"Everyone, leave!"
Danzo slowly closed his eyes, concealing the increasingly uncontrollable blaze of bitter hatred that had overwhelmed the gloom in them. He took a slight breath, then suddenly spoke again.
Yet there was no trace of heat in his words. The elderly man, whose body and even half his face were wrapped in bandages, spoke with the same cold, unchanging tone as always. Not the slightest emotion could be heard in it, as if the hatred from moments ago had been nothing more than an illusion.
At the same time, behind the seat of honor where he sat, something seemed to flicker within the darkness as dense as that surrounding them.
Then, that thick darkness seemed to lighten slightly.
If it was a warning...
Then how had he known? Once he sensed that everyone had left, uncertainty began to rise in Danzo's gloomy eyes.
At that moment, the blaze of hatred that had suddenly flared up and caught him off guard had vanished completely from Danzo's heart, as though it had never existed.
For Danzo, grief and regret were useless now. Besides, as the master of Konoha's Root and the man in charge of its dark side, how could he allow himself to be hindered by emotion?
Moreover, setting aside such meaningless feelings, Shin had ultimately only been one member of Root. In the end, he had merely been a "tool."
A tool that supplied nourishment to Konoha.
He could mourn Shin's death, but as Root's leader and the organization's founder, he could not indulge in sorrow.
There were things more important than Shin's death.
First, he had lost his sole right-hand man. The newly promoted ones could not meet his needs. Even though the situation was far better now than when the Fourth Hokage first took office, and