"Lord Hiashi, the acting Hokage assistant has arrived."
A middle-aged ninja clad in Hyuga Clan attire suddenly appeared behind Hyuga Hiashi, who had only recently made up his mind, and spoke in a low voice.
"The acting Hokage assistant?"
Hyuga Hiashi was visibly taken aback at those words.
"Yes, the acting Hokage assistant himself."
The middle-aged ninja behind him answered truthfully.
"Then hurry—"
Hearing the middle-aged ninja's confirmation, Hyuga Hiashi did not dare delay. He immediately rose to his feet, intending to go meet Chiba.
The current Taki Chiba was no longer the Traitor's Son whom everyone in the village had despised and scorned. He was now the Fourth Hokage's representative, the Hokage Assistant—indeed, an unprecedented assistant.
And this unprecedented status was not merely because he had assumed the crucial political post of Hokage Assistant at the age of eleven or twelve. It was also because he was the first assistant in Konoha's history—and in the history of the entire ninja world—to possess real authority, the first assistant to a Kage to wield actual power.
No assistant before him had ever been able to independently take charge of a village construction project, nor use the Hokage's authority throughout the full scope of that project. Basically, whatever he needed, he did not need the Hokage's approval. He could directly order quite a number of departments to cooperate.
Moreover, he had heard that Chiba could enter the true archives hidden beneath the Hokage Building, freely come and go, and read whatever he wished. That was an authority reserved solely for the Hokage. Even the two advisers had no right to enter those archives without the Hokage's permission.
Naturally, none of the assistants before him had possessed such authority. Whenever the Hokage needed documents from within, the assistant had to obtain a series