"I'll wait for you up ahead!"
Sasuke's voice came from the distance.
"Let's go. I want to talk to your Hokage too and see just how your Hidden Leaf Village plans to maintain peace!"
Then A roared at the Kumogakure shinobi around him.
"Brothers, we're heading back!"
"Let's go too."
Naruto spoke to the members of the Hidden Leaf Village's forces beside him.
The Land of Fire.
A remote village.
The atmosphere in this village had been rather strange lately.
Although the men went out to work in the fields every day, the villagers generally stayed home unless they had something necessary to do. No one wandered around.
It all started with the strange people who had arrived in the village some time ago.
A few days earlier, a group of odd people had come to their village.
One look was enough to tell that they were noble lords. After arriving at the village chief's house, they settled in there.
They stayed for several days.
Everyone in the village knew that noble lords had arrived, so none of them dared to visit their neighbors, afraid of inadvertently offending the nobles.
In these times, offending a noble lord was tantamount to committing a capital offense.
These were the people the Mysterious Organization had sent out to search for Keita Otake.
They were no fools. They knew they were the organization's bait.
But there was nothing they could do. From the moment they joined the organization, their lives were no longer their own.
They could not refuse the organization's orders.
But who would want to die if they could stay alive?
So they deliberately slowed their search.
They practically rested for seven days for every day they worked.
As a result, they had only visited a few villages so far.
After all,