Chapter 306: Fourth Kazekage Rasa: Am I Not a Temporary Worker?
"By the way, Teacher, have you made any progress with the Cursed Seal research you were doing before?" Amamiya Kenichi asked curiously as he piloted the airship.
He knew a little about the Cursed Seal. It was somewhat like a simplified version of Sage Mode, but because it was a simplified version, it naturally came with flaws, such as its extremely high mortality rate.
"It is progressing well enough. Do you want to try it?" his teacher asked.
Orochimaru was sitting on the sofa, sipping tea while working on a laptop. Amamiya Kenichi glanced at it and found himself momentarily speechless.
A laptop.
And not just any laptop, but the newest model.
"No, I was just curious." Amamiya Kenichi shook his head. He had no interest in trying the Cursed Seal. After all, he already knew Sage Mode, so the Cursed Seal was of little use to him.
Orochimaru looked up at his disciple, then reached into his clothes and tossed something over.
Amamiya Kenichi caught it smoothly and examined it in his hand.
It looked like a mobile phone.
However, this phone only had a single simple button, and it was huge, about the size of an old brick phone. It was also very heavy. Even with Kenichi's current physical strength, he could still feel its weight clearly.
"Teacher, is this the thing you researched?" Amamiya Kenichi asked, excitement flashing in his eyes even though he already knew what it was.
With a phone, missions in the future would become much more convenient. The existence of a phone could also, to some extent, reduce the communication gap in this world.
The invention of the telephone had turned the world into a city. The advent of the internet had turned it into a village.
Amamiya Kenichi naturally understood that principle, but this world was a strange one. It had computers, yet no telephones, no mobile phones, and no internet. Its technological development was badly lopsided.
"Mm. I combined it with the ideas you mentioned. But for now, it can only support one to one communication. In other words, if you press it now, it can only connect to me. It also has a limit on distance." Orochimaru pulled out another phone from his clothes.
It was the same model.
"Teacher, what is the range limit?" Amamiya Kenichi asked curiously.
If the range was too short, then the phone would not be especially useful. Of course, for the first mobile phone in this world, even this was already incredible.
"Not too far. Roughly enough to connect Konoha to the laboratory," Orochimaru replied with a faint smile.
Amamiya Kenichi froze.
That far?
The laboratory was in the Land of Rice Fields, and Konoha was quite a distance away. That was not a short range by any means. For a phone to already reach that far was outrageous enough.
As expected of his teacher. He could even create things on the level of black tech.
"Then, Teacher, if the phone's signal range is limited, can we solve it by building relay towers or some kind of signal boosting stations?" Amamiya Kenichi asked.
This phone was already impressive, but stronger was always better.
If they could build a signal network that covered the entire world, it would drastically shorten the distance between all parts of the Ninja World. And as someone who had lived in the modern world before, Amamiya Kenichi knew exactly how much money a monopoly in this sort of business could make.
If mobile phones were launched, the Kage of every major hidden village would immediately realize how important they were. At that point, selling phones, selling cards, and charging monthly service fees would all become enormous sources of profit.
And there would be no competitors in the Ninja World who could rival him.
Once the business took off, it would be a pure monopoly. Making money would become as easy as drinking water.
He could even use such a system to gather intelligence. Of course, ninja would still keep some vigilance, but if everyone else had such a convenient tool, how could you afford not to use it?
In the past, communication between Konoha and Hidden Cloud had to pass through repeated relays. With phones, the Hokage and the Raikage could talk directly and settle cooperation in minutes. Once people tasted that kind of speed and convenience, they would naturally understand whether they needed it or not.
Of course, not all ninja were fools. They would certainly try to reverse engineer it and build phones for their own villages. But with proper anti theft measures, that could be delayed.
And in that delay alone, the profit would already be immense. It might even allow him to gather a considerable amount of information.
At the same time, though, it would also mean that he would have to step forward and push the spread of telephones himself.
Still, before any of that, the range issue had to be solved.
"That idea is rather interesting..." Orochimaru showed some interest.
He had thought about that problem as well, but had never found a proper solution. Now that Kenichi had brought it up, it sounded very feasible.
"You seem to know quite a lot about these things," Orochimaru said as he narrowed his eyes at his disciple.
He had always been curious about Kenichi's talent in science. The concept of the mobile phone had been his. So had the hot air balloon. So had the airship.
It could be said that Amamiya Kenichi was the most talented student Orochimaru had ever seen. He had also grown quickly along the path of a ninja, and by now he was already approaching Orochimaru's own level, perhaps even surpassing it in some areas.
That gave Orochimaru a rather complicated feeling.
"Teacher, I just want to solve these problems as quickly as possible too, but I have other work at hand, so..." Amamiya Kenichi laughed awkwardly.
He had long expected that his teacher would ask something like this, so he had already prepared an answer.
"You have excellent talent, but do not forget to keep training your ninjutsu. In this world..." Orochimaru began, intending to warn him.
Then he thought of Amado.
That scientific ninjutsu reflection device of Amado's was quite interesting. It could significantly increase a ninja's combat power.
And the weapon Kenichi had invented possessed destructive power comparable to large scale ninjutsu.
For a moment, Orochimaru did not know what to say.
"Teacher, I understand. I'll keep hold of both ninjutsu and science," Amamiya Kenichi said with a smile.
Scientific creations were powerful, but also very time consuming. Although he had already succeeded in making a thermobaric bomb infused with four chakra natures, dealing with truly powerful opponents was still difficult.
Just thinking about Uchiha Madara made his scalp tingle.
Madara was practically a humanoid nuclear weapon. In some ways he was even more outrageous than an actual nuclear bomb. His production cost was zero, his mobility was absurd, and his concealment was infinitely better.
The Rinnegan was simply too strong.
To reach that level through technology, a nuclear weapon might have the raw power, but it would be far too inconvenient. Beyond that, there would only be even more absurd things like antimatter weapons, star destroyers, dark matter weaponry, energy shields, and so on.
At present, though, both ninjutsu and scientific weaponry still had plenty of room for growth.
So Amamiya Kenichi intended to develop both. By combining science with ninjutsu, he would become far more versatile against any enemy.
"Mm. Do you know why I chose Hidden Sand as our first stop?" Orochimaru suddenly asked.
Amamiya Kenichi raised an eyebrow.
"Distance, probably. And Hidden Sand's relationship with Konoha is relatively decent, so Konoha would likely choose to do business with them first," he answered with his own guess.
Before this, he had already suspected that distance had been one of his teacher's considerations.
Although the Ninja World itself was not that large, from Konoha's perspective, Hidden Sand was indeed relatively close.
"There is another reason. Hidden Sand is weak." Orochimaru gave a slight smile.
He had not only considered distance.
Since Konoha wanted to sell this thing, they would definitely start with the weakest target. That way, they could force Hidden Sand to avoid making deals with other villages.
Orochimaru even suspected that Konoha had already dispatched five teams of ninja at once to do business simultaneously, just to maximize their profits.
Amamiya Kenichi nodded.
That made sense too.
Konoha most likely had done exactly that.
"Hidden Sand..." Amamiya Kenichi looked out the window of the airship.
Below them stretched an endless desert.
They had already entered the Land of Wind, one of the Five Great Nations of the Ninja World. It was relatively weak compared to the others, and it was also a rather unique place.
Amamiya Kenichi glanced at his teacher, who was still calmly drinking tea.
Speaking of Hidden Sand, the first figure that came to Kenichi's mind was naturally the Fourth Kazekage, Rasa.
He was a fairly powerful ninja, possessing a very distinctive Bloodline Limit. His strength was also considerable. He could repeatedly suppress the rampaging One Tail, Shukaku. Even if Shukaku was the weakest of the Tailed Beasts, managing to suppress it in a desert environment was already extremely impressive.
And yet such a ninja had ultimately died at Orochimaru's hands.
Although Orochimaru had used Kimimaro and Yakushi Kabuto for assistance, that still said enough about the level of power possessed by one of the Sannin.
Soon, the airship was approaching Hidden Sand Village.
Amamiya Kenichi stood by the window and looked below. There was nothing flying above Hidden Sand. No sign of hot air balloons, no sign of anything similar. His mood improved quite a bit at once.
That meant either Konoha had not started doing business yet, or Konoha's people had not reached Hidden Sand yet.
So it had not been a waste for him to rush here with Wind Release chakra driving the airship at full speed.
After all, in business, speed was everything.
Amamiya Kenichi boldly lowered the airship so it would be visible from the village below.
At the same time, he prepared a letter of introduction, tied it to a stone, and threw it directly toward the Kazekage's building.
"My Lord Kazekage, according to what Konoha told us, Konoha's envoys should arrive in our village in two days. What do you think..." At that moment, inside the Kazekage's office, Rasa was seated at his desk handling documents.
"Did Konoha's people say what they were coming for?" Rasa asked as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
He frowned as he looked at the ANBU in front of him.
Rasa was not at all comfortable with the giant power that was Konoha.
To him, the only good Konoha was a dead Konoha.
But Konoha was still very much alive. It had survived the Ninja World War, and it had even endured its conflict with Hidden Cloud. That made it dangerous.
"No, but..." the ANBU replied respectfully.
Then he suddenly looked up in alarm, staring at the ceiling.
The next second, something crashed straight through the roof.
The ANBU moved quickly and caught it, only to discover that it was a stone wrapped in an envelope.
"My Lord Kazekage! Something has appeared in the sky above Hidden Sand..." At that moment, the ANBU in charge of aerial surveillance also rushed into the office.
Rasa silently took the stone and looked at the words written on it.
[Product Introduction Letter]
"Interesting."
Rasa gave a cold snort.
With such a style of action, combined with the strange dark object hovering above the village, he immediately realized who had arrived.
The war mercenary who had shaken the entire Ninja World, attacked Konoha, and bombed Hidden Cloud. Heavenly Demon.
Although Hidden Sand was poor and infamously stingy when hiring people, and although they had never hired Heavenly Demon, the man's reputation had already reached the ears of the higher ups.
Because of that, Rasa had already increased investment into protective barrier research.
But Hidden Sand was not Konoha.
Unlike Konoha's nearly extravagant budget, Hidden Sand truly had to stretch every coin. Many times, Rasa himself, the Kazekage, had to go panning for gold to make money for the village. He lived more like a laborer than a ruler.
Still, Heavenly Demon's arrival now gave him a distinct sense of urgency.
What if the next thing that dropped from the sky was not a stone, but something else?
[Dear Kazekage, please allow me to briefly introduce the war and defensive tool that I am about to launch.]
[Airship X237, developed by yours truly.]
Rasa carefully read through the letter in his hand.
Very quickly, he understood what Heavenly Demon's purpose was.
That lunatic actually wanted to sell him an aerial vehicle.
An airship.
And it had to be said, the offer was tempting.
Especially because the letter also said:
[I am currently touring the Five Great Nations to promote my airships one by one. These are vastly superior to those crude imitation products. Besides defense, they can also be used for commercial transportation.]
The only problem was...
It was expensive.
.....
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