Tsunade exuded dominance. With a wave of her hand, Jiraiya slunk back, though the aggrieved look on his face was enough to make anyone laugh.
Not just Hiko—even Orochimaru was speechless at Jiraiya. Why put yourself through that?
But Jiraiya liked doing this sort of thing, especially whenever he ran into Tsunade. Orochimaru could only silently tell himself to get used to it.
Missions and training became the Sarutobi Squad's two-point routine.
Because the advanced class students had graduated, the Third Hokage was extremely busy and had yet to make time to teach the four of them. They trained and took missions on their own.
Fortunately, these were mostly D-rank missions—low in difficulty but highly troublesome—and they did not require the Third Hokage to accompany them.
As they continued completing all kinds of missions, the squad's reputation gradually accumulated, and Hiko's pockets became more comfortable as well. That was good news for Hiko.
Hiko resumed the training he had abandoned for so long. Now, he finally no longer had to worry about lacking money to buy Kunai and shuriken. Although the rewards for the lowest-tier D-rank missions were meager, small amounts added up, and after enough missions, the earnings were still quite considerable.
It was just that compared to other missions, they were far inferior.
Time slowly passed. The Sarutobi Squad, once the center of attention, gradually faded into the background. Quite a few people even began taking pleasure in their misfortune.
When they learned that the Third Hokage had personally accepted them as disciples, many had been green with envy. But now, they were starting to gloat. The Third Hokage was too busy and simply did not have much time to guide them. Forget guidance—he did not even have time to lead them on missions.
The Sarutobi Squad had