Civilian Ninja

"If only I'd traveled back in time earlier. Even without a Golden Finger, I wouldn't be living so precariously, would I?"

Other people were reborn from the womb with Six Paths Bloodline. At worst, they arrived as tender little children just starting Ninja Academy, with plenty of time to grow.

But he had only crossed over half a year ago, becoming a twenty-year-old cannon fodder chunin in a near-death crisis.

At twenty, he should have been in the prime of his youth. On the surface, this transmigration had even earned him several extra years of life.

But in reality, considering that the average ninja only lived into their teens, he was already a seasoned elderly ninja.

Especially since it was currently the Second Great Ninja War, and he was stationed on the Front Lines of the Land of Rivers.

Advanced in age and high in danger.

The kind who could be buried at any moment.

When he had first crossed over, people called him [Sha Shi Gai], and for a time, he had thought he had become Second Pillar. Unfortunately, he never found his best buddy [Naruto].

Only later did he learn that his name was [Umino Sasuke]. His surname was Umino, and he was a Konoha Ninja, so his first thought had been of Konoha's Old Mother, Umino Iruka, as well as Iruka's Parents, the jonin couple Umino Ikaku and Umino Kozue, who had both died during the Nine-Tails' Rampage.

They shared the Umino surname. He had assumed he was related to Umino Iruka. After all, if a family could produce two jonin, surely the Umino Clan was one of those slightly impressive yet exceptionally low-profile ninja clans that had simply never been mentioned in the original story?

Even if he had failed to get Six Paths Bloodline, being born into a Konoha Ninja Clan would have been good enough.

Being born into a Konoha ninja family was still pretty good. It might not mean being born in Rome, but at the very least, he would have started half a street ahead of those commoner pack mules.

Unfortunately, things did not go as he wished.

Only through the fragments of memory in his mind did he learn that Konoha had no such thing as an Umino ninja clan. He had no connection to Umino Ikaku or Umino Kozue either. Instead, he had deep ties to the Sarutobi Clan.

His ability to become a ninja, and even a Konoha Villager, was entirely thanks to the Sarutobi Clan.

For three generations, his ancestors had been commoners and retainers of the Sarutobi Clan—pure tenant farmer and servant stock.

Although the Sarutobi Clan was not a top-tier noble house like the Senju Clan or Uchiha, it was still a second-tier ninja powerhouse. It even maintained a Fire Release Brigade and owned numerous businesses throughout the Land of Fire.

The Sarutobi Clan's main business was being ninja. Quite a few members without ninja talent chose to manage the family's industries, but there were not enough of them. They naturally lacked the manpower to personally oversee such enormous holdings, so promoting household-born servants to assist with management became their preferred solution.

Because his grandfather, Umino Tairou, was handsome and somewhat literate, the ever-expanding Sarutobi Clan promoted him to assist Sarutobi Foreign Affairs Members in managing fishponds and mines around Akihabara.

His status was not high, only marginally better than tenant farmers who could only scrape food from the soil. But at least he would not starve to death, and he could afford to have a few more children.

During the Warring States Period, human lives were worth less than grass. Becoming the retainer of a powerful clan and gaining a place to settle down was something countless people dreamed of.

When Konoha was founded, many retainers of ninja clans naturally followed their masters into Konoha to settle down and become Konoha Villagers, in order to fill out the village's population.

The Umino Clan had missed the first great wave of immigrants during Konoha's Founding, but they caught Konoha's expansion.

After Hiruzen Sarutobi became the Third Hokage, Konoha underwent another expansion. How could rootless refugees be more reliable than household-born servants?

Thus, answering the Sarutobi Clan's call, the Umino Clan became part of the second wave of immigrants and moved into Konoha.

They gloriously rose from tenant farmers and servants to self-employed city dwellers—and city dwellers in a First-Tier City in the Land of Fire, no less. It counted as a certain degree of class mobility.

However, the Umino Clan had no patron within the Sarutobi Clan at the time. Competition for servant positions in the Sarutobi household was fierce. In the end, they could not compete against the older generation of immigrants, nor those who had long since sent in their sons and daughters to secure patrons. They completely missed their chance to keep eating from the Sarutobi Clan's public coffers.

They could only helplessly become ordinary Konoha Villagers, there to bolster Konoha's population.

Living in Konoha was not easy.

Konoha was called a village, but it was actually a major city with a population exceeding one hundred thousand, and its prices were absurdly high.

Housing prices and rent were outrageously expensive as well.

Even before the inflation of Naruto and Sasuke's era, a bowl of ramen cost fifty or sixty ryo.

As for housing, ninja and war orphans generally received basic housing, while ordinary villagers could only rent places themselves or spend enormous sums to buy a home.

All one could say was that ninja truly were high-income earners. Everything was expensive.

If the Umino Clan had not previously managed fishponds for the Sarutobi Clan and learned the trade of raising and butchering fish, they would have gone bankrupt long ago, been driven out of Konoha, and become refugees whose lives were worth less than grass.

The Umino Clan started over and became fishmongers at Konoha's fish market. But they were no Gao Qiqiang—just bottom-rung fish sellers who could barely make ends meet after food, clothing, housing, and transportation, earning nothing but hard-earned money.

That was only because unsold rotten fish and dead shrimp could be eaten by the family themselves, saving greatly on food expenses. Otherwise, for a bottom-tier commoner family in Konoha like his, there was no way they could have raised an ordinary child without genetic mutation into a glorious ninja through the efforts of just one generation.

The fact that his parents had renamed the previous owner of this body [Sasuke] when he was young showed just how fervently the Umino Clan had hoped to cultivate a powerful ninja of their own.

The name [Sasuke] did not refer to Second Pillar, but to Sarutobi Sasuke, the father of the Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi and a Kage-Level Expert from Senju Hashirama's era.

Naming him Sasuke did not mean they wanted him to become Hiruzen Sarutobi's father. Rather, it was an expression of special sentiment and respect.

There were even more people in Konoha named [Hashirama], and names containing [ma] were as numerous as stars.

Heaven did not disappoint those with determination in the end.

The whole family had scrimped and saved, pouring all their nutrients into one person, and finally raised a ninja.

The Umino Clan naturally experienced another leap in social standing, rising from bottom-tier commoners into the ninja class.

Ninja might not have been nobles like samurai once were, but they possessed no fewer privileges.

At the very least, his family no longer had to pay a cut when selling fish. That cut had been even higher than the profit they had earned selling fish in the first place. Before, they had essentially been working for others and only making enough to compensate for their labor.

Of course, if it had not been hard work with low profits, the fish-selling business would not have fallen to his family back then.

Ever since the previous owner graduated from Ninja Academy and became a Konoha genin, the Umino Clan had undergone earth-shaking changes.

The previous owner had graduated from Ninja Academy at the age of ten, in Konoha Year 28, during the longest period of Ninja World Peace.

There had been a full decade of peace between the First Great Ninja War and the Second Shinobi World War that began last year.

Perhaps thanks to the Sarutobi Clan's political influence, the previous owner had entered Ninja Academy near the end of the First Great Ninja War. His aptitude had barely met the threshold during testing, yet he had not been eliminated and luckily entered the Ninja Academy's regular class.

By the time he graduated, he had naturally missed the First Great Ninja War entirely.

Ninja were high-income earners. Even genin earned quite considerable incomes during peacetime.

High income came with high risks.

Even during peacetime, missions could encounter all kinds of unforeseen events.

It was very rare for an ordinary C-rank mission to suddenly become a B-rank mission, but it was not unheard of.

After several unexpected missions and several life and death trials, he spent six years and finally became a Konoha chunin just before reaching adulthood.

Once he became a chunin, not only did his income immediately multiply several times over, but the Umino Clan finally underwent another major leap in social class.

Genin were consumables, but chunin were Konoha's backbone.

Various hidden benefits gradually opened up to him, such as Mission Merit Points for exchanging ninjutsu and low-interest home loans.

The ultra-low-interest housing developed by the Senju Clan had long since sold out, but the Sarutobi Clan was also highly skilled in Earth Release construction. The properties it developed were a little more expensive, carried higher interest, and were not located along the main roads, but they were still properties in a First-Tier City in the Land of Fire. Their value would certainly rise substantially in the future.

Less than a year after becoming a chunin, the previous owner moved out of the Senju Clan's low-rent housing and bought a home with a loan.

After another two years, he had paid off the mortgage in full. During that time, he had even bought his family a small storefront in the fish market.

No wonder Konoha Villagers all wanted to become ninja. It was not about the Will of Fire at all—the ninja profession genuinely had a lucrative future.