"Shikamaru, are you okay...?"
As Choji leaped forward, he looked toward his friend beside him.
His brain might not have been the sharpest, but he could still hear the threat in the Lord of the Blazing Sun's words.
If it had been anyone else, even one of the other Four Kage, he would not have been this worried.
But the one making the threat was the Lord of the Blazing Sun.
The man had taken on the entire Shinobi World alone. The terror behind his threats went without saying.
If he deliberately targeted them, forget the Nara Clan—even the Five Great Ninja Villages might not be able to withstand it.
That was precisely why Choji was so worried.
Ino-Shika-Cho shared both glory and ruin. If the Nara Clan suffered, the Akimichi Clan would not be able to stay out of it either.
"I'm fine!" Shikamaru snapped out of his thoughts and reassured him, "Don't worry. Blazing Sun Country is the Public Enemy of the Ninja World. Whether it can even continue to exist is still uncertain, much less target our Nara Clan!"
That was what he said, but his expression did not improve in the slightest.
There was a saying: fooling others was fine, but do not fool yourself.
No matter how unwilling he was to admit it, Shikamaru knew perfectly well how terrifying that threat was.
So while he looked unconcerned on the surface, his mind had been constantly working out how to deal with the threat of his clan being wiped out.
A threat of extermination!
It had truly appeared.
And no one understood better than Shikamaru how this crisis had come about.
His father had decided to tie himself to the Hokage Faction's ship, which was why he had targeted Blazing Sun Country at every turn. He