Just after arriving at the front-line camp and already securing a contract with Ryūchi Cave—Uchiha Feiyu had to admit, that was a pretty auspicious start.
Once he left the command tent, he casually found a patch of empty ground and began testing his new summons.
He started small, calling out snakes as thick as his wrist. Then he tried ones as thick as a man's torso. Finally, he pushed it further, summoning giant pythons twenty to thirty meters long, with bodies two or three meters across.
In the end, Feiyu realized that even for those massive pythons, their intelligence wasn't anything special—better than your average chakra beast, but at best comparable to a ten-year-old child.
Clearly, these weren't the elites of Ryūchi Cave. Even the giant ones were just fodder beasts in that ecosystem. As long as they weren't dying in huge numbers in a short time, the truly intelligent serpents of Ryūchi Cave probably wouldn't care in the slightest.
After testing a while, Feiyu began summoning both venomous snakes and giant pythons in turn, killing each summon and taking their souls.
Despite the massive difference in body size, the soul of a giant python was only one or two times stronger than that of a wrist-thick snake. Considering that pythons sat relatively high on Ryūchi Cave's food chain and couldn't be as numerous as the common snakes, Feiyu finally decided it was more efficient to "farm" ordinary pythons day to day.
The Spirit-Seizing Rite he used to "consume" souls did have its limits. Every time he devoured a soul, a residue of resentment and malice would cling to him. He could use his Sharingan to grind down and convert that grudge into his own strength—but that too took time.
And this was with animal souls. Their resentment was nothing compared to that of humans. If he tried that with large numbers of human souls, his mind might get drowned in hatred and he'd end up a full-blown lunatic.
After experimenting for a while, Feiyu found his daily limit: at most, he could safely process the souls of a little over a hundred snakes in one day. In Ryūchi Cave's terms, that was a drop in the ocean. The serpents there probably killed and cannibalized one another in far greater numbers than that every single day.
Besides, even if the souls were consumed, the snake bodies would still return to Ryūchi Cave to become food for other serpents. In the grand scheme of things, Ryūchi Cave wasn't really losing anything.
And the souls of over a hundred Ryūchi pythons a day were more than enough to give Feiyu's body and spirit noticeable growth.
If he could keep that pace up every day, Feiyu was confident that in two or three months his chakra reserves would multiply several times over. In a year, he'd have Kage-level chakra. In ten years, he might reach a tailed-beast–class chakra volume.
And honestly, chakra was only half the story. The boost to his physical body and mental strength might prove even more valuable in the long run. That kind of fundamental enhancement would push his very being beyond the level of an ordinary shinobi.
Unfortunately, Feiyu didn't have the leisure to sit around in camp and grind snake souls. The very next day, he was scheduled to head out on his first mission.
"The mission orders from Lord Orochimaru, Captain Feiyu. From today on, I'll be serving under you."
The flap of the tent lifted. The speaker was a young man in his twenties with short blond hair and a very steady, composed demeanor.
Feiyu accepted the written order the blond ninja handed over. Inside was a map marked with terrain features. Feiyu's assignment was clearly written: operate within this designated zone and conduct guerrilla strikes against Sunagakure four-man squads.
This was standard practice for all the great villages.
Shinobi had incredible mobility and killing power, yet their bodies were still fragile enough that a well-placed kunai could end them. By nature, they weren't suited for massive, rigid formation battles.
Large-scale clashes involving hundreds of shinobi did happen, of course—but only at the very beginning of a war or when things approached the endgame. The casualty rates were so horrific that neither side could afford to fight that way for long.
Most of the time, shinobi warfare meant breaking forces down into small teams. These units would roam and clash in sabotage missions, infiltration, intel gathering, and guerrilla raids. They'd tear down one another's outposts, ambush isolated teams, and whittle away strength until one side finally couldn't sustain the losses anymore… and was forced into a decisive battle it couldn't win.
Konoha's White Fang had made his name precisely by devastating enemy squads in this kind of warfare. Later, the Yellow Flash would surpass even that record. For high-speed specialists, small-unit engagements were a playground.
"Name. Specialty. What jutsu you're good at," Feiyu said as he walked out of the tent, gesturing for the blond ninja to follow.
The man showed no hint of looking down on him for his age and answered calmly:
"My name is Yamanaka Seiichi, Chunin of the Yamanaka clan. I specialize in sensory ninjutsu and have a fair degree of long-range telepathy. My offensive mind techniques, however, are lacking; I don't have much direct combat power."
A combined sensor and communications specialist. In the shinobi world, that was rare and valuable. If Seiichi's combat skills weren't so weak—even compared to a standard Chunin—he would've long since been promoted to Special Jōnin.
Almost all of his mental techniques were purely support-oriented. He hadn't even fully mastered the basic Yamanaka offensive jutsu, Mind Body Switch Technique. But paired with Feiyu? The two of them were actually a perfect fit.
Once they cleared the outskirts of the camp, Feiyu led Yamanaka Seiichi into the forests of the Land of Rivers, slowly working their way toward the region where the Sand encampments were marked on the map.
He had no intention of storming the enemy camp directly. The closer they operated to Suna's lines, the more likely they'd run into enemy squads. Lingering around Konoha's own main camp wouldn't put them in contact with anyone from Suna at all.
As they moved, Feiyu kept asking questions. Seiichi, for his part, was cool-headed and steady. He didn't mind answering, and he didn't treat Feiyu like some reckless kid just because of his age.
"Sunagakure's offensive has already weakened a lot," Seiichi explained. "In the first two months of the war, every few days there would be a battle involving several hundred shinobi on both sides. In those two months alone… nearly two thousand shinobi were killed or wounded."
Feiyu listened and nodded thoughtfully.
"So Suna's stalling out," he said. "That tracks. A first strike is strongest, the second weaker, the third exhausted. If the attackers don't take the advantage early, they'll bleed more heavily in the long run."
"You're correct, Captain," Seiichi replied. "At the start, Suna pinned the disappearance of the Third Kazekage on Konoha and came at us with everything they had. Their early casualties were terrible. Of those two thousand dead and wounded in the first two months, sixty percent were Sand shinobi."
He paused, then added:
"However… the war began so suddenly that the Land of Rivers hasn't been fully stripped and evacuated. There's been no true scorched-earth policy here. As long as that's the case, Suna can keep pillaging and looting to maintain their supplies and morale for a while longer."
"So that's it," Feiyu murmured, glancing down at the map in his hand.
"Sunagakure is propping up its war effort by bleeding the Land of Rivers dry."
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