Chapter 354: Danzō's Advice
Inside the mirror-space, a battle raged violent enough to bring down the sky and crack open the earth.
Outside it, though, everything remained calm, even peaceful.
Aside from Konoha itself, now reduced to one massive crater, nothing else dangerous seemed to be happening.
Minato, having already led countless villagers to safety who-knew-how-far away, stood atop a massive tree in the distance, gazing back toward what remained of Konoha.
That absurdly massive crater looked exactly as though a meteor had come crashing down from the sky.
Getting an accurate headcount of who'd escaped wasn't easy right now, and Minato had no real sense yet of how many casualties this disaster had caused.
Even the Nine-Tails incident hadn't managed to destroy the village outright, and yet here it was, plunged into crisis by some inexplicable earthquake.
It was genuinely hard to believe — the kind of thing that made a person feel like they were still trapped in some dream.
Honestly, Minato had genuinely wondered at first whether this was all a dream — he'd even quietly pinched his own thigh, hard, to check.
But the pain told him... this wasn't a dream at all. Every bit of it was real. Konoha was gone!
The entire village had become a massive sinkhole, easily a thousand meters deep — fall that far and you'd end up nothing but a splattered red smear.
Rebuilding Konoha under these conditions would mean starting from scratch on an entirely new plot of land — everything back to square one, decades of progress wiped out overnight.
At least most of the people were still alive. Looking back at the dense crowd behind him, Minato could see the fear and anxiety plain on their faces.
Drawing a slow breath, Minato let out a bitter laugh. "First time I've felt this helpless. What did Konoha ever do to deserve this? Why does every single disaster seem to land right on top of us?"
Minato was fairly convinced he had to be the unluckiest Hokage in history. Two major crises, back to back, since taking office.
The first one went without saying — the Nine-Tails incident. If Ryū-kun hadn't stepped in when he did, subduing the beast quickly would have been a genuine struggle.
And if it had dragged on, Konoha would have suffered even worse damage — losing well over half the village wouldn't have been out of the question.
And the second crisis was happening right now — an inexplicable earthquake, an inexplicable giant beast, everything about it entirely inexplicable.
Yes... he'd seen that massive claw tear up through the ground with his own eyes, a claw the size of a small hill — genuinely beyond belief.
Minato figured that claw alone was roughly the size of the Nine-Tails itself — which meant whatever it belonged to had to be terrifyingly massive.
Probably the size of an entire mountain range, at that.
Since when did the shinobi world have monsters this powerful? Never once seen anything like it in any text. It's like it just appeared out of thin air. Unbelievable.
Minato rubbed hard at his own stiff face, letting out a bitter laugh and murmuring to himself, "If Ryū-kun hadn't sent those girls to warn me in time, there's no telling how many more people Konoha would have lost."
As the Fourth Hokage, Minato genuinely felt his head throbbing right now — the whole situation had a distinctly, uniquely intractable feel to it.
He suspected even an outright war against a rival village wouldn't have given him a headache quite this bad.
Pulling back his gaze and his thoughts alike, Minato leapt down from the treetop, landing beside the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi.
Hiruzen glanced over at him, curious. "So, Minato — what do you think we do next?"
Minato blinked, pressing his lips together as he thought it over. "Ryū-kun seems to have pulled that beast into some kind of pocket dimension. I'd imagine he has a way to handle it."
He'd seen the beast get swept into that strange space with his own eyes, clear as day, though he wasn't entirely sure whether that had been Ryū's doing.
If it had been Ryū-kun's ability too... then the man really was proving to be an unfathomable one.
Then again, he'd always been unfathomable, so — not really out of character.
"Fourth Hokage, are you seriously placing Konoha's fate in the hands of a man who isn't even a shinobi?"
Danzō's voice carried over, tinged with its usual shadow. Most of those standing near Minato at this point were Konoha's senior leadership.
"I'll grant that the man has never once done anything against Konoha's interests. But he's still not a shinobi. How can you place this much trust in him?"
Danzō's challenge left Minato momentarily at a loss for words — honestly, even he couldn't quite say why he trusted Ryū this much.
Their acquaintance wasn't even especially deep, when he thought about it. Calling Ryū a "friend" might have been a stretch.
At that, Danzō continued, "Right now, our priority should be leading Konoha's people toward whatever will help us weather this crisis — shelter, food, water, that sort of thing."
"If we can't secure any of that, we won't last three days. And at that point, Konoha genuinely won't have any hope of rebuilding."
Sure, Danzō carried that shadowed air around with him every day, and some of his so-called scheming came across as almost childish at times.
But what he was saying now wasn't wrong. Konoha couldn't afford to pin all its hope on Ryū alone.
There were that many shinobi and civilians to account for.
The sheer amount of food and fresh water needed was enormous.
Water Release shinobi could probably draw moisture from the air or from trees for fresh water, enough to hold out for a while, at least.
Food and shelter were trickier problems, though. The violent earthquake had already sent every animal for miles fleeing — there wasn't so much as a single rat to be found nearby.
As for wild vegetables and fruit, nowhere near enough to feed this many people. The situation was a genuine headache.
Not far from Minato and the rest of Konoha's leadership, Anko's eyes swept the crowd over and over. She'd been searching for half an hour now, and still hadn't spotted the one person she was looking for.
Worry crossed her face as she murmured to herself without meaning to, "Where did Ryū-oniisan go... He wouldn't still be in the village, would he? No, that can't be right — somewhere that dangerous, he must have gotten out too!"
Kurenai, standing nearby, gave her a strange look and couldn't help but ask, "Anko, this Ryū-oniisan of yours — who exactly is he, anyway?"
Anko shook her head. "Honestly, I don't really know much myself. He's pretty mysterious."
Kurenai's mouth twitched slightly. She was starting to get the sense her friend didn't actually know all that much about this Ryū-oniisan she was so worried about.
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