On Konoha's side, the Ninja Magistrate did not launch an attack on the Land of Lightning's checkpoint defenses. While continuing to maintain the encirclement, they focused on rapidly occupying the interior of the Land of Lightning.
The sparse local garrisons completely collapsed at the first contact with the elite troops on the Ninja Magistrate's front line.
After the fighting entered the city streets, it was instead the local gangsters who displayed tenacious combat strength.
The Land of Lightning was a gangster state. Its underground forces were complex and deeply entrenched, colluding with the local aristocracy.
The largest gangster organization among them was Kumogakure. It operated every profitable business imaginable, including casinos, brothels, drugs, construction, labor brokerage, loan sharking, and arms dealing, relying on violence and coercion to keep its enterprises running smoothly.
These people knew very well that once Konoha took control, they would have no way out. Besides imprisonment, a streetlamp awaited them.
Thus, they could only fight to the death. Their firepower was quite sufficient, and by disguising themselves as civilians or using threats of retaliation against civilians to conceal their identities, they operated from the shadows. Even after the cities were occupied, their unending attacks caused the Ninja Magistrate no small amount of trouble.
Still, cleaning them up was only a matter of time. The principal nobles were not so easy to hide, either. After paralyzing the Land of Lightning's major national functions and capturing the capital, the Ninja Magistrate launched an attack on Kumogakure.
Because of the well-known divide between the shinobi and non-shinobi systems, Kumogakure maintained the traditions of a ninja village and did not station large numbers of troops.
After more than a decade of recuperation, aided by financial support from the aristocracy, the number of shinobi had not only recovered to the level