"So."
Inside Mixue Bingcheng, Uchiha Gin slowly stirred the pale red milkshake in front of him, his inexplicable gaze falling on Maruboshi Kosuke, who sat opposite him wrapped head to toe in bandages.
"You guys just won while lying there?"
Maruboshi Kosuke shifted his fractured left leg, the stabbing pain making his brows furrow. Hearing the teasing question in Uchiha Gin's voice, he curled his lip.
"Forget the lying part. Just tell me whether we won or not."
"Fine. Winning while lying down is still winning."
Uchiha Gin shrugged. He had not expected that the one who played the decisive role in this war would actually be Kagami-zai, who had stayed hidden for years.
Not only had he defeated three Tailed Beasts single-handedly, the garrison troops traveling with him had also surrounded the Earth-Cloud Allied Forces that had pushed deep into their territory. Seeing that the general situation was beyond saving, Ōnoki had wisely chosen to cease hostilities.
Of course, this so-called ceasefire was only the official explanation he gave back home, merely to preserve the last shred of his dignity. The actual situation was that Iwagakure's invasion war had collapsed completely, and he had even sold out their hired ally, Cloud Village, along with it.
Now the two sides had forged an irreconcilable blood feud. In the future, forget cooperation—if they met without immediately starting a fight, they would already qualify as candidates for the Ninja World's good-citizenship award.
After sighing over the current state of the once iron-blooded alliance's collapse, Uchiha Gin's gaze fell on Maruboshi Kosuke's left leg, encased in plaster, his eyes filled with emotion.
"Still, I've got to say, kid, your luck really isn't bad. Not only did you survive a battlefield of that level, you didn't even lose any of your five limbs."
Compared