want Konoha—specifically the ever-suspicious Third Hokage—knowing about the Broodmothers. He knew the leadership would never allow him to control a giant insect army of this scale.
Only when the total number of Broodmothers reached two hundred, including sea-based versions, and once he solved the problem of the hives being able to "self-deploy" their own outposts, would Tetsumaru truly be free.
At that point, the speed at which he could establish new hives would outpace Konoha's ability to clear them. With that kind of strength as his backing, the Hokage wouldn't matter. He could do whatever he wanted.
This Broodmother had to be built near the highway to meet the deployment and resource requirements, he thought. I'll have to be extra careful.
Ultimately, the problem was that the Scythe-Mantises still weren't strong enough. Their stamina was poor, and their chakra reserves were low. If they were stronger, he could just set up a Blood Covenant and summon them whenever he wanted.
If he didn't have to worry about their movement range, he could space the Broodmothers 300 kilometers apart. He could build simple relay stations in between and hide his production hives in the middle of nowhere. He could make them as big as he wanted and breed as many giants as he liked.
This made Tetsumaru even more eager to find the "Super-Giant" insects—the ones dozens of meters long and weighing tens of tons. With that kind of mass, they would have massive chakra reserves even if they were "brainless," making them perfect for Blood Covenant summoning.
When the Sannin showed off their giant summons, he'd be able to pull out his own and see the looks on their faces. That would be a sight to see.
Unfortunately, the Super-Giant insects remained a dream for now. His closest attempt—the Red-Black Giant Beetle—had died. A fifteen-meter insect simply couldn't sustain itself; it was born with a litany of congenital defects and hadn't lasted four months.
Without the reference data from the Desert Scorpion and the Giant Ants, his giant insect research had hit a plateau. For now, he could only focus on the Broodmother network—if he couldn't improve quality, he would focus on quantity.
History had taught Tetsumaru one thing: infrastructure was grueling, thankless work. But that effort would never betray him.
One day, these hives would be the foundation upon which he would ascend.