The most central location in Konoha Ninja Village in the Land of Fire was naturally the Hokage Building, where the Hokage of each generation worked.
This not-so-tall, circular building was the heart of the entire village, and all major decisions in the village were made within it.
The Third Hokage, who was nearing his twilight years, stood in front of the window, the tobacco in his pipe occasionally lighting up.
Hiruzen Sarutobi's life was quite magnificent. As a young man, he showed talent and was taken as a disciple by the Second Hokage of the village.
Then he experienced Madara Uchiha's defection, the death of the First Hokage, and the ensuing Ninja World War.
Later, he was ordered to become the Hokage in a time of crisis, and finally led the village to win one victory after another.
In the process, he personally watched the disciples he had cultivated with his own hands grow up and gain fame, and personally saw the village become more and more prosperous with a wealth of talent.
At this point, he could say that he hadn't failed to live up to Tobirama-sensei's entrustment and sacrifice.
But then three disciples left one after another, even defecting. The Nine-Tails Rebellion caused the Fourth Hokage, who was in the prime of his life, to sacrifice himself, and the Uchiha clan was exterminated by Itachi after plotting a rebellion.
Those shining geniuses of Konoha, whom he had placed high hopes on, had withered one after another, and all of this made the aging him more and more exhausted.
But what was gratifying was that the war had ended, and new seedlings of Konoha had begun to grow vigorously in the era of peace.
But for some reason, he had always had a feeling of unease recently.
Just then, a person kneeling on one knee appeared behind him. That person was wearing a gray ninja vest, a bird-patterned mask on their face, and didn't reveal any characteristics that showed their identity.
The Assassination Tactics Special Forces, abbreviated as Anbu, was a special organization created by the Second Hokage that reported directly to the Hokage.
In short, it was Konoha's intelligence agency, mainly responsible for protecting the Hokage and preventing foreign enemies from invading Konoha Ninja Village, and sometimes also responsible for reconnaissance and assassination.
The bird-faced Anbu raised a scroll and said, "Hokage-sama, the investigation into the outsiders in the village has been completed."
The matter had to be said from yesterday. Hiruzen Sarutobi, who "occasionally" had free time, was using the crystal ball to observe the public sentiment as usual, and then saw a special building.
It used to be an izakaya, but it had started to be renovated yesterday.
He had heard that the customers who had bought it were quite generous, and had paid the construction team a lot of money to work overtime, and had quickly renovated a two-story building.
The style of that building was out of tune with the rest of the street, and the special symbol flag fluttering at the top of the building made Hiruzen Sarutobi feel uneasy.
As the Shadow of a village, it was natural for him to take precautions, and an investigation was justified.
Opening the scroll, Hiruzen Sarutobi saw almost all of Drake and the others' itinerary after coming to this world.
Including how much money Drake had exchanged with a large amount of gold, how he had bought the real estate and established that building, and what that guild he had established called Fairy Tail did.
Drake hadn't intended to hide anything in the first place, so the information on the scroll was very clear, especially about Fairy Tail's main business.
Hiruzen Sarutobi exhaled a puff of smoke, and a trace of confusion appeared in his eyes.
There were also organizations like Yorozuya and mercenaries in the ninja world. On the surface, that guild was the same type of place.
But the problem was, what were they thinking opening it in Konoha Village?
As everyone knew, an important function of a ninja village was to accept various requests from the outside world, which was also an important part of the ninja village's income.
And because large ninja villages like Konoha had great strength and credibility, even customers from other countries would come to Konoha to issue requests.
Opening such an organization in Konoha, did they really think they would have any competitiveness?
On the one hand, he felt that Fairy Tail wouldn't threaten the village, and on the other hand, Konoha didn't have any rules prohibiting the opening of Yorozuya in the village, so Hiruzen Sarutobi put this matter aside.
Although he still had a faint feeling of unease, it was more important to handle the assignment of the ninja school graduates, because there were many people this year who needed to be paid special attention to.
Not to mention the descendants from various ninja clans, Naruto Uzumaki, the orphan of the Fourth Hokage and the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, and Sasuke Uchiha, the last survivor of the Uchiha clan, had to be dealt with carefully.
But soon Hiruzen Sarutobi's thoughts changed.
A few days later, Hiruzen Sarutobi stared blankly at the report in his hand, which was information about a request from Fairy Tail.
After finally dealing with the assignment of classes, Hiruzen Sarutobi suddenly thought of Fairy Tail. Curious if it had already closed down, Hiruzen Sarutobi specifically asked about it.
He didn't expect to receive a report about Fairy Tail causing a big incident.
At first, it was indeed as Hiruzen Sarutobi had expected. Fairy Tail had no competitiveness compared to Konoha.
But he had overlooked one difference. Konoha divided requests into different levels according to their difficulty, and Konoha itself set the standards for the fees for different levels.
But in Fairy Tail, the client could decide the amount of the reward themselves.
Of course, unlike Konoha, which directly assigned requests to ninjas, whether or not to accept a request in Fairy Tail was up to the individual.
If the reward was too low, it was possible that the request would hang on the display board for a long time without anyone accepting it.
Before, a village had come to issue a task to exterminate bandits, but unfortunately, the people who came didn't have enough money to pay the reward.
The official of the Land of Fire who managed that village was a complete corrupt official, and had already scraped all the property from the villagers in a way that exhausted the pond to get all the fish.
After the bandits appeared, that greedy and stingy guy wasn't even willing to take out a single ryo to pay the reward for the request.
But thinking about how in the Land of Waves, the national infrastructure had to be paid for out of the pockets of the craftsmen, it wasn't a surprise that the nobles would be like this.
The villagers, who had been ransacked by both the nobles and the bandits, had come after hearing that they could hire ninjas to exterminate the bandits, but unfortunately, the money they had left wasn't enough to pay the reward.
Then the disappointed villagers passed by Fairy Tail, which was located in the street between the Hokage Building and Konoha Gate.
Natsu, who had heard about this, decided to take on this request, and then left for that village with Happy.
Then it was what the report in Hiruzen Sarutobi's hand said, about the bandits and an entire mountain being leveled.
From the perspective of ninjas, who valued secrecy, the way Natsu completed the request was too willful and simply reckless.
But this approach had allowed everyone to see Fairy Tail's strength.
The clients couldn't understand what powerful ninjas were like, but collapsing a small mountain did look impressive.
And in fact, it wasn't just impressive. Hiruzen Sarutobi, who had the title of Ninja Professor, knew very well that most ninjutsu couldn't do that.
Hiruzen Sarutobi couldn't help but recall the battle that had created the current terrain of the Valley of the End. Perhaps only the First's Sage Art Wood Release and Madara Uchiha's Susanoo could easily do the same thing!
Hiruzen Sarutobi stroked his beard, the confusion on his face even heavier. Even though he couldn't sense Chakra on anyone in Fairy Tail, why did they have such power?
A group of people with special powers, why had they come to Konoha? What was their purpose?
It seemed that he had to pay more attention to these people! As for testing them... Hiruzen Sarutobi knew his old friend who was hidden in the darkness very well. Even without his orders, he would do it.
If anything went wrong, he could just let his old friend take the blame, so that the situation wouldn't get out of control.
After so many years, he had long mastered the correct way to use that old friend.
Sure enough, the door to the office was pushed open soon after. A gloomy old man with bandages wrapped around his face and arms walked in.
"Monkey, people with unknown backgrounds have mixed into the village. As the Hokage, you should take action!"
"They entered the village through official channels. I have no reason to target them!"
"Their power is dangerous!"
"That's why we can't act rashly!"
"Sarutobi, you'll regret it!"
"Danzō, I'm the Hokage!"
Bang!
It was another day when the door to the Hokage's office was hit hard.
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