A single scream pierced the night.
Then, dead silence.
The quiet was worse than the chaos.
Sosuke tightened his grip on the silver shard in his hand. His heart beat fast, but his hand was perfectly steady.
The carriage curtain flicked open. A blade probed inside. Blood dripped from its tip.
By the pale moonlight, Sosuke saw a face. It didn't belong to any of the caravan guards. It was smeared with camouflage grease, a metal forehead protector bound tightly above the brow. A deep scratch slashed through the center of the village insignia.
A rogue ninja. Or a wandering mercenary.
The man's gaze swept the interior of the carriage. His eyes locked onto the cargo, heavy with greed.
He didn't notice Sosuke huddled in the deepest shadows of the corner. Or rather, to a man like this, the cargo simply held more value than a life.
"Only salt," the man muttered to his companion outside.
"Tch, what a waste," a raspy voice replied from the dark. "Check the front. The fat merchant's carriage is definitely bleeding grease."
The rogue retracted his blade and let the curtain drop. Footsteps faded, moving deliberately toward Takaya Jiro's carriage.
Sosuke exhaled slowly. Cold sweat had already soaked through his shirt, clinging to his spine.
This was his first time in such close proximity to a ninja radiating genuine killing intent. The oppressive weight of it—even without sensing their chakra—was suffocating. The sheer indifference to human life in those eyes was enough to choke the air from his lungs.
Fighting broke out outside.
It was violently brief. A few crisp clashes of metal striking metal, followed by the heavy thud of bodies hitting the dirt.
"Who's there?!"
The furious roar of the guard captain finally shattered the night. Torches flared to life. The entire camp exploded into a frenzy.
Sosuke didn't move. He kept waiting.
He was calculating the variables. If this was a large-scale raid, stepping outside meant immediate death. But judging by the acoustics of the skirmish, there weren't many enemies. Two or three, at most.
It fit the operational profile of rogue ninja perfectly: infiltrate, assassinate, grab the high-value assets, and vanish.
"Wind Style: Gale Palm!"
A low shout cut through the noise. It was immediately followed by the deafening howl of a localized hurricane. Several guards screamed as they were launched through the air, slamming into tree trunks with the sickening crunch of breaking bones.
Real ninja.
Sosuke gritted his teeth. Takaya Jiro could not die. The merchant was his long-term meal ticket and his only gateway to a legal identity. If the fat man died tonight, the trading company would instantly disintegrate, and Sosuke would be reduced to just another refugee waiting to be slaughtered.
Sosuke slipped through the narrow gap between the wooden crates.
He didn't rush the battlefield. Instead, he flanked around the rear of the carriages. Peering through the spokes of a heavy wooden wheel, he analyzed the tactical layout.
Three ninja.
One was actively suppressing the perimeter guards with Wind Style jutsu. The other two were pincer-attacking Takaya Jiro's carriage.
The guard captain was a trained fighter—likely a samurai—and possessed decent swordsmanship, barely managing to hold off one of the attackers. But the third ninja had already vaulted onto the roof of the carriage.
He raised his kunai, preparing to drive it straight down through the wooden ceiling. Right into the spot where Takaya Jiro was resting.
Sosuke was twenty meters away. Too far. He had no training in shurikenjutsu.
But he had money.
Or, more accurately, he had gold.
Taking a shallow, measured breath, Sosuke reached into his pocket and scooped up a handful of newly synthesized gold beads. They were small, roughly the size of soybeans. He held about a dozen in his palm.
He didn't throw them at the ninja. He threw them toward the shivering mass of refugees.
"Gold!" Sosuke pitched his voice into a sharp, desperate shriek of pure greed. "There's gold all over the ground!"
A dozen golden beads arced through the air, catching the torchlight in brilliant, glittering streaks before raining down just ahead of the refugee crowd. A few even rolled directly to the feet of the Wind Style user.
Human nature cannot withstand certain stress tests. Especially when starved and desperate.
It didn't matter if there was a mountain of blades or a sea of fire ahead of them; if there was gold, someone would charge.
"Gold?"
"It really is gold!"
The refugees lost their minds. Absolute terror was instantly overwritten by absolute greed. Hundreds of people surged forward like a tidal wave of ragged flesh.
Even a hardened ninja would freeze for a fraction of a second when confronted by hundreds of suicidal lunatics rushing them at once.
The Wind Style user instinctively reached for a hand seal to slaughter the crowd. But there were too many of them, blindly crushing into one another. Someone practically tackled his legs, clawing desperately at the dirt just to snatch a single golden bead by his boots.
The battlefield lost all structure.
The ninja on the roof, poised for the assassination, hesitated in sheer disbelief at the sudden mob.
In that microsecond of distraction, the guard captain seized the initiative.
With a guttural roar, a faint blue aura flared to life along the edge of his longsword—a chakra-infused katana.
"Iai!"
A flash of silver.
The ninja on the roof shrieked as his leg was severed clean off. Arterial blood sprayed across the wood.
"Fall back!"
Seeing the collapse of their tactical advantage, the lead Wind Style user kicked away the refugee clinging to his thigh. He grabbed his maimed comrade, violently threw down a smoke bomb, and retreated.
Poof! Acrid purple smoke rapidly expanded across the camp. By the time the cloud dissipated, the three ninja had vanished into the treeline.
They left behind a camp in absolute ruins. Moans rose from the dirt, belonging to the dozens of refugees trampled in the stampede for the gold.
Sosuke stood perfectly still in the shadows, coldly observing the aftermath. His back was entirely slick with cold sweat.
But the empirical results were undeniable.
'Gold Style' was a highly effective tactic. It was useless for direct lethality, but as an instrument for manufacturing chaotic variables, it was god-tier.
Takaya Jiro was terrified out of his mind. His stitches had ruptured, soaking his thick bandages in fresh blood. Dr. Doi was frantically trying to reapply pressure to the wounds.
The guard captain stalked over, his expression grim. He knelt and picked up a single golden bead from the mud. It was stained with dirt and blood.
He looked at the writhing mass of refugees, then scanned the dark perimeter.
"Who threw this?" he demanded.
No one answered. The refugees who had successfully scavenged a bead were far too busy hiding the gold inside their undergarments to speak.
The captain didn't press the issue. Whoever had the capital to casually throw away gold to buy their lives—whether friend or foe—had just saved the caravan.
He slipped the bloody bead into his own pocket and acted as if he had seen nothing.
When dawn broke, the caravan mobilized immediately.
Their pace was drastically accelerated. Everyone was highly paranoid, jumping at shadows.
Sosuke relocated to Takaya Jiro's carriage. The fat merchant was deathly pale from blood loss, but the way he looked at Sosuke had fundamentally shifted.
It was the look one gave a peer.
He had heard the scream of "Gold!" last night. The voice had been purposefully distorted, but Jiro's ears were sharp enough to recognize the cadence of a young man. Moreover, in this entire camp, only his "nephew" possessed the audacity and the capital for a maneuver like that.
To use raw gold as throwing stones in a life-or-death crisis required a terrifyingly pragmatic worldview.
[Once we reach Konoha], Takaya Jiro wrote on a piece of parchment, his thick fingers trembling. [I will give you a shop.] Sosuke smiled. For the first time, the expression was genuine.
"I want an apothecary," Sosuke stated.
Takaya Jiro nodded heavily.
Three days later.
A colossal forest dominated the horizon. The timber was absurdly massive, with individual trees easily towering dozens of meters into the sky.
A wide, paved avenue cut through the edge of the ancient woods, leading directly to a heavily fortified checkpoint.
Painted across the massive wooden archway was the familiar insignia of a spiraling leaf.
The border outpost of Konohagakure.
They had finally arrived. The Land of Fire. The most prosperous and militaristically dominant nation in the shinobi world.
Even the atmospheric pressure felt different here. The air was rich with moisture, carrying the clean, biological scent of wet earth and dense vegetation. Compared to the bleak, acidic rains and suffocating decay of the Land of Rivers, this place was practically bursting with cellular energy.
The caravan ground to a halt before the checkpoint.
Two Konoha Chunin, both wearing the standard-issue green flak jackets, strolled out to meet them. Their body language was relaxed; they were even casually chatting with one another.
This was the ingrained arrogance of a superpower. Here, deeply entrenched in their own territory, no one possessed the suicidal urge to attack a Konoha border post.
"Transit permits," the Chunin requested, extending a hand.
Takaya Jiro gestured for the guard captain to hand over the heavy stack of documentation.
The Chunin flipped through the paperwork, his eyes lazily scanning the length of the caravan. "Any contraband? Explosive tags? Chemical toxins?"
"None, sir. Strictly legitimate commerce. Salt, raw iron, and bulk pelts."
The Chunin nodded, shifting his weight to wave them through.
Suddenly, his gaze locked onto Sosuke.
Sosuke was sitting on the carriage shaft, methodically sorting dried medicinal herbs for the doctor.
"That one." The Chunin pointed a gloved finger directly at him. "Why doesn't he have a chakra registration record on file?"
Sosuke's heart skipped a beat.
He had been aggressively refining his chakra over the past few days. While the volume was pitifully microscopic, to the sensory perception of a trained ninja, it was as glaring as a radioactive isotope in pitch darkness.
Even a trace amount of chakra was the absolute dividing line between a civilian and a threat.
"He is the guild master's nephew, sir," the guard captain quickly intervened, his tone deferential. "He only recently began attempting to extract chakra."
The Chunin stepped closer.
He looked Sosuke up and down. It was a deeply analytical stare—the kind of look a man gives a piece of livestock, or a variable in a threat assessment matrix.
"Just started refining chakra?" The Chunin smirked slightly. "How old are you?"
"Fifteen," Sosuke replied evenly.
"Extracting chakra for the first time at fifteen..." The Chunin shook his head. The sharp vigilance in his eyes instantly dissolved, replaced by a cold, clinical trace of contempt. "You've missed the prime age. At this point, you'll be lucky if it helps you stay healthy."
In Konohagakure, elite bloodlines began refining chakra at age three or four. A civilian starting at fifteen was considered the lowest tier of genetic trash.
"Move along," the Chunin ordered, waving his hand dismissively. "And keep your heads down. Times are tense right now."
The heavy wooden wheels groaned as the caravan lurched forward.
Sosuke glanced back at the Chunin over his shoulder.
He welcomed the contempt. It made him feel secure. In a world saturated with apex predators, being perceived as weak was the ultimate camouflage.
The carriages rolled onto the paved roads of the Land of Fire. Sunlight filtered through the dense canopy above, casting fragmented, mottled shadows across Sosuke's face.
'Konoha,' Sosuke noted the name in his mind.
It was the center of the shinobi world, and its greatest whirlpool.
And he, armed with hands capable of infinitely violating the laws of mass conservation to generate pure gold, was stepping directly onto the floor of the world's largest casino.