After regrouping under the cover of the Tailed Beast Bomb, the first thing the Iwagakure ninja did was send the intelligence back to Iwagakure.
Because the weather was excellent, Ōnoki had been in a very good mood.
When he learned that the report came from the Land of Grass battlefield, he went to read it with a smile.
After all, nearly every report from the Land of Grass battlefield recently had been good news. Things had gone so smoothly that even Ōnoki found it surprising.
With Yellow Flash and one of the Sannin, Jiraiya, on the opposing side, the Iwagakure forces led by Retsuishi had somehow driven Jiraiya's troops into repeated retreats without suffering much loss.
"The intelligence unit made a mistake and fell into Konoha's trap. The troops suffered devastating losses?" The corners of Ōnoki's mouth, which had been slightly raised, turned downward.
"Hm? How many troops are left?" Ōnoki could hardly believe the number of words on the encrypted scroll.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and opened them again, but the number had not changed. It was still three hundred and twenty-three. There was no extra one in front of it.
Bang!
Unable to hold back, Ōnoki slammed his fist onto the desk, disbelief written all over his face.
That had been a full force of two thousand ninja. Two thousand ninja, not two thousand samurai or ordinary people. One defeat, and they had been reduced to three hundred and twenty-three?
Ōnoki nearly blacked out. A two-thousand-man ninja force had been reduced to barely over three hundred.
Iwagakure had spent years quietly building itself up and had only managed to accumulate a force of twelve thousand ninja. Yet one defeat had wiped out nearly one-sixth of it.
His original plan had been to use their