The First B-rank Mission

"Lord Morino, I've finished today's autopsies. The test reports have been sorted and sealed. If there's nothing else, I'll find a spot by the Memorial Stone to bury the bodies."

Kaedeji took an umbrella and headed out.

A light rain drifted down from the midnight sky. Carrying a lantern, Kaedeji passed through the grove of memorial stones and stopped at an empty patch of ground on its very edge.

He raised his carving knife and engraved an unfamiliar name onto the gravestone, casually adding the lie: "Killed an Iwa Chunin."

The scrape of the blade against stone sounded like fingernails scratching across a coffin lid.

The corpse he had personally stitched together today bore a fatal wound in its skull, one clearly caused by a Konohagakure kunai.

This was one of the Corpse Disposal Unit's routine duties. The supervising Intelligence Interrogation Department would issue orders, and subordinate departments such as the Corpse Disposal Unit, Intelligence Compilation Unit, and Prison Management Unit would act to bury mangled corpses that were difficult to identify.

Every additional name on the casualty list meant another share of compensation paid out by the Land of Fire's daimyo. Those extra funds would ultimately become funding for human experimentation projects.

By the later stages of the war, economic pressure was immense. It was impossible to sustain the war entirely through Konoha's own economy—Konoha was, in essence, the Land of Fire's massive military district. To fight a prolonged war, the many nobles and lords of the entire Land of Fire had to lead all their towns in supplying Konoha with blood.

Under such circumstances, prying even a little extra research funding out of the Land of Fire's treasury was no easy task. Projects with no direct benefit to the war required especially special means.

This was the village's will. It had to be carried out.

The rotten soil of the graveyard had swollen from the rain. After finishing his work, Kaedeji dragged the corpse of a Kumogakure Genin into his private office.

In this tiny organization of only five people, having few people had its advantages. Kaedeji always had ample room for his own research, and his colleagues would not say much about it either. They all dealt with corpses, and they all did plenty of work that could not see the light, work contrary to the righteous grandeur of the Will of Fire. They were more tolerant of certain colleagues' unusual hobbies.

"October 25th. Kaedeji practiced the Dead Soul Technique again. No contact between him and the Miko has been discovered for now."

Morino Ise glanced up, silently recorded it, then lowered his head and continued working on the corpse in front of him. Though he disliked this work as well, as a ninja, he had no right to choose. He only had the right to accept missions and carry them out.

Dim blue Chakra seeped from Kaedeji's fingertips into the corpse's meridians. The dead man's eyeballs bulged in the darkness, while his decayed throat let out a raspy, "Hah... hah..." howl.

"Thirty-seventh comparative experiment this month: a Genin dead for over forty-eight hours could only sustain fifteen minutes of high-intensity physical activity before its lumbar vertebrae fractured. An Iwa Chunin dead for less than forty-eight hours could use most of the ninjutsu it had mastered in life, although its finger bones flew apart while forming hand seals..."

What interested Kaedeji most was the corpse of a Sunagakure Jōnin—the zombified Puppet Master's fingers could even produce Chakra threads.

"Based on my experience with the corpse transport team and the Corpse Disposal Unit, the ten minutes before brain death are the optimal conversion window. Zombies created then almost perfectly replicate their strength in life and can, for a certain period, erupt with strength greater than they possessed while alive. However, doing so requires extracting Chakra regardless of cost, which means the body deteriorates at an astonishing rate. It is basically scrapped after one battle."

That was not necessarily a waste. Before it was scrapped, it could still be made to unleash a corpse explosion, causing additional damage. It was a form of recycling.

Kaedeji sketched a graph in his experiment log as strange spiderweb-like patterns emerged across the Sunagakure zombie's lungs.

He casually sliced open the zombie's throat. The instant black blood gushed out, its decayed vocal cords shuddered and snapped completely apart. It could no longer produce its instinctive howls. This corpse had been a Jōnin-level Puppet Master in life, and it still retained forty percent of its strength.

The only regret Kaedeji felt was that the first Jōnin he had controlled turned out to be a Puppet Master. He did not have enough puppets on hand for this zombie to use.

Perhaps he could use some cheap Chunin and Genin zombies as puppets for this Jōnin zombie? A zombie that used zombies in battle... perhaps that could also count as a type of ninjutsu he had developed, Kaedeji thought.

The Gate burst open, and the distinctive smell of blood interrupted his thoughts.

Two Root ninja smashed through the entrance and rushed into the Corpse Disposal Unit. The young ninja on the stretcher was covered in purple-black blotches and convulsing. Black blood seeped from his seven orifices, pooling into a thick puddle on the metal table.

Kaedeji gave him a glance. He knew this man.

Tobitake Tonbo.

"He can't be saved."

Morino Ise performed only a brief examination before shaking his head. "We've already ended the war with Amegakure, so this should be Sunagakure poison, right? His internal organs have all been corroded. Someone like this should have been disposed of early. Why send him here while he's still alive?"

One of the Root ninja tore off his bloodstained gloves and tossed them to the floor, eliminating any possibility of being contaminated by the poison. "The Medical Ninja at the hospital treated him for two days but still couldn't save him. To conserve medical resources, they have effectively abandoned treatment. Lady Tsunade left the village with Lord Dan Katō to carry out a mission and cannot analyze the poison. Lord Aburame Ryoma ordered us to bring him here."

"I can't save him either."

"We didn't ask you to save him. While this guy is still alive, you are to cut open his body, observe the changes in each organ, and write an analysis report on this poison. Make it as detailed as possible! Those reports will ultimately be submitted to Lady Tsunade as one of her reference materials for breaking down Sunagakure poison."

The other Root ninja spoke coldly. His eyes beneath the mask held no emotional fluctuation, only ruthless indifference. "This is a B-rank Mission. If you succeed, it will add another accomplishment to all your records. But if this mission is leaked, you will become the mission we must complete."

Morino Ise frowned, but he still nodded. "I understand. No one who enters the Corpse Disposal Unit is a fool, and there are certainly no blabbering idiots. Everyone here knows their fate..."

Besides, dissecting and analyzing a living ninja from their own village—if Such Matters were exposed, they would certainly cause an enormous uproar and severely damage the morale of the ninja on the front lines.

Morino Ise looked at the two Root ninja before him, then lowered his gaze to the young ninja struggling in agony. In the end, he severed what little empathy he had left and ordered the "diagnosis" to begin.