The maid hurried to hand me the envelope she had been holding. Opening it, I took out a fairly detailed map of Numa no Kuni and the surrounding countries. It showed a dotted line leading from the capital to the Land of Trees, through the Land of Demons to the Vegetables, and back to the Swamp.
"How long has it been since it was sent?"
"A little less than two months, and when Yorou-kun didn't return after two weeks, even though he always managed to do it in that time before, we sounded the alarm and sent word to Konoha," sighed the landlady. "Considering that there's still no news from him, I fear the worst.
"There is still a chance that Yoru-san will survive. Three experienced jonin won't die that easily," I shook my head, but didn't pursue the subject. "In any case, I will find them and punish those responsible, even if it's some clan.
Of course, none of those present even thought of bandits.
"Most likely, the shinobi from Oni no Kuni are involved, given the situation," Sio nervously twitched the corner of her mouth. "It's because of them that we had to hire such strong guards."
"But there haven't been any problems with them before — few people want to mess with representatives of the Great Villages," the boy grimaced, joining the conversation, "but now they've suddenly become unexpectedly strong, attacking the country and winning a crushing victory.
"Then I won't waste any time," I bowed my head, "I'll be back with news in a week or a week and a half.
That would be enough time to thoroughly comb through all the lands along the trader's route and find at least some traces of the caravan.
***
After saying goodbye to my client's family, I didn't linger, but immediately set off along the route on the map. Fortunately, the trader had used a fairly normal road for travel — wagons with goods would not pass along the bad roads, which were mostly muddy, as were the roads in most of the country that did not lead to large cities.
And it really was a country of swamps — in some places, you couldn't take ten steps away from the stone under your feet without ending up in a quagmire, which clearly showed the work of the road builders. This terrain doesn't bother a shinobi much because of their chakra, but for ordinary people it presents great difficulties.
Despite the sky beginning to darken, I did not stop to rest and hurried away from the capital — at night, the main city and its surroundings would be patrolled much more intensively due to the martial law, and I did not want to waste time with the local ninja.
Despite my subconscious expectations, the border between the countries was guarded only by a small guard post without a single shinobi, which surprised me quite a bit, but then I realized that I shouldn't expect the local hidden village to have the numbers of at least Takigakure or Amegakure, let alone the great gaku rezato.
If they could scrape together a couple of hundred, that would be great. The people were on the brink of war with a superior enemy, and they had already lost the first battle on the border, so they had to defend only the most important centers and pull together all available forces, leaving non-critical areas unprotected. Nevertheless, this was a plus for me, despite the fact that shinobi from large villages in small countries try not to get involved.
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