He changed his tune at once. The hesitation that had clung to his face vanished like mist, replaced by a firmness so absolute it was almost comical.
"The Clan Leader is wise! We should dispatch our strongest elites at once!"
Konohamaru gave a faint nod. His tone softened, but the calm in it only made him seem even more mature, as if he had already thought through every possible outcome.
"Do not worry. Even if three thousand are mobilized, the clan will still retain more than two thousand members at home to preserve the foundation. As long as the foundation remains, time alone will be enough for us to recover our strength."
The elder finally let out a breath of relief. Pride even surfaced in his eyes, as though the future strength of the Sarutobi clan had already become his own glory.
He bowed, turned around at once, and hurried off to assemble the clan.
***
The real world exploded into uproar.
"Five thousand? The Sarutobi clan has at least five thousand ninja?"
"If they can sustain five thousand ninja, then how many people does the entire clan even have?"
"Is that still a clan? That is basically a miniature hidden village!"
"Hiruzen Sarutobi - just how much did he use the Hokage's authority to fatten his own family?"
Shock, suspicion, resentment. Those emotions spread across the shinobi world like sparks racing through dry grass.
The Kage of the other four great villages looked up at the heavens with cold, hard eyes. Their vigilance toward Konoha - and toward Hiruzen Sarutobi in particular - climbed to a level it had never reached before.
***
Inside the Hokage's office, Hiruzen Sarutobi's expression darkened until it looked like soot had been smeared across his face.
He had spent years concealing the true scale of the Sarutobi clan's development. That secrecy had never been pointless. It was precisely because he understood how dangerous it would be if the other clans and villages learned the truth.
And now the sky curtain had ripped away that veil in front of the entire world.
"This is really... very good for you people..." he ground out between clenched teeth, a wave of weakness washing through him.
He could already foresee what would come next - pressure from outside the village, suspicion within it, and endless questioning from every direction.
But then a colder thought surfaced, one that made his face stiffen completely.
"Konohamaru said, 'What will happen to the Sarutobi clan if we lose this war?'"
"Who is he afraid of? Could it be... that future Naruto will settle accounts with the Sarutobi clan?"
"Is it because of... the way we treated him?"
The moment that thought formed, Hiruzen's back turned cold. He remembered the lonely blond child who had grown up in neglect, mockery, and suspicion. If that child one day gained the power to destroy the world, then hatred toward the Sarutobi clan would hardly be impossible.
For the first time, Hiruzen felt with complete clarity that his previous attitude toward Naruto might not have been a way of protecting the village at all. It might have been the slow nurturing of a catastrophe.
Then another thought hit him like a hammer.
"Wait... if Konohamaru became Clan Leader, then where is Asuma?"
Hiruzen's expression changed again. A terrible premonition rose in his chest, heavy and suffocating.
***
The revelation of three thousand war-ready ninja - and an additional reserve of more than two thousand hidden within the clan - crashed into Konoha like an underwater mine detonating beneath a quiet lake.
Every clan reacted differently, yet none were left untouched.
The leaders of Ino-Shika-Cho gathered together in private. Even Nara Shikaku, who was famous for keeping his composure in any situation, could not hide the surprise in his face as he rubbed at his aching temple.
"Five thousand ninja..."
"I always knew the Third Hokage used his position to benefit his family," Shikaku said, his tone dry with irritation. "But I never imagined the old man was this capable of hiding things - or that his appetite was this large. Truly... shrewd. And frightening."
There was annoyance in his voice at having been deceived, but deeper than that was caution.
The Sarutobi clan had grown to a size that threatened the long-maintained balance of power within Konoha itself.
At the Hyuga main house, Hiashi's face was no less grim.
He had always believed the Hyuga to be Konoha's true number-one clan. Yet with the Sarutobi clan's hidden strength laid bare, he felt a threat more direct than any he had ever sensed before.
Even at their peak, the Hyuga and the Uchiha could never have produced numbers like this.
The smaller and mid-sized clans were even more anxious. To them, the hidden strength of the Sarutobi clan meant one thing above all else: their own future influence, resources, and bargaining power would only become more constrained.
***
Outside the Akatsuki base, the rogue ninja reacted in a far more direct manner.
A strange gleam flashed through Orochimaru's golden slit pupils. His tone was calm, carrying something between amusement and admiration.
"As expected of my teacher."
Then he turned toward the silent Itachi Uchiha standing not far away. A playful smile curved across his lips, and he deliberately raised his voice just enough for everyone nearby to hear.
"Itachi-kun, at the height of its power, did your Uchiha clan ever have five thousand members - even including civilians?"
Itachi's hand tightened beneath his sleeve until his knuckles went white.
Even at the peak of the Uchiha clan's glory, the number of true core ninja had only been a few hundred. Even with civilians included, they had never come close to five thousand.
His face remained cold. His lips pressed into a thin line. He said nothing.
Kakuzu, standing nearby, began muttering as he counted on his fingers. Then he let out a hoarse exclamation.
"Five thousand ninja? Then the total population of the clan must be in the tens of thousands. Tsk... with that size, they could trample any country outside the Five Great Nations."
He gave Itachi a sidelong glance, meaning plain in his small green eyes.
"The so-called strongest Uchiha clan? Compared to the Sarutobi clan, that sounds like a joke."
Itachi's body trembled almost imperceptibly.
The muscle in his jaw tightened, and for an instant the perfect stillness on his face almost cracked apart. But in the end he endured it. He forced himself back into silence, as if he had heard nothing.
The pain of exterminating his clan, and the burden of the mission he carried, left him no choice except endurance.
Orochimaru, seeing no response, did not press him further. It was as if everything he had said had merely been casual chatter.
He lifted his head and looked back at the sky. Then, in a voice so soft that only those nearest him could hear, he murmured as though speaking to himself:
"If you want to truly understand a person, never look only at what he says..."
"...look at what he does."
The words were light, almost lazy. Yet they struck like a poisoned kunai, driving with merciless precision into the most sensitive, painful, contradictory corner of Itachi Uchiha's heart.
What had he done?
He had slaughtered his own clan with his own hands for the sake of the village. He had borne every sin, every curse, every stain of infamy, and become Konoha's S-rank missing-nin.
He had done all of that.
But in the eyes of those who understood the truth, what had Hiruzen Sarutobi done?
Hiruzen had built the Sarutobi clan into an enormous hidden force while the Uchiha had been hemmed in, watched, and ultimately erased.
The Third Hokage had always said the Uchiha were trapped within the narrow frame of family and clan.
And the Sarutobi clan was not?
With one careless remark, Orochimaru shattered the moral fortress Itachi had built inside himself with words like duty, righteousness, and sacrifice.
A faint smile touched Orochimaru's lips.
He's still far too young, he thought.
***
The scenes in the sky continued to advance, moving on to the allied villages' feverish preparations for war.
With an efficiency never before seen, the Five Great Nations assembled an army on a scale that made the entire world gasp - one hundred thousand ninja.
Just hearing that number was enough to make people's breathing grow heavy.
It was a force that could only exist by gathering the strength of the entire shinobi world together. And by that fact alone, it proved just how hopeless, how crushing, the future enemy named Naruto Uzumaki must be.