Money Was Just Lubricant

Aburame Tetsumaru had belonged to the ruling class in his previous life, but he himself had been one of the ruled.

In this life, he not only belonged to the ruling class, but had been born as one of its rulers, though his status was not high enough.

In short, Aburame Tetsumaru had never viewed the world from a ruler's perspective, so he had never experienced what it meant for "money to be merely the lubricant among the tools of rule."

Now, after being put through Konoha's wartime purchase restrictions, Aburame Tetsumaru understood it deeply.

Under the purchase restrictions, even though he had savings of over ten million ryo, he could not buy what he wanted. There were no channels.

What could he do?

Pull strings and work his connections. Through his social network, Aburame Tetsumaru bought over a hundred kilograms, but it was not enough.

Konoha's governing structure was, overall, still a feudal system. Having money was inferior to having power.

The extent of a Konoha Ninja's authority depended entirely on their distance from the Hokage and how close they were to him.

For instance, the three Hokage's assistants, especially Danzo, definitely had no quotas. Otherwise, what would he use to run Root?

And the red-haired girl, Uzumaki Kushina—had she ever lacked anything, or been short on study materials?

But that path took effort and time, and most importantly, Aburame Tetsumaru had no talent for it. The Instructor's way suited him better.

Self-reliance brought abundance.

Aburame Tetsumaru eliminated the insects that did not meet his requirements, such as those with insufficient reproductive capacity, substandard metal accumulation, or poor controllability. In the end, he settled on three kinds.

First was the Gold-Eating Insect, a wingless beetle that reproduced and grew quickly and loved devouring metal. It was about the size of a melon seed. Its carapace accumulated metal to strengthen its defenses, and remarkably, the metal within its shell existed as a mixture of elemental metals, making it a high-quality resource that could be smelted directly.

Though he had borrowed the name of Old Demon Han's spirit insect, Aburame Tetsumaru's Gold-Eating Insects had absolutely no combat ability.

No, these little bugs had to struggle with all their might just to stay alive. The Gold-Eating Insect's shell was too heavy, leaving it poor at moving and foraging. Large-scale breeding required human intervention, and Aburame Tetsumaru was not about to do that, so he decided to pair them with two other insects.

The Tunneling Worm was an annelid worm resembling an earthworm. Adults were roughly two centimeters in diameter and forty centimeters long. Tunneling Worms had no eyes but keen senses of smell. They excelled at digging tunnels, and the mucus they secreted hardened to reinforce them.

The Tunneling Worm's weakness was its weak bite. It could not handle rock. It could swallow small stones whole, but had to detour around large ones.

The Mole Cricket Aburame Tetsumaru chose last was an insect skilled at burrowing through rock. Besides its shovel-shaped forelimbs, which were excellent for digging, it had a hammer-shaped specialized appendage that built up power and struck like a mantis shrimp, shattering rock.

Furthermore, the Mole Cricket's saliva was a powerful acid. It corroded especially hard rocks before smashing them apart and excavating them.

The Mole Crickets also transported minerals, crushing excavated ore and carrying it back to the Insect Hive to feed the Gold-Eating Insects.

He soaked the insect eggs in a specially formulated hormone solution, then injected them with Chakra and growth hormones during pupation. After this modification process, which had a ninety-five percent mortality rate, they successfully mutated into giant insects.

What pleased Aburame Tetsumaru most was that he had successfully given all three giant insects flaws—enormous defects in their life systems that made them exceptionally easy to tame.

The Gold-Eating Insects grew to the size of thumbs, while their six legs shrank by half. After their second molt, they completely lost the ability to walk and relied entirely on Mole Crickets to feed them.

The Mole Crickets became palm-sized, with significantly increased speed and strength, but their consumption increased even more. Their digestive systems were so fragile that they could only survive on artificially produced feed.

The Tunneling Worms became terrifying giant insects as thick as bowls and twelve meters long, but lost their ability to split and regenerate. Their eggs could no longer hatch naturally either. Only under artificially maintained constant temperature and humidity, with steady illumination, could they achieve a two to three percent hatch rate.

After simple training, the three insects formed a metal-mining system capable of extracting extremely low-grade metal ore at minimal cost.

By hatching worms, supplying feed and Insect Feed, and spraying pheromones, Aburame Tetsumaru controlled them. He named this combination of the three insects the Mineral Insect Swarm.

It was a resource completely controlled by Aburame Tetsumaru, belonging to him alone and unaffected by the outside world.

By the time half the vacation had passed, the Mineral Insect Swarm had expanded to the limit Aburame Tetsumaru expected: three hundred Tunneling Worms, four thousand seven hundred giant Mole Crickets, and fifteen thousand Gold-Eating Insects.

Centered on his family's courtyard, the Mineral Insect Swarm excavated wildly beneath a four-hundred-meter radius, constructing a complex labyrinth of tunnels five hundred meters deep and roughly seventeen kilometers in total length.

By luck, they dug into a hematite vein. Though it was waste ore of such poor quality that it had no mining value, the Gold-Eating Insects could still refine seventy kilograms of pure iron from this not-quite-waste ore every day, fully meeting Aburame Tetsumaru's needs.

Aburame Tetsumaru did not want anyone to know about this metal income. His thinking was utterly at odds with that of the feudal ninjas of the Shinobi World. From the perspective of a working man, he was deeply dissatisfied with the reward he had received for contributing Ant Sugar.

You people don't care about money, right? Then I won't tell you about this new source of wealth. I'll enjoy it all by myself.

Regrettably, he could not carry that idea through. In the end, Aburame Tetsumaru's strength was still insufficient, and his technological reach was too narrow.

First, the Gold-Eating Insects' molts were composed of mixed metals and had to be smelted. To keep it secret, he would have to expand the furnace in the basement and smelt the metal himself every few days.

Could one person smelt seventy kilograms of metal in a day? What about when the scale became even larger in the future?

And how would he solve the issue of fuel for smelting metal?

Second, even if he acquired huge amounts of metal, it would ultimately be used to breed Summoning Insects. Once Aburame Tetsumaru created tens or hundreds of thousands, or even more insects, how would he explain it?

After thinking it over, he could only take out all the Gold-Eating Insect shells and hand them to the Sarutobi Clan for smelting, purification, and separation, letting them take their cut.

Fortunately, he would not have to spend any more money from beginning to end.

With the source of metal materials settled, insect breeding and cultivation soon got on track.

Aburame Tetsumaru finally relaxed. He rested properly for several days, enjoying good food and sleep, and shared accounts of the front lines with his father, who had returned home on leave.

Having been tempered by the battlefield, Aburame Tetsumaru could understand his father's advice. As a veteran who had experienced two great wars, his father had seen far more than Aburame Tetsumaru.

The conditions in every country, the specialties of ninja from different regions, the strengths and weaknesses of each nation's ninja forces, battle experience, Konoha's high-ranking ninja, and famous high-ranking ninja from other countries—Aburame Tetsumaru diligently absorbed his father's experience, took notes, and recited them repeatedly.

After learning from and absorbing his father's experience, Aburame Tetsumaru made a choice between the Summoning Technique and the Shadow Clone Technique, a matter he had struggled with for a long time. He temporarily gave up the Shadow Clone Technique.

Aburame Tetsumaru had earned considerable merit on the front lines and had long been able to exchange it for the C-rank Summoning Technique. He had not exchanged for it immediately because it would have been useless on the front lines.

The Summoning Technique was divided into two types based on the summoning target. One summoned blood-contract Summoning Animals, while the other summoned objects.

There was no difference in the technique itself. The hand seals and formulae were completely identical, as were the effects. The caster performed the Summoning Technique, sensed the target's Chakra, caused their Chakras to resonate, then transferred the target before them.

Summoning Animals possessed Chakra of their own, and more importantly, had a certain degree of intelligence. They could tell whether the caster was their contractor and actively respond to complete the summoning.

Summoning objects was much more troublesome, however. The work had to be done on the summoned object itself.

The first method used objects capable of containing Chakra. For example, the Seven Swords of the Mist could have Sealing Techniques permanently inscribed upon them. By using a summoning scroll containing the corresponding Sealing Technique, one could activate the Summoning Technique, but it could only summon in one direction.

The second method was to construct an enormous Sealing Technique array and place the summoned object within it. Then the object could be summoned. The cost was immense, but it could travel back and forth like a Summoning Animal, such as summoning Rashomon. (Author's original setting.)

What Aburame Tetsumaru wanted to summon were all kinds of insects, fulfilling his unique logistical supply needs.

As an insect user who fought through insect formations, Aburame Tetsumaru's control limit had already reached four thousand insects. When deploying autonomous insects with extremely simple functions, such as Landmine Insects, he could deploy more than fifteen thousand at once.

Such enormous numbers could only be drilled within Konoha, because fifteen thousand insects weighed over two hundred kilograms in total—twice Aburame Tetsumaru's own carrying limit. He simply could not transport them.

Fortunately, the Shinobi World had ready-made ninjutsu. The Summoning Technique, this black technology capable of transporting supplies, life, and even intelligent species across time and space, could completely fulfill Aburame Tetsumaru's needs.

Even giant toads weighing over ten tons could be summoned at a moment's notice. What were a few kilograms of insects?

What? The Summoning Technique required a massive amount of Chakra?

Sorry, while Aburame Tetsumaru's Chakra was not yet as abundant as that blond kid's, his biggest problem was already having too much Chakra to use up.

Nothing wrong with that.

However, although Summoning Insects could absorb Chakra, their intelligence was zero, and they could not actively respond to a summoning blood contract. Therefore, he could only use the second method: summon the Insect Hive, with the insects hidden inside it, for indirect summoning.

That required spending money to construct a Sealing Technique array, then learning the modified Summoning Technique according to the secret contract established within the Sealing Technique.

This was a massive project that Aburame Tetsumaru could not complete alone. He did not even have a channel to contact ninja from the Sealing Squad. Other than paying, the entire matter could only be handled by the clan.

Therefore, the summoning Sealing Array could only be clan property. He needed to persuade his father and the Elders to fund its construction, and once it was completed, he would have to pay "rent" to use it.

This economic scheme truly represented the pinnacle of feudal society. Only Blue Star's real estate developers could respond with a disdainful smile.

He first persuaded his father, then paid another visit to Elder Aburame Shihui.

Aburame Tetsumaru felt rather embarrassed. In the months since returning to Konoha, he had asked the Elder for help every few days. It was truly discourteous.

"Your Aburame Family wants a summoning array on a very large scale!"

A Sealing Squad captain carefully flipped through the planning scroll and could not help scratching his head. "It'll cost a lot of money."

Several old men of the Aburame Family sighed in relief together. If it could be solved with money, then it was no problem. Then they all froze, their expressions dazed.

"So the Aburame Family has days when we don't have to worry about money too."

With money, Konoha as backing, complete materials, mature techniques, and abundant manpower, the largest project undertaken by the Aburame Family since the village's founding quickly began.

First, they tore down the buildings in the clan's forbidden grounds. Elder Aburame Shihui and several other Elders worked personally, making thunderous noise as they worked while laughing and chatting loudly.

"I've hated the sight of this lousy building for ages. We can finally tear it down."

Then they hired fifteen Earth Release ninja to tear up the ground and excavate seventy full meters downward.

Next, they filled the excavation layer by layer with massive stones inscribed with Sealing Techniques. The stacked stones formed a wall ten meters thick, leaving a space at the center thirty meters long, wide, and high.

After leaving passageways of various sizes, they sealed the top of this Core Space, covered it with another ten full meters of massive stones, then built the clan's secret vault level. Above the vault, they built another level of ordinary storage and a level of training rooms.

Once the ground had been leveled, the foundational work was complete.

According to the plan, the Sealing Squad constructed the summoning Sealing Array at the bottom level, while the clan's ninja built the secret vault and warehouses.

They also needed to construct a two-story building above ground and build walls. Ordinary craftsmen from the village were hired for the work, and they also needed to complete the underground training rooms.

After forty days of intense construction, the entire project was complete. The Aburame Family had not only spent all its savings, but also accumulated a debt of seventy million.

Within Konoha, the Shinobi World's largest violent organization, the Aburame Family occupied the third level of the power structure. They lacked neither influence nor connections, but their lack of business talent had left them poor. They had long been troubled by a shortage of money and had to restrain themselves in everything they did.

Aburame Tetsumaru watched Elders such as Shihui and Zhishuang wave their hands expressionlessly before outsiders, spending hundreds of thousands or millions at a time, only to turn around and reveal stunned, unbelieving expressions.

He secretly used a Slime to photograph the expressions of the seven Elders and hid the images away. If they found them before passing away, Aburame Tetsumaru, as the culprit, might be beaten to death.

In fact, ninja clans and merchant associations throughout Konoha and even the Land of Fire were actively seeking opportunities to lend money to the Aburame Family. The clan now had monthly net income exceeding a million ryo, and everyone wanted a share.

Thus, when the Aburame Family wanted to undertake a major project and stated that it lacked funds, influential figures throughout Konoha and the Land of Fire voluntarily helped, contributing money, labor, personnel, and technology.

What intoxicated the Aburame Elders was not merely the fact that they could "spend money freely." Much of the pleasure came from tasting this kind of "doing whatever one wanted" power for the first time.

So money truly was only lubricant, but not having it was genuinely grinding.

Aburame Tetsumaru carefully set down the last Insect Hive. When he turned around, the summoning hall, which had been thirty meters long, wide, and high just days ago, was completely unrecognizable.

The summoning hall was now circular, twenty-four meters in diameter and only eight meters tall. At its center stood a four-meter-tall hexagonal stone pillar, its surfaces carved with countless sealing runes.

The middle of the pillar bore a list of names inscribed with summoning contracts. There were already thirty-five Aburame ninja listed.

The sealing runes on the pillar extended all the way to the ground, where they divided into twelve tree-like structures that spread across the entire floor of the summoning hall, then continued three meters up the surrounding walls.

Elevated walkway boards had been laid across the floor for people to walk on, preventing them from touching the runes.

Based on large, medium, and small sizes, the floor was divided into three concentric summoning zones. The center held twelve large summoning slots, the middle held three hundred and sixty medium slots, and the outermost ring held one thousand small slots.

Aburame Tetsumaru looked around. The central area was completely empty, while the middle area held only the eighty-four two-meter-tall large Insect Hives he had placed there. The outer area contained just over a hundred scattered groups of items—scrolls, swords, bundles of Kunai, and all kinds of miscellaneous things.

Well, forty of those hundred-odd groups were also Aburame Tetsumaru's half-meter-tall small Insect Hives.

Aburame Tetsumaru chuckled. One large Insect Hive contained a secret weapon, one was filled with supplies and medicine, and one held ninja tools and research equipment. The remaining eighty-one Insect Hives contained one million one hundred and fifty thousand dormant Summoning Insects.

This army of over a million insects included nineteen species, covering six combat categories: reconnaissance, camouflage, attack, defense, disruption, and battlefield control.

After strictly selecting them based on more than half a year of combat experience and eliminating impractical insects or those with redundant functions, Aburame Tetsumaru had finally chosen these nineteen types. Proudly, he named them the Legion Insect Swarm, his second insect population after the Mineral Insect Swarm.

He could summon a million insects at any time. Unless he encountered an area-of-effect ninja like a Jinchuriki, Aburame Tetsumaru felt he had achieved his modest goal of escaping alive from an Elite Jonin or even a Kage.

However, the million insects had also emptied Aburame Tetsumaru's reserves. Only insect eggs and newly hatched nymphs remained at his home and ranch. The earliest batch of insects would not mature for another three months.

After arranging the Insect Hives, Aburame Tetsumaru left the Aburame Forbidden Grounds.

The Aburame Family's forbidden grounds now had walls, gates, and numerous guards. It had become a proper forbidden ground.

His next task today was to go shopping and stroll around with his parents, eat a lavish meal, and soak in hot springs with his father.

Tomorrow, Aburame Tetsumaru would return to the Land of Rain. The war had accumulated new energy amid its steady rhythm, and the opportunity for a new clash had ripened.