Is My Brain Cramping?

After watching his two subordinates train for a while, Aburame Tetsumaru returned to his tent to catch up on sleep. Yet he kept feeling as if he had overlooked something, as though a flash of inspiration had been obscured by mist. It was an unpleasant feeling.

He lay down and tried to think it through again, but the moment his head touched the pillow, he fell asleep.

When he woke, the sky had already darkened. It was sunset. Having just awakened, Aburame Tetsumaru felt sticky and uncomfortable all over, as if he had slept enough but still did not feel refreshed.

The greatest advantage of the Land of Rain was that there were ponds, lakes, marshes, and streams everywhere. Clean water was easy to find. He went to a nearby water source and took a bath, immediately feeling refreshed and clear-headed.

The downside was that it rained constantly, so there were never any dry clothes. The prolonged dampness also made the fabric rough. After washing clothes, he did not even dare wring them hard. He could only put the wet clothes back on and warm them dry with his body.

Wet clothes clung tightly to the body, and the feeling was indescribably awful. During the slow drying process, the constant loss of body heat also brought a strong sense of insecurity. It was very unpleasant.

Whenever this happened, Aburame Tetsumaru, who specialized in Wind Release, especially envied his colleagues skilled in Fire Release. He could use Fire Release too, of course, but his skill level was not high. Drying clothes with it made it all too easy to burn them.

Well, the Fire Release experts active on the Land of Rain battlefield were already miserable enough. In a country where it rained three times a year, each rain lasting one hundred and twenty days, the power of Fire Release was reduced by seventy percent for no reason at all. He could only console himself with that tiny advantage.

How did Aburame Tetsumaru know how stifled Fire Release users felt?

He had a subordinate named Uchiha Kei. Before this mission to hunt down rogue ninja, Kei had fought using only Taijutsu, Kenjutsu, and Shuriken throwing. His usual catchphrase was, "If I could use Fire Release, I'd spit flames and burn him to death in one go."

When he returned to camp in wet clothes, Aburame Tetsumaru immediately heard Uchiha Kei complaining, "I haven't used Fire Release in so long that I'm practically forgetting how. I have to practice properly. We can't be stuck in the Land of Rain forever, right?"

"Honkhonkhonkhonk~~" Kurama Yun's sinister goose-like laughter rang out.

Aburame Tetsumaru could not help laughing too. This scaredy-cat Uchiha had built up quite a grudge. Still, the fact that Kei could complain to Kurama Yun meant he had begun to see her as a teammate.

But if Uchiha Kei thought they would someday be transferred to a battlefield where he could use Fire Release, he was overthinking it.

Konoha's upper ranks were quite obviously hostile toward the Uchiha Clan. Quite a few Uchiha had been stationed on the Land of Rain battlefield, but even more had been sent to the Land of Water battlefield.

The Land of Water not only faced the sea directly, but was also perpetually shrouded in dense mist. Then there was the fact that Kirigakure Shinobi of the Land of Water had widely mastered the Hidden Mist Technique and were practically all Water Release experts.

The Uchiha in the Land of Water had cried themselves dry from frustration. Compared to them, the Uchiha in the Land of Rain were already fortunate.

"But is it useful for you to keep practicing a few fixed routines? It feels like everyone knows the Uchiha Clan's moves."

"I don't know, but Elder Shihui said it doesn't matter. As long as we're skilled enough and fast enough that the enemy can't react, we can win."

"Right. As long as we can knock the enemy down, it doesn't matter if they know."

Aburame Tetsumaru froze. As long as you were fast enough, you could win. As long as you could hit the enemy, that was enough.

Had my brain been cramping these past few months? I actually went around in circles and drilled myself into a dead end.

I wasn't developing the Giant Insect Swarm to become strong in every aspect. The Giant Insect Swarm is my standard combat method. I only need to combine sufficiently sharp fighting techniques.

Cheng Yaojin had made a name for himself with just three moves. If the Insect Swarm could put together three or four combat methods, it could make a name for Aburame Tetsumaru too. As long as he could defeat the enemy at the right moment, why did he need an all-around advantage?

The knot in his thoughts came undone, and his heart instantly felt clear and open.

However, when a Swift Hawk flew through the rainy night sky, Aburame Tetsumaru knew a mission had arrived. He had no time to test his ideas for now.

He forcefully suppressed his irritation and loudly ordered Uchiha Kei and Kurama Yun, "Organize your equipment immediately and await my orders."

"Yes!"

Aburame Tetsumaru watched them quickly enter their respective tents, then immediately headed for the center of camp. By the time he arrived, more than a hundred Chunin captains had already gathered there, along with several Jonin captains.

Everyone waited anxiously for news, only to be left speechless. It was not a combat mission at all, but an announcement that the commander had been replaced.

This mix-up was truly depressing. Especially for the captains who had arrived last—they had spotted the Swift Hawk outside camp, panicked, and abandoned their units to rush over. Upon hearing the news, they nearly collapsed on the spot.

The new commander was somewhat embarrassed as well. He had gotten overly excited and, on a whim, used a Swift Hawk to announce that he had taken office, creating a huge misunderstanding.

The new commander had always remained in the village and had never been to the front lines. He had no concept of the tense atmosphere there. A perfectly ordinary method of notification in the village could make tense, high-strung ninja on the front lines run around in chaos.

Aburame Tetsumaru had never been a soldier or fought in a war in his previous life, so he did not know what warfare on Blue Star was like. From the scraps of military knowledge he had learned, he knew that soldiers at the front had a limit to their endurance. Once that limit was exceeded, serious consequences followed.

On paper, warfare in the Shinobi World seemed to move at a very slow pace. Most squads did not even see combat for an entire month. But once battle broke out, the results were brutal. Defeat often meant total annihilation, while even victory commonly came at the cost of more than half the force.

On top of that, ninja had absurd mobility. Mountains, rivers, and terrain could not stop their infiltration. Sneaking a hundred kilometers a day through enemy territory was no difficulty at all. As a result, the Shinobi World had no real concept of a front line, only vast stretches of battlefield.

Once you entered a battlefield, you could be attacked at any time. Once battle began, survival was a fifty-fifty gamble. Any normal ninja who understood that reality would be trembling with fear and constantly on edge.

If that state lasted too long, people went mad. Thus, no ninja who had survived three months on the front lines was normal. Calling them all perverts would not be an exaggeration.

So the question was, how had someone so unsuitable been dropped into the position of commander?

The next day, a new group of reinforcements arrived at the Land of Rain camp. Leading them was a ninja with fair skin and long flowing hair.

Do not misunderstand. It was not a female ninja. It was the Jonin Orochimaru.

Uh, perhaps Orochimaru would become a female ninja in the future?

After Orochimaru arrived, he took over the position of deputy commander. Aburame Tetsumaru thus received the answer to yesterday's question and reached a conclusion: if this was not simply good luck, then Sarutobi Hiruzen's arrangement was a brain cramp.

A new official always lit three fires upon taking office, yet the first fire had turned into this mess. One could imagine that this commander's personal strength was unknown, but his command and management ability was absolutely lacking.

On a fiercely contested front line, poor command ability would inevitably lead to unforgivable mistakes. Then he would be removed from office in disgrace, and Orochimaru, as deputy commander, would naturally take his place.

If Orochimaru had not been a genius who excelled at everything, this plan would definitely have fallen apart.

But the Sandaime had been lucky. Orochimaru truly was a genius, a genius at everything. He was not only a genius in ninjutsu and research, but also a brilliant manager and commander.

Therefore, the final result should have been a happy ending for everyone. Whether this arrangement had been carefully planned or was merely a successful gamble was impossible to know, and no one in the Shinobi World would look into it too deeply.

But Aburame Tetsumaru thought differently, and this gave him considerable hostility toward the Sandaime Hokage.

To support his disciple's rise to power, he had deliberately arranged for an unsuitable veteran Jonin from a rival faction to serve as commander. This showed that he did not value the lives of the more than two thousand ninja in the Land of Rain army—or at the very least, they were less important than Orochimaru's position.

The price of this commander's inevitable mistakes would be the lives of Konoha Ninja. Only the loss of hundreds, perhaps even a thousand lives, would provide enough justification to cast the commander into the Abyss.

Unfortunately, Aburame Tetsumaru fell within the scope of that price. Even more unfortunately, this crossed his bottom line, a bottom line he could not tolerate.

Because of this, Aburame Tetsumaru gave up the idea of spreading scientific knowledge. He had always been considering when the right time would be. Chakra in the Shinobi World was simply too suitable for the development of biotechnology.

But the great taboo of technological development was working behind closed doors. Technology required geniuses to blaze trails, but it depended even more on the combined efforts of many less gifted scientists to build a solid scientific foundation.

The stronger the foundation and the larger the base, the higher the ceiling technology could reach.

And the speed of technological advancement depended on industrialization, while industrialization depended on basic education.

Chakra could not change that rule. It could only greatly reduce the need for a broad foundation and give geniuses more room to perform.

But today's situation made Aburame Tetsumaru realize the issue he had always overlooked. The culture of the Shinobi World was unsuited to scientific development. It had no concept of industrialization and lacked even the basic demand for universal education.

Without mainstream social culture recognizing science, without people generally understanding the relationship between science and technology, the result of his spreading scientific knowledge was doomed to fail.

Either people would not believe in science or would find scientific development too troublesome, or a small number would value certain technological achievements and attempt to monopolize them. Technology would quickly be locked away and eventually stagnate.

Just like Ant Sugar technology. It had made no progress at all these past few years because the Ant Sugar Alliance had easily established a monopoly using ninja privilege. Once they had a monopoly and could effortlessly earn excess profits from it, where would they find the motivation to keep researching?

More importantly, during the process of being shut out, Aburame Tetsumaru himself would be in danger.

Take Ant Sugar again. Over the past few years, the person selected by the alliance to oversee Ant Sugar work had already reached the ninth term. None had resigned. The first eight had either disappeared or died.

If Tetsumaru had not sought Elder Shihui's help before establishing the alliance and removed himself from the matter, he would have been finished long ago.

One had to know that Tetsumaru had only reached Chunin level after graduating and being tempered by war. Yet the eight managers had all been Chunin selected according to Shinobi World customs. When they were pushed too far, the ninth manager they elected was simply a Jonin.

How could the backward culture of the Shinobi World be solved?

Aburame Tetsumaru agonized over a solution. He truly hoped to gain support through scientific development. Only then would there be enough efficiency, and only then could he possibly follow the path of life sciences and glimpse the small goal of immortality.

The answer was actually obvious, but I don't want to pay the price.

The art of slaying dragons. It was not as though he had never learned it.

Aburame Tetsumaru had read all three great wasteland reconstruction guides—the Barefoot Doctor's Handbook, the Militia Military Training Manual, and Friends of Civilian-Military Dual-Use Talent—and he remembered every word of them.

Most regrettably, more than half of One Hundred Thousand Whys had become useless, though it had still played a guiding role while Aburame Tetsumaru experimented with insects.

Transforming a society's culture meant revolution. Revolution required revolutionaries to offer sweat, blood, and life. It likewise required the old society's members to pay an even greater price in flesh and blood before success could be possible.

And the first sacrifice would be the revolutionary leader serving as the seed. Could the Shinobi World possibly produce a revolutionary leader?

Of course not. There was no soil for such a person. How could it nurture a great leader?

The only way was for Aburame Tetsumaru to sacrifice himself, become the revolutionary leader, and begin a cultural revolution in the Shinobi World.

Pah.

The Shinobi World, the Land of Fire, Konoha—they were not worthy of making him, a transmigrator, die for them.

Unless my brain really is cramping.

That was what Aburame Tetsumaru thought, and then he realized he had actually raised a flag. Damn it, how could that be okay? He was on a battlefield.

Pah, pah, pah. What he had just said did not count. Anything not spoken aloud did not count.

May the good come true and the bad not come true.

Damn it, no matter which god is listening, if my brain really cramps, I'll tear down all your temples.