I'm Sorry, I'm a Spy

I'm Sorry, I'm a Spy

"Are you really going to choose this path?"

Obito asked with a grim expression.

Aoba nodded numbly.

"Why?" Obito was silent for a moment before asking again.

Unable to reveal the real reason, Aoba had no choice but to make up a moving excuse. "Didn't we make a promise? Once the war was over, you'd come get me. Besides, a war orphan like me definitely wouldn't be able to survive out there, right?"

Obito's body suddenly trembled. He seemed to recall those days when the two of them had bickered and messed around every day, along with the childish words he had repeatedly spoken about protecting Aoba.

Suddenly, the tension in Obito's face eased, and his gaze toward Aoba softened.

That's precisely why I can't let you stay.

This is hell, and the only ones who can remain in hell are... demons!

"Since you've chosen this path, don't regret it."

After leaving him with those words, Obito returned to his cold expression and turned to leave.

Aoba, meanwhile, breathed a sigh of relief. Strangely, though, he had already made his choice, so why hadn't the mission indicated that it was complete?

"You've gone soft, Obito."

White Zetsu appeared beside Obito like a ghost and said with a grin.

"No. I kept him because he still has some value to me." Obito coldly argued in his own defense.

"Oh? What use could a worthless brat like him have? You should have realized it too. The reason Lord Madara never teaches him anything is precisely because he saw that his aptitude will only ever amount to that of an ordinary shinobi. He's not worth the effort to cultivate." Black Zetsu spoke up.

Obito fell silent. A few seconds later, he slowly said, "Since Madara saw all that long ago, why did he keep him? That man must have had a reason for choosing to do so. And I merely did what 'Uchiha Madara' should have done."

After hearing this, White Zetsu and Black Zetsu both fell silent.

"Then are you planning to keep him?"

"No. Send him away—to Konoha!"

"Send him to Konoha?" White Zetsu froze.

"I told you, he has value. War orphans with ordinary aptitude like him are resources that every major shinobi village 'recovers.' If their aptitude is exceptional, the major villages will instead investigate them repeatedly. So this is an opportunity. He can infiltrate Konoha perfectly, and when the time comes, he will inevitably become an asset to me."

Obito's reasoning seemed sound, but...

"If it's only intelligence gathering, I and my clones are enough. There doesn't seem to be any need to..."

"I trust my judgment. All you need to do is obey my orders. Understood?"

Obito then closed his eyes. Although Aoba's choice had surprised him, he had immediately thought of this way to keep Aoba away from hell for the time being. He believed that the war would end sooner or later, and that Konoha would inevitably be on the victorious side.

That way, the world would enter a brief period of peace, and Konoha would be one of the safest places around.

There, Aoba could grow up safely. Once Obito's plan was realized, he could fulfill his promise as well.

Without realizing it, after witnessing Kakashi kill Rin with his own hands, the last trace of softness remaining in Obito's heart had turned out to be a brat who had yet to grow up. This was probably something Madara had never anticipated before cutting himself off from the world.

As the tail end of Konoha's forty-seventh year arrived, the victories Konoha achieved in the Kikyo Mountain Battle and the Kannabi Bridge Battle marked the end of the western front of the Third Shinobi World War.

Unable to turn the tide, Iwagakure had tried to steal a chicken only to lose the rice used to lure it. It could only withdraw in disgrace, leaving behind nothing but a complete mess.

Countless villages had been destroyed in the flames of war, and corpses lay everywhere.

The Konoha shinobi responsible for the aftermath cleared the battlefield while gathering large numbers of nearby war orphans, then sent them back to Konoha in batches.

Some said that wars were fought with money, but in truth, population was even more important than money!

After several major battles in succession, the Genin graduating from the Ninja Academy were sent to the front lines at practically the fastest possible pace.

If you saw a group of children around ten years old holding kunai and slaughtering one another on the battlefield, please don't be too shocked. Most of the adult shinobi had already been killed in action.

All the major shinobi villages had suffered drastic population declines. If the war continued, it would soon be the four- or five-year-old children taking the battlefield.

That was precisely why gathering war orphans and bringing them back to the villages became an unspoken understanding among the major shinobi villages—something that never needed to be publicly acknowledged.

These homeless children would make tremendous contributions to the villages' futures. The newborns they gave birth to after growing up alone would replenish the precious fresh blood of the major shinobi villages.

Not to mention that a large number of these children who had experienced the suffering of war would become the next generation of active-duty shinobi.

So by the end of a war, the ones truly suffering were not the Five Great Shinobi Villages at the heart of the conflict, but the small villages destroyed by the flames of war and the ordinary people who had no power to resist.

As for hatred?

Give me a break. If they couldn't even resolve such a minor issue, what was the point of fighting a war? A few small favors and some brainwashing would basically take care of it. What kind of storm could a group of children with no one to rely on possibly stir up?

It was under these circumstances that Shimiya Aoba, who had been hungry for several days and was dizzy from starvation, was finally discovered by Konoha's follow-up forces along with the few brats traveling beside him.

The moment he saw that familiar forehead protector, tears nearly sprang to his eyes.

Heaven knew how he had struggled to survive during those days after White Zetsu had dumped him in some remote forest.

If he hadn't drawn three abilities from the Beginner's Gift Pack, he would probably have long since become feces in some wild beast's stomach.

Moreover, worried that White Zetsu had been secretly observing him the entire way, he hadn't dared reveal his abilities voluntarily. His life had been as miserable as it could possibly get.

Of the dozen or so war orphans he encountered one after another, only four or five of them remained by the time they left the forest. The rest had either been carried off by wild beasts or starved to death. As for those who had lacked the strength to keep up and fallen behind, their fate went without saying.

When he left, that lousy mission finally showed some progress.

Stage One complete. Reward: Worn Wooden Treasure Chest ×1

Stage Two unlocked.

Mission Name: Who Is the Spy?

Description: Infiltrate Konoha and cause trouble from time to time.

Mission Reward: Depends on completion.

Mission Failure: Don't ask. If you ask, the answer is self-destruction!

Stage Three: ???

This mission was also more or less the same as what Obito had told him to do. However, neither Obito nor this lousy system had clearly stated what exactly he was supposed to do. It seemed he would have to improvise.

Still, these missions really were more suicidal than the last!

Damn!