Being Disdained Was Truly Wonderful

By afternoon, Uchiha Kei and Kurama Yun had finally returned.

The rogue ninja Juyuan was already dead. They had delayed too long, and the man had been poisoned to death by a massive dose of sleeping pills.

As for the exact cause of death, there was no way to determine it. Uchiha Kei found that the rogue ninja could no longer be saved, so he only brought back his head.

After taking his two subordinates to submit the spoils and mission items and complete the mission, Aburame Tetsumaru sent the two mud monkeys off to wash up, then arranged for them to rest while he continued pondering insects.

In last night's battle, Aburame Tetsumaru had deployed more than a hundred thousand insects, yet he had lost over twelve thousand of them.

And that was against Iwa Ninja, who were not skilled at killing insects. If they had been Kumo Ninja or Suna Ninja, wouldn't the entire swarm have been wiped out?

He had fought Suna Ninja plenty of times while in the Ueno Squad before, but it had not seemed this difficult back then.

Aburame Tetsumaru carefully listed the differences between the two squads, eliminated the unreliable factors, and ultimately narrowed it down to two reasons.

In the Ueno Squad, Captain Ueno Hayato had always served as the main force, while the other members, including Aburame Tetsumaru, handled support duties.

Now, in the Aburame Squad, he could only serve as the main force himself, yet his mindset had not shifted from that of a supporting member to that of a captain carrying the team.

Because he had been support in the Ueno Squad, Aburame Tetsumaru's insects had almost exclusively carried out ambushes aside from reconnaissance.

Last night, however, they had launched a proactive frontal assault. Especially after the enemy reacted and organized their ninjutsu, the resulting casualties had been terrifying.

The conclusion was obvious. Aburame Tetsumaru's giant insects were not qualified to serve as the main force, particularly when their frontal assault capabilities were severely lacking.

Can I really shoulder the role of the main force?

Aburame Tetsumaru could not help but doubt himself. Being the main force meant having to step up at critical moments.

As the main force, he would inevitably be focused by the enemy. He needed considerable defensive power and could not be taken out by a single hit. Aburame Tetsumaru was still quite confident in his own defenses. He had never relaxed his upgrades to the Ironclad Beetle; from his first battle until now, it had already gone through five versions.

But ninja were almost all glass cannons, while ninjutsu possessed absurdly high offensive power. That required the main force of a squad to have even greater attack power, enough to settle things in one decisive strike at critical moments.

To put it bluntly, a ninja with insufficient attack power was like an MT without taunt. Enemy ninja would not even bother with you, and no matter how strong your defenses were, they would be useless.

That was precisely Aburame Tetsumaru's weakness. What he lacked most was a way to convert his massive Chakra reserves into combat power.

There was another issue he had to consider. Ever since acquiring Puppet Technique and perfecting his Insect Swarm tactics, Aburame Tetsumaru had enjoyed more than half a year of benefits and unconsciously invested enormous costs into insect development.

The sunk cost of an insect swarm numbering in the millions was simply too great. His future path could only move forward on the foundation of the swarm. Without the determination to cut off his own arm, there was no way he could choose another road.

No, changing paths at this point was no longer cutting off an arm. It was cutting himself in half at the waist. Not only would it be agonizing, it would certainly be fatal.

How troubling.

While Aburame Tetsumaru was agonizing over how to make up for his shortcomings, the Root Ninja had already reported today's mission details.

Shimura Danzō had received word that the mission to hunt down the rogue ninja had been completed. Naturally, he became interested in Aburame Tetsumaru, who had completed it.

Since Root's founding, it had recruited many Aburame ninja. Adding one more was perfectly reasonable.

Moreover, one look at the name Aburame Tetsumaru told him that he was from a branch family of the Aburame Clan. As long as he first demanded that Aburame Shibi join Root, then took a step back amid the Aburame Clan's fierce opposition, he could naturally obtain the target Danzo truly wanted.

He had used this worn-out little trick too many times. Yet Ninja Clans sacrificing branch-family members to protect their direct-line heirs was practically instinctive, so the tactic succeeded every time. Naturally, Danzo had prospered with ease.

Aside from two clans, the branch-family ninja of the Byakugan clan all bore the Caged Bird seal, their lives and deaths controlled by the Main Family. Danzo could not accept having his subordinates controlled by others.

The Uchiha Clan and Danzo were openly hostile. Especially now that the Uchiha Clan was not led by that softie Fugaku, every request from Danzo was rejected without exception.

The Uchiha Clan had even used its law-enforcement authority to repeatedly arrest and detain Root Ninja conducting secret operations in Konoha. There had even been an incident where they blocked Root's entrance and demanded that Danzo hand people over.

After ordering a subordinate to bring Aburame Tetsumaru's intelligence dossier, Shimura Danzō studied it carefully.

"As the top student at the Ninja Academy, he refused early graduation during the war. After graduating, he was not accepted as an apprentice by the Sannin. Hmm, Hiruzen must dislike him. Very good, very good. That means there are no obstacles."

"A one-hundred-percent mission completion rate?" He was simply perfect for my Root.

"Massive Chakra reserves, not skilled in the Aburame Secret Technique, suspected Senju bloodline?"

Shimura Danzō retrieved Aburame Aiko's records as well and quickly confirmed that she was not a Senju descendant. Aburame Tetsumaru's maternal grandfather had joined Konoha as an individual ninja when the village was founded, and his origins were entirely clear.

"Low presence, extremely difficult to sense." Massive Chakra reserves with low presence—he was a natural-born assassination ninja prospect, far too suitable for Root.

When he saw the final section of the report, Shimura Danzō's mood immediately soured. It felt like biting into half a worm in his food. With a dark expression, he closed the dossier and tossed it to his subordinate. "Put it away."

Root claimed to refuse no one and to be able to forge every ninja into a blade for the village, but there were actually three types of ninja it would not accept:

Ninja of the Uchiha Clan were not wanted. Danzo only wanted their red eyes;

Hyuga ninja were not wanted, for the reasons mentioned earlier;

Lastly, ninja of the Akimichi Clan were not wanted. When they fought, the earth shook and mountains trembled, making them naturally incompatible with Root's covert operations;

Everyone else was wanted. Even those lacking strength were not rejected. At the very least, they could be used as spies or cannon fodder. Those truly useless could still be sent to the operating table for experiments.

Of course, Root later added another type of ninja it did not want. A certain Taijutsu ninja even requested to join Root voluntarily, yet Shimura Danzō disdainfully rejected him.

The Inuzuka Clan was even implicated and became disliked by Root as well. Ninja whose brains did not work properly could ruin things with a single careless mistake or even cause a huge commotion. The risk was simply too great.

Aburame Tetsumaru's situation resembled that of the Akimichi Clan. His fighting methods caused too much commotion, and he could not independently carry out missions either.

What trash.

More than thirty years later, when Root was disbanded and the related intelligence was declassified and leaked, Aburame Tetsumaru finally learned that Root had disdained him because his Insect Swarm was too noisy.

He felt incomparably fortunate. Being disdained was truly wonderful.

Thinking back on the frustration of making no progress in researching the Insect Swarm, the pain of having his wallet devoured by the swarm, and the despair of having no road forward, he could not help but praise the principle that misfortune and fortune went hand in hand as an unshakable truth.

Of course, Aburame Tetsumaru was currently troubled by the next step for the Insect Swarm, unsure how to solve its lack of combat power.

The first solution he ruled out was Aburame Tetsumaru personally taking the field and serving as the spearhead and blade point of the entire Insect Swarm.

After a year of tempering in war, his trump cards had long since been upgraded. His true combat strength was naturally far greater than what he displayed, but he absolutely could not defeat a Jonin.

This year's fighting had not been intense. During the first half of the year, the Ueno Squad fought thirty-one battles in total. As its core, Captain Ueno had faced no fewer than twenty life-or-death crises.

The name Ueno Hayato definitely came with a luck aura. After twenty trials of life and death, he had only suffered minor injuries.

Aburame Tetsumaru did not think he possessed such powerful talent. Back when he had faced a Jinchuriki alongside his captain, the captain had only lost a tuft of hair, while he himself had been injured so badly that the front line could not treat him. He could only return to the village and recuperate for more than a month before recovering.

Aburame Tetsumaru was merely a Chunin and had no luck aura. Wouldn't standing on the front line be courting death?

Really speaking, what troubled him now was the sort of trouble born from good fortune. At worst, he would lose too much money or lack certainty in completing missions. There was no threat to his life.

If his strength gradually improved in the future, say to the point where he could defeat an Elite Jonin, he still would not do it. Why take risks when he could safely get the job done?

The second solution he ruled out was recruiting powerful ninja into his squad. That depended on luck, and as he had said before, he had no luck aura.

The third, and only solution not ruled out, was to cultivate stronger combat insects. This plan was currently being pushed forward at full speed.

Aburame Tetsumaru could use Chakra's wish-fulfilling nature to combine insects almost however he pleased, but the problem was that he lacked truly powerful insect templates for reference, such as the giant Centipede among the Naraka Path's Summoning Animals.

Without a ready-made template as a foundation, Aburame Tetsumaru could only use his existing giant insects as a base, combine them with one another, and test them repeatedly in an attempt to obtain a powerful insect specimen.

Damn it, he was back on the track of relying on luck again. Aburame Tetsumaru was very unhappy, because the related work had already continued for half a year without producing anything.

After sending his two subordinates off to sleep, Aburame Tetsumaru checked the insects' development in the cultivation tanks and picked out the dead eggs for disposal. There was nothing else for him to do today.

Being on the front line, the makeshift laboratory was extremely crude and could not handle many tasks.

In the end, only one thing remained to pass the time: the most grueling task of all, organizing Chakra Runes.

Before graduating from the Ninja Academy, Aburame Tetsumaru had collected every rune that could be produced by five-seal combinations.

There were 12 single-seal runes, 33 double-seal runes, 165 triple-seal runes, 742 quadruple-seal runes, and 2,970 five-seal runes, for a total of 3,922 runes.

Higher hand-seal combinations exceeded Aburame Tetsumaru's capabilities. His hand speed could not meet the requirements of six-seal combinations.

It had truly been a long and arduous task, consuming a full eight months and leaving Tetsumaru with a pair of dark circles that would never fade.

After graduating, following Mendeleev's approach to discovering the periodic table of elements, Aburame Tetsumaru labeled and arranged the runes he had discovered, attempting to identify their patterns and create a periodic table of Chakra Runes.

As he organized and compared the runes, Aburame Tetsumaru unexpectedly discovered that many runes possessed duplicate properties, though their effects varied in strength.

Powerful runes influenced or refracted a large number of similar weak-effect runes. Those weak-effect runes were influenced by more than one powerful rune, making their properties appear endlessly varied.

However, no matter how marvelous they were, weak-effect runes could still be replaced by powerful runes.

Aburame Tetsumaru immediately changed the direction of his research and focused on identifying which runes were powerful ones.

This work was not easy either. Aside from a few simple runes, most powerful runes possessed equally varied properties, and he could only analyze them one by one by comparing the strength of their effects.

Fortunately, Aburame Tetsumaru did not fear trouble. He liked this kind of work, where patience and steady effort could be exchanged for success. At the very least, it did not test his luck.

After another all-nighter without confirming a new powerful rune, Aburame Tetsumaru saw the first light of dawn. Without a ripple of emotion, he put away his research tools, began his morning training, and prepared to welcome a new day of work.

When he finished training and prepared breakfast, Uchiha Kei and Kurama Yun finally woke up. Both still looked listless. It seemed they would not have the energy to accept a new mission today.

On the front line, one could not accept missions while in poor condition. It would cost lives.

Aburame Tetsumaru simply gave his two subordinates the day off, had them eat a good breakfast, arranged restorative training for them, and told them to continue resting in the afternoon.

He ran to the mission center himself and marked that his squad would not accept missions today. After finishing the process, he was informed that they were now under Level Two Alert. Squads without missions could not leave camp freely, and squad members could not accept personal missions either. They had to remain ready at all times to receive assignments from headquarters.

Level Two Alert?

Aburame Tetsumaru scratched his head. This was the most annoying state: he could not go anywhere or do anything, and there was a high chance that nothing would happen all day, leaving him waiting for nothing.

He might as well go back to sleep. Once he had slept enough, he could continue working on runes.

When Aburame Tetsumaru returned to camp, Uchiha Kei and Kurama Yun were practicing ninjutsu and Genjutsu. He naturally stood to one side and watched for a while.

An observer could not see anything from Kurama Yun's Genjutsu training, but Uchiha Kei's ninjutsu practice was quite interesting. After practicing for a while, he would open a scroll and read for a moment before continuing.

Aburame Tetsumaru soon realized that Uchiha Kei was practicing a classic clan tactic: begin with Fireball Jutsu, then follow with offensive tactic one using the Body Flicker Technique, offensive tactic two using throwing techniques, a confusing tactic using the Transformation Technique, a disruption tactic using Phoenix Sage Fire, and a trap tactic using a second Fireball Jutsu.

This tactic sounded simple, yet it was the Uchiha Clan's foundational tactic, renowned throughout the Shinobi World. The hidden details were all clan secrets: how to judge the enemy situation, how to smoothly link two stages, how to manage Chakra output and fluctuations, and so on.

Over the centuries, countless genius Uchiha had improved this tactic. It had long been tempered a thousand times over and refined to perfection. It could be said that it had always been imitated, yet never surpassed.

The Sharingan's strength was not only displayed in battle. Observing and studying oneself could greatly improve training efficiency, while its advantages in clan inheritance were even more immense.

Using the Sharingan solely in battle like Uchiha Sasuke did was an enormous waste of this strongest Kekkei Genkai.